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I want to talk about Ressentiment, specifically the intro to a book I read of the same name by Max Schaler. I'm surprised the motte/rationalist circles haven't discussed it more, because it seems extremely relevant to the culture war. Here's the definition given in the book:
The reason I bring it up is that I see this emotional pattern as the driving force behind modern politics. More on the populist right surely, but the left also has a weird sort of ressentiment in which they kind of hate their own culture, see whiteness / western civ as a stain that they can never get rid of.
Importantly though I think the right falls into the definition of being 'impotent' FAR more than the left, which as this quote explains is crucial to the whole process of ressentiment:
Ultimately I know a ton has been written about this topic, but curious what folks here think of the idea?
The populist right? Which populist right?
Maybe if you mean the groypers and GOPe. I don't expect the Motte to like my answer here, but I only find these feelings of ressentiment among the Panicans. Trump himself is maybe the most agentic man in the world, even when he's complaining about unfair treatment on twitter. I don't see impotence fantasies from the people behind Iran and Venezuela, or Trump's Ballroom and Victory Arch, or the MAGA loyal faithful who think we could pull out a victory in the midterms. I see a lot of impotence fantasies from the anti-Israel crowd and the neo-Tucker / Kent / MTG / Candace Owens people who say MAGA was betrayed and everything was lost. I see a lot of impotence fantasies from Hill Staffers and Congressmen who all of them, to a man, no matter what they say in public, believe that the midterms are 100% a guaranteed Republican loss so anything Trump tries to do about it is actually cope and therefore illegitimate. (They not only believe that we deserve to lose the redistricting wars for this reason, but that Trump squandered his 2024 mandate because of stuff like ICE protests in Minneapolis, oh well, we tried nothing and ran out of ideas, we deserve to lose, maybe we can try again next time in 3028.)
I suspect I will be accused of gross partisanship or bias but when I scan the landscape it's the faction that believes we can Make America Great Again that is the most ruthlessly optimistic about the future of America. Who is more excited about the state of the future today? The tech people? The peptide biohackers? I don't see a wellspring of optimism about the future coming from many other places.
More than that though:
Does this not actually describe, to a T, the modern leftist emotional bent? It's the left subsumed in infinite impotence fantasies about how invisible ineradicable all-powerful forces permeate society at every level. They believe, for example, that White Supremacy is woven into the fabric of American life, it explains everything bad that happens to a minority anywhere, you can't log off and ignore it, you can't hard work your way out of it, you can't argue with it. A black man who fails failed because of White Supremacy. A black man who succeeds succeeded despite White Supremacy. We have to have massive, world-spanning DEI infrastructure to even begin to address the imbalance, it's never enough, we need police reform, we need reparations for Haiti, we need gun control. We can't even begin to address everything wrong with the world until we address capitalism, and to do that we have to fight the billionaires.
Is it not a movement premised around an extremely negative emotional outlook?
Climate change is going to destroy the world and as individuals we're powerless to do anything about it.
Sexism and racism are vast systemic forces and as individuals we're powerless to address them.
Technology and capitalism are destroying the world and as individuals we're powerless to change things.
Leftists often believe in all these powerlessness fantasies even as they do exercise real power. Climate change is the perfect example, real environmental problems that could be solved are subsumed into the ultimate global problem. Instead of getting people to go into the forest and pick up trash out of the river, you get them to protest for regulations that could curb 1% of a country's Co2 emissions over a 15-year period so that 0.02% of the global climate problem can be alleviated. It's actually extremely consistent, a lot of leftism is a machine for transmuting its followers real problems into vast impersonal forces that we are all powerless to do anything about (until the final defeat of capitalism i.e. Alex Jones and Donald Trump).
I mean, "personal responsibility" is an idea so obviously coded one way that it's at this point a bad cliche.
There is something very admirable about the seemingly boundless faith some grassroots MAGA supporters have for Trump. It's a pure loyalty exercise for them. To a point where reality itself is just a test to be overcome. But that's also a flaw. Ruthless optimism that parts the sea of information and fact to lead us all to the promise land of hope through loyalty is only good insofar as the promise land is actually there and the parted sea doesn't collapse back in on everyone on the way there. J6 does come to mind.
To springboard off your example on lefties and white supremacy. The sociology theories lefties come up with to explain the racial gaps are obviously insane and untrue. But at the same time it's not possible to falsify them without actually explaining why the big gaps exist.
Now how does one explain that as a race blind MAGA supporter in Trump's America? Do some similarly half baked sociology based on the Moynihan Report? Do we just advocate for the implementation of a genuine white supremacy to mend the black nuclear family back together through force? Or do we just not talk about it?
Not talking about things seems to be the preferred option for dealing with most things that are unpleasant to think about for the MAGA optimists. We instead trust our leaders and don't think too much about things. Just listen to cope merchants on Fox and friends tell us about how everything is under control. No need to deal with hard reality. And that's where things stop feeling admirable.
When people start recognizing that this loyalty exists and start to pander to it for their own gain, then you're left with a snake swallowing its own tail. With hucksters abusing this captive audience that has nowhere else to go. It's very sad to watch.
Well I don't know I feel pretty confident that it's my view that matches reality and everyone else is just too jaded to believe in anything because they're cynical and old and mad at God. It's as if you described Christianity in very clinical terms and said, "There's something pure about belief in Christ even though these Christians have to put fact aside." Well, no, Christians believe (I believe) that Christianity is based in fact, just like I believe my support for Trump is based in fact.
But I understand that my perspective is rare so I get what you're trying to say etc. etc.
Sorry, it's not clear to me contextually what specifically is being hypothetically explained here, the existence of the racial gap as such? I think the mainstream conservative position is that blacks and whites behave differently, and then you fill that difference with some ratio of "culture" and "race" depending on how racist you are. And this more or less explains everything, without having to reach into every social institution and change every facet of society. I like the take of a friend of mine who described DC's local government as having "an abusive relationship" with respect to local voters.
This is a fierce, omnipresent debate within MAGA and I really only ever hear this line from people who don't like my explanation for why I trust Trump. It can't be that I've thought things through and reached a different conclusion from them (from you), it's that I haven't thought it through.
I guess, to add some specificity here instead of just talking on the meta level: I trust Trump because he's smarter than me, has better information than I have, and has better instincts than I have. People look at me like I have two heads when I say this, but if you were learning physics and your teacher demonstrated obvious learning you wouldn't say, "I trust my teacher and don't think too much about things." No, he clearly knows more than me, in this situation it's correct to be a little humble and learn something. I mean that with zero sycophancy.
To take an even more specific example, let's take immigration. I trust that Trump wants to stop illegal immigration. After ten years of Trumpian politics, I trust that Trump wants to stop illegal immigration. Now, in the day-to-day, there are all sorts of stories, why isn't Trump deporting more people, is this a broken campaign promise, or why hasn't Trump tried this strategy instead of that strategy, or what's he doing in Minnesota, or maybe he should defy judges, or this or that. There's a lot we could sit and debate I guess. But ultimately what reason do I have for actually supposing that Trump is wrong? He's much more agentic than I am, he's much more successful than I am, he has much better political instincts than I do, he has much more information than I do, he has much better judgment than I do. So take Minnesota. Maybe he could have done what twitter is saying and doubled down and called it an insurrection and declared martial law and forced an even bigger crisis. I'm sure that was presented to him as an option. But he didn't take it. Why would I assume that my judgment is better than his? Because I scroll twitter?
Note that this logic is not a blank check for trusting all leaders blindly. When leadership of the Republican Party passes to Marco Rubio or JD Vance I don't suppose that they will replicate Trump's skill in every domain. (Although they probably deserve more deference than random posters on twitter.) Likewise Obama and Biden don't deserve this kind of deference just by virtue of being the president. (Actually if there was one Democratic leader I would defer to it would be Nancy Pelosi: if you were a Democrat it would be entirely reasonable to take cues from her about what is politically possible, you wouldn't be very credible if you claimed to know better than her. That's because she earned it after a very long career of very highly-demonstrated competence.) Anyways, Trump has obviously performed at the highest levels for a generation now and succeeded in situations everyone else thought impossible. That actually obviously, trivially merits a pretty high level of trust. Backseat driving every decision Trump makes is about as compelling to me as a fat washed-up beer-belly in a sports jersey complaining that he can tell every time Lebron James makes a mistake.
I'm trying to lay this out very neutrally although reading back I think this conversation is not quite the right jumping-off point and I'll have to try again in the future. But I'm bored at work and I have time at my desk and so why not. I get why this sounds so irrational and strange to people. I also believe that Donald Trump dodged a bullet in an obvious miracle and is clearly chosen by God and clearly represents the deep spirit of America, U-S-A, U-S-A, and we're all too cynical so we need a reason why we should listen when Mom tells us not to touch the hot stove. But putting that aside I think loyalty can be extremely rational, which is what I'm trying to enunciate.
As an aside, Fox has always been relatively critical of Trump and is definitely not where you go to hear happy stories about how everything is fine. Fox is where you go to hear about how woke transgender dog clinics are ruining San Francisco with vegan homeless shelters. If I was woke I would watch Fox News because it would make me feel powerful.
Many MAGA optimists don't gauge things by what is happening around them. It's exactly like you say. Their barometer is what Trump does. If he does X, then X was the best thing to do because they trust Trump. Their gas prices going up or their jobs moving away or their farms going bankrupt is just not accounted for as a counterfactual.
HBD has no place in mainstream conservative politics. The functional reason for the existence of the dissident right is to be a right winger that can acknowledge HBD. The mainstream conservatives have no explanation or the gaps between the races beyond what I described before, if they even acknowledge them at all, which is rare. The conservative position is that maladaptive black behavior is driven by culture. Primarily the welfare state making them dependent and ghetto culture that glorifies violence. They never explain why blacks move towards this sort of thing, nor how they are going to fix it. It's an excuse that is just as loony and baseless as any lefty cultural excuse about historical oppression and omnipresent ethereal white supremacy.
Those in power being the most competent is only true insofar as they are competent in staying in power. I'm not sold on how that naturally translates to functional governance. From what I can tell the Trump we have now is so far removed from the 2016 Trump it's not comparable. If one wants to say that every decision that he has made that has removed him from his original brand has been the best course of action, then I'd ask, best course towards what? Draining the swamp, building a border wall and kicking all the foreigners out and give jobs to Americans? Or the best course of action for Trump to stay in power? If it's the latter, why is it good that he is staying in power if those same actions are removing him from the original promises?
I'm not a routine Fox viewer but as far as I can gleam from the Youtube clips, they are pretty much on the Trump train. Especially with regards to Iran. It's been a fair while since I saw any rhetoric comparable to the #NeverTrump of 2016, when Fox, outside of Tucker Carlson and similar, was anti-Trump.
I'm not sure what you're intending. Most people don't reason in the sense you're describing. There is no mass reserve of people who "gauge things by what is happening around them". Most people get their opinions from life experience, and most life experience is consuming media. There's nothing novel about MAGA here except that we broadly trust Trump's judgment. So that, if gas prices go up, I assume this was judged relative to other options and found to be the best course of action. It's not even that mysterious. It's not hard for me to make a case for why Trump went to war with Iran or how this is potentially a good thing. I don't have to appeal to mysterious subrational forces.
Respectfully, conservative politics has moved way far beyond whether conservatives can talk about race.
Well we are building a border wall and this is the first administration in generations that has seen more foreigners leaving America than coming in. As for draining the swamp, Trump has politically defeated a lot of powerful people in his attempt to reform the American government. To me this reads like making the perfect the enemy of the good, and declaring that, since Trump hasn't accomplished everything he must have moderated. But I don't know anyone, not a single person, who has ever accomplished everything they intended.
You describe the exact process I'm talking about. We both agree that MAGA optimists judge things by whether or not Trump did the thing or not. We both agree that this is novel.
Where we seemingly don't agree is whether or not a relevant amount of people care about 'things', like gas or housing prices, or something similar. I think a lot of people see or feel something that personally affects them like that and therefor want to vote for those things in specific. Expecting a solution and positive change. Using those things as the barometer. I think you understand and agree with this dynamic insofar as you understand that it's important to maintain that Trump is keeping his promises, like you do below.
I guess my point comes down to the question of how you determine values. It feels like we are doing a lot of outsourcing to Trump. My perspective is that MAGA optimists are going the way of the Dodo. They are politically a minority, their children will be a racial minority. I feel like I'm watching the sky fall and then I see them happy as clams because Trump is in charge.
But you are appealing to a very limited force. Mainly just yourself and your faith in Trump. You making a case and then asserting that the course of action being taken is the best because Trump took it isn't particularly rational. Apologies if this sounds too dismissive but I'm starting to feel like you're just constructing a rhetorical fun house of sorts, where you can make assumptions and assertions yourself but preclude others from doing so at any time if they disagree with Trump. Since Trump is smarter and has more information and such. Like, not to rehash things but what is the current state of the Iran war? At what point can we state that the war has been a failure and that Trump made a bad choice? Or is that even possible?
Not really. The small contingent that was bullied into white advocacy, like Charlie Kirk or Tucker Carlson, talked some about whites as a group. But they all defaulted back on individualism, culture and values when push came to shove. Which is the same song and dance they've been doing since they ostracized Peter Brimelow and similar voices from the mainstream.
Yeah, that sounds more true than not. So what is perfect?
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You answered your own question here!
The welfare state and ghetto culture are the mechanism. That doesn't explain why blacks are drawn to it more so than other races.
If race is skin deep and the sociological theory being presented is true then it should apply equally regardless of race. But instead we see very disparate results along racial lines. It's the same problem lefty sociological theories have. As soon as you treat them as serious theories and not convenient verbal political excuses that have no substance and only exist to help us turn our brain off, they fall apart.
The origin of the American federal welfare state traces its way back to the Freedman's Bureau, established during the Civil War. As you might guess from the name, blacks were "drawn to it" because the Bureau was specifically established for them.
A sociological theory that hangs it all on "IQ" and doesn't account for the facts of the historical case is less fixing the problems with lefty sociological theories and more embracing them, just swapping out "IQ" for "racism" as the Great Monocausal Foe.
I think some people assume that accomplishing this swap will lead to closing the welfare state tap off, perhaps unaware or forgetting that the tap was turned on at a time when (functionally) that very belief was widespread.
To take your narrative seriously one would have to imagine that a post-war government program that lasted 9 years in the 1860's which gave resources and education to a group of people was always going to lead to that people being welfare dependent. If that's not the argument, then we're just finding historical a-ha! moments that might feel satisfying to our brains but are of no real consequence or value beyond that.
Both the left and the conservatives assert that the gaps exist because of historical circumstance and/or oppression. They both assert historical just so stories without ever applying them seriously as sociological theories about the nature of man. Instead treating it like a verbal game, not a look at reality. They walk through the steps of history and pontificate on each as a cause for behavior, but not a consequence of it.
The 'monocausal' foe is the nature of human beings, the differences between them, the widely divergent population groups humanity is composed of and the wide variety of circumstance they find themselves in.
If history was causal in the way you describe and not consequential, one would see a vast difference between ancestrally similar population groups that had divergent historical paths. We have this case.
Iceland was the poorest country in Europe for centuries. Yet with the Marshall Aid program post-WW2, they went from being the poorest to being one of the most prosperous nations on the planet in the span of 50 years. The lesson is simple. Give high quality people technology and resources and they will prosper. Being colonized doesn't matter. Being poor doesn't matter.
Becoming a criminal or welfare dependent is not a consequence of history. It's the path of least resistance for a certain type of person. Most people find it easier to learn how to read than to have 5 children with 5 different men, collect child support, become obese and claim medical benefits on top of that. Most people find it easier to go to work rather than rob a liquor store and sell drugs. Most. But not all. The difference is the people.
The circumstance that make those anti-social actions possible are a consequence of the kind of people that would take advantage of those circumstances existing. On top of that, welfare programs existing doesn't cause, for example, Norwegians in Norway to abuse the programs at nearly the same rates as other groups do. In short, these history specific explanations fail to explain anything in a broader context. They're not applicable to the real world. These things happen in different context and the obvious determining factor is the humans, not their historical circumstance.
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