The Search for Reds

 Today's mood has improved over yesterday's, which is good. After I posted the down-in-the-dumps post, I did push myself to do a short workout, take a shower, and . . . well, absorb the news about the helicopter-passenger jet collision in Washington, DC. God be with the victims' families. 

Today's press conference by President Trump featured the expected bromides about togetherness in tragedy before (apparently--after I stopped listening) detouring into the expected scapegoat for the crash from the administration: Biden (and Pete Budigeig) and DEI. He offered no evidence or substantiation, of course, even after some (admirable) pushback by some reporters. Trump is well beyond the need for proof. Apparently, so are his supporters. Some news media are instead noting how the FAA chief had stepped down at Musk's command on Jan 20, how air traffic controllers had been suffering from overwork and shortages for years, how the (again, Musk-spawned) scare letter to all federal employees yesterday provide at least some points of curiosity--for other people, obviously, not for Trump or his administration.

Just before sitting down to write this (after cleaning up yet more of Solo's projectile barfing--I'm really worried about our little guy), I read the report of a national call from Braver Angels (the depolarization group I'm part of). The call concentrated on the results of a long survey/study about one of the major problems Braver Angels faces: red (i.e., conservative) recruitment. The results identified two familiar reasons. First, reds report feeling unwelcome in BA spaces, usually thanks to offhand comments from uncareful blues. Second, many reds simply don't see why BA is worth their time and trouble; it's all talk and no action. I've heard the latter expressed by many of our red attendees. 

With effort, I quash my first reaction--how far back to we need to bend over in order to make reds feel welcome? In no other realm of society or politics do I ever see reds worrying about whether they're making blues feel welcome. Looking beyond that, I think there are some other issues going on--at least where I am--that contribute to the red-recruitment problem.

The first is that partisan sorting into reds and blues (Braver Angels's longstanding default) leaves out a great many self-identified independents, often (but not exclusively) of some flavor of libertarian. Now, a lot of times BA will label these (or encourage them to self-label as) red. But that shade of red doesn't fit well. 

One of the solutions offered by the BA official in charge of the call (whom I know as a really stand-up red-identifying guy) involved including a prominent red, a podcast host, on the call. But this prominent red is described as having "a personal relationship with a Trump nominee for the NIH"--the nominee being of course Robert Kennedy. Here's the thing: Kennedy is much more libertarian than MAGA red. He's kissed the ring enough to be NIH nominee (he'll likely get through despite a long history of cackle-brained, anti-vax opinions). Trump has recruited more libertarian bros like Kennedy and Musk into his circle this time around. I'm assuming that this podcast host falls more into that red-leaning libertarian mold, not the bright-red MAGA. (Checking Wikipedia--apparently he's been described as libertarian but now rejects that label--which is still different than a full-on-Trump loyalist a la Kash Patel.)

It remains to be seen how stable such libertarian-authoritarian bonds will remain. Libertarian authoritarianism is increasingly a thing, but it's not quite the same as MAGA white-nationalist-Christian-fundamentalist authoritarianism (not that everyone is white or Christian in that group, e.g., Patel). Some fractures between them have so far been slight, and it may be that Trump's main feat this time around involves forging and maintaining that fusion between "no government telling anyone what to do" and "no government telling me what to do--but definitely telling those other people what to do."

In any case, I don't know that we have that many dyed-in-the-wool MAGA Trump supporters in the organization. When I hear folk complain about BA being "all talk, no action," I hear more the libertarian streak than the authoritarian streak. 

Why is that? Well, one reason is that I don't hear the authoritarian streak at all. Religious fundamentalists and [substitute whatever gradation of white nationalism you'd like here] just don't come to Braver Angels meetings so far as I can see. And why would they? What's in it for them?

There's a difference, in other words, between "BA is all talk and no action, so it's not worth my time" and "BA is interested in getting the two sides to talk to and work together for the common good--and thus it's not worth my time." If you really believe that you have a deadlock on the True and the Right and that the other side really is just fundamentally Wrong and Malicious--well, it's immoral to work with them or talk to them. Authoritarians do not care to depolarize. They aim to conquer, and anything that reeks of compromise is a turnoff.

Frankly, I think both modes of thought--no government at all! and much stronger government that makes others do what I want!--represent dealbreaker positions for Braver Angels, which if anything embraces democratic governance moderated by protected liberties.  

As for the second objection--blues are mean--well, I agree that's a complaint I often here (more at the national level than at local levels). But again, I'm not sure it means what we think it means.

More tomorrow.

Fear and Loathing, Cultural and Political Power

In my last post, I expressed disappointment at Rod Dreher's piece castigating as some trans people whose statements at a city council meeting in Olympia went viral among some right-wing sites (a Google search turns up almost entirely right-leaning hits). Dreher's post struck me (and still strikes me) as hyperbolic and just plain mean.

Statistically, trans people, particularly trans people of color, are among the most vulnerable demographics. The people in the video were speaking out against the way Olympia carried out the Trans* Day of Remembrance. There's no indication the LGBTQ community of Olympia or elsewhere endorsed their statements; they're a minority within a larger minority. The thought that these three people (1) stand in for progressives broadly, and/or (2) represented a deep and dire threat to Christian conservatives baffles me. For Dreher to harp on them as he does, an in such insulting terms, seems like punching down.

I mean, I could easily come up with people claiming to be conservative Christians saying awful things in city council meetings. See here, for instance, where a city councilman in GA spoke out (at a meeting) against interracial marriage. For the record, it would be wrong to frame such instances as typical of conservatives or Christians. There's a reason such clips and quotes go viral, and it's not because they're run-of-the-mill sentiments. It's cheap to select and represent the most extreme examples of one's opponents as representative.

From my perspective, the question concerns who has power. Who has actual influence? The three trans activists, as they themselves admitted, have no power. They're a minority of a minority complaining to an unsympathetic council. Aside from providing fodder for conservatives to laugh at, they have zero influence.

The example I shared from Georgia at least came from an actual councilman. That councilman was in turn defending his mayor's statements that a candidate for city administrator should be rejected because he (the candidate) was black and that the city wasn't ready for a black city administrator. Again, I do not suggest such attitudes are broadly representative of Christian conservatives. But, I submit, that story represents an instance where culture (in this case, parochial racism) finds direct expression by elected representatives. That's power.

Dreher differs. Setting my annoyance aside, then, I remain curious about his argument that the left's cultural victories easily trumps the right's political or legislative victories. Here's Dreher (I'm bolding what I see as his biggest point):

Hear me loud and clear: I understand why the Left fears Trump in power. What is a mystery to me is why they don’t see how thoroughly they’ve conquered this culture — and, eventually, will have conquered its politics. As a religious conservative, if it were possible to trade the presidency for the cultural power the Left has, I would take that deal without thinking twice. As I explained here, power to force one of the most successful corporations in America — Chick-fil-A — to violate its brand and change corporate policy out of the “shame” of having donated a little money to the Salvation Army, of all groups — man, that is some real power. It’s malevolent, but it’s real, and it’s going to dominate American life for the foreseeable future. Some religious conservatives rally around Trump because they really believe the rhetoric that comes out of their own mouths about how he’s the best president Evangelicals have ever had, and suchlike. But others, whatever they say in public, know the truth in private: that absent some unforeseen event, Trump is the last thing holding back the forces of the Left in this culture from doing exactly what Michael Brendan Dougherty, above, says they’re going to do: punish religious believers and their institutions as hard as they can manage. We know this from history. We know from recent history, too, that the Jacobin spirit is alive and well.

Most left-leaning folk I know would bark laughter at the idea that conservatives feel powerless. They control the presidency, the Senate, and--thanks to Mitch McConnell--much of the federal judiciary. They pass laws that from progressives' view actively seek to block or roll back decades of progress on racial justice, reproductive rights, LGBTQ equality, climate policy, and immigration. There are simply no one seriously advancing a policy that would target Christians as a class of people to bar them from legal marriage, lock them out of certain jobs, or gerrymander congressional districts in ways that minimize their electoral influence.

Those facts, of course, don't feel the same to conservatives I know. They, like Dreher (and like Micheal Brendan Dougherty whom he quotes), see some high-profile instances (Chick-fil-A is a favorite one of late; Brendan Eich is another) as signs of general trends. Those in certain (usually urban, often coastal) areas often feel isolated, dots of red in a sea of deep blue. They hear their neighbors and co-workers bashing Trump and know to keep their heads down. They see how younger generations are much less religious and much more aligned with progressive attitudes about sex, race, and gender than they are. And thus they see threat.

I agree with Ezra Klein (whom Dougherty cites approvingly, and who in turn name-checks Dreher) that fueling the Republican support for Trump isn't (or isn't only or primarily) endorsement but fear. It's the "flight 93" presidency (existential, all-or-nothing threat)--forever. Dougherty and Dreher would supplement Klein's argument with the idea that it's both sides--Democrats as well as Republicans--who are operating from fear and loathing of the other side.

It is not a hopeful picture.

Heroes of the Fourth Turning

Yesterday I read Will Arbery's new play (currently at Playwrights Horizons in NYC), Heroes of the Fourth Turning. Rod Dreher at The American Conservative blogged about it a few times, giving it high praise for its empathetic portrayal of white Catholic conservatives.

Empathetic is a loaded descriptor here, for reasons I'll get to in a moment.

The play, set in 2017 Wyoming (just before the total solar eclipse, just after Charlottesville), features the troubled, mostly twenty-something alumni of Transfiguration College (a real place where the playwright's parents work and where he lives). We see a few hours from the ending of a party celebrating the inauguration of the College's new president, beloved president Gina, who doesn't appear until the final scenes.

The other characters represent representative cross-sections of white conservatism. Teresa, aptly described by Dreher as an "Ann Coulter type," is in many ways the standout, Gina's former star pupil now blogging merrily as an intellectual powerhouse of the Right. She adores Steve Bannon, argues that Trump represents the next, necessary face for conservatives. Kevin is lost soul, desperately lonely, desperately horny, pathetically self-aware of how pathetic he is. He's a bit of an incel, though he never uses that term. Emily, Gina's daughter, is a deep-feeling soul questioning some of the harsher sides of modern-day conservatism. Justin is the oldest of the alumi at 38; he entered college after a stint in the Marines. His perspective aligns with Dreher's own Benedict Option (which gets name-checked here, as do a range of other theological and political works). A war is coming, he's convinced. The best Christians can do is batten down the hatches until it passes.

Most characters are convinced that some kind of conflict is happening. Teresa is eager for it. She wants warriors and castigates Kevin as a "soy boy," too weak-willed to stand for anything. Emily recoils at the thought of making war. So too does Gina, once she comes. She and Teresa have at it, former star pupil versus former favored professor.

Arbery gives every character some grand monologues. As Dreher notes, Teresa in particular sings well the tune of Sohrab Ahmari (from the recent Ahmari-French debates). Reacting to Gina's castigating Trump and his ilk as no true conservatives, Teresa lashes back:

Not being measured. Not being polite. I don’t want to be polite anymore. We can’t lie to ourselves. We’re past that. We’re in Crisis. They’re coming for our tabernacle. They want to burn it down. They want to destroy the legacy of heroes like you. So I propose leveling up. I propose looking at the truth in the face. Knowing what it looks like. Knowing what we look like to them. It’s not going anywhere. I propose not taking any shit. Not ignoring all the hypocritical bullshit. Going blow for blow. And being ready for the war, if it happens. When it happens. You call us racist, we’ll call you racist. You call us white, we’ll call you black. You call us Nazis, we’ll call you abortionists and eugenicists. You call us ignorant Christians, we’ll call you spineless hedonistic soulless bloviating bloodbags. But you stop doing that, and give this thing space and time to work itself out, we’ll stop too. You focus your efforts on making this a better nation, an American nation, a republic of ideas, we will too.

Challenged by Emily about the Christian precepts of love and empathy, Teresa slaps her down:

Oh don’t with the empathy. Liberals are empathy addicts. Empathy empathy empathy. Empathy is empty. Hannah Arendt says we don’t need to feel what someone else is feeling – first of all that’s impossible, second of all it’s self-righteous and breeds complacency, third of all it’s politically irresponsible. Empathize with someone and suddenly you’re erasing the boundaries of your own conscience, suddenly you’re living under the tyranny of their desires. We need to know how to think how they’re thinking. From a distance.

Gina's response is devastating, at least in my own star-pupil-who-loves-getting-accolades-from-professors eyes. She essentially declares that the school's great works curriculum has failed with Teresa, who's twisted it into a Machiavellian warfare strategy. Teresa's character spouts a viewpoint I find dangerous and repulsive, but the moment where Gina practically disowns her just stings.

I'm fascinated how and why this play has caught the fancy of New Yorkers. I tend to distrust it when NYC seizes upon a play as a "real" or "respectful" portrayal of a non-left/progressive demographic. Generally, when I scratch the surface of such accolades I find the same old "aren't they awful/fascinating/scary" stereotyping and "aren't we so much better" back-patting. I imagine the play would be very different, and very differently received, were it about white evangelicals. (Of course, I must admit that the characters' conversations would probably be a bit less erudite; Catholic higher ed institutions score better at intellectual rigor and cultural literacy on average.)

Part of the interest, however, seems to be that reaction against empathy. The dramaturg's intro to the printed edition of the play (and kudos to Playwrights Horizons for making such editions available immediately) cites a recent Invisibilia episode, "The End of Empathy," which I listened to while running today.

Both it and the play require me to chew on them a bit more.

The Zero-Sum Frame

This last week, Boston Review writer Ronald Aronson noted a fact simultaneously stunning and depressing: President Trump's approval ratings are, so far as we can tell, among the most stable of any recorded president's.

No matter what Trump does or fails to do, he remains within the relatively narrow 35-45% range of approval. Aronson quotes Jerry Falwell, Jr. "I can't imagine him doing anything that's not good for the country," says Falwell. "I know anything he does, it may not be ideologically ‘conservative,’ but it’s going to be what’s best for this country,”

Aronson seizes on this "anything he does" as the core of Trumpism, which Aronson links to white evangelicals, Trump's strongest demographic of support (80% in the last election). Wondering how this could be so, Aronson draws on sociological research to locate this "anything he does" support in a white fear of displacement.

Diana Mutz provides Aronson his main thesis in her 2018 postmortem of the 2016 election. It is not economic anxiety, Mutz argues, that motivated this core of white voters. It is status threat, the perception among whites that other racial minorities are taking over, usurping the position of cultural, economic, and political hegemony that white people have historically enjoyed in the US. Mutz explains, "It is not racism of the kind suggesting that whites view minorities as morally or intellectually inferior, but rather, one that regards minorities as sufficiently powerful to be a threat to the status quo.”

I think this is spot-on. When I hear white conservatives grousing about racism as an overused scare-word by progressives, I see them distinguishing their beliefs (everyone is equal) from those of "real" racists like the KKK. They don't see themselves as racists--they recoil at being called racist--because they don't hold what they consider to be racist beliefs. Cue progressive eye-rolls. I'm not sure I've seen much in the way of an effective progressive response to this. By effective here I don't mean accurate but "at least as intuitively appealing as whites' denial of racism is to them."

Confronted with the "I'm not racist" response from white people, progressives like me tend to react in one or more various ways:

• You're lying to me: Sure, Jan. You really are racist--as in you believe black and brown people to be subhuman--but you know they can't just say that out loud (at least not when you think someone who'd object might hear). So you lie. Obviously, this is a strong claim. Obviously, there are some situations in which this is likely true. But, putting myself into a white conservative's shoes, I can see why this response wouldn't exactly elicit self-reflection and trust. It's a battle blow--you're a bad-faith actor--not a call to dialogue. (Sometimes a battle blow is what's called for, but I'm restricting myself to situations of dialogue and outreach.)
• You're lying to yourself (cognitive dissonance): That is, you really do harbor racist beliefs (e.g., distrust of people of color, belief that white people are smarter/better/more deserving than others, stereotypes about black and brown people). But your self-image is of someone who does not believe such things. So you lie to yourself, creating elaborate rationales for racist beliefs and feelings that somehow excuse you of racism (ex: I don't hate black people! I have black friends! I hate lazy people, and black people are more likely to be lazy. That's not racism; that's just facts...). Because the lying-to-yourself response is subtler than a charge of bad-faith mendacity,  progressives like me often proffer it as a way of preserving some sense of good faith (or, at least, preserving the sense that we progressives operate in good faith). And, like the deception response, it may be true in some cases. But, again, in terms of how someone is likely to take it? Well, I wouldn't usually be open to someone telling me that I'm mistaken in or deluded about my account of my own thoughts and beliefs. I'm more likely to hear that message as an attack, which it kind of is.
• You're implicitly biased: This is a favorite of late, a version of the lying-to-self argument that has numbers-based research to quote backing it up. You can take an implicit bias test to see whether your unconscious reactions betray bias for your ethnic group and against others. The validity of these studies, as with so much else in psychological research, has been called into question. I'm less interested here in the truth or accuracy of implicit bias (it makes intuitive sense to me) than in how I'd respond as a white conservative to the charge of implicit bias. How would I respond if told, for instance, that I'm implicitly biased against people I think I'm not biased against? I'd probably be resentful, especially if I view that charge as coming from a hostile source likely to use my implicit bias against me. And that is a problem: insofar as implicit bias exists, it (1) likely exists to some extent for just about everyone; (2) gets framed as something you aren't or can't be responsible for. Of course, studies suggest one can mitigate implicit bias over time. But as a weapon in the you're-so-racist conversation, diagnosing someone with what sounds like a mental condition is of limited efficacy. (Much the same can be said, I think, about "white fragility." I think that model is accurate, but when has "well, you're just being fragile" worked to make me more open to changing my mind?)
• You're systemically racist: This response seeks to displace the idea of racism as an individual failing, replacing it with an understanding that the systems and institutions of society were build of, by, and for white privilege. It shouldn't be surprising, then, that participants in that system behave and react in ways that perpetuate that dominance, even though they may individually wish for racial equality rather than white supremacy. I'm a fan of this view. But it's tough to make it work in practice. The naive view of racism--open, explicit bigotry--is incredibly powerful (it doesn't help that open, explicit bigots are enjoying a level of publicity they haven't seen in years). Once you make racism mean "the overlapping effects of various social structures," critics ask, what do you call those racially prejudiced bigots? Moreover, these critics ask, doesn't a thoroughgoing definition of racism as systemic rather excuse people who hold racist views? Moral accountability (you should stop perpetuating racist systems) without moral agency (your racial privilege inheres in the system; you did nothing to gain it, nor can you simply wish it away) jars with white conservatives' common sense of right and wrong. (Of course, that's what makes systemic inequality so maddening for those on the losing end: they suffer the consequences without having done anything wrong except be born into a marginalized group.) It can work, but it takes a while to do. The systemic approach is so complicated that often progressives themselves avoid it. It's much more fun to label someone racist than to have a long conversation where we get on the same page about how institutional structures can perpetuate racially discrepant outcomes.

Again, just to be clear, I think each of these responses to "But I'm not racist!" might be true in certain circumstances (in nearly all circumstances for the last two). But I'm not sure whether any of them can work as part of an exchange between progressives and white conservatives. For the record, it's no one's job to participate in such an exchange. No one's under obligation to teach white people to be less racist (nor, though I may wish otherwise, are white conservatives required to listen generously to progressives calling them racist). This is lagniappe work.

But, if you're doing that lagniappe work, trying to move white people to some point where they can at least grok why they're being called out for racism, I wonder if Murtz's framing might have more potential.

Murtz's frame lets us affirm that, yes, you can personally believe that races are equal. But you can at the same time feel uncomfortable or threatened when you see a norm of representation and prestige changing in ways that make it seem like your group is losing. The problem isn't (or isn't only) a frame of "non-white people are inferior" but a frame of "social status is a zero-sum game that only one group can win." This frame can be identified. This frame can be challenged. It may be easier, at least initially, to challenge that frame than to guide/drag someone through an odyssey of self-criticism and systemic reflection.

Or it might not.

More tomorrow,

JF