Morality play

[elainegrey]

I continue to read http://www.electoral-vote.com/ , which, until midway through 2016, was a fairly clear summary of polls and the news that affected the political polling. There was a light writing style, and i could tell there were shared values around facts, science, general good citizenship, and balance. I was never sure of the political leanings: they were not partisan hacks.

In 2016, like the rest of the country, there was a shift to the amazed, disbelieving, "if this was a movie i would not believe it." And after the election, instead of quietly slipping into silence to reactivate at midterm elections, they kept up with writing summaries. And the snark slipped in. What i like about their summaries is they're trying to read the tea leaves of the American electorate, which means comparing how stories are framed across the news spectrum. That helps a little in answering my question of how long can this nonsense go on: other frames focus on other things.

What's even more helpful though, was this Wednesday article from the Atlantic, pointing out after the jaw dropping pairing of Manafort and Cohen court outcomes Fox news led with "murder in the heartland." The article presents a narrow slice of moral foundation theory (i wish i had a citation to the first long article i read on the subject; an academic survey of some interest is Graham, Jesse, Jonathan Haidt, and Brian A. Nosek. “Liberals and Conservatives Rely on Different Sets of Moral Foundations.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 96, no. 5 (2009): 1029–46. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0015141.)

The article includes this quote:

Yale philosophy professor Jason Stanley makes an intriguing claim. “Corruption, to the fascist politician,” he suggests, “is really about the corruption of purity rather than of the law. Officially, the fascist politician’s denunciations of corruption sound like a denunciation of political corruption. But such talk is intended to evoke corruption in the sense of the usurpation of the traditional order.”

which the author refines into a pithy statement:

What the president’s supporters fear most isn’t the corruption of American law, but the corruption of America’s traditional identity. -- Peter Beinart

Some one of you, i think, referred to the president's Tweets as from someone cosplaying at being president. And... YES ...

....

My background of stories -- countless X-Files episodes, a dash of Twin Peaks, western tropes that seep into Science Fiction -- all have this idea of a community where there is a powerful person with family members and loyalists "running the town," keeping a hierarchical order, taking what they want, and generally held up as exploitative. "The dark underbelly." And the hero goes in and defends the innocent at the bottom of the hierarchy and convicts the bully at the top.

Is that essentially a liberal story? To me, the current executive branch looks a good deal like an extremely stereotyped cast for such a story.

I suppose the other side are all the criminal procedural where the outsider did it?

--== ∞ ==--

Must move on to work. Quick notes re yesterday. Woke 3 am probably too excited about how soon i will be planting fescue in the orchard, and then i can plant my chestnut and the two mulberries, and i need wood chips and etc etc. Worked 4 am to 5:30 ish finding an email that presented a design issue that worried me, was able to doze back off, and realized a solution. Busy workday with many meetings. Briefest lunch break, ended up talking about design issues until 4:30 pm, and NOT quitting early to nap. Walked with Christine and Carrie around the beautiful grounds at Fearrington reveling in the dry air. Got Subway for dinner, ate, and spent the evening on the deck reading about extrafloral nectaries in Prunus spp aka petiolar glands.

Windows open all night -- how incredibly delightful. I hope we have a very very long autumn. Today is heavenly and i have too many meetings.

Comments

[gurdonark]

I think about Frank Capra. On one level, his movies feature a lot of elements that speak today's language. I fear the creation of Pottervilles. I perceive that slick but bought United States senators live in the swamp. I see the press still makes big stories out of attractive rich kids doing erratic things.

Though his films speak to the Democrat in me, Capra was in fact a lifelong Republican. He did not follow the form book in all ways--he became a pacifist later in life.

But thinking about Frank Capra's right-wing ways and "defend the little guy" films makes me think about the absence from the current scene of many vestiges of that kind of small-government, pro-little-guy Republican. I tend to agree with Frank Capra that "The curse of Hollywood is big money. It comes so fast it breeds and imposes its own mores, not of wealth, but of ostentation and phony status", but I would take that description past Hollywood and move it into lots of offices in Washington and beyond.

So as I find myself a confirmed moderate Democrat, I miss other moderates--but I also miss a certain kind of Republican that I hope will one day reappear.

[elainegrey]

And one of those Republicans just left us.

Listening to the local politics discussion here, i think many would claim to be "small-government, pro-little-guy" but their sense of who the little guy is is certainly narrow. One person continually whines about ADA requirements oblivious of how it's just a matter of time before he may need vision or mobility assistance.

[zyzyly]

I read that Atlantic article the other day and thought the author's insight was spot-on. I tend to read across the political spectrum, and it is clear that there are sharp differences in how people see what is going on in America.

[elainegrey]

Do you have particular national news sources you find useful? I used to read more international news sources, i don't know that many well staffed national news papers.

[johnpalmer]

One thing to keep in mind is, there is a right wing propaganda organization (and I don't *just* mean Fox News).

If *enough* people say a thing is so, it's normal to ponder if it's so - even if it seems ridiculous to you.

There are enough people who will parrot and defend every GOP talking point. That's enough to make the talking points seem reasonable. Then, add to it that these propagandists are trusted because of agreement on other issues, and that can create those sharp differences in vision.

After all, if all of these "good" people believe X, and they're "right" about these other things, then surely X is at least worth considering, right?

[weofodthignen]

Merely a suggestion: I have no sympathy whatsoever for those who voted for that piece of scum. But I think alot of them see him as the outsider going in to clean out the hive of villainy that is the Liberal Establishment they imagine runs everything from the press up. After all, there's the myth of the ZOG. And as the Tea Party showed, Republicans never believe they have enough power. There are people not in prison who believe in gay rights, and are not Xians! ZOMG! See the stuff about "purity" you cited above. See his treasonous campaign slogan. They will not give an inch.

Ugh.

M

[elainegrey]

I certainly agree -- and the studies underscore -- the purity frame of morality is far more fundamental to the "conservative" frame than the "liberal".

[arlie]

The only thing that shocked me about 2016 was that there were so many of them, and the "establishment" didn't succeed in squelching them. That was a big shock - the kind that changes one's plans for the rest of one's life - as I realized that I could never truly see Americans as "Us" - their lunatics are mainstream, and so presumably their sane people (like you) are fringe. Retiring in California had been my plan - something I was actively preparing - for 20 years - and now I'm working on plan B. (First casualty - the solar panels I didn't install, and the electric car I didn't buy.)

I'm currently reading Fantasyland by Kurt Andersen. He's wrong in a lot of ways - particularly his idea that the US is unique in having these problems. But the basic picture is right enough - the lunatics here are running the place, and I can't really imagine that getting better any time in e.g. the next 30 years, regardless of which party produces the next president.

There are real grievances, but they are so mixed in with disappointed entitlement and scapegoating that I certainly can't see any effective way to address them. Feel good policies are more important to most of the loonies than anything else - they want to return to feeling like normative lords of creation, more than they want food, shelter, health, etc. They want the dream - the kind one gets with lottery tickets - more than they want real opportunities. And worst of all, the same seems to generally be true of their opponents, but in different ways. They can neither effectively examine evidence, nor find and believe someone competent to do so.

I suppose this is the human condition generally - we're tuned for "social skills" as a species, with intelligence and rationality as a side effect.

[elainegrey]

"the same seems to generally be true of their opponents, but in different ways"

The whole frame "too much government except -- here -- get the government in to say what's right" is pretty equally shared, but the "here" (bedrooms, the workplace) is different.

[randomdreams]

I don't feel like the maverick-comes-in-and-cleans-up-the-corrupt-boss is at all a liberal story: I think that's exactly the story that Trump pushed, for instance. The storyline is attractive to the downtrodden, and I think we're in a period of history in which faux-traditionalists are feeling like they are downtrodden. (as many other people have said, the loss of privilege feels like oppression.)

[elainegrey]

Ah! Good point. It's just my picture in my head of who the downtrodden are that's different.