Thread by @kiralio

I want to point something out: even the shittiest, bad-faith conservative troll's favorite line is "hah! that good thing isn't actually possible, it would cost too much, be an adult."

The troll themselves are filth, no mistake. But ask yourself -- who does this line prey on?

I think the main answer is, in fact, poor people. When you're poor, your entire life is a series of questions about what you can afford to give up. What privations you can withstand.

This becomes the cornerstone of your identity -- your capacity for endurance, for sacrifice.

This is especially common in men, but I think there's also a relationship between this idea and the conservative emphasis on the family. Nothing inspires sacrifice like kids, and very few causes make sacrifice such a moral necessity (and thus a point of pride).

White (and especially WASP) families are notoriously cold and quick to kick kids out the door. I'd heard this before, but didn't really believe it; I perceived my family as uncommonly warm and supportive... until I actually spent some time with a Hispanic friend's family.

To be clear, their right-wing extremism aside, my family DID actually support my brother and I. My parents sacrificed tremendously to stay in the same school district after moving, sent me to college on their dime. My mother, especially, has supported me financially for years.

But here's the thing: the material nature of this support makes it more limited, more zero-sum, more transactional. It HURTS more -- it's very possible my going to college contributed to my brother not, although there are also other factors at work there.

It matters, tremendously, that my parents did this for me. It's how they show (or showed) love. But this framework, especially combined with the constant push towards individualism and total independence, breeds a kind of quiet resentment on both sides.

It's alienating, in the literal, Marxist sense of the word -- parents are conscripted into the task of producing ideal laborers, and the very nature of the task separates the parent from the child, atomizes the family even as it relies on the ideal of Family for fuel.

Parents are forever wondering: "When will it finally be ENOUGH?" and "Will they take care of me in my old age?" (Their terror at how we abandon the elderly and disabled in this country contributes to the fear at work here -- it's not an irrational concern.)

Children are forever wondering: "Will they ever actually respect me as an adult?", compounded by the fact that the material reality of our generation is that many of us will never own homes, never pay off our student loans, meet so many of the basic markers of adulthood.

And this is the lens through which we learn to see politics. Basic material needs are withheld to make us weak and fearful, so we cling to the things that matter to us most. We prioritize, and we make prioritizing a sign of our willpower, not the vulnerability that underlies it.

Once we're cornered like this, channeling it into racism is simply a matter of extending the notion of "family first" one tier further. You determine that you deserve to live, so your poverty must be an injustice of scarcity; from this comes the appeal of the "deserving poor."

All your direct experiences with government involve it withholding things from you, which inspires no faith or loyalty.

Education is, essentially, indoctrination to see things the same way as people who despise you (and yet, necessary to financial advancement).

As much as this enables a deeply selfish and cruel politics (and lets cruel people effectively form a coalition with the desperate) it's all pretty rational once you accept just one basic, emotional premise: that people want to see themselves as strong individuals.

(more on this when I get home -- a comparison to liberalism is coming)

Okay, so, functionally speaking, the point of conservatism is that it holds people in a state of suspended tension -- fearfully denying vulnerability, and craving strength. We'll talk about the more muscular, predatory side of conservatism later, but first, liberalism.

If the dishonest conservative troll is "grow the fuck up", the dishonest liberal troll is "why are you being so mean to me?"

Again, we know people deploy this as a weapon, in bad faith. But the question remains -- who does this bait?

The answer is people who want to be good -- which has two meanings. That is, both people who want to be kind, but also people who want to have easy, peaceful, comfortable relations with others. Liberalism is, above all, the politics of comfort -- with yourself and others.

If the genius of conservatism is that it allows the cruel to caucus with the desperate, the genius of liberalism is that it binds compassion to contempt. Liberals can admit the existence of vulnerability, but they understand it as something to be pitied, in themselves or others.

If you want to get along with people, you have to be able to sympathize with them, at least slightly. It's necessary to admit that their suffering is real and that it isn't fair.

Philosophically, liberalism is rooted in abstract ideas about how things ought to be -- axiomatic principles, stripped of context, e.g. human rights, are strongly preferred over *values* like "equity" or "kinship." The liberal imagines a world in which context doesn't matter.

Conservatives often accuse liberals of moral relativism, of being able to justify anything, but this isn't quite right. It makes sense from the conservative perspective -- their system is entirely focused on values, rather than principles.

In fact, liberalism is quite morally inflexible. For instance, it's quite common for liberals to be absolute moral pacifists. This reads as hypocrisy, because "liberal" leaders often support war -- but that's not quite right. It's less hypocrisy, and more learned helplessness.

Because liberal principles are still completely centered on the individual, on absolute rules that they must follow regardless of context, the liberal opposes war in theory but cannot imagine ever taking the political steps necessary to actually prevent it.

The reason this happens is because, as an individual -- who is always vulnerable by reason of being alone -- the liberal must always imagine that power lies elsewhere, typically in an idealized and heavily rules-based "democracy" that favors experts and technocrats.

The idea, generally, is that if everyone individually follows the moral rules, leaves things up to the most qualified leaders who possess a democratic mandate, then anything that goes wrong must have been truly inevitable. There was nothing anyone could have done to stop it.

Just as the conservative lives in horror of their own weakness and craves strength, the liberal lives in terror of being PERSONALLY responsible for anything bad, and craves vulnerability, smallness, even weakness as an explanation for why they are not responsible.

Of course, everyone -- and most of all the poor -- are vulnerable, and when alone (as most people are in an intensely individualistic society), weak. Liberalism is comforting for poor people because it at least allows them to acknowledge each other's humanity and worth.

But once again, it holds them in tension: constantly aware of suffering, incapable of acting on it. And once again it allows them to caucus with another kind of person: someone who is comfortable with the way things are, but needs an excuse to be able to live with themselves.

Ultimately, conservatism and liberalism are only comfortable for their respective elites. Conservative elites are usually wealthy people who need only token, symbolic reassurance of their own strength. White men are vastly over-represented because they have the most reassurance.

Liberal elites are modestly more diverse, and can sometimes partially substitute other forms of elitism for wealth: celebrity, education. Above all they crave the expert authority, and right of recompense, that comes with vulnerability or oppression -- but none of the discomfort.

This paradox is how Hillary Clinton, literally one of the most powerful women in the world, can complain that she didn't get to personally COMMAND the bombing of third world countries and the execution of imperial wars, and get women to sympathize with her experience of sexism.

Because remember, the context -- the tremendous power that she already had as a senator, Secretary of State, or merely through personal connections -- doesn't matter. What matters is that she followed the rules, obeyed the principles, and was rejected in favor of a male clown.

Anyways, the point: the elites can survive within conservatism or liberalism indefinitely. They can even shift between the two: it's vulgar to be seen doing so, but the cult of individualism applies to both, & sometimes it's more useful to be strong than aggrieved or vice-versa.

But for regular people, and most of all for the poor, the contradictions are much more intense. Liberalism and conservatism don't form a perfect equilibrium; they paralyze the poor & enable the rich, which results in a steady slide towards right-wing elitism as the dominant mode.

For conservatives, this heightens their sense of contradiction: they're winning, but they're suffering MORE. Identifying with the power of the wealthy by proxy becomes inadequate; their true vulnerability looms bigger and bigger in their mind, and becomes harder to dispel.

For liberals, the suffering seems more and more insane, more irrational; they're doing everything right, but things keep getting worse. Again, this isn't symmetrical; it's likely to paralyze them even worse, at first. But some of them will begin to feel angry instead of confused.

Sooner or later, something has to give. The conservative admits their personal vulnerability, and claims strength in the one place it really comes from, besides money, which is beyond their reach: in numbers. Consider the original meaning of the fasces.

Conversely, the sincere liberal, the one who really believes all that stuff about human rights -- if things go just right -- finally realizes that you have to actually have MEANS to go with your ends, and takes the first halting steps towards anti-capitalism (of some flavor).

Which is to say, sooner or later, individualism has to go. It completely fails to describe the world. It can't even *articulate* a path to power that applies to ordinary people. The only powerful "individuals" are the ones who can afford to ignore everyone holding them up.

Liberal / conservative opposition exists, but it's shadow theater: the rank-and-file of each is repulsed by the elites of the other. The conservative recognizes the sneering contempt of expert snobbery, the liberal the casual arrogance (and disregard for rules) of privilege.

Lives (and dignity) are at stake, so people will correctly reject claims that "both parties are the same." The interests they represent are very real, and important.

But the truth is even worse: the two parties are SYMBIOTIC.

A liberal win really does represent a negotiated, temporary victory against suffering. A conservative win really does represent a kind of power and strength by proxy. They thrive to the extent that they cancel each other out, because that way they constantly release pressure.

There is only one real danger to this system, which is that eventually the steady rightward drift will heighten the contradictions to the breaking point. This results in cyclical economic and political crises that grow steadily worse the longer we manage to deflect them.

Imperialism, racism, & the world economy let us push the human cost of capitalism far away, stifling revolution by creating tiers of oppression who can't effectively unite -- but all this did was make climate change, which will be even bloodier than a mere revolution, inevitable.

Anyways, it's not all doom and gloom; the cyclical crises and growing awareness of, and anger towards, suffering are lining up. The Civil Rights movement was fighting uphill against (lopsided, unequal) prosperity and paralyzing comfort; our generation doesn't have that problem.

We need to organize people who share our material interests, and some of that will, in fact, involve changing minds and winning people over. But we should be smart about who we spend our time convincing; hopefully this mountain of text will help you identify the right people. :V

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