What the fuck is even happening right now: an analysis

I'm writing this for a number of reasons, none of which are to persuade anyone to switch sides. I do, however, want everyone to have a better understanding of what they're disagreeing with. Political discourse these days seems to be mostly nut-picking and piling on outrage against "enemies." I would like it if we could be more transparent about our own ideologies, and have a better idea of the opposing ideologies. So, in reading this, let me know if I miss or misrepresent the facts. What follows will inevitably contain gross generalizations, so... sorry?

Competing ideologies

The most fundamental difference between the two primary factions in the USA is how members of each group process and understand history. The "story" each side tells itself is indicative of how they perceive events of the past, present and future.

Let me tell you two stories.

Once upon a time, a great nation was born. It was founded by smart people seeking religious freedom and liberty. They defeated their oppressors and created a constitution based on the best of all possible ideas. This nation thrived and survived trials and tribulations that would shatter a lesser state. Long after its founding, but in our recent past, our nation was thrown into conflict against the greatest evils the world had ever known, and it came out victorious. All the other nations were humbled before it, and the world was good. Now, the nation is threatened from within. Weakness thrives in the heart of the nation, corrupted by the great evil that broke Rome itself. Degeneracy and impurity festered in the hearts of its cities, and it is now up to the strongest and truest in the nation to drive these forces from their shores.

...

A continent, stolen from its native inhabitants. A country founded upon the labors of the unwilling, for the enrichment and freedom of a single class of its citizens. Unsatisfied with their lot in life, the disenfranchised rose up and demanded equality. A great war was fought for the fate of the nation's soul. With much blood spilt, it was decided that human beings are not property. With the dawn of the industrial age, the personal fortunes of a select few were raised high above the masses. These few had unconstrained influence over all affairs, business and government alike. The workers toiled and suffered until they could no longer tolerate their mistreatment. They joined together and forced the government and the Oligarchs to compensate them for their labor. At the same time, half of the country's citizens, previously excluded from politics and partially considered the property of their mates, demanded to be recognized as equal human beings. Later, during a time of great prosperity, citizens who were being denied access to the prosperity shared by the ruling class started demanding to be treated equally, and refused to be physically separated from the ruling class based on their ethnicity. Thus is the repeating pattern, each class of people who had been denied equality in turn demands it, bringing the nation a little bit closer to its professed ideals. Now, many citizens of the ruling class are feeling resentful at the rising fortunes of the people they had considered their inferiors, and using the sum of their power to push the country backward toward the past. To a time when their power was unquestioned.

So, obviously, both stories are about the US of A. The first is what I'll call a "Tribalist" story. It's a heroic, simple story of good and evil. The second story uses the language of Marxist thought to describe the conflict between classes and the march of social progress. It's not a feel-good story, but it does highlight that injustice has been the status quo for America's entire history.

Disclaimer!!

So, Marxism. I'm not a scholar, so anyone who is may take offense at my use of the term. I'm kind of wrapping Social Justice and Marxism into the same thing, because I believe that their fundamental goals are the same: equality. To anyone who sees the word Marxism and is feeling their hair rise on the back of their neck, I am not advocating FULLCOMMUNISM, but simply referring to Marxism as a school of thought. The same way in which a believer in Stoicism (hopefully) wouldn't advocate for the banning of all emotional expression.

Tribalism is another term that I'm using that I will define for my own purposes. In this article, I define Tribalism as a social theory that prioritizes the survival, well-being and prosperity of "the group," which is defined on an individual level, but helps explain some of the behavior I'm seeing. It's hard to use an existing term to define the modern Right, because answers really depends on who you ask. I see various components of many different ideologies, but I'm hoping that this term is adequate.

The meaning of life

So, now we have our terms and I'd like to now talk about the definition of "good" in both personal and societal terms for each group.

Reproduction and capitalism

At its core, conservatism could be summed up as "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." Humanity has survived for a lot of thousands of years at this point, and our survival seems to be based on our ability to generate wealth and babies. This is true, at least in simplistic terms. This leads to a few policy objectives that are fairly obvious.

For the reproduction angle, abortions are bad, birth control is bad, traditional gender roles are good, traditional family structure is good, etc. All of these are aimed at making sure that the each generation will be larger than the last. Reproduction is a fundamental human drive, so it's universal good, right?

For prosperity, capitalism is seen as the most surefire way to create more wealth. Wealth is good for everybody and smart people are better at generating wealth, so it's a great mechanism for meritocracy. The smartest and best will rise to the top and make society better through their great wealth generation skills.

The pursuit of happiness

In contrast, the Left de-emphasizes participation in traditional activities in favor of maximizing happiness for all individuals. They believe that humans have diverse needs and react in different ways to similar circumstances. To quote the Vulcans, "Infinite diversity in infinite combinations" is a value statement which I think represents the Leftist perspective well. Diversity is viewed as a strength and a driver of innovations, in thought, aesthetics, technology, music and art. If everyone had the exact same perspective, creating and recombining ideas would be much more difficult.

Even among racially-homogeneous populations, there is quite a bit of inherent diversity. Queer people often have barriers to being able to reproduce, whether by choice or biology. Therefore, these people have different needs than straight people.

"The West" and white entitlement

In my observations of the nacent forms of the political Right, I have noticed that there is a particular fascination with "Western" cultural artifacts. It should go without saying that the term "West" in this context carries a lot of baggage. On the surface, it appears to be a celebration of intellectual and artistic artifacts from nations of the "West" a.k.a. European, English speaking North American and Australia/New Zealand. This in itself is a huge arbitrary exclusion, as South America is usually excluded from this list, as is the Middle East and Africa, all of which made huge contributions to "Western" art, science and culture. It makes a lot more sense if you substitute "Western" with "white", which begins to highlight what this idea is really about.

This canard is a reaction to the increasing visibility of racial minorities in art and culture, and their ownership of their own cultural artifacts. Popular culture is trending away from white male hegemony, and certain people take this as a threat to their identity and value. If you point out that most forms of American music were pioneered by people of African descent, their goal is to highlight the "superior" quality of white music, by highlighting European composers as a higher form of art. The same situation is happening with white Christians, as they fade from cultural dominance. You can tidily sum up this idea thusly: "When You’re Accustomed to Privilege, Equality Feels Like Oppression."

The flaws in this argument are obvious if you give it about two seconds of thought... "white" and "Western" are meaningless distinctions created to artifically segregate people from the colonial powers from those of the colonized. As soon as you break down "white" people into actual cultures, you can clearly see the difference between Eastern, Southern, Western and Northern European cultures. And then, in North America, you have this blending of cultures to the point where "American culture" is simply an amalgamation of ALL cultures. Or at least, it could be if not for the actions taken by white-identified people to segregate themselves and their culture from whom that they perceive as non-whites.

Social justice

This is the part where we talk about "identity politics" or whatever people are putting scare quotes around these days. Since one of the goals of the Left is justice, systemic inequality is something that they strive to eliminate from society, by removing laws that cause inequality, by passing new laws to attempt to compensate for societal or historical problems, and by pushing the courts to recognize equal rights in places where the law is applied unequally. In the courts, this is done by using the concept of "protected class" on which employers, educators, bankers and landlords are forbidden from discriminating.

Examples of this would include:

• Banning and repealing laws that enforce housing discrimination.
• Pushing the courts to recognize LGBTQ+ equality.
• Using affirmative action to act as a modern counterbalance against historical and systemic wrongs against a people group.

This idea is backed up by the concept of Intersectional Feminism, which expanded the tenants of Feminism to cover all racial, sexual, ability and gender differences. In a nutshell, a straight, white, wealthy man has more advantages in life and experiences less hardship than a poor, queer woman of color. Each of those factors interact in unique ways, and must be used in the overall rubrik of privilege. It's especially frustrating when people on the privileged end of the spectrum claim that privilege doesn't exist, when most everyone on the un-privileged end experience some form of discrimination on a daily basis. "Privilege" is invisible to the privileged.

The end goal of social justice is to get everyone on equal footing as a fair starting point for the rest of life's challenges.

The (hopefully not) inevitable revolution

Revolutions can be united by class (Communism) or by race (Fascism), or by some unprecedented factor. The whole world is slowly edging toward more extreme reactions to systemic problems. The rich are too rich, the middle class is shrinking, careers are harder to bootstrap. Mass unemployment is the primary cause of political instability. When you have a bunch of unemployed youth who are angry about not being heard, a revolution is a very real consequence.

Personally, I would like to avoid a revolution. I would ask the reader to do three things. Please stop dehumanizing the other side; it makes you blind to your own words and actions. Be visible to your friends and relatives; it's harder to dehumanize a group of people when you know them personally. Stop participating in media that demonizes the opposition; your eyeballs and your clicks determine what gets written.

Next up: Why revolutions are bad (with examples)