this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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chapotraphouse
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Look, if they thought our politics were better, they'd agree with us. So it's something else.
I had mormon missionaries try this tact with me, that at some point 'deep down' I knew that their truth claims were correct. I don't consider this a workable model, as it basically gives up the game, and forces us to work backward. 'Knowing deep down' or 'at an emotional level' is a common colloquialism but it seems to reifying a sort of compartmentalized cognition where there are multiple cognizers within and individual knowing different things and not communicating, which I don't buy.
I'm not even convinced cognitive dissonance is an actual thing, as it presupposes humans have a need for logically coherent world views, and given that 99% of humans are not even acquainted with the rules of formal logic nor do they use them in arriving at their individual beliefs, I don't see any reason we should experience discomfort when those rules are broken by our beliefs. The psychological studies that I've read that seem to show cognitive dissonance exists could just as plausibly show that people get uncomfortable when their views are publicly interrogated under some formalized system, which is already pretty obvious.
We know they know we're right, though, because they'll tell us when our ideas are separated from the material changes that are required to implement them. Ask a lib what they think of:
You're probably going to get supermajorities on roughly the same page as us, at least when they're speaking in the abstract. They do value many of the things we do.
The problem, of course, is when someone whispers "property values" or "the price of gas" in their ear. Suddenly all those good intentions vanish because it could conceivably be a threat to their own material conditions. We know they know that's wrong, too, because libs lionize people who put what's right over what's profitable.
I don't disagree that they agree with the moral righteousness of any policies (or oppositions) in a vacuum, they just deny that vacuum exists, which they are of course right to do. Take universal healthcare or public housing or anything else, their position is typified by saying "it would be great if we could have this, but we can't, because there would be worse moral tradeoffs if we did". The quintessential examples for this are universal healthcare stifling innovation and immiserating hundreds of thousands of workers.
Now are those objections true? No, but they believe them, and that's how they can see their position as being the more moral of the two.
The cognitive dissonance thing is something I've been mulling on for a while as well, kinda neat to see a take on it that helps me sort out some thoughts.
People abuse it for their convenience and it oresents epistemological problems, but the dynamic you seem to be describing g is absolutely a real thing. Minds are not indivisible.
That's putting it lightly. Brains are not indivsible, and you can absolutely overlay a divisible conceptual schema (id, ego, superego, whatever) onto the mind, but as a functional unit for interaction and access, minds are indivisible. I can't walk into another part of my mind like I can walk into a different room. If I could, who is doing the walking? This model seems to posit a sort of Inside Out scenario where we're actually a constellation of different cognizers, which I don't buy.
That's the thing though, there's an undercurrent of "actually it's responsible adulting to do bad things, sweaty" to it. They have thought terminating defense mechanisms that respond to exposure to uncompromising ethical positions on things they have proudly compromised on with rage. Fascists worshipped the suffering and death that their actions brought to everyone including their own ranks. Far right liberals believe that brutal subjugation and abuse is "responsible leadership," believing it to be bad but necessary. Mainstream liberals tie their brains in knots to ignore the suffering capitalism and the brutal violence it requires causes, finding justifications for inaction. Radlibs reflexively move towards the mainstream and concede and capitulate to it, and have been trained to be enraged by anyone who does not.
I mean when we respond with PPB they probably think we're angry too and are thought terminating. Which usually I am, internet debates are dumb, I just want my trans folks to be living good lives free of discrimination, adequate housing, and with free healthcare that resolves their dysphoria. Everything I believe is bent around that and frankly idgaf how it happens so long as it does
If the liberals somehow do it tomorrow I'd be stoked, but history shows they're incapable of it, whereas what I described is actively underway in Cuba and even areas less developed on trans rights like China simply because they care a lot about housing and food access
I mean that's how it looks on the outside, but it's and understandable conceit on the inside. You can, with a sufficiently complicated yet wholely coherent and individually reasonable set of premises justify things like sanctions that are going to starve a bunch of children. When you or I come along to cut the Gordian knot and say "starving children is bad and unallowable axiomatically", they will object, once again self-consistently, that we can't do that because even worse outcomes will happen if we don't starve the children.
There's also plenty of this to go around on the left. Pop quiz: should the Romanovs have been gunned down in cold blood? (The answer is no), but once again, with a sufficiently complex set of premises and inferences you can justify machine gunning a tsarevich.
Those premises are that a talking head or oped told them it was the responsible if unpleasant thing to do. You're just describing layers of propaganda and contradiction-deflecting defense mechanisms: they know the costs of austerity and hegemony are wrong so they recoil from learning about the details and latch on to prevaricating bullshit from some propagandist to wear it as a shield. They want to believe that their team is good, and censor their consumption of information to stop that from being challenged.
Yes the way we form our beliefs and vocabularies is largely contingent on our experiences and sources, be they Thomas Kuhn, Michael Parenti, or Tucker Carlson.
That's what these look like from the outside, but from the inside they look like, and for all intents and purposes, are, eminently reasonable and defensible justifications for thinking the things they think. In certain meaningful ways, we don't even live on the same planet as them.
How do they know this? We know this, but I don't think we can assign this knowledge to them. If we ask them this, their just as likely to say it's regrettable, but on consideration, morally preferable to the alternatives.
They would not need to justify starving children unless they knew starving children was wrong. Compare libs to reactionaries here: the latter will openly say "yeah kill all them [slurs], I don't care" at the drop of a hat, even when we aren't at war with one of the Bad Countries. You need to bombard libs with endless propaganda for months before they come close to that.
I'm also not sure that propaganda justifies horrors like starving children so much as it diverts blame. Ask a lib if food shortages in the DPRK are the result of sanctions and they won't tell you it's sadly necessary, they'll tell you we don't sanction food, so if people are hungry they should blame it on their government.
It's only propaganda external to their frame of reference; internally it's nuance. The whole point of ideology in the Zizekian meme sense is that it's invisible and totalizing from within the system, and only becomes apparent when one ideology is replaced by another, which is why we can see it for the propaganda that it is (at least from our frame of reference).
I think most of them can tell they're the conservative in every conversation and they dun like it
To me it's the age old frustration of just not having a shared set of fundamental beliefs or even a meaningfully shared vocabulary. To them, we're using a bunch of words incorrectly and using them to arrive at inallowable conclusions.
which is why debate doesn't work. no one can fit an entire description of the way they view the world into a forum post.
That's why I insist on fitting my entire Quinian web of belief into 90 comment long argument chains. It still doesn't work of course but no one ever doubts that I ate my wheaties after reading one of those bad boys.
This is why I fit my worldview into a series of pictographic depictions
i still think analytical philosophers were right to focus so much on clarity of language, the average disagreement with a liberal is entirely as you said - a fundamental disagreement on premise acceptability.
They think the problems are bad but the causes are good.
It's material conditions. They can absolutely know, on some level, that our politics are more morally correct (what I guess you mean by "better") but also know, on some level that their politics benefit themselves personally more. They're siding with the politics that personally benefit them, and getting angry at the ones that are more correct but would mean they don't continue to benefit from exploitation of others if implemented. Then there are other people who might even themselves benefit more if all exploitation were ended but have bought into the arguments made by those further up the ladder.
What's the proof of this?
Every engaged political actor does this. There's no material benefit to being a leftist in the west, but it does feel good living by your principles. Liberals simply don't share the same principles, they aren't secretly thinking they are morally inferior or whatever.
I disagree somewhat. If we're to believe this map posted further up in the thread, any average person who does not live in one of the blue countries would benefit from global communism:
The US, Germany, the Nordics, and most of eastern Europe is a large portion of the West's population.
I think that how this potential benefit is weighed against the real possibility of sacrificing one's life, and potentially entire communities, for a revolutionary cause, instead of simply staying out of trouble and trying to survive, is the more challenging and important issue than a lack of class interest in socialism.
Even in the blue countries, the possibility of living an unalienated life with meaningful control over one's work, community, and society could be more appealing in the abstract for many than simply making more money in a rotten, alienating system. There's more benefit in socialism than simply meeting one's basic needs, as important as that is. The problem for anyone is actually working towards a point where that possibility becomes real. That entails danger and instability.
Good points, in the long term communism does materially benefit most people. And there is some benefits in the current day to be a leftist in the west, like being part of a community and finding meaning in life beyond the market.