One of my pet theories (and I was saying this years before talk of "education polarization" became a big thing) is that the sides in politics have become what they were in school: the Tough Kids versus the Smart Kids. And conservatism has become the Tough Kids claiming that they're being bullied by the Smart Kids. Isn't it ironic, don't you think.
"Tough kids" and "smart kids"? You've overlooked the hippies and the goths -- and plenty of other subcultures and individuals that don't suit your binary formulation.
As for the supposed irony of the Tough Kids claiming that they're being bullied by the Smart Kids? What, then, do you make of the situation in San Francisco, where "Progressives" have branded Tech Bros (the Smart Kids?) as bullies who've destroyed the city's bohemian (as well as working-class) character?
And it's not even THAT simple: To a significant degree, those Tech Bros are more like Frat Boys than Smart Kids -- and the bohemians and [a highly diverse array of] working stiffs are all over the (political and cultural) map.
Have the Smart Kids been worse about being sore winners that the Tough Kids are about being sore losers? I don't think so. The Tough Kids *really* don't want to accept the possibility that Smart Kid values might have defeated Tough Kid values in the marketplace of ideas fair and square. It's too humiliating to think that these nerds who they should be beating up might have won their cultural clout legitimately; they *must* have cheated. Thus they get more and more dependent on conspiracy theories, even if they're as ridiculous as QAnon or birtherism.
When the Smart Kids tell you that your son might really be your daughter (and can become fully female with castration and hormones), and that it's none of your business if (s)he's considered a girl at school -- when you've witnessed the sacking of Oakland's Chinatown during the Summer of Floyd (much of which remains boarded up and graffiti-bombed to this day), and when Chinese grandmas in the neighborhood keep getting mugged (and you're told that all this is about "racial justice" and combating "white supremacy") -- when we're goaded to pick each other apart over "pronouns" and "privilege" while the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank...
...you might start to wonder whether the "Smart Kids" are really all that smart, or whether they're too smart for their own good (or yours).
When you voted enthusiastically for Obama's "No Black America, No White America," and then (in the era of "Black Lives") the Smart Kids tell you that what had swayed you was merely "aspirational" rhetoric -- i.e., a bait-and-switch....
When you're told you'd be better off living in "dense" stack-and-pack conditions without ANY backyard, and that instead of being in the driver's seat (with a[n electric] car in every garage), you should be waiting for a bus (or riding a bike)...
If you're a Latino citizen (or one of the aforementioned Asians) building a middle-class life, and are told that illegal immigrants (seeking "asylum" when crossing a border already far from the countries they fled) are merely "undocumented" (as if shoplifting is merely "undocumented shopping")...
...you might start to wonder who gains by your disempowerment, and by tellling you not to believe your lyin' eyes. And you might consider who's getting paid to administer this lunacy and to spread the word (rather than to work with their hands)...
Then you find yourself lumped together with "birtherists" and believers in Q-Anon -- by the Smart Kids -- when that's all the system has to offer.
"Conspiracy theory"? Follow the money (or read Yascha Mounk)!
A very good summary of the myths, so prevalent in American politics that I have totally despaired of even arguing with people who hold them. The worst comes when you are confronted with an upper-middle-class white liberal in a very affluent neighborhood arguing that Republicans are the party of rich white people. However, I want to hear more about the cultural dynamics that are not limited to the US. Working-class people all around the West are embracing the populist right. This is a stunning reversal from the century of left politics. So why?
This is a terrific piece, perhaps not so much for its debunking of these two myths, which I think most of us understand, but for some really clear and persuasive stats. That’s what we (the Persuasion Community) need to Fight the Good Fight!
“Democrats now hold nearly 2/3 of all House seats with above-median incomes, and Republicans hold nearly 2/3 with below-median incomes.”
That’s the kind of fact we can remember, and it’s so dramatic that it can produce the cognitive dissonance needed to wake someone up. It will be useful for at least a few years.
Unfortunately, substacks bury these things quickly. We need to work around that and compile these where they are easily accessible. Could you help with that? Or could we help you with that?
On Myth 1 (2nd half): “This looming dominance of the left helps to explain why Republicans are so scared of immigration.” Taken literally, you nailed this. But, what do you think about the more interesting possibility: “The *Myth* of looming left dominance helps explain …” If you’re right that these myths are widespread, that should be true!
On Myth 2: “Rich Republican, Working class Dems.” You might point out that your view was already making headlines in 1970 with the Hard Hat Riot in NY, which beat up college-student peaceniks, and got the hard hats invited to Nixon’s White House. Then 1972 was the first, and only time, a majority of union families voted Republican. Myth 2 seems particularly hard to kill. It’s like one of Krugman’s Zombie Ideas.
I nearly did not read this essay since I have been burned out on politics for so long now. I am glad that I read it though, it’s points are true and important additions to the shallow and mundane discourse that dominates today.
Yascha makes many of the same arguments that Thomas Piketty made in his long introduction to Capital et Idéologie in 2019, sans Yascha’s insightful observations on America’s bizarre racial ideology. The big question for me is - why do so many people cling to ideas that are so obviously untrue? We overturned Plessy v. Ferguson before most readers were born and passed the Civil Rights Act when I was in grade school. Yet, our wealthiest and most privileged citizens are determined to enforce the one-drop rule today.
In the larger sense, these depressing trends reflect the immutable nature of humankind. More narrowly, the benefits of Jim-Crow thinking, which lurks under the surface of racial essentialism, continue to exist.
Piketty noted that « ce système d’élites multiples n’est pas totalement sans rapport avec le régime trifunctionnel ancien, qui se fondait sur un certain équilibre entre les élites cléricales et guerrières, même si les formes de légitimité bien changé. »
I agree that the financial and status benefits of these widely held beliefs resemble l’ancien régime of per-revolutionary France as well as the rigid class/racial system of the Jim-Crow South. Those who benefit and those who wish to associate themselves with the rich and powerful need ridiculous and transparent ideologies/religions to obscure and justify the indefensible. Thus, people who come to America from Spain transform into non-whites by passing through Latin America. Other Europeans who speak Latin languages who come to America via the same route, such as my ancestors, remain unchanged. This magical transformation only began in the 1970s. Our government is adding a racial category for North Africans. Will Saint Augustine now become a person-of-color? I can’t wait to find out from our modern-day priesthood.
Yes, terrific writing and terrifying conclusions. The attack on whiteness has little demographic sense or substance. Lumping Asians in with African Americans is like saying Arsenal and Chelsea fans are blood brothers.
It is shocking to see how these specious narratives can take control of the media.
Keep on exposing the truth, Yascha. Demolish the narratives that are dividing the nation.
It is really funny reading this and recognizing the tap-dance around just admitting that Democrats are the party of the upper class and wealthy elite, and the Republican party is now the party of the working middle class. Just admit it and move on . org.
"Progressives usually dismiss these trends; after all, as they rightly point out, the policies Trump actually pursued while in office usually favored the rich and large corporations over the economic interests of working-class voters."
A big fat lie repeated makes it a bigger and fatter lie.
First, most qualified and non-partisan economists have admitted that the Trump tax cuts did more for the working class and minority Americans that any other tax cut.
Second, and this is even more important, DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE THAT LIARS ABOUT THIS... THEY ARE INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST BECASUE THEY KNOW THAT WITH OUR PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAX SYSTEMS INCOME TAX INCREASES ARE ALWAYS GOING TO CAUSE GREATER TAX LIABILITY TO HIGHER INCOME FAMILIES AND THUS TAX DECREASES ARE GOING TO RESULT IN GREATER TAX BENEFITS TO HIGHER INCOME FAMILIES. DEMOCRATS LIE TO HAVE THEIR CAKE AND EAT IT TO. PASS A FLAT TAX AND THEN IF A TAX INCREASE FAVORS THE HIGHER INCOME FAMILIES DEMOCRATS WOULD JUSITIFIED IN THEIR CLAIMS.
A flat tax? Instead, how about keeping taxes high on the higher brackets (say, over $250k/year) -- while eliminating loopholes -- and cutting taxes for those further and further below?
If you've got a problem with that, I've got an oligarchy to sell you.
One of my pet theories (and I was saying this years before talk of "education polarization" became a big thing) is that the sides in politics have become what they were in school: the Tough Kids versus the Smart Kids. And conservatism has become the Tough Kids claiming that they're being bullied by the Smart Kids. Isn't it ironic, don't you think.
"Tough kids" and "smart kids"? You've overlooked the hippies and the goths -- and plenty of other subcultures and individuals that don't suit your binary formulation.
As for the supposed irony of the Tough Kids claiming that they're being bullied by the Smart Kids? What, then, do you make of the situation in San Francisco, where "Progressives" have branded Tech Bros (the Smart Kids?) as bullies who've destroyed the city's bohemian (as well as working-class) character?
And it's not even THAT simple: To a significant degree, those Tech Bros are more like Frat Boys than Smart Kids -- and the bohemians and [a highly diverse array of] working stiffs are all over the (political and cultural) map.
Too many "pet theories" on how to herd cats! ;-)
Have the Smart Kids been worse about being sore winners that the Tough Kids are about being sore losers? I don't think so. The Tough Kids *really* don't want to accept the possibility that Smart Kid values might have defeated Tough Kid values in the marketplace of ideas fair and square. It's too humiliating to think that these nerds who they should be beating up might have won their cultural clout legitimately; they *must* have cheated. Thus they get more and more dependent on conspiracy theories, even if they're as ridiculous as QAnon or birtherism.
When the Smart Kids tell you that your son might really be your daughter (and can become fully female with castration and hormones), and that it's none of your business if (s)he's considered a girl at school -- when you've witnessed the sacking of Oakland's Chinatown during the Summer of Floyd (much of which remains boarded up and graffiti-bombed to this day), and when Chinese grandmas in the neighborhood keep getting mugged (and you're told that all this is about "racial justice" and combating "white supremacy") -- when we're goaded to pick each other apart over "pronouns" and "privilege" while the oligarchs keep laughing all the way to the bank...
...you might start to wonder whether the "Smart Kids" are really all that smart, or whether they're too smart for their own good (or yours).
When you voted enthusiastically for Obama's "No Black America, No White America," and then (in the era of "Black Lives") the Smart Kids tell you that what had swayed you was merely "aspirational" rhetoric -- i.e., a bait-and-switch....
When you're told you'd be better off living in "dense" stack-and-pack conditions without ANY backyard, and that instead of being in the driver's seat (with a[n electric] car in every garage), you should be waiting for a bus (or riding a bike)...
If you're a Latino citizen (or one of the aforementioned Asians) building a middle-class life, and are told that illegal immigrants (seeking "asylum" when crossing a border already far from the countries they fled) are merely "undocumented" (as if shoplifting is merely "undocumented shopping")...
...you might start to wonder who gains by your disempowerment, and by tellling you not to believe your lyin' eyes. And you might consider who's getting paid to administer this lunacy and to spread the word (rather than to work with their hands)...
Then you find yourself lumped together with "birtherists" and believers in Q-Anon -- by the Smart Kids -- when that's all the system has to offer.
"Conspiracy theory"? Follow the money (or read Yascha Mounk)!
A very good summary of the myths, so prevalent in American politics that I have totally despaired of even arguing with people who hold them. The worst comes when you are confronted with an upper-middle-class white liberal in a very affluent neighborhood arguing that Republicans are the party of rich white people. However, I want to hear more about the cultural dynamics that are not limited to the US. Working-class people all around the West are embracing the populist right. This is a stunning reversal from the century of left politics. So why?
This is a terrific piece, perhaps not so much for its debunking of these two myths, which I think most of us understand, but for some really clear and persuasive stats. That’s what we (the Persuasion Community) need to Fight the Good Fight!
“Democrats now hold nearly 2/3 of all House seats with above-median incomes, and Republicans hold nearly 2/3 with below-median incomes.”
That’s the kind of fact we can remember, and it’s so dramatic that it can produce the cognitive dissonance needed to wake someone up. It will be useful for at least a few years.
Unfortunately, substacks bury these things quickly. We need to work around that and compile these where they are easily accessible. Could you help with that? Or could we help you with that?
On Myth 1 (2nd half): “This looming dominance of the left helps to explain why Republicans are so scared of immigration.” Taken literally, you nailed this. But, what do you think about the more interesting possibility: “The *Myth* of looming left dominance helps explain …” If you’re right that these myths are widespread, that should be true!
On Myth 2: “Rich Republican, Working class Dems.” You might point out that your view was already making headlines in 1970 with the Hard Hat Riot in NY, which beat up college-student peaceniks, and got the hard hats invited to Nixon’s White House. Then 1972 was the first, and only time, a majority of union families voted Republican. Myth 2 seems particularly hard to kill. It’s like one of Krugman’s Zombie Ideas.
Myth zero: democracy = elections. Nope.
Democracy = random selection!
https://open.substack.com/pub/democracycreative/p/avoiding-oligarchy-through-sortition?r=fwuu0&utm_medium=ios
https://open.substack.com/pub/democracycreative/p/conclusion
I nearly did not read this essay since I have been burned out on politics for so long now. I am glad that I read it though, it’s points are true and important additions to the shallow and mundane discourse that dominates today.
Yascha makes many of the same arguments that Thomas Piketty made in his long introduction to Capital et Idéologie in 2019, sans Yascha’s insightful observations on America’s bizarre racial ideology. The big question for me is - why do so many people cling to ideas that are so obviously untrue? We overturned Plessy v. Ferguson before most readers were born and passed the Civil Rights Act when I was in grade school. Yet, our wealthiest and most privileged citizens are determined to enforce the one-drop rule today.
In the larger sense, these depressing trends reflect the immutable nature of humankind. More narrowly, the benefits of Jim-Crow thinking, which lurks under the surface of racial essentialism, continue to exist.
Piketty noted that « ce système d’élites multiples n’est pas totalement sans rapport avec le régime trifunctionnel ancien, qui se fondait sur un certain équilibre entre les élites cléricales et guerrières, même si les formes de légitimité bien changé. »
I agree that the financial and status benefits of these widely held beliefs resemble l’ancien régime of per-revolutionary France as well as the rigid class/racial system of the Jim-Crow South. Those who benefit and those who wish to associate themselves with the rich and powerful need ridiculous and transparent ideologies/religions to obscure and justify the indefensible. Thus, people who come to America from Spain transform into non-whites by passing through Latin America. Other Europeans who speak Latin languages who come to America via the same route, such as my ancestors, remain unchanged. This magical transformation only began in the 1970s. Our government is adding a racial category for North Africans. Will Saint Augustine now become a person-of-color? I can’t wait to find out from our modern-day priesthood.
Yes, terrific writing and terrifying conclusions. The attack on whiteness has little demographic sense or substance. Lumping Asians in with African Americans is like saying Arsenal and Chelsea fans are blood brothers.
It is shocking to see how these specious narratives can take control of the media.
Keep on exposing the truth, Yascha. Demolish the narratives that are dividing the nation.
It is really funny reading this and recognizing the tap-dance around just admitting that Democrats are the party of the upper class and wealthy elite, and the Republican party is now the party of the working middle class. Just admit it and move on . org.
"Progressives usually dismiss these trends; after all, as they rightly point out, the policies Trump actually pursued while in office usually favored the rich and large corporations over the economic interests of working-class voters."
A big fat lie repeated makes it a bigger and fatter lie.
First, most qualified and non-partisan economists have admitted that the Trump tax cuts did more for the working class and minority Americans that any other tax cut.
Second, and this is even more important, DEMOCRATS ARE WORSE THAT LIARS ABOUT THIS... THEY ARE INTELLECTUALLY DISHONEST BECASUE THEY KNOW THAT WITH OUR PROGRESSIVE INCOME TAX SYSTEMS INCOME TAX INCREASES ARE ALWAYS GOING TO CAUSE GREATER TAX LIABILITY TO HIGHER INCOME FAMILIES AND THUS TAX DECREASES ARE GOING TO RESULT IN GREATER TAX BENEFITS TO HIGHER INCOME FAMILIES. DEMOCRATS LIE TO HAVE THEIR CAKE AND EAT IT TO. PASS A FLAT TAX AND THEN IF A TAX INCREASE FAVORS THE HIGHER INCOME FAMILIES DEMOCRATS WOULD JUSITIFIED IN THEIR CLAIMS.
A flat tax? Instead, how about keeping taxes high on the higher brackets (say, over $250k/year) -- while eliminating loopholes -- and cutting taxes for those further and further below?
If you've got a problem with that, I've got an oligarchy to sell you.