> What I mean is, the left has spent several decades now working its existing ideologies to their logical conclusions. And in fact, they’ve arrived at a pretty inflexible point. The right, on the other hand, doesn’t really care about its ideology. It just wants power, and that search for power is taking them in some pretty extreme directions.
I'll be chewing over this one for a while. Some initial thoughts:
* While many right-wing pols are in it for the power, it does seem that there is a new breed who actually believe the BS;
* I can't believe that the average right-winger voter *only* cares about power--understanding what he really wants (and how he can be fooled) seems essential;
* The logical conclusions on the Left can often seem like a willing embrace of reductio ab absurdum, and as only a limited part of the populace is capable of such mental gymnastics, I wonder how the fundamentals of the ideology might evolve.
1&2: The BS is actually about power. I can’t easily look it up right now, but I actually wrote a blurb in the past few months about how I realized from my experience as a right-winger that the power was the point; the BS was just a permission structure that allowed me to indulge the stuff about power.
3. I think the main feature of the filibuster-abuse-era left is that they get hyper-focused on the parts of their ideology that they care most about. If legislation had kept pace with leftism’s slow march of progress, then we wouldn’t be seeing this right now. For instance, Bernie would not be seen as a M4A extremist if Obama, Clinton, or even Truman through Nixon for that matter, had gotten universal healthcare. The left wouldn’t be so irrationally impatient for it if they’d ever actually won it when it was reasonable to win and they had reasonable majorities in favor.
> What I mean is, the left has spent several decades now working its existing ideologies to their logical conclusions. And in fact, they’ve arrived at a pretty inflexible point. The right, on the other hand, doesn’t really care about its ideology. It just wants power, and that search for power is taking them in some pretty extreme directions.
I'll be chewing over this one for a while. Some initial thoughts:
* While many right-wing pols are in it for the power, it does seem that there is a new breed who actually believe the BS;
* I can't believe that the average right-winger voter *only* cares about power--understanding what he really wants (and how he can be fooled) seems essential;
* The logical conclusions on the Left can often seem like a willing embrace of reductio ab absurdum, and as only a limited part of the populace is capable of such mental gymnastics, I wonder how the fundamentals of the ideology might evolve.
1&2: The BS is actually about power. I can’t easily look it up right now, but I actually wrote a blurb in the past few months about how I realized from my experience as a right-winger that the power was the point; the BS was just a permission structure that allowed me to indulge the stuff about power.
3. I think the main feature of the filibuster-abuse-era left is that they get hyper-focused on the parts of their ideology that they care most about. If legislation had kept pace with leftism’s slow march of progress, then we wouldn’t be seeing this right now. For instance, Bernie would not be seen as a M4A extremist if Obama, Clinton, or even Truman through Nixon for that matter, had gotten universal healthcare. The left wouldn’t be so irrationally impatient for it if they’d ever actually won it when it was reasonable to win and they had reasonable majorities in favor.