Ideologies have overlap

I am not a fan of writing comments that agree with everything because I think agreement with everything is redundant, but on this post, I hereby issue a hearty “ME TOO” and “two thumbs up” and all that. The actual content of the populism really does matter. Lots of good policy will poll well, but that doesn’t have a direct bearing on who will be elected, even under uncorrupted politics.

They regularly say they want liberal policies then vote against them.

Or they vote for politicians who say that they will push for liberal policies, but the politicians are lying to them to get elected. Stupid voters.

… the corporate right threw aside actually [sic] fiscal conservatism (we’ll promise them services and give them tax cuts!)

For your Orwellian decoder dictionary:

fiscal liberalism: “tax & spend to provide gov’t services”
fiscal conservatism: “borrow & spend to pay private businesses with contracts to provide gov’t. services”

My own personal definition of “progressive” includes some policies that could also be considered libertarian, like eliminating most drug laws. Things that expand personal liberties without harming society would fall into that category. So, in that sense, which may not exist anywhere outside my own head, libertarians might be considered partly progressive. To me, liberalism is the idea that government has a place in shaping society to be something better, and to provide safety nets and the like for people who need them. That is a generally progressive ideology.

Is that anyone else’s interpretation? Or do most folks just use “progressive” and “liberal” interchangeably?

Obama is a Reagan democrats, which is to say, not a Democrat at all. these kinds of beliefs are Republican, today’s definition of what a Republican is. and Democrats are more Republican than anything.

society use to be valued in American before Business bought out the Republican and Democratic party. the Elites of both side agree more or less, with some variations/semantics really.

the Democratic party chose to follow Reagan. those that did are Blue Dogs, not “real” Democrats, lol.

Looking out for the working American is what used to be a Democrat. now those people don’t exist, like the Tea Party, just a fancy name/propaganda for screwing the poor in the name of the Rich.

the labels of Republican and Democrat have changed since i grew up in the 60’s. Now there is no advocate of or for the working American, no matter what “label” is used today.

as we see today, there is no real difference between the two sides of the ONE party that runs America for the Elites. so i’m not sure what labels do today other than divert attention from the naked “thieves” who exploit Americans. A crook is a crook. and like Nixon, they all say, “I am not a crook.” which means they are really horrendous crooks.

Now further imagine that you are an “elite” and you fully recognize what is espoused above, and you don’t subscribe to Dualism/Binary thinking, yet you engage it for others in order to maintain your advantage. What a wonderful tool of control that would be. I’m surprised no one has thought of it yet.

While I agree the Democratic party abandoned working class people for Wall Street career prospects and bribes, there are a few throwbacks who have not gotten the memo.

Both of these guys are populist and both are despised by the Democrats Central Committee…although they tread carefully on Webb while feeling free to walk all over Meek.

Anyway, a great ticket in 2016, but they’ll need to run as independents, because even if they got a majority of the primary votes the Central Committee would never allow patriotic people who believe in Democracy to be nominated.

Jim Webb http: //www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/03/28/webb

Kendrick Meek: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kendrick_Meek

The idea that the Democrats abandoned the working class, like the idea that the Democrats abandoned the poor, white South is a trifle over-worked, in my opinion. To a large extent, Democrats were responding to secular changes in American society and its political psychology.

Again, “populism” is a style of politics that rests on appeals to a politics of social solidarity and authority. In many ways, it is analogous to the social psychology of armies, where the soldiers have to submit to authority — an authority, which, objectively, will use the soldier’s lives like grist for a mill. That kind of social organization can be made to work, if the Army makes a good show of taking care of the soldier, and encourages a “band of brothers” sense of solidarity. Units with really dangerous assignments will adopt firm rules about, say, never leaving a brother behind on the field — as assurance that, even though the unit will get members killed, those members will not be abandoned, even in death. (Dead, but not abandoned (!?!) — these are things you do not want to think about too deeply, which is why armies are not welcoming places for liberals with tendencies toward anti-authoritarian skeptical inquiry.)

American society, over the last 70 or 80 years, has seen a huge decline in the degree to which people seek social affiliation, and, relatedly, the degree to which people have strong typal prejudices about the members of “other” racial and ethnic groups. Feelings of social solidarity rest on such in-group, out-group distinctions. 80 years ago, on the eve of the New Deal, American partisan politics was not strongly ideological; it was, instead, strongly about class and ethnic and religious identities. People, generally, had very strong ideas about the character of, say, Germans or Irish (meaning Americans of German or Irish descent). In 1930, on the lee side of the massive immigration prior to World War I, the average immigrant had been in the U.S. longer than the average native-born person. The massive German-speaking communities, which had existed and persisted since before the Revolution, had disappeared in WWI, but most cities were still divided into distinct ethnic enclaves and subcultures, and many rural communities and small towns had an ethnic enclave or church or two. The Republicans represented the WASP ascendancy and big business; the Democrats, everyone else, as an unruly grabbag. People were Democrats because they were white Southerners, or members of an industrial union or Catholics. Members of a skill trades union were Republicans; white, Episcopalian and Presbyterian businessmen were Republicans.

Such feelings of social solidarity were the key to political power and were used to structure political power. It was the basis for segregation and single-party politics in the South. Yankee vs. Irish was the basis for similar political standoffs in the Northeast between Democratic city machines and Republican state governments.

Americans, today, are not the joiners they were 80 years ago. Maybe, that’s economics, maybe, that’s television, maybe that’s social evolution. My father was an Elk — the Elks were a fraternal organization that operated men’s bars; an Elk could have a drink with “friends”, anywhere. Fraternal organizations were once a powerful force in American politics; the Masons, Tammany Hall, and in local politics, the Kiwanis, Rotary, etc. They haven’t entirely disappeared, but they are faded.

American partisan politics divides almost entirely on ideology and worldview, which is historically unusual. The Revolution and the American Civil War mark the only other times, ideology dominated a political division. Usually, the Parties have been orthogonal to divisions over ideas: abolition, women’s suffrage, temperance, progressivism. And, to a large extent, the “non-political” associations, identities and mass membership organizations that might intervene in politics have faded away. Unions are gone. Efforts to imagine an “hispanic vote” regularly break up on the reality of disparate hispanic identities. Even the evangelical and pentecostal Protestant churches, on which the reactionary Republicans depend so heavily — the roots of those associations have become increasingly shallow, superficial and fragile.

People complain all the time that both Parties are dominated by Big Business. But, the corporate executive class are the only ones, who actively participate in politics. Politicians in both Parties would absolutely love to have opposing interests to play against one another, but the best they can do is to play opposing business interests, and those “opposing” business interests have caught on. In key sectors, like Media and Finance, conglomeration and concentration and networks have ensured that there’s no “opposing”.

A lot principled liberals seem to think politicians should take a vow of poverty and celibacy, and act, like Catholic priests, solely from a love of God, or liberal ideas of ideal policy. It doesn’t work that way. And, if both Parties are completely dominated by corporate business interests, it is, at least, partly, because there are almost no mass membership organizations, participating in politics, and, to a depressing degree, no associations representing “local” interests, either. The family-owned big-city daily newspaper, or independent bookstore or independent book publisher is largely gone. The savings and loans, community banks, credit unions, and mutual insurance companies, are largely gone, from finance.

The psychology of political solidarity is built into human nature, as a social animal. The potential of tribalism as a political force has not gone away. But, there are fewer structures channeling it or managing it. Instead, there’s Fox News.

Bruce Wilder, you’re on fire. Great comments. This caught my eye..

The “content” doesn’t matter in the sense that the kind of appeals which are effective in marshalling authoritarian followers are qualitatively predictable and narrow in scope and type. That’s what gives “populism” in all its flavors, its characteristic style.

Which makes me wonder if the formula then is the more progressive and equitable the economic reform, the more reactionary and divisive terms it must be framed by its proponent (who, ideally, is viewed as an angry and hateful person himself).

Into this “mess” stepped President Richard Nixon. What he proposed was a striking departure from the status quo. The federal government would now assist poor families that were intact as well as those that had split apart. It would assist the working poor as well as the nonworking poor… The income of poor people living in the South would be tripled, and the welfare rolls themselves would double in size. According to not a few economists, 60 percent of all indigent people would be brought above the poverty line immediately were this proposal to be enacted into law. Lyndon Johnson never dared go so far. Both architects of the programs– dubbed the Family Assistance Plan (FAP)– and correspondents, not to mention historians, have recognized the boldness of Nixon’s proposal.
http://books.google.com/books?id=J9oZ2yTlR_kC&lpg=PA287&pg=PA287

@Bruce Wilder

I agree with beowulf (“on fire.”) I really enjoyed your analysis. Now, I’m going to try to put together a question…

Given that social-affiliation driven politics has an unpretty side (rivalries and pettiness, with consequent perpetual violence and unease,) and – as I take your point – that otherwise fragmented societies are ripe for demagogic authoritarian-style politics, then I ask: Are these the extreme poles of the human social dynamic, wherein there is a sort of “sweet spot” between, in a healthy society? Or, is this a pestilent roil of social behavior awaiting a sort of new collective self-awareness to something else?

Or, and this is very likely, I’ve completely misread you. 🙂

@S Brennan
When I say that partisan politics was not strongly ideological, I mean that the principles that sorted out the divisions of partisan identity — what made someone think of herself as a Democrat or Republican — were decided along lines, such as, I’m a white Southerner, therefore I’m a Democrat, or I’m a Catholic, living in Detroit, I’m a Democrat. Or, I’m a New England Yankee, therefore I’m a Republican. Someone with ideas about policy — say, an ideological Progressive or an advocate of Temperance, depending a bit on geography — could end up in either Party.

I think the speeches you quoted worked very well as “populist” appeals, which I’m sure they were intended to be. I read “populist” appeals as being targeted not at self-interest, so much as the political psychology of “authoritarian followers”. Being an “authoritarian follower” just means people, who tend to have a certain cluster of attitudes about authority, social conformity and so on. My point about partisan identification circa 1930 is that many of the people one might expect to be “authoritarian followers” from the nature of their personal experience in life ended up predisposed to identify as Democrats. Because they were union men in the working class, or Catholics, or white Southerners. So, FDR, as a Democratic President in a crisis, was well-positioned to successfully elict their support.

In our present circumstances, we are not so lucky. The Republicans and their plutocrat sponsors have wised up, hired Frank Luntz and Glenn Beck, and deliberately make populist appeals. George W. Bush bought a ranch in Texas, and cut brush on weekends, just to seem a man of the people. And, Republican dirty-tricksters gin up the birther controversy and rumors about Obama being a muslim.

Authoritarian followers are, almost by definition, populists, or ready to respond to populist appeals, whether those appeals are from the Right or Left. Their resentments are a given; on whom they focus their resentment is up for grabs. They are not automatically fascists. They have an acute sense of fairness in certain circumstances (they can actually respond quite well, from a liberal perspective, to the drama of a non-violent protest being violently suppressed), and once you get past the in-group/out-group thing, they are determined egalitarians.

@Pedro

Being an “authoritarian follower” is having a cluster of attitudes, and in a politics in which tribal identifications are built around the expression of attitudes, that’s a very dangerous thing. You can get all the authoritarians crowded together in one Party, on the basis of sharing attitudes with a few charismatic demagogues, and one political tendency or movement. And, that’s the last thing that’s healthy.

In any organization or political movement, some authoritarian followers is healthy for the organization. These are the good soldiers, who will get with the program, follow orders, and, thus, strengthen the ability of the organization to get work done, and done right. But, if the group has only authoritarian followers, its teh crazy.

Job #1 in any politics isn’t really to win for one Party or the other, or one ideological program or another, it is keep either the ruthlessly corrupt or the completely crazy out of power. The healthiest thing is to divide the mass of authoritarian followers among the powerful factions or parties, and to marginalize the crazies and the demagogues, who will attempt to exploit the gullibility of authoritarian followers to gain power. We want politicians with some integrity to lead, and for people to support, or punish, as necessary, to check elites, when they deviate from at a muddled pursuit of the common good. Not easily done. Not being done at all, today, in the U.S., where accountability does not exist for elite opinion, public policy, or private corporate policy.

Have you thought that maybe Obama is putting on a Reagan facade in order to get reelected? Then in his last term he will swing far left. Of course, by then, both the House and the Senate will be solidly in Republican hands. (Notice I said Republican, and not conservative.)

http://www.thedemocraticstrategist.org/archives/0609/weilera.php

American society, over the last 70 or 80 years, has seen a huge decline in the degree to which people seek social affiliation

A nice thesis would be how Eisenhower’s Interstate System helped facilitate, exacerbate and cement this outcome. The exponentially increased mobility reordered the economy and the attendant community and culture. It ushered in what is now referred to as the Corporatocracy. It helped to divide and conquer the old order of things. It was during this time that the substantial shift from non-urban to urban populations took place, or at least that trend was catapulted. Certainly there were a host of other factors involved, but certainly the speed of transport, accentuated by the Interstate System, had a significant impact.

I love this quote from Steinbech about the Interstate:

Instructions screamed at me from the road: “Do not stop! Maintain speed.” Trucks as long as freighters went roaring by, delivering a wind like the blow of a fist. These great roads are wonderful for moving goods but not for inspection of a countryside. When we get these thruways across the whole country, it will be possible to drive from New York to California without seeing a single thing!!!

And so it was, and so it is. The U.S. roaring down the path of “progress” without seeing a single thing.

Today, we have a new Interstate System….that of the electronic information highway. And, like its predecessor, the effect is identical…roaring along without seeing a single thing, including our fate, as this video both literally, and figuratively, illustrates.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OWtDpGM36J8&feature=player_embedded

@S Brennan

Almost without exception, anytime a human creates needless complexity in an argument, deceit and dishonesty are the means to perpetrate a wrongdoing. Frankly, all the current labels employed with such relish obscure truth and facilitate ignorance.

I absolutely concur, and would like to add that anyone citing Altemeyer in defense of some sort of spurious Golden Mean is being quite disingenuous. As Altemeyer himself writes: (note that the New Democrats are Canada’s social-democratic party)

If you look at just the New Democrats’ and the conservatives’ scores on the
RWA scale, party affiliation correlated .82 on the average with authoritarianism,
which is one of the strongest relationships ever found in the social sciences. The
RWA scale divides these two groups almost as cleanly as a vote in the legislature
would.
Nothing else, so far as I know, correlates so highly with left-wing versus right-wing
politics, anywhere. In Canada at least, when you are talking about the “left-to-right”
political dimension among politicians, you are talking about the personality trait
measured by the RWA scale. At least until something sharper comes along. This
might be true in the United States as well, but it doesn’t show up nearly as crisply in
terms of party affiliation mainly because the Democrats have a lot of high RWAs in
some of their caucuses, particularly in the South.

There’s the the rub–the erstwhile advocates of the Golden Mean would have us believe that authoritarianism as a function of political alignment forms a sort of U-shape, with authoritarian personalities of either end of the scale and sensible, independent-minded people in the middle. As you can see in Figure 5.2< in The Authoritarians (page 215 in the PDF edition), this is NOT what Altemeyer found. The left-wing NDP and right-wing Conservatives and Socreds cluster at opposite ends, while the centrist Liberals (not plotted on the chart but the figures are still given in the accompanying table) occupy, miracle of miracles, THE CENTER, and not the low end as some would have one believe. Again, Altemeyer’s research does not support the thesis that “both extremes are equally authoritarian” at all, and actually indicates the opposite.

Again, Altemeyer’s research does not support the thesis that “both extremes are equally authoritarian” at all, and actually indicates the opposite.

That thesis is offered up because the far left has inappropriately, and quite underhandedly, been represented as the Soviet Union, which we all know was about as “left” as my right hand. Anarchy is a more valid representation of the far left, and in its purest form, embraces anti-authoritarianism. I suppose it could even be argued that Anarchy doesn’t even fit nicely on such a shoehorning spectrum.

@Rilen

I don’t recall asserting any kind of balance, to wit, “the militant left and militant right are equally authoritarian”. It is certainly not what I believe.

Altemeyer does use the term right-wing authoritarian and distinguishes it from left-wing authoritarian, but, basically, discusses only the former; I thought the adjective “right-wing” (in the sense Altemeyer uses it, as opposed to its political sense) would be confusing and just drop it. When I reference the personality of the authoritarian follower, I am talking about Altemeyer’s right-wing authoritarians, only. “Authoritarian follower” is a label for a personality, characterized by a particular cluster of attitudes — it is not, itself, about politics. Being an authoritarian follower does not make one’s politics right-wing. Populism, I assert, is a style of political appeal made to people, whose personalities and attitudes put them in the cluster, authoritarian follower.

In North America people who submit to the established authorities to
extraordinary degrees often turn out to be political conservatives, so you can call
them “right-wingers” both in my new-fangled psychological sense and in the usual
political sense as well. But someone who lived in a country long ruled by Communists
and who ardently supported the Communist Party would also be one of my
psychological right-wing authoritarians even though we would also say he was a
political left-winger. So a right-wing authoritarian follower doesn’t necessarily have
conservative political views. Instead he’s someone who readily submits to the
established authorities in society, attacks others in their name, and is highly
conventional. It’s an aspect of his personality, not a description of his politics. Rightwing authoritarianism is a personality trait, like being characteristically bashful or
happy or grumpy or dopey

This is from page 10 of Altemeyer.

Bruce – I agree with most of your posts but my interpretation of Altemeyer hinges on the above passage – more of a deference to existing authority. You see this throughout the US political discharge. During the election campaign I flipped through the McLaughlin Group – and this was about when Obama was not supporting the Democrat in some backwater New England State – and the democrat expressed his displeasure. All 4 of the commentators, especially Pat Buchanan, were horrified anyone would tell the president of the USA to get stuffed. This was not about left or right but deferring to authority. From a political party perspective the democrat was correct in telling the President to get stuffed. What’s the point of political parties if they campaign against you?

Should have been:

That is not to say that “authoritarian” figures have not tried to induce “up is down” Orwellian language as corporations have increasingly strengthened their stranglehold over academia:

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Ian, speaking of software upgrades…I wish for comment sections that would allow for editing after the post, but allow for inspection of the original comment to prevent a commenter from playing games.

Not that you need my praise Ian, with a couple of exceptions I’ve noted, you do have the strongest comment section in the anonymous ether-world of Blog-go-stan.