I’ve been watching Sarah Silverman’s I Love You, America and find I am really enjoying it. Her stand-up has always been hit or miss for me but this show is great.
It got me thinking that often I will see articles or blog posts where coastal elitist types will journey into Red America and try to learn and understand what makes them tick. I don’t recall seeing the opposite, where conservative, fundamentalist Red Staters venture out into the blue Socialist Republics of California or New York.
Am I incorrect in my assumption that Blue Staters will often try to understand and initiate a dialog with the other side while Red Staters could care less? I really hope I my assumption is proven wrong.
If Vance had written a book for the folks back home to understand how wacky city-folk think, then I’d agree. But he didn’t. He wrote a book which was widely read in those cities by center-left folks trying to understand the red-staters. He reinforces the theme mentioned in the OP.
I think the dynamic is different. It’s one thing if you are a well to do Lib, trying to understand poor (Republican) citizens.
But I don’t think well off rich people are going to be quite as welcoming if a bunch of be poor people show up in their doorstep talking about: “We just want to understand you.”
Its also that for liberals, conservatives are seen as wanting to take rights, freedoms and safety away from people other than themselves. Because we do not subscribe to the conservative philosophy, their behavior strikes us as very selfish, cruel and hypocritical and that creates a massive desire to understand ‘why’ which I think conservatives lack when thinking about us. The people who supported Jim Crow in the south fully supported freedoms and civil rights for themselves, they just didn’t want black people to have them. The people who get enraged about NFL protests think they (meaning conservative white people) should be allowed to protest as much as they want (they didn’t complain when the Cliven Bundy clan were pointing guns at police officers) but they don’t want black people to have a right to protest. Lots of the people you see at right wing rallies shouting about how horrible welfare and wealth redistribution is are on social security, medicare and medicaid.
It is hard for liberals to have empathy for these people, and their behavior is very confusing to us. So I guess we want to understand why people would think like that.
I don’t know if hardcore conservatives feel that same kind of confusion that we feel. I think its easier for a conservative to understand why a liberal would want medicare for all or police reform in black communities, but harder for a liberal to understand why a conservative would want government assistance to texas after a hurricane but not Puerto Rico, or they’d complain about voter fraud while taking away other people’s right to vote, or they’d complain about an imaginary war on christianity while declaring open war on islam and atheism.
As far as income, the base of the GOP and base of the democrats are both wealthier and more educated than average.
I think both sides in general think they know why the other side thinks the way they do, it’s just that some more liberals are more willing to actually do the homework and interview conservatives, etc., even if they think they already know in advance what the interviewee’s answer will be. Whereas conservatives will generally think “We already know why liberals think the way they are, why go to the trouble of asking?”
Well, it could be that conservatives as a group understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives.
I am sure many ‘Dopers gasp and exclaim "That cannot be true. All conservatives are stoopid’ upon reading that*.
However, Jonathan Haidt has studied who understands the other side better, liberals or conservatives. It turns out that conservatives and moderates understand liberals much better than liberals understand conservatives and moderates (as a group of course, YMMV)
I think the assumption ought to be that the Blue Staters who are trying ‘to understand and initiate a dialog with the other side’ are doing so because they do not already understand the other side. If you understand the other side, then the conversation really isn’t needed.
A couple notes. Haidt started studying political psychology to help Democrats win (The Righteous Mind, chapter 8). Second, social psychology is a bit iffy IMHO, but Haidt seems like he is pretty good.
*Upon preview, Velocity nailed it before I could even post. So **Velocity **, got any research to back up your guess?
I think us liberals were dumbfounded by the election of Trump. I know personally I cannot fathom why anyone would vote for him, including conservatives, and I appreciate efforts to try to explain such a profoundly perplexing behavior. As others have said, I don’t think liberal goals are perplexing to conservatives (although they are often misstated)
Yup. I think its easier to understand why someone would support medicare for all (even if it means higher taxes) or police reform in the ghetto than it is to understand why someone would think a seriously deranged, authoritarian con man who works for our enemies is qualified to be president.
We can’t understand conservatives. I think conservatives understand us better than we understand them.
Tribalism (nativism, white nationalism, patriarchy) and authoritarianism goes a long way to understanding the conservative mentality. But still, it is confusing and disappointing to us.
In one of his talks, I think it was TedX, he talks about being from a red state and trying to fit in and understand the elite ivy league culture. I haven’t read his book.
Here is a hint: Assuming that Trump voters view him as a ‘seriously deranged, authoritarian con man who works for our enemies’ is a bad place to start if you are trying to understand why they voted for him.
For a board that supposedly is interested in fighting ignorance, it is rather surprising that no one has actually bothered to look at any research in this area.
I mentioned Haidt earlier and he has some interesting theories and research in this area. (Haidt, for those who haven’t heard of him, is a Professor of Ehtical Leadsership at NYUs Stern School of Business, got a BA from Yale and his PhD in psychology from University of Pennsylvania).
The issue with conservative vs. liberals is that each group is working from a different set of moral foundations. Those foundations are care, fairness, loyalty, authority, liberty* and sanctity. Liberals, as a group, score very high on fairness and caring. Conservatives on the other hand are concerned with all the foundations equally. So when a conservative has a belief that is based, or somewhat based, on sanctity, liberals really do not understand it. At the same time, conservatives understand a liberal belief based on fairness, but they don’t give fairness the same weight a liberal does. So, yes, conservatives (as a group) can understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives.
You can take a test on this here. For the record, I am socially pretty liberal, fisically classically conservative. My results from the moral foundations test were
(Note, the values in parenthesis are liberal/conservative average. My purity score indicates I am one dirty MF :eek:)
Note, liberty/opression is not on the test but Haidt added it later. Libertarians tend to score very high on this.
If you really want to start understanding conservatives, go check out moralfoundations.org, read this link(warning, pdf), and go to yourmorals.org and take some tests.
Not just that, but if you want to understand liberals, all you need to do is pick up magazines and books. Most of them are written by liberals, and most articles in magazines are about liberals. By liberals. It’s like asking African-Americans to understand white culture. They are exposed to it every day. Conservatives understand liberals better than liberals understand conservatives because liberalism is dominant in entertainment and academics. You don’t need to journey anywhere except your local library.
Well, I’d also note that liberals only get interested in conservatives when they realize there are more of them than there are liberals. When liberals are winning elections their attitude to conservatives is “we will crush you and everything you believe in! You will conform!” Then they lose and want to understand.