Continuing my grouchy old man series . . .
A few weeks ago I bashed modern society for giving in to 1984-style surveillance, without even putting up a fight. Sad!
Now I’d like to bash the rise of political bigotry:
Whereas in 1960 only 5% of Republicans and 4% of Democrats said they would be “displeased” if their child married outside their political party, by 2010, those numbers had reached 49% and 33%, a far higher percentage than those who would be “displeased” if their child married outside their race.
Of course those figures would be roughly reversed if you asked about race.
I’m actually old enough to recall the time before widespread political bigotry. Even as late as the 1980s, I recall that politics was a non-factor on the dating scene. It simply didn’t matter (to me or to the women I dated.) Now people tell me that even my home state of Wisconsin has become polarized by politics, with neighbors refusing to talk to each other. This seems both very weird and very sad.
So here’s my question, is there a “law of conservation of bigotry”? People simply must feel bigoted about something, and if it’s not one thing it will be another. I’ve always suspected that grown-ups are just high school bullies who are more sophisticated at hiding their bullying.
Scott Alexander (who most certainly is not a bully) has one of his excellent posts on this general topic. Using his terminology, I’d be a member of the “grey tribe” which makes it easier for me to avoid bigotry toward the blue and red tribes.
Because most people assume that others are like them (i.e. very tribal), they misunderstand my political posts, assuming that I am also very tribal. Thus people will explain to me that some outrage by Trump also was done by Obama. And I think to myself, “if you are trying to convince me to like Trump, why the heck would you mention Obama? You should compare his idiocy to Bush!” If these “red” commenters would explain to me that Trump is no more of a corrupt pathological liar than Bush, and cite examples from Bush, I might actually take them a bit more seriously.
The other mistake they make is to point to some link that presents a pro-red tribe data point, with a “so there” attached. But I’m not anti-red tribe! Or more precisely I’m just as anti-blue tribe as I am anti-red tribe. So then why did I favor Hillary over Trump? Because of Trump. There are plenty of GOP candidates that I would have preferred to Hillary. I have no special antipathy toward the red tribe, indeed many (most?) of my best friends are red tribers. At worst I might be biased by a distaste for Trump’s awful personality. But I do think I’m capable of respecting politicians whose personality I dislike (such as Thatcher.)
[Indeed by Scott Alexander’s criteria, I might be more red tribe than blue tribe. I was happy when Osama died, and sad when Thatcher died. Scott says that blue tribers scolded people for celebrating Osama’s death, but then turned around and celebrated Thatcher’s death. If that’s blue tribe, then count me out.]
Before you claim that I’m just as bigoted as anyone else, tell me which other pundits in the blogosphere are not opposed to any of these sorts of people serving on the Supreme Court:
1. Liberals
2. Conservatives
3. Atheists
4. Muslims
5. Catholics
6. Socialists
6. Fascists
7. Communists
8. Vegetarians
I want specific names.
As long as they are good judges, why should I care about their personal beliefs on religious or political issues? If I were on the Supreme Court I would not try to implement a libertarian agenda, even though I am a libertarian. I would not rule big government “unconstitutional”, unless it clearly and unambiguously violated some specific part of the constitution. I probably would not have ruled against Trump’s immigration restrictions, even though I despise them. I don’t view our drug laws as unconstitutional. I would hope that fascist and communist judges would not use the court to implement their preferred public polices. A good judge is not a liberal or conservative or communist judge, it’s a judge free of bias.
PS. I might have voted against one small aspect of Trump’s immigration policy, which favored Christian refugees over Muslims. But even there I’d first need to study the issue. I believe that that particular policy has recently been adjusted–is that right?
PPS. Mike Pence recently said the following:
We may be separated by an ocean, but the American people have always been bound by a kinship to the Chinese people, and we always will.
Actually, Pence didn’t say that, I made it up. Pence said this.
PPPS. So Trump completely made up a story that his predecessor had committed specific criminal impeachable offenses. Then he failed to provide any evidence to back up this claim. Then he failed to provide any coherent reason for failing to provide evidence backing up the claim. Then when caught lying he refused to apologize, or even to admit he had lied.
But Obama said you could keep your insurance company, so we’re equal!