The thing is, if you are a typical coastal-urban leftist, almost all your conversations are intra-left conversations. So you get used to the idea that everybody-- or everybody who matters-- shares your basic moral premises and worldview already. And in that environment, yes, scolding and shunning dissenters works. So people learn instinc…
The thing is, if you are a typical coastal-urban leftist, almost all your conversations are intra-left conversations. So you get used to the idea that everybody-- or everybody who matters-- shares your basic moral premises and worldview already. And in that environment, yes, scolding and shunning dissenters works. So people learn instinctively to use it all the time, and then when a nationwide plurality or even majority composed of people they never talk to, and whose lives they know nothing about, backlash against it, it's easy to say "oh that's just a bunch of dumb bigots". It's the old Pauline Kael "how could Nixon have gotten elected? I don't know a single person who voted for him!" problem writ large.
That's more true of the right than it is of the left, but somehow nobody thinks it's a handicap the right needs to overcome.As it turns out, making people conform to your worldview is more effective politicking than conforming yourself to them. In reality, scolding and ostracizing works -both on internal and external dissenters (those aren't really separate cases, they're just on a spectrum). that's why the right, which is deeply siloed, and viciously intolerant of external and internal dissent, is succeeding.
Leftists and center left liberals no longer have the intellectual high ground they once had to argue from.
1) A lot of policies touted by “smart” Democrats turned out poorly.
2) Joe Biden has been a senile fool as president and his successor couldn’t find it in herself to explain how she was going to be different from the unpopular policies of the Biden administration.
A lot of the policies touted as 'smart' were triangulations away from the left towards the right. Of course they failed- they prioritized political positioning over effectiveness.
We see this best in Obamacare, when what is actually cheap and leads to good outcomes is free-at-point-of-use, like NHS or places with mandatory nationalized insurance plans.
The thing is, if you are a typical coastal-urban leftist, almost all your conversations are intra-left conversations. So you get used to the idea that everybody-- or everybody who matters-- shares your basic moral premises and worldview already. And in that environment, yes, scolding and shunning dissenters works. So people learn instinctively to use it all the time, and then when a nationwide plurality or even majority composed of people they never talk to, and whose lives they know nothing about, backlash against it, it's easy to say "oh that's just a bunch of dumb bigots". It's the old Pauline Kael "how could Nixon have gotten elected? I don't know a single person who voted for him!" problem writ large.
That's more true of the right than it is of the left, but somehow nobody thinks it's a handicap the right needs to overcome.As it turns out, making people conform to your worldview is more effective politicking than conforming yourself to them. In reality, scolding and ostracizing works -both on internal and external dissenters (those aren't really separate cases, they're just on a spectrum). that's why the right, which is deeply siloed, and viciously intolerant of external and internal dissent, is succeeding.
Leftists and center left liberals no longer have the intellectual high ground they once had to argue from.
1) A lot of policies touted by “smart” Democrats turned out poorly.
2) Joe Biden has been a senile fool as president and his successor couldn’t find it in herself to explain how she was going to be different from the unpopular policies of the Biden administration.
A lot of the policies touted as 'smart' were triangulations away from the left towards the right. Of course they failed- they prioritized political positioning over effectiveness.
We see this best in Obamacare, when what is actually cheap and leads to good outcomes is free-at-point-of-use, like NHS or places with mandatory nationalized insurance plans.