When parties reverse their stance, supporters immediately switch their opinions
thespeakernewsjournal.com
thespeakernewsjournal.com
Your friends will argue with you, you'll be surrounded by memes making fun of people who believe what you do. There's incredible social forces to conform to the exact set of beliefs espoused by political parties, which are mostly set by corporate interests.
It's a huge part of what the Republican party has struggled with: There's both the clear vision of conservative values and ideals... and Donald Trump. You can practically see on people's faces trying to reconcile their beliefs with party platform. And there's a massive amount of pressure to stay in line with everyone else.
Would that explain why Catholics, who, ah, generally don't support abortion, are split ~50/50 between blue and red? [1]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catholic_Church_and_politics_i...
This begs the question - why do people pick and choose their religious dogma, but not their political dogma?
I feel that the answer to this question is 'The world is a little bit more complicated than the parent poster claims.' These claims have little predictive, or explanatory power, given this rather prominent counter-example.
Interesting possibility: Religion is a protected class, politics isn't. So people fear viewpoint discrimination (i.e. getting canceled) for diverging from the dominant political party, because that isn't protected, but not for diverging from any given religious doctrine, because that is protected.
Maybe we just need to declare the political parties to be religions. In a way they are. And it's in the same way that caused religions to be protected to begin with, isn't it?
It feels risky to me. Coupled to the protection of freedom of religion in the US is both the interpretation of the First Amendment and the political custom that there be a "high wall" between religion and politics. In practice, this isn't always true, but the principle serves as a counterweight to people's faith not being formally, structurally questionable.
For obvious reasons, no such high wall can exist between people's politics and politics, so making political affiliation a protected class risks giving protection of the law to things that society will greatly suffer under if they are protected (imagine if he SPLC couldn't fire a staffer who's an active Klansman).
I don't know if I buy it, because the purpose of the wall is to constrain people from being punished for their beliefs, which you could do just as well with politics. That isn't the same as having their beliefs questioned in a public debate -- which we already do with religion. Questioning isn't punishment. Getting fired is punishment.
> imagine if he SPLC couldn't fire a staffer who's an active Klansman
The strongest objection to a Klansman is that they commit acts of violence. But violence isn't protected speech. If they're committing acts of violence, fire them.
Whereas if your only objection is that they go home and give sermons against interracial marriage while wearing a stupid hat, isn't that kind of the point?
How is it any different than Planned Parenthood can't fire a Catholic for opposing abortion outside of work?
Companies ought to have the right to fire people acting counter to their goals.
Well, in a multiparty democracy (which was where the study happened; if you didn't know that going in to the article, the reference to multiple center-right parties should be a pretty big giveaway) if you dissent from a party on an issue of any salience, there's a pretty good chance there is another party available that is just like that one, except for it's view on the issue you dissent on. So, if the party fails to convince you when it changes, you stop being a party member rather than become a dissenter on the one issue.
That's less true for religions (especially religions with certain features: you aren't going to find a Church like the Roman Catholic Church including it's view of the papacy and it's historical descent, but differing on the moral parameters of abortion.)
It's also less true of parties in a system which isn't a robust multiparty democracy, which is why both major parties in the US system are big tent parties with stark internal divisions that sometimes try to paper over them to present a united front.
No actually, you can't. You can fit the broader definition of Christian but if you hold these views and profess to be a Catholic, you are in fact a heretic and can be excommunicated[1]. I see this fiction posted again and again on HN, and while it's not my intention to support or oppose the Church's viewpoint on this people should be educated and aware that they can't claim to be certain things if they aren't them.
[1] https://www.vatican.va/archive/cod-iuris-canonici/eng/docume...
In practice, there's a wide gulf between what the Church formally establishes as dogma and the adherence of individual Catholics. It's generally resolved as the Church holding the door open for forgiveness through a person's entire life, as long as penitence is a possibility. It's rare for the Church to excommunicate an individual Catholic (or even deprive them of communion) even for very public statements regarding their support of abortion.
Sometimes, the door is held open so long the Church's view on the topic changes and forgiveness is no longer needed to align the practitioner with the Church's stance.
No, you can't, and nothing at your link supports your claim. Support for legal abortion (or the non-criminalization of anything; criminalization is not symmetric and there are cases where this wouldn't be the case for supporting criminalization of an act) is, where not obligatory, inherently a prudential judgement as criminalization always inflicts harm intentionally.
Moral support for abortion would be dissent from authoritative teaching, which is of a more serious (both doctrinally and in canon law) character, but that's an intensely different thing.
You can be religiously Catholic and support legal abortion, and do so without dissenting on any essential doctrine (though you’d be in tension with how the heirarchy tends to apply certain important doctrines.)
If you morally support abortion, you'd be in dissent, but doctrinal dissent isn't really unheard of among Catholics (even within the heirarchy.)
The European Catholics (Primarily Irish, Italian, German ancestry) are often more liberal, perhaps because historically they've lived in the urban North East.
Have you not seen the current Pope? Far more injecting in politics than the previous. Obvious in a historical perspective, this is still very hands off for the church.
[1] https://www.consciencelaws.org/religion/religion002.aspx
[2] In this context, by scandal Catholics mean action that invites others to sin.
American Catholics support legal abortion at pretty similar rates to the general population. [0] The Church heirarchy may not, but that’s not the population of interest.
[0] https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2020/10/20/8-key-findi...
That said, the no-compromise issues really do have the effect of shoving all the important stuff into the background...
In fact, there are numerous pro-life groups who directly benefit from moving the ball around but never actually winning the game.
The same is true of race relations organizations, animal cruelty activists, the NRA, etc. With all of these, the spoken platform may or may not be a good thing, but the largest stakeholders would lose tremendous money and influence if they ever actually won.
This is exactly how you win elections. If you gain enough single-issue voters you never need to debate the complex issues that might split your base.
It's important to portray the situation as if they are losing. Pro-Choice is a great example. Abortion-right are frequently portrayed as "under attack and imminently about to be destroyed" despite almost every SCOTUS judge publicly saying it's "settled law".
It is a political form of George Orwell's endless war, and the ultimate distraction.
Corporations don't need to fund them directly as politicians are happy to play this game so that corporations can fund THEM directly since the political attention is placed elsewhere.
I read some “gun people” discussing this. An argument was that they were not single issue voters, but rather they were a foundational issue voters.
That all rights (to him/them) are supported by the idea the public is a counter force to the government. Fundamental before all other issues because is the prevention of the gov backtracking or infringing on anything “down stream”. So...
That if a politician supported the disarming of civilians that was indeed a full stop to other thoughts on abortion or the foreign trade or etc.
It was a good read really, because calling them a single issue voter may give the wrong impression, which is good for no one coming to the table on other issues.
(they weren't yokels, they weren't particularly armed, they were aligned with officials, etc.)
For the cynics and BLM activists and more, this is seen as obvious (no rubber bullets, no real resistance). The police forces will tear gas (illegal in warfare), rubber bullet, etc. black lives matter protestors, but won't dare go against white protestors / insurrectionists. We still have a 'uge race issue here. We just cover it up with policies. In reality (aka both insurrection and protests) we clearly see the two groups treated completely different.
The photos/videos of people milling about after members and staffers narrowly escaped those in the crowd clearly intending violence combined with a rather intense propaganda effort aimed at minimizing the autocoup attempt have effectively spread a false narrative of the attack, though.
Black's Law Dictionary defines the word arms as "anything that a man wears for his defense, or takes in his hands as a weapon."
The word "arms" in the right to keep and bear arms explicitly meant weapons that could be carried by a single infantryman. It was never about (and still isn't about) tanks, or cannon, or warships, or nukes. So no, you don't have to be committed to allowing tanks to be fully keen on the right to keep and bear arms.
(if you still doubt this, focus on the word "bear". You can't "bear" a tank, if anything a tank bears you.)
( https://www.buckeyefirearms.org/iii-what-arms-meant-circa-17... )
That said, it actually happens to be totally legal for private citizens to own a tank in most countries, including the US. They're expensive, get terrible gas mileage, probably not street-legal to drive on the freeway, unlikely to fit in your garage and the neighbors are bound to complain if you fire the main gun...but you totally could own one (and drive it around your own private property) if so inclined.
https://www.dailydot.com/unclick/operational-tank-for-sale-a...
(Making, say, a 50 caliber gun legal under the NFA is indeed somewhat more onerous than owning a shotgun. And a gun rights advocate certainly could care about trying to make it less so but they're not required to care about it because - as I said above - a tank doesn't count as "arms".)
Case in point: A few years ago I had a company outing to go play tank paintball. This was in the UK.
I'm also curious about the constitutional ramifications of the ban on civilian ownership of machine guns manufactured after 1986. Could any class of small arms be gradually banned by specifying a date of manufacture cutoff for legality in a similar way? Seems contrary to a plain reading of the 2a to phase out weapons this way but I know that my layman's plain reading is worth very little here.
I’m pretty sure you dismissing the conversation I reported as “identity politics” is exactly what the argument was warning against; people misreading opponents of gun control as some surface level thing that can be hand waved away.
Also, “identity politics” isn’t right. No one is born a gun owner, nor can you identify one in a line up or nod to one walking down the street unless they want you to know they are “one of us”. Nor does owning a gun preclude you from another group like being white or black might, although there is a long running AK vs AR debate, but I think that’s pretty much been settled!
But I agree there is a foundational element to the 2nd amendment (which is why they passed it 2nd), and it is not (only) identity politics.
If you expand the definition of “tanks” to the commonly used one of “armored vehicles”... then there are a lot more than you’d likely expect.
I and friends have for a few years discussed the idea of freezing all gun and abortion laws in place for 20 years as a means to declawing the US parties' stranglehold on dialogue.
Sans wedge issues, there is a solid American consensus out there and it trends populist, and does so for simple economic reasons.
Entirely entirely unrealistic and would go nowhere. Both sides love their wedges. They campaign on they both saber rattle with, they make their careers on them. When they have a chance to make movement, they usually don’t, if they fixed the issue it wouldn’t raise money anymore.
Look how many people already say there is a UniParty when looking at pretty shitty things like both sides voting for Iraq war, Patriot Act, meager amounts of citizen Covid relief compared to corporate interests... so take away the wedge issues and the two parties may look far more similar.
I’d like to see viable third and fourth party options. No decent person can be entirely red or blue.
I have quit responding to labels directly and nearly always move to clarity first and foremost.
Uniparty?
Usually this is met with either righteous indignation, or a hard pass, or agreement of some kind.
When I ask, "how so?", I tend to understand the other person better and have an opportunity to have a respectable, sometimes productive dialog.
Re: more parties
I agree with you. Sadly, I do not believe those party options make much sense in our current system.
And it is the system, meaning changing it will require similar effort as it does to get anything else done, so...
I feel factions, blocs, caucuses can serve a similar role. On the right, the Tea Party was quite effective. Not endorsement, just noting dynamics that apply here.
The economic left is contemplating similar ways and means.
The other tool we do have is collective action. Class type moves that can deliver very significant incentive to change.
Ie: Let's make sure everyone sees the doctor without going bankrupt or being denied for lack of money
, or
relitigate the SCOTUS decision gun ownership being an individual right, and like all rights, is not absolute, subject to reasonable regulation.
Pick one.
And one is all we get due to how politics currently works in our US system. As for changing it? Same priority discussion.
Without our people being able to express consensus in a potent way, we basically ignore them right now. No judgement there, just hard reality.
How do we want to play it then?
So far, these kinds of conversations have been super interesting! They often go pretty well. The core idea is being for something we have majority consensus on rather than burn time on things we don't.
Expressing all this stuff in terms of priorities could be a way to get past how toxic it all is.
What I will say is quid pro, pro. Get health care sorted and we all can have a much lower cost, lower risk conversation about guns...
That center is always moving: over the last 30 years, the economic center has moved rightward (see Bill Clinton and the "Third Way", or the tax rate of the top bracket), while the social center has moved leftwards (see public opinion of interracial marriages and LGBTQ unions). On both axes, the US center is right of center, compared to the rest of the world.
I still love the idea a little bit, federal abortion and gun laws have moved only incrementally in the last 20 years and yet they've prevented coalitions surrounding so many other pressing issues from forming.
In ancient Athens they used to try to make laws like that. They would create a penalty for bringing up certain ideas like melting down golden statues in their temples for money or proposing ideas that disasterously failed in the past. These laws had a tendency to be broken though.
Bear in mind, many people's politics and values have become very aligned: If you don't support someone's views on identity issues, for instance, they may not feel they can be friends with you anymore. If you consider abortion to be literal murder, the color it places on someone who supports or has had an abortion, may make friendship similarly challenging.
That's actually kind of the point of this article, as I read it: political opinions are very malleable. Tribal identification is one mechanism by which they can be changed. If the tribe decides we're cutting taxes, we change our opinion to favor cutting taxes. If the tribe decides that trans identity is extremely important, we do too. Not because of any overt pressure but simply because of natural herd and instincts.
But self-interest is an even stronger hammer with which to shape political opinions. If it is strongly in my economic best interest to get an abortion, there's a pretty decent chance I'm gonna finagle my way to believing it's OK -- at least for me -- even if I "thought it was literal murder" before. It's easy enough to do because abortion has none of the physical hallmarks of literal murder (you know, struggling, screaming victims, blood everywhere, etc.) and society clearly treats it as a different thing, no matter where in the U.S. you live. I have noticed a similar pattern whereby rich liberal friends are slightly less in favor of eating the rich than poor liberal friends, even though the Twitter crowd has pretty much decided where they stand on this issue. Self-interest is a powerful motivator! Us rich folks like to talk about all the entitlements we support but we get a little less comfortable when it comes time to talk about who pays for them.
This is just a general rule, it doesn't apply universally by any means. Even this article suggested that there's just a 15% shift in personal opinion directly after a tribe opinion change. But I guess the change grows over time too. I hadn't heard a damn thing about illegal immigrants from my conservative father until about 2016. Now sometimes it seems like every third article he sends me is on that subject.
Hey, you know another interesting thing about this: everyone hates literal murder, but somehow murderers families often -- not always, but often -- come around to forgiving them. Sometimes they forgive the murderer so hard that they come to court to support them before they're even convicted, pay for lawyers, etc. You'd almost never do that for someone who wasn't family. Self-interest, family, and tribe are extremely powerful mutators of political and even moral opinion!
Sure people do. There are plenty of us. Even those of us who are atheist and/or pro-LGBT. It doesn’t strictly align with parties; for instance my own views are rather liberal except for this particular issue.
> Folks would lynch abortion providers -- not one or two, but en masse
This did not happen for a lot of other viewpoints throughout history that we now consider illegal and unthinkable. Those of us who are anti-abortion consider abortion to be much the same—it will take a long time to change society’s opinion but violence is not the answer to solving the problem.
What if it's state sanctioned? Where were all the people destroying nazi concentration camps?
I would also just note that there are policies that have been clearly demonstrated to reduce the number of abortions, but they require a small amount of spending. I struggle to believe that someone who believes abortion is literal murder would shrink from providing e.g. free contraceptives, given the alternative. Yet Republicans tend to be opposed to these things, certainly at the legislative level. The behavior and voting patterns just don't support the claim, IMO.
(This did happen with the Republicans in 2016
Republicans controlled Congress and held the Presidency for various times from 2001-2006.
The number of clinic bombings and assassinations of abortion providers in the US particularly given how few there are in slem areas demonstrates that enough people believe it to feel compelled to act.
But your main point is right, that things like memes often serve to push people away if you’re not already in the in-group.
Edited to add a space
Is it? When I debate some partisans, I can't find bedrock logic under their opinions. It's like the opinions are pointers to beliefs they receive from an authority figure.
They are unconvinceable--because the decision maker isn't in the room.
Also, there is a page in there where Haidt hypothesized that the low agreeableness/asperger personality people actually do better in the startup world precisely because they don't fear being ostracized and thus don't engage in the groupthink showcased in the article. Peter Thiel type people. Of course that's hard to really test one way or another, but the narrative fits...
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_Politics_(book)
Probably also worth nothing that our political view point(s) may, to a certain extent, be biologically determined:
> Studies have found that subjects with conservative political views have larger amygdalae and are more prone to feeling disgust. Liberals have larger volume of grey matter in the anterior cingulate cortex and are better at detecting errors in recurring patterns. Conservatives have a stronger sympathetic nervous system response to threatening images and are more likely to interpret ambiguous facial expressions as threatening. In general, conservatives are more likely to report larger social networks, more happiness and better self-esteem than liberals. Liberals are more likely to report greater emotional distress, relationship dissatisfaction and experiential hardship and are more open to experience and tolerate uncertainty and disorder better.
* https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biology_and_political_orientat...
Ok it’s not that easy.
It is, but it's not just them. Mainstream Democrats are more center than the Party. "Defund the Police" did not play well with many centrist Dems.
People flip flop on policies because they are part of social groups, not coherent ideologies. They don't perceive themselves as flip flopping, because of course they have not changed groups.
If a 'strong' leader of a group such as the President, characterizes something as positive, followers will buy it.
Especially when there is a political divide, people tend to be 'against' ideas as well, much more so if 'the other side' approves or proposes them.
If you gave any number of policy recommendations to a random group, and indicated at random they were proposed by either Republicans or Democrats, I suggest you'd get responses more consistent with group alignment than ideological alignment.
I've lived long enough to see the terms "liberal" and "conservative" morph multiple times. (You will too eventually, just watch carefully.) They've long since lost any connection to their origin in classical European political philosophy and have now become merely placeholders to give the pretense that the two major US political parties have some kind of consistent ideological (as opposed to financial) backing, which they don't.
There's a certain irony in Barry Goldwater being credited with launching the modern "conservative" movement in the US when Goldwater himself could be considered much more "libertarian" and was opposed to the policies and increasing influence of "conservative Christians" such as Pat Robertson.
Scratch either of the two parties and underneath you'll see a very loose coalition of differing, sometimes opposing interests, not a clear set of consistent, unwavering beliefs. It's an ongoing power struggle, and the political labels just reflect the currently dominant group in the power struggle.
It mostly has a neolibaral foundation, and secondarily a governance and NGO ethos.
Anti-Globalism in the 1990's was by the Left, and they were against the WTO and mostly neoliberal world order.
Anti-Globalism today is much more complicated issue, but with the more popular versions being more or less Nationalist, anti-UN/WHO/Multilaterialism.
Personally - I think there are very good arguments on all sides of this subject and it's sad that it's ideologically aligned.
Global neoliberalism has brought zillions out of poverty, but has wicked externalizations and a lot of inequality.
Globalist institutions have a certain kind of individual corruption (think FIFA) and are also subject to the completely antithetical influences of bad actor states (think Saudi Arabia on Human Rights) etc. and finally, very susceptible to ideological institutionalization, elitism and creeping, ineffectiveness and bureaucracy.
Yet at the same time there are some parts of some orgs that are super essential. Like the WHO right now and probably the IPCC for a few reasons.
What both the left and the right complain about in their 'anti-globalist' is 'we are unhappy with the situation here' and we blame the rest of the globe. The left believes that all changes to the economy they don't like could just not effect them if you didn't have free trade. And the right, by now is basically the party of the white working class has the same issue.
This is also why the left is now the pro globalism party, they are now the party of the urban people rather then the (white) working class and cities have much fewer of the problems from change in industrial structure.
Free speech used to be popular.
Still is with us rebels. How the hell free speech became counter culture I have no idea, but I’m 90% sure it has to do with almost all media in the USA being run by 6 corporations.
But I'm talking about the speech itself, and you're talking about support for free speech. You'd expect support for free speech to not be counter-cultural. But when what's being expressed is counter-cultural, support for the speech may be somewhat weaker among the culture, at least among those who aren't sticklers for principle.
Personally, I find the government censoring the CDC, and not getting accurate information from government agencies a much larger imposition on free speech. The silencing or the Florida data scientist sharing public information that conflicted with official reports.
Why? Because the government is using legal threats to silence someone on every channel.
Obviously there is some interesting power here that I'm not sure if I feel comfortable with Twitter having, but having to use press releases and TV speeches instead of hammering a first draft tweet out into the internet is what the vast majority of presidential communication has been
Every notable politician that I know of has a Twitter now, and uses it to some extent.
I truly wish DJT hadn't used twitter, like ever. But he did, and it was his main outlet, and then he was silenced on it. I personally don't think that's okay (while still supporting the idea that Twitter had the right to do that).
It's patently obvious to everyone that they're playing sides, when it's convenient. Not just enforcing their TOS or something.
An incredibly small group of people have amassed an incredibly large amount of power.
That is not good for Democracy.
At the time, the "left" was rabidly anti-globalism and anti-GMO-those were themes. I was on a youthful anarchy kick that was informed by the archives of 80s non-leftist anarchist zine world, but also interested in economics and futurism.
As an aside wrt today: my area was tear gassed to such an extreme that I had to carry a guy a dozen blocks while throwing up ropes of phlegm and while national guard stalked through the zero-visibility beating anyone they found with what looked like long wooden dowels.
Later, helicopters lobbed flash bangs and cs gas into residential neighborhoods through which I was slowly escaping. At choke points, random people would band together to make fire barricades before escaping.
So, what's happening now is not especially crazy.
Take for example the anti-war stance. As far as I know Trump is the only one continually advocating for a troop withdrawal in the Middle East. This used to be a solid progressive issue.
Not to be pedantic but you're conflating two issues: being anti-war and being pro-troop presence. One of the big reasons the US has kept a troop presence in the middle east is to deal with the human cost of the instability that was created in the 2000s by those wars of choice.
I can't speak for all progressives but those that I know have both anti-war views (stop shit-stirring with Iran) and pro-troop presence (try to stabilize the region before withdrawal). I will admit that both have been going very poorly lately.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_U.S._troops_from...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Withdrawal_of_U.S._troops_from...
The remaining troops were there in an advisory capacity. And Trump has been trying to pull out those advisors.
The needle has been pretty steadily moving for the last 10 years, it's just been slow going. It's also debatable if the number of troops there should ever be zero if they're only acting as advisors.
One of the things we're sorely missing in the anglo sphere is any actually progressive candidates.
The first problem with saying people take positions uncritically is that you need to determine how interested they are in the subject. Assuming this was a longitudinal study, I'd want to know how much thought respondents had put into an opinion when doing the survey. The simple explanation is the 15% who flipped likely never had strong (or well-developed) opinions in the first place.
It's fairly unusual in politics to see reversals without any explanation, simply because politicians have to interact with people who are very invested in politics. And if you read those explanations charitably, most reversals aren't. For instance, government programs are sold to the public with warranties of fitness of purpose. If your welfare program was sold with such a guarantee and doesn't live up to that promise, then you're not reversing yourself to oppose it.
It's right to be skeptical of reversals and the explanations, but if you're buying into the notion that people are "blindly" following their leadership, you're probably falling for some cheap partisan rhetoric yourself.
you don't have to. https://sci-hub.se/https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.12550
Smart people don’t think others are stupid: https://rochemamabolo.com/2015/06/21/smart-people-dont-think...
Is it bad? I dunno. I'm sure people who are Very Rational Independent Thinkers will interpret it that way.
But maybe people aren't well informed about the issue, so they go with the group they trust on other issues, because of a shared value system. Maybe there's a public debate which convinces them, or something in the news that provides color on the issue. Or all these things together. Or something else.
¯\_(ツ)_/¯
There is one safeguard known generally to the wise, which is an advantage and security to all, but especially to democracies as against despots. What is it? Distrust. -Demosthenes
For example, if you look back now in the US, you could probably find that some Democrats started supporting gay marriage after the party changed its stance. It's also the case that the party changed its stance in the middle of a large scale shift in public opinion that was occurring.
San Francisco and CA in general have a lot of "direct democracy" items on ballots (a couple dozen props each cycle) and nobody really understands more than one or two at the level they probably should. I personally have never read the full text of a CA prop, and I'm guessing most others haven't either.
Did they? Ballotpedia says that the support side outspent the oppose side 10:1, but maybe californians just like their cheap taxi/delivery service (just like they like their cheap apparel/electronics manufactured in developing countries), or they thought that AB-5 is riddled with exemptions already?
> Voters can either vote directly or delegate their vote to other participants; voters may also select different delegates for different issues. In other words, individual A of a society can delegate their power to another individual B – and withdraw such power again at any time.
For example, you could have only people who have delegates have open votes, while those that don't have anyone delegated to them can vote or delegate secretly. This isn't much worse than our current delegative system, which admittedly does have an issue with vote-buying!
Politicians aren't fully informed about these issues either, there are a lot of examples where they vote laws through where it is pretty simple to deduce they haven't read the bill. The current legal framework in the US is so large and complicated nobody understands it all either, raising questions about how the politicians could even theoretically understand what they are dealing with.
The quality of the decisions would rise under direct democracy, and laws would probably become more general and the body of law would shrink to something more manageable.
Do you believe that most politicians have read the full text of the bills they vote on?
The deeper problem is people who broadcast their political views do it to signal their identity and to feel important. I wish there was a way to decouple identity from political issues a bit more, at least for issues that aren't strictly social issues.
Maybe it’s more about authorities changing their opinions as a bloc, similar to how OPEC adjusts oil prices as a bloc? (The issue isn’t that any one oil company sets prices, but that companies form a cartel that colludes on a price at the cost of consumers)
You do this? I don't. I just automatically rebel against any authority that tries to tell me what to think.
Probably to a fault but it has served me well so far in life.
Some issues of Boardwatch are available on archive.org but I'm not sure if that particular issue is. It's been a couple of decades since I read the article so it's also possible my much younger mind thought more of it than I would if I found it again.
almost nobody does this. Minds are molded by something, which, in the internet age, is extremely easy to do.
Media/Tech companies foster a narrative and narratives influence voting.
There are few people who realize this and even less who completely unplug from popular media.
I actually think we need to rethink politics in the internet age. I've been thinking about making counties (no "r") stronger and voting is more focused on local issues. The distributed nature is like federated social networks where it's hard to influence/censor the whole.
I'm from Switzerland and we have probably the most direct democracy in the world and we do have parties (many in fact) and representatives.
The direct democracy aspect however is a very important check on what the government does and it allows for grass root initiatives to get national discussion.
We are not part of the EU because of population went against the parliament on that issue. Something most other countries in Europe didn't get the option to do.
It also has some negative sides as well.
In general I would say having more parties, would help a lot. If your social circle is full of people who have slightly different parties switching party is a lot easier.
In the US the most important system is the get away from First Past the Post single election for congress and presidency. Remove primaries, use either larger districts with representative representation of some kind, or smaller districts with ranged/score/star voting. Ban the president primary and have people use range/score/star voting to select an actually popular president. This I think would eventually destroy the two party system in the US.
That is to say - for any individual, they are part of a faction of their party. For the faction to prosper, the party must prosper. So the individual strategically should advocate for whatever the other factions want without worrying about the details too much.
Maybe I don't totally understand what 15% means here, but it sounds like the vast majority of supporters did not switch their opinions? If my interpretation is correct, this title feels very misleading, but it's also possible I'm just misunderstanding.
That's why there is I think some merit to how some elections are run in Cuba where candidates essentially run as independents. Whatever the motivations of this system are I see multiple benefits:
- candidates themselves have to show policy acumen and cannot rely on party policy
- Each candidate's personal opinion is therefore more likely to be relayed to the public
- less political conformism as large parties cannot dominate
- Voters are forced to review policies every election rather than simply voting for the same party/party candidates
This isn't just limited to political parties, but group "identity" in general.
This study seems almost like an anecdote as it only studied two issues in a single, small European country. I have a feeling the results aren't reproducible in any meaningful way.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/powerpost/paloma/daily-2...
However, this won't fit those looking for a "all people/parties are the same" narrative. One party changed their opinion by 64%, the other party was unchanged.
(From the article here, I'm not sure if that's what was studied or not, and I haven't read the underlying study.)
When I vote, I pick people who I trust to help me form opinions on subjects I don't know in detail.
(Except for climate change,) I don't vote based on a strict adherence to issues; because I want to elect critical thinkers who are leaders.
Ron Paul was very popular among Republicans. And before him Ross Perot, who basically gave Clinton the White House in 1992 by taking a huge percentage of voters who would have voted for George H.W. Bush. His #1 issue was anti-NAFTA.
They didn't "suddenly become doves" or "became anti-trade". They have always been there, but the party didn't have to listen until 2016.
With regards to ending foreign conflicts, to me it seems more like a desire to return to America's pre-WWII isolationist position. It might be hard to imagine now, but up until Pearl Harbor there was virtually no desire among Americans to enter "Europe's" war (>90% opposed).
Republicans are historically far more Hawkish on Russia, Iran etc. and with Trump was saw the tables reversed.
The answer is likely because people attune to groups and individual leaders of those groups more than ideology.
Trump supporters accepted his 'Tough on China' but 'Weak on Russia' brand of personal foreign policy essentially because he told them to. It's about him, not ideology or even ideas.
Especially with Syria, It's been equally funny watching the centrist Democrats have to push back and make big public statements in support of trying to keep the troops there and stop Trump from pulling out abruptly.
People are more consistent with the people they follow than the ideas they maintain.
Watching the comment boards on all of the various sites, it was hilarious to see FoxNews commenters recently rally behind Trump's $2K last minute populist wrench-in-the-works veto threat/demand.
All of a sudden 'empathy for working people' became a really important issue!
It was always there of course among rank and file working class, they just needed someone 'patriotic!' to say it.
And then the other articles would lament socialism with bated breath.
I'm not taking sides here, other than to point out this one very specific and recent populist issue very viscerally demonstrated how this can happen.
I should say it's also not entirely duplicitous, the same policy can be arrived at via different principles. In particular, populist-Constitutionalism can be a funny thing when it clashes with ideology, for example, the 1st Amendment doesn't protect 'free speech' at all in the way people think it does, many are surprised to learn.
Edit: I should add, in the months leading up to the budgetary standoff, as 'one party' was pushing hard for said stimulus checks, there was no support at all among the Fox News commenting section, at least from my observance. And then when some 'other person supported it' the support was loud and clear.
FWIW there is a line of reasoning in which neither of these is inconsistent.
The strongest opposition to socialism is really opposition to central planning, with the consequent inefficiency and corruption that tends to imply.
Giving everybody a uniform amount of money is about the smallest amount of central planning you can have and still be said to be doing anything. The decision of what to do with the money goes to the individual rather than the party apparatchiks. It's something you can do (help people) without doing the thing you don't want to do (give power to bureaucracies).
There is a completely unambiguous divide on that issue in the regular political context - Democrats are 100% on the side of more personal stimulus, and Republicans entirely on the other side. That war plays out like clock work every budgetary period.
Trump's last minute monkey-wrench was really interesting for a whole slew of reasons beyond the scope of this, the flip-flop was crystal clear among the commenting proles.
The evidence, is of course that 'large stimulus checks' had been pushed by the Dems for months (!) leading up to the final negotiations, and nobody thought they were a good idea until 'Trump Said It'.
Also:
> There is a completely unambiguous divide on that issue in the regular political context - Democrats are 100% on the side of more personal stimulus, and Republicans entirely on the other side.
Keep in mind that "tax cut" and "giving people money" are economically equivalent. EITC was created and expanded under Republican administrations.
Both of your comments are out of sync with crude, real-time populism.
$2K checks means "MONEY FOR ME NOW" to the proles, ideas like 'tax cut' (which FYI usually are targeted at the rich), or 'we have to pay for other things over there or' 'but the deficit is big!' - are all rational, but ultimately second order thinking. Not populist. Those matter to people 'paying attention'. Most people are not.
You're also missing the fact that it's a very poignant 'flip flop' in that for months, the 'Evil Nancy Pelosi and AOC' had been pushing for exactly that, and were ridiculed for it.
Trump's move was savvy: he wanted to put Mitch McConnel in a corner and he really did, and he was smart enough to know that his followers are not ideological and will get riled up and support pretty much whatever he says. Especially if it's 'free money'.
It's a really crystal clear example of flip flopping among the proles, in this case, purely on the basis of individual populism.
And again I'm not taking sides here, I'm not saying whether it's a good or bad idea etc. just realpolitik populist observation.
But those people (i.e. McConnel) are the ones opposing the $2000. Sending the money is hugely popular with the public, including Republicans.
Also:
> 'tax cut' (which FYI usually are targeted at the rich)
The top marginal rate has been in the 35-39.6% range since 1993. And before then it was lower.
Trump's support of $2K checks is completely against policy instinct of his side. It's purely populist.
The fact so many Trump supporters support these $2K checks now that they are proposed by him, and not 'the other side' - is the clear indication of the policy flip flop among the proles.
It's consistent with their politics, for the reasons already mentioned. The major US political parties don't have any consistent ideology.
> Trump's support of $2K checks is completely against policy instinct of his side. It's purely populist.
Explain why Milton Friedman and others like him on "their side" supported a negative income tax, which is effectively the same thing as sending the checks.
Yes they do.
You are missing the point with Milton Friedman. This is not about 'what works and what doesn't work. This isn't about ideas or their validity.
This is about populism and opinions.
The 'Right' consistently, ideologically wants 'Restrained spending, balanced budgets, possibly military spending and supply-side economics, Constitutional Originalism, fairly free markets, limited social spending.
The 'Left' wants deficit spending, demand side economics (i.e. stimulus cheques) etc. etc..
This is very, very consistent throughout the last many decades.
Donald Trump flipped the narrative by pushing for 'free money' for people, which is something 'the Left' has been pushing for hard since the start of the pandemic, and which was consistently rebuffed by the GOP - both sides consistent with their ideology.
Because Trump followers support him and don't even understand their own ideology, they think anything he says is 'Conservative' even when it's not.
So commenters in Fox News are all huff and puff about 'hard working people need that money' the day Trump made the claim, even though for months, 'the Left' had been pushing that only to rebuked by Fox News readers as being 'socialism'.
The plebes are often dumb, and believe whatever their populist leaders tell them, even if it's directly against their own supposed ideologies. This basically the nature of the article.
Those things are consistent with neither one another nor the actual behavior of Republicans. How are restrained spending and profligate military spending consistent with one another, when they're opposites? When was the last Republican administration to lower the deficit or cut Social Security or Medicare?
Sending the money is hugely popular with the public
> The top marginal rate has been in the 35-39.6% range since 1993.
In 1993, the top 39.6% rate applied starting at $89,151 ($169,407 in 2020 dollars). In 2020, the top 37% bracket starts at $518,401. So, not only is the top rate lower, you have to be making more than 3× as much, adjusted for inflation, before you start paying it.
> And before then it was lower.
Only from 1987-1992. In 1986, it was 50%, and the top 4 brackets were 42% and up. The 42% rate cut in at $44,781 ($105,746 in 2020 dollars, lower than where the 39.6% in 1993 applied) and even the penultimate 48% rate applied from $59,671 ($140,908 in 2020 dollars, still less than the cutoff for the 1993 39.6% rate.)
At that 50% top rate? It was the result of cuts from Reagan's famous giant tax cuts; prior to that tax cut (which was applied in steps from 1981 on) the top rate was 70%.
In 1993, the top 39.6% rate applied starting at $250,000:
https://files.taxfoundation.org/legacy/docs/fed_individual_r...
Adjusted for inflation that's $447,769.
Also, the second highest bracket now is still 35% and starts at $207,351.
But for "the rich" (e.g. Bezos) the 2.6% difference in the highest bracket is far more significant than any of the rest of it anyway, and it's a difference of 2.6%.
Meanwhile increasing the thresholds for the various rates (it wasn't just the top one) reduces the rates paid by the people who make less money.
> prior to that tax cut (which was applied in steps from 1981 on) the top rate was 70%.
Rates prior to Reagan are incomparable because the rate cuts were coupled with the elimination of massive tax loopholes that were widely exploited, to the point that the high marginal rates only existed on paper and weren't paid in practice.