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Comment by at_a_remove | Hacker News Reader

See, there's that contempt again.

You should know that this is what began to pry me away from being your basic leftist template. I said, "Wow, I better make sure I am not voting against my own interests. Wouldn't I feel like a fool if I supported people who had contempt for me."

After that, I would hear "Ugh, men are awful" in a curious new light. Or someone would say "White people ruin everything" and I would realize, hey, I'm white. This sort of thing began to add up and it became clear that "going left" meant supporting people who had contempt for me, purely on the basis of things like skin color and sex. Wow, I really have been going against my own interests, all this time. I am no better than those "fools" in Kansas.

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I guess I just don't care enough about whether or not a person, party, or politician has contempt for me. Whoever has the policy that will be best for the country and the population overall. (With the understanding that my best interests are not always the best interests of the overall country / population...)

Again, you're talking about feelings instead of policy. About "contempt" instead of dollars and rights and lives.

I can't help but see this as every bit as ridiculous as the anti-vaxxers who dig their heels in even as the people around them are dying, because they don't want to give in to The Left on vaccines.

Well hell, let's talk about facts!

Do you think the left is particularly supportive of men? ("In fact, more women as a whole now graduate from college than men ... This is a great accomplishment—not just for one sport or one college or even just for women but for America. And this is what Title IX is all about." President Barack Obama.) If they are not, then that is the error of What's the Matter with Kansas?, the error of supporting those who do not have your best interests at heart.

If feelings don't matter to you, then why are you engaging with a discussion about contempt?

I don't think this is a "feelings" thing. Being openly contemptuous of the people I'm trying to help raises legitimate questions about my motivations and honesty. If you see someone go around cracking homophobic jokes all the time, is it worth carefully considering their policy ideas on LGBT issues?

The two sides don't react to contempt symmetrically. The left doesn't care if Trump insults them. It only has any bearing if it leads to policy changes they hate. The right, on the other hand, really, really hates to be made fun of, to the point where they'd rather destroy the country (see the Civil War or the Jan 6 insurrection) than leave an insult unaddressed. The right believes the left is as sensitive as they are to issues of honor, so they spend vast effort trying to own the libs. The left believes compassion, ideals, rational argument, and consideration of material self-interest are what motivate everyone, so they write endless tracts trying to prove their point, appealing to science and founding principles and so forth. The right finds this boring. The clever right find this a useful red cape to distract their enemies with. "Surely we must not nominate Supreme Court judges in an election year! It's a sacred principle! Oops, except let's nominate several now that it's our turn to nominate."

Please don't take HN threads further into ideological flamewar. I realize the topic has a lot of ideological overlap, but that makes it more important to avoid flamewar and stay focused on what's intellectually interesting and curious.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> The left believes compassion, ideals, rational argument, and consideration of material self-interest

My goodness.. this comment is so full of itself I can't even. Yes, us right wingers believe it's good to be uncompassionate.

> they write endless tracts trying to prove their point, appealing to science and founding principles and so forth

And yet, most left wingers are so disconnected from the reality of people on the ground it's frightening. For example, Portland decided to encourage blacks to get vaccinated by putting ads of black drag queens up. I can't think of anything stupider than the disconnect of left wing pundits from material reality.

> The left doesn't care if Trump insults them. It only has any bearing if it leads to policy changes they hate

The left screamed for years about Trump's manner of speech (not his content, simple the manner). For example, Trump's big talk on immigration through the southern border was met with outright hostility, despite the current administration now keeping the EXACT same plan (the remain in mexico policy). Or, for example, when Trump insulted Antifa, we had to hear on end how Antifa was just an idea, and how being against Antifa means you're a fascist or something.

https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

> Portland decided to encourage blacks to get vaccinated by putting ads of black drag queens up.

This is called nutpicking. You claim this example is representative (and you claim you have adequately represented who did what for what purpose). I claim it is confirmation bias. We could settle this with statistics.

> The left screamed for years about Trump's manner of speech (not his content, simple the manner). For example, Trump's big talk on immigration through the southern border was met with outright hostility, despite the current administration now keeping the EXACT same plan (the remain in mexico policy). Or, for example, when Trump insulted Antifa, we had to hear on end how Antifa was just an idea, and how being against Antifa means you're a fascist or something.

Setting aside your characterization, which again I believe is self-serving and inaccurate, the point is the left weren't upset at being insulted, they were upset that Trump was using lies to justify harmful policy and to promote vigilante violence against various groups the right hates, including, strangely, anti-fascists. You haven't actually addressed this point.

Perhaps I wasn't clear, so, to restate my thesis: the right cares a lot more about contempt than the left. It bothers everyone to be insulted, but it bothers the right a lot more, to the point that revenge is more important to many of them than any policy goal. The right assumes the left thinks like them and acts accordingly. The left assumes the right thinks like them and acts accordingly. Each side misinterprets the other. Though, again, I don't think this is symmetrical either. I think the right misunderstands the left more than the reverse. So, for instance, the right assumes that the positions people on the left take are insincere "virtue signaling" because they can't believe someone would sincerely hold these positions. The left knows that arguing policy with statistics, studies, and appeals to claimed national values isn't going to work with most of the right, but they don't really have a better strategy.

> the right assumes that the positions people on the left take are insincere "virtue signaling" because they can't believe someone would sincerely hold these positions. The left knows that arguing policy with statistics, studies, and appeals to claimed national values isn't going to work with most of the right, but they don't really have a better strategy.

This is one of the more beautifully succinct ways I know of to describe this. The moral hole of the right wing (and, well, I'm sure 'iammisc will again rend their shirt, but I've read their comment history and I've spent plenty of time in that swamp more generally, I'm confident in my assessment on both scales) is such that it assumes their opposite numbers must share it because there is no way their epistemic closure can countenance any alternative. And as you say, the left absolutely understands that pointing out reality won't matter--but lacks the capacity to communicate because to do so abrogates our core values. (There is an obvious path to, say, socialism in America, if it's only for white people. We know, because our right wing like socialism-for-white-people. They will fight their representatives to defend it. It's when other people get hold of it that there are objections. And that's a bridge we certainly won't cross for them.)

The divide is inescapable. For a while we could hope that kids wouldn't share their parents' behavior, but--well. Gamergate happened, the MRA movement happened, and they funneled their dupes straight into the machine.

It is sad.

As a former liberal, I'm not rending anything. I just no longer buy the prevailing liberal narratives.

Only extremists describe those they disagree with as immoral people. I would never think that of my liberal friends or family. Misguided? Yes. Misinformed? Sometimes. Evil? Not any more than anyone else. It's the last point most leftists fail to understand in their zealotry.

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