Are divisions more about ideology or knowledge? (longish)

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grubar

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I have been mulling this over for quite some time,IU
Sure, there are some beliefs that we can describe as "conservative":
  • Resistance to taxation and excessive spending
  • Resistance to excessive regulation
  • Resistance to Affirmative Action (which they mistakenly call "DEI.")
There is another cluster of beliefs/convictions that I suppose could be labeled as conservative:
  • Hostility to elites
  • Hostility to "so called experts"
  • A preference for one's own "opinions" as opposed to faith in expertise
All these sorts of things set folks who call themselves "conservative" from those who disagree with them
But I have come to suspect that the larger source of political divisions comes down to folks believing things that simply are not true,
That divide is partially owing to this conviction that every opinion is as good as any other opinion, regardless of knowledge,
And it is largely owing to the fact that the current POTUS is (quite literally) the worst liar to hold any position in American public life, It is unclear to me how much his lying is really just evidence that he is pretty deranged, and how much is because he is intentionally manipulating his loyal followers. He is convinced that those folks will believe anything.
And, of course, we know that the folks in the right wing media AND the folks who are dependent on the POTUS are committed to lying to back him up,

It seems to me that setting aside the core ideological divisions, there remain a host of issues/topcs that come down to MAGA people just not understanding things. That is, if we could magically make these people understand the facts I think that many of our core problems would be solved, Here are just some examples:

  1. Issues surrounding undocumented immigrants: (a) What is their history before they became "illegal"? (b) How does their crime rate compare with Native born Americans? (c) Do they pay taxes? (d) Are they, collectively, more dangerous than other Americans? MAGA folks believe things about immigrants that are untrue, and DJT feeds that with lies
  2. The Economy: (a) How do tariffs actually work? (b) what does the current data actually say? (c) what is the relationship between our current trade policy and our historic diplomatic goals? (d) What percentage of folks with elite training in economic issues believe that POTUS is doing a good job? [Then of course there are so many lies from him.]
  3. Science and Public Policy: Here we have an assortment of topics. In each case, folks who have devoted their lives to studying the science disagree with DJT and Kennedy and MAGA. Including: (a) The facts on Climate Change (b) The facts surrounding pregnancy and medically dangerous csses; (c) Vaccinations and Infectious Disease (d) The causes of autism and what the data actually says, (e) Everything surrounding Gender and Transsexuals. All topics involving serious expertise as well as folks who just prefer their own opinions.
  4. History, Literature, and Race. A massive set of topics. The simple version is that POTUS knows that his followers resent POC, so he does all he can to almost literally Whitewash our history, including (a) His idiodic attack on the Smithsonian, (b) His perpetual demeaning of black leaders, and especially black womeh, (c) This bizarre claim that American history (as studied by professionals and reflected in texts etc) has too much bad news. MAGA folks whine about "playing the race card." I think the truth is that these people know almost nothing about the history of race in America. and yet DJT wants to reduce what the Smithsonian shows.
  5. Crime and Cities. Here, again, MAGA folks believe things that are untrue, presumably because DJT lies pretty constantly. But in addition to made up numbers, we have a classic interpretive problem (among many): If a city elects a Democrat as mayor, why should that mayor be blamed for the crime rate? There are lots of variables involved here. The punchillne is that some moron wearing a red cap in Montana has no idea what is true, but he/she will believe whatever Trump says
SO, my core question is this: To what extent is the current political divide simply owing to the ract that one party lies constrantly (far more than the other party) and one party's core followers are, well, morons.
 
Further thoughts:
It seems to me that for decades (at least) GOP managers, like Karl Rove, perfected a strategy where they would invent a source of concern and get their target audience worked up, inluding:
  1. Gays were going to destroy traditional marriages
  2. Trans men were intent on getting into women's bathrooms, where they would do horrible things
  3. Massive, murky, "caravans" of illegal immigrants were marching North to invade the US
  4. (most recently) thousands of trans women and girls were seeking to disrupt women's sports and injure little girls
The point here is that these people were brilliant at choosing topics that would upset their base. And it just did not matter that they were lying, because their base was pretty stupid,'

Along comes DJT, and the overall strategy becomes based on the notion that these people really are that stupid, and the rest of the GOP is that afraid of him,

Most recently, it seems to me that social media is opening up new strategic paths,
In the last few months I have been getting regular tweets, claiming that the Democrats are passing laws giving the vote to illegal immigrants, I should, they ask, respond to the message and give money to share my outrage.
Meanwhile, Dukie Stephen Miller, has this new talking point about illegal immigrants and the census. What he says is completely untrue, but that does not matter,
The larger point is that DJT continues to believe that these folks really are that dumb.
 
grubar said:
There is another cluster of beliefs/convictions that I suppose could be labeled as conservative:
  • Hostility to elites
  • Hostility to "so called experts"
  • A preference for one's own "opinions" as opposed to faith in expertise
Click to expand...
Before I get to your larger point, this quoted part isn't conservatism, it's populism. Of course, Republicans currently exhibit these traits (which is really just one trait, anti-elitism) because the party is completely in the thrall of populism, but these traits aren't inherently conservative. There's also burgeoning left populist movement which is just as guilty of these traits.

------

On to your bigger point, the current insanity within the Republican Party isn't directly about ideology or knowledge, although both are involved indirectly. The Republican Party doesn't have enough of a consistent ideology beyond (a) greater economic benefits (taxes and otherwise) for the wealthy and (b) bigotry against minorities for ideology to be the defining mark of the party. And, to be honest, I doubt that those 2 ideological points are truly consistently held by the entire party but are much more a set of actions that the various factions of the party can agree upon in order to act collectively within our political system. Knowledge is also not the direct driver of the issues within the Republican Party, as there are folks who are quite intelligent within the Republican Party and there are a lot of folks who are quite dumb. (Yes, the intelligent folks might very well believe stupid or silly things, but that's not because knowledge is withheld from them nor they are incapable of understanding the facts of any particular situation. Of course, there are stupid people who believe correct theories/ideas, as well.)

The issue for the Republican Party is ultimately an issue of authority; more specifically, it's an issue of what authorities the bulk of the Republican Party trusts to guide their beliefs and that of the party. All of us have to rely on others to understand all of the complexity of the modern world. None of us are or can possibly be experts on all the areas of knowledge/study that is required to understand our greater world; no one person possibly have a sufficient level of understanding on economics and climatology and public health and constitutional law and so on in order to understand all the issues that face our society and that government will likely need to address. Therefore, all of us depend on others to investigate more deeply into these issues and to guide us on how to best approach them. And each of us decide who we believe on these topics based on our own knowledge/experiences in the areas where we have expertise.

The bulk of the Republican Party currently places authority in those who do not value expertise in the areas upon which they opine, instead, they place authority largely based on how much those authorities reinforce their previously held beliefs and provide support/justification for those beliefs. For the bulk of Republicans, the test of how "accurate/truthful" an authority is how much that authority states as accurate/truthful things with which they already agree. So, in the eyes of the bulk of Republicans, they consider to be the proper authorities those who support their beliefs that (their version of) Christianity is the correct religion, that their bigotries against minorities are correct, that their economic problems (and their preferred economic solutions to those problems) should be the most important to society, and that rural America is "real America". And, at this point, authorities that provide that support are those who have been granted the leadership of the Republican Party. Now, to be clear, not all members of the Republican Party nor the leadership actually share these beliefs, there is certainly a significant number of charlatans within the party who are happy to lie to the party base in order to secure their support.

This theory that "telling the base what they want to hear" largely explains how Trump - as someone far, far different that the bulk of the Republican Party - came to be its unquestioned leader; he was willing to provide the Republican base with support for their previously-held beliefs. He told them that as white, cisgendered, heterosexual, working/middle class, rural/suburban people that they are the "Real Americans" and that the government should be oriented to them and their problems. He reinforced their bigotries against various minority groups and told them that they were right to believe themselves superior to those minorities. He told them that their economic troubles weren't their fault and promised to orient our economic policies to specifically addressing their concerns with their preferred economic solutions (i.e. bringing back higher-paying manufacturing jobs that don't require extensive education). And because Trump told the bulk of the Republican base things that aligned with their previously held beliefs, they granted him status as the authority over their party and provided him their political support.

This also explains how even pre-Trump, the GOP has been so easily able to stir the base of the party up into a frenzy using a variety of largely social issues; the GOP leadership knows the areas in which the base already views itself as inherently superior and that focusing on those issues will motivate the base to turn out to the polls. It doesn't matter if the specific topic is "welfare queens" (read: racial/ethnic minorities), same sex marriage, transgender rights/folks, abortion, immigration (again, read: racial/ethnic minorities), religious rights (read: Christian superiority), and others; the party leadership knows that stoking these (largely) social issues is a reliable way to motivate the Republican base to go to the polls and vote for the party.

To be clear, this isn't to suggest that all Dems are perfectly logical and only follow subject matter specific expert opinions on all subjects as that would be patently and obviously false. However, reliance upon subject matter experts and scientific/academic data/study/knowledge is a guiding principle of the leadership of the Democratic Party and therefore is a driving determinant of authority within the party and its beliefs.

So, in summary, the reason for our divisions is not directly about ideology or knowledge, but about authority and how each party determines who is a reliable authority concerning various topics. Democrats, as a party, tend to place authority in subject matter experts who have formal training in related scientific/academic fields and Republicans tend to place authority in those who validate their previously held beliefs and lived experiences.
 
SnoopRob said:
Before I get to your larger point, this quoted part isn't conservatism, it's populism. Of course, Republicans currently exhibit these traits (which is really just one trait, anti-elitism) because the party is completely in the thrall of populism, but these traits aren't inherently conservative. There's also burgeoning left populist movement which is just as guilty of these traits.

------

On to your bigger point, the current insanity within the Republican Party isn't directly about ideology or knowledge, although both are involved indirectly. The Republican Party doesn't have enough of a consistent ideology beyond (a) greater economic benefits (taxes and otherwise) for the wealthy and (b) bigotry against minorities for ideology to be the defining mark of the party. And, to be honest, I doubt that those 2 ideological points are truly consistently held by the entire party but are much more a set of actions that the various factions of the party can agree upon in order to act collectively within our political system. Knowledge is also not the direct driver of the issues within the Republican Party, as there are folks who are quite intelligent within the Republican Party and there are a lot of folks who are quite dumb. (Yes, the intelligent folks might very well believe stupid or silly things, but that's not because knowledge is withheld from them nor they are incapable of understanding the facts of any particular situation. Of course, there are stupid people who believe correct theories/ideas, as well.)

The issue for the Republican Party is ultimately an issue of authority; more specifically, it's an issue of what authorities the bulk of the Republican Party trusts to guide their beliefs and that of the party. All of us have to rely on others to understand all of the complexity of the modern world. None of us are or can possibly be experts on all the areas of knowledge/study that is required to understand our greater world; no one person possibly have a sufficient level of understanding on economics and climatology and public health and constitutional law and so on in order to understand all the issues that face our society and that government will likely need to address. Therefore, all of us depend on others to investigate more deeply into these issues and to guide us on how to best approach them. And each of us decide who we believe on these topics based on our own knowledge/experiences in the areas where we have expertise.

The bulk of the Republican Party currently places authority in those who do not value expertise in the areas upon which they opine, instead, they place authority largely based on how much those authorities reinforce their previously held beliefs and provide support/justification for those beliefs. For the bulk of Republicans, the test of how "accurate/truthful" an authority is how much that authority states as accurate/truthful things with which they already agree. So, in the eyes of the bulk of Republicans, they consider to be the proper authorities those who support their beliefs that (their version of) Christianity is the correct religion, that their bigotries against minorities are correct, that their economic problems (and their preferred economic solutions to those problems) should be the most important to society, and that rural America is "real America". And, at this point, authorities that provide that support are those who have been granted the leadership of the Republican Party. Now, to be clear, not all members of the Republican Party nor the leadership actually share these beliefs, there is certainly a significant number of charlatans within the party who are happy to lie to the party base in order to secure their support.

This theory that "telling the base what they want to hear" largely explains how Trump - as someone far, far different that the bulk of the Republican Party - came to be its unquestioned leader; he was willing to provide the Republican base with support for their previously-held beliefs. He told them that as white, cisgendered, heterosexual, working/middle class, rural/suburban people that they are the "Real Americans" and that the government should be oriented to them and their problems. He reinforced their bigotries against various minority groups and told them that they were right to believe themselves superior to those minorities. He told them that their economic troubles weren't their fault and promised to orient our economic policies to specifically addressing their concerns with their preferred economic solutions (i.e. bringing back higher-paying manufacturing jobs that don't require extensive education). And because Trump told the bulk of the Republican base things that aligned with their previously held beliefs, they granted him status as the authority over their party and provided him their political support.

This also explains how even pre-Trump, the GOP has been so easily able to stir the base of the party up into a frenzy using a variety of largely social issues; the GOP leadership knows the areas in which the base already views itself as inherently superior and that focusing on those issues will motivate the base to turn out to the polls. It doesn't matter if the specific topic is "welfare queens" (read: racial/ethnic minorities), same sex marriage, transgender rights/folks, abortion, immigration (again, read: racial/ethnic minorities), religious rights (read: Christian superiority), and others; the party leadership knows that stoking these (largely) social issues is a reliable way to motivate the Republican base to go to the polls and vote for the party.

To be clear, this isn't to suggest that all Dems are perfectly logical and only follow subject matter specific expert opinions on all subjects as that would be patently and obviously false. However, reliance upon subject matter experts and scientific/academic data/study/knowledge is a guiding principle of the leadership of the Democratic Party and therefore is a driving determinant of authority within the party and its beliefs.

So, in summary, the reason for our divisions is not directly about ideology or knowledge, but about authority and how each party determines who is a reliable authority concerning various topics. Democrats, as a party, tend to place authority in subject matter experts who have formal training in related scientific/academic fields and Republicans tend to place authority in those who validate their previously held beliefs and lived experiences.
Click to expand...
This is well said. I will just note that I think you're missing an element of Trump's rise beyond telling people what they want to hear - it's also giving people someone to blame, a set of enemies (mostly internal, domestic enemies, but also some international ones). It's that second element that unites Trump's right-wing populist movement with the other neo-fascist movements that have been sweeping the globe - not just telling people how right they are, but telling them that other people ("elites," college professors, bureaucrats, illegal immigrants, "Big Pharma," etc) are to blame for all their problems. This is also a characteristic of populism, but the relentless search for and demonization of "enemies" is one of the fundamental characteristics of facism (along with, of course, the authoritarian consolidation of power in the executive).
 
SnoopRob said:
Before I get to your larger point, this quoted part isn't conservatism, it's populism. Of course, Republicans currently exhibit these traits (which is really just one trait, anti-elitism) because the party is completely in the thrall of populism, but these traits aren't inherently conservative. There's also burgeoning left populist movement which is just as guilty of these traits.

------

On to your bigger point, the current insanity within the Republican Party isn't directly about ideology or knowledge, although both are involved indirectly. The Republican Party doesn't have enough of a consistent ideology beyond (a) greater economic benefits (taxes and otherwise) for the wealthy and (b) bigotry against minorities for ideology to be the defining mark of the party. And, to be honest, I doubt that those 2 ideological points are truly consistently held by the entire party but are much more a set of actions that the various factions of the party can agree upon in order to act collectively within our political system. Knowledge is also not the direct driver of the issues within the Republican Party, as there are folks who are quite intelligent within the Republican Party and there are a lot of folks who are quite dumb. (Yes, the intelligent folks might very well believe stupid or silly things, but that's not because knowledge is withheld from them nor they are incapable of understanding the facts of any particular situation. Of course, there are stupid people who believe correct theories/ideas, as well.)

The issue for the Republican Party is ultimately an issue of authority; more specifically, it's an issue of what authorities the bulk of the Republican Party trusts to guide their beliefs and that of the party. All of us have to rely on others to understand all of the complexity of the modern world. None of us are or can possibly be experts on all the areas of knowledge/study that is required to understand our greater world; no one person possibly have a sufficient level of understanding on economics and climatology and public health and constitutional law and so on in order to understand all the issues that face our society and that government will likely need to address. Therefore, all of us depend on others to investigate more deeply into these issues and to guide us on how to best approach them. And each of us decide who we believe on these topics based on our own knowledge/experiences in the areas where we have expertise.

The bulk of the Republican Party currently places authority in those who do not value expertise in the areas upon which they opine, instead, they place authority largely based on how much those authorities reinforce their previously held beliefs and provide support/justification for those beliefs. For the bulk of Republicans, the test of how "accurate/truthful" an authority is how much that authority states as accurate/truthful things with which they already agree. So, in the eyes of the bulk of Republicans, they consider to be the proper authorities those who support their beliefs that (their version of) Christianity is the correct religion, that their bigotries against minorities are correct, that their economic problems (and their preferred economic solutions to those problems) should be the most important to society, and that rural America is "real America". And, at this point, authorities that provide that support are those who have been granted the leadership of the Republican Party. Now, to be clear, not all members of the Republican Party nor the leadership actually share these beliefs, there is certainly a significant number of charlatans within the party who are happy to lie to the party base in order to secure their support.

This theory that "telling the base what they want to hear" largely explains how Trump - as someone far, far different that the bulk of the Republican Party - came to be its unquestioned leader; he was willing to provide the Republican base with support for their previously-held beliefs. He told them that as white, cisgendered, heterosexual, working/middle class, rural/suburban people that they are the "Real Americans" and that the government should be oriented to them and their problems. He reinforced their bigotries against various minority groups and told them that they were right to believe themselves superior to those minorities. He told them that their economic troubles weren't their fault and promised to orient our economic policies to specifically addressing their concerns with their preferred economic solutions (i.e. bringing back higher-paying manufacturing jobs that don't require extensive education). And because Trump told the bulk of the Republican base things that aligned with their previously held beliefs, they granted him status as the authority over their party and provided him their political support.

This also explains how even pre-Trump, the GOP has been so easily able to stir the base of the party up into a frenzy using a variety of largely social issues; the GOP leadership knows the areas in which the base already views itself as inherently superior and that focusing on those issues will motivate the base to turn out to the polls. It doesn't matter if the specific topic is "welfare queens" (read: racial/ethnic minorities), same sex marriage, transgender rights/folks, abortion, immigration (again, read: racial/ethnic minorities), religious rights (read: Christian superiority), and others; the party leadership knows that stoking these (largely) social issues is a reliable way to motivate the Republican base to go to the polls and vote for the party.

To be clear, this isn't to suggest that all Dems are perfectly logical and only follow subject matter specific expert opinions on all subjects as that would be patently and obviously false. However, reliance upon subject matter experts and scientific/academic data/study/knowledge is a guiding principle of the leadership of the Democratic Party and therefore is a driving determinant of authority within the party and its beliefs.

So, in summary, the reason for our divisions is not directly about ideology or knowledge, but about authority and how each party determines who is a reliable authority concerning various topics. Democrats, as a party, tend to place authority in subject matter experts who have formal training in related scientific/academic fields and Republicans tend to place authority in those who validate their previously held beliefs and lived experiences.
Click to expand...
Great post, I would only add that Republicans and conservatives generally have worked hard and persistently and very successfully over the past thirty years or more to develop a powerful media apparatus to feed their base only what they want to hear and to keep them in a constant state of outrage. Fox News is the classic example - a pure Republican propaganda network that has developed down to a science the art of feeding their viewers the world as they wish to see it and creating enemies and faux outrages to keep them angry and frightened- but they now have other right-wing TV networks like Newsmax, they're buying up local TV stations via Sinclair Broadcasting, and they have developed a national network of right-wing radio hosts. And with the development of social media they have created whole new ways of reaching their base. And now they're simply buying up any opposing media and forcing them to move to the right - the Washington Post, LA Times, Twitter (via Musk), CBS News (via Skydance taking over Paramount), and so on. It's no longer just about spreading propaganda to their base, they're now trying to silence any opposing voices, which was likely the inevitable endgame for the people controlling the conservative/populist/authoritarian movement.
 
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rodoheel said:
This is well said. I will just note that I think you're missing an element of Trump's rise beyond telling people what they want to hear - it's also giving people someone to blame, a set of enemies (mostly internal, domestic enemies, but also some international ones). It's that second element that unites Trump's right-wing populist movement with the other neo-fascist movements that have been sweeping the globe - not just telling people how right they are, but telling them that other people ("elites," college professors, bureaucrats, illegal immigrants, "Big Pharma," etc) are to blame for all their problems. This is also a characteristic of populism, but the relentless search for and demonization of "enemies" is one of the fundamental characteristics of facism (along with, of course, the authoritarian consolidation of power in the executive).
Click to expand...
I agree with you that Trump provides his base with someone to blame for their ills, but I'd include that in "telling them what they want to hear".

Beyond that, I'm not sure it's operative in the distinction that grubar made in the OP regarding the issue being ideology vs knowledge or my addition of "authority".
 
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