Dissonance
 

Here's something I've been wondering about (I have too much unwanted free time on my hands, I know). It seems to me that people who identify with the conservative end of the political spectrum claim great patriotism and love for their country while at the same time evincing a great dislike of a sizable number of their fellow Americans - like we shouldn't have social service programs because everybody will just jump on board the government "gravy train" and never do a lick of work again. Or they say, "Let's get tough on crime and throw everybody in jail and execute 'em all."

On the other hand, people who gravitate toward the other end of the political spectrum seem to be pretty free in their criticisms of the country, but more concerned about the well-being of its individual citizens. Like we should have better governmental security nets for the old folks or people who get sick or who need help because they're had a run of misfortunes in their lives.

How can you love your country and dislike its people? If this is a government by the people and you love that concept, how can you at the same time be so suspicious of your fellow countrymen? By that logic, wouldn't you as a conservative, have to hate your country, as well? If you as a liberal dislike your government, how can you feel that it will do a good job helping our people? I don't want to get in some big debate about welfare, we've done that already. What I'm curious about is the dissonance going on in both groups. Do you see this too? And if so, why do you think it's possible for people to hold such contradictory ideas in their head without even being troubled by it? (I am really glad Radar no longer reads my posts on this one!)

Part of it is that's how humans are. You find that anywhere there's two ends of a situation to be on.

And that leads to another, probably bigger, part: the fact that there's a perpetuated selection of two choices: conservative/liberal. Whenever you take a situation and give aspects of it labels with specific definitions, you'll have people splitting into camps. Us vs Them. Hatfield vs McCoy. East Coast vs West Coast. And part of being in one camp or another is that you're not LIKE the other people. And to prove it (to yourself or to your campmates or to the world), you have to not be like the other campers. The more you show you aren't like them and the more you show you don't like what they do, the more you prove you match whatever camp you've aligned yourself with. Besides, if you're trying to do X, Y and Z and the other camp keeps doing things that disrupts or overturns your efforts, you're bound to get a little pissed off after a while. Never liked political labels meself.

The final part is that so many issues that people tend to deeply divide themselves about have a tendency to get personal on some level. How personal it gets depends on the individual and the issue. Abortion, for example. One lady from camp X firmly believes the fetus is a living human from conception and another lady from camp Y believes that since its feeding off the woman's nutrient supply she should at least have the choice to have it removed. Camp X lady wants to save a life, Camp Y lady wants to save her choice. To Camp X lady, Camp Y lady wants the choice to commit murder legally. Flip it around, Camp X lady appears to want to relinquish all American womens' control over their own body, without their consent. And from that point, you get them calling each other murderer, fascist and other lovely things...

I know exactly what you mean, Cyber. It's so easy for people to place themselves by knee jerk reflex into "them" versus "us" camps. What I'm asking about is the ability to hold such paradoxial views as the ones I pointed out above in your own mind at the same time, and think nothing of it.

I could be wrong here but it seems to me there is a fair percentage of the US population who barrak for political parties like football teams, very strange, quite destructive.

Huh?

I had to break out the dictionary. "Barrack" is an Australian saying which means "to shout support for a team."

Interesting that it is also a British saying "to jeer or shout at a player, speaker or team."

So the Brits and Ozzies us the word to mean exactly the opposite of the other.


Never heard that one before.

People do that with everything. brand loyalty for chrissakes! i don't drink pepsi, I like COKE! mcDonalds, not Burger King! we have ford pickup truck drivers with little stickers on their back windows that have a kid peeing on a chevy logo.

Really? I thought it was a common word...

In America "barracks" are where the soldiers sleep.

But that aside, I thought your meaning was clear, and I agree. There's a lot of similarity between politics and sports fandom.

Definitely not much difference in the customer base...

people want their own choices ratified. that's why some people are big referrers. ever meet someone who told you about every great deal they got, or practically insist that you try their barber/insurance guy/mortgage broker, etc...? They want to see you confirm their choice by making the same one. Pepole want you to believe what they believe. very elemental human nature. "you should worship MY god, it's the only right one." ..... "Oh, you're a democrat? you know there's lots of bad stuff about them....you really should be republican." "I'm going to jump off this cliff. You really should too"

Match that up with the conflicting need to feel different and special and you've probably wrapped up most of psychology.

Just because two things or ideas are inextricably linked does not mean that you must have the same opinion of both things, even if they are just separate qualities of the same concept. For instance, I can love Wal-Mart's low prices and product selection, but loathe the company itself. There is a logical separation of ideas there, and one is not dependent on the other, so they're not really contradictory. What I mean is, the things that cause me to dislike Wal-Mart are things other than the prices and product selection... such as their business practices and smothering growth.

The same logical separation allows us to support our soldiers, while still condemning the war in Iraq. The soldiers are not the war, they're just one high-profile aspect. The citizens are not the nation.

Extreme conservatives like the ones you describe usually love their country and rich people. That's why they dislike social service programs and the like, but they still love their country.

Foreign policy is run by politicians and government aid programs are run by civil servants. My opinion of civil servants is higher than my opinion of politicians.

A barracks is the same in australia but you barrack for a team, which is when you say 'Carn the $team!', usually very loudly after a few. Just to confuse things further ;) That's usually followed by something like 'COME ON WARNEY YOU FAT TUB OF LARD', we love our sportpeople. I'm crossing my sports there though.

Was working on a record in Sydney a few years back, and got invited down to Melborne to see the Anzac's Day footie. We asked our hosts which team we should "root" for, and got a horified look in response.

Rooting is a vulgar expression for getting your sex on, which would be a very odd way to "barrack" for your team.

Go Bombers.

-sm

Worked jolly well for the rainforests though, didn't it?

bombers?
Sydney?
*hangs head*

Yes, I see what you are saying. Kind of like you can "hate the sin and love the sinner" or support the soldier but loathe the government who sent him off to war. That's still not exactly what I'm trying to get at. I don't think its flying in the face of logic to disagree with a politician's decision to wage war while feeling sympathy for the young soldier who puts his life on the line for his country. One can view the politician as older, wiser, and cynically out for some ulterior motive as he stays safely at home while the soldier is young, politically naive, and out there doing the fighting.

Extreme conservatives may love their country and rich people, but they try to convince one that they love everybody when it should be obvious to everyone that they don't.

But the liberal point of view is just as flawed, really. If I as a liberal feel angry with the government for not providing a better educational system or better health care, why do I turn to the very same culprit (the government) seeking redress of these wrongs? As the years go by, I loose ever more confidence in the government. I have come to realize that I have as little faith in the government as most Libertarians seem to have. I guess what it comes down to is that I don't believe that we any longer have a government "of the people, by the people, for the people."

Perhaps, this is where my feeling of dissonance comes from as much as anything. It seems to me that "the people" have given up and become polarized into those "knee jerk" camps we spoke of above. I think "the people" feel pretty powerless to influence civic or political events and this sense of powerlessness, whether acknowledged or not, translates into fear and a type of xenophobia. The white folks are afraid of the brown and black ones, the black folks and the hispanics dislike the white; and we all retreat to our seperate gated communities and hate one another while waving our American flags. But maybe I'm being overly cynical.

I have stayed out of it but I know the, uh, compassionate conservative answer to the original question, from having been a compassionate libertarian.

The compassionate conservative believes in people more strongly than the liberal - that people have the ability to overcome problems in their lives, that the individual has the ability to spend his/her money more intelligently than the government, and that in the end the individual's choices will result in a better overall condition.

The compassionate conservative says that when we offer public support to people, we reduce them in spirit, by reducing our expectations of what they are capable of.

The compassionate conservative believes, not that there should be no safety net for people, but that the family and other civic-level groups are capable of providing a far better safety net than the government. And that these entities are losing their footing in the world, because if there are government programs, there is less *need* for the family and other civic-level groups at all. The compassionate conservative says government programs are inevitably full of waste because of their nature and will never do a truly good job of providing for the people.

I offer all this for a level of understanding, not because I am a compassionate conservative.

Well I know its possible because it happens in my own head quite a bit and usually it stays there. I sometimes argue with myself too (not out loud, of course :D ). In my experience though, if there tends to be more emotion involved then it gets harder to move on to other things and see other points of view and easier to want and try to impose your view on someone else.

I think hard left and hard right pretend to respect the individual but when the rubber meets the road neither trusts their fellow citizens to make the most appropriate choices for themselves. More and more we insert law as the lubrication between people where community might suffice. This tendency moderates as you move toward the center where Americans share more values, but it never goes away (ignoring Badnariks <1%). It will be interesting to see how both parties market their positions, from here on out. Bush is in a bad spot with the fiscally responsible and Kerry is only "not Bush" to the anti-war crowd. To some extent they both have problems with their natural base which will lead to tension when they go for the center.

Melborne. Stayed with a gentleman named Colin Carter, who was a league commissioner, he was an essendon fan, so we were essendon fans.

-sm

Let's not forget doublethink.

I was wondering about the sydney bit, there still isn't much footy up that way, more rugby country. I don't really follow aussie rules anymore but last I check the bombers were still one of the strongest teams.

I try not to get into these types of conversations, but this was curious.

Wouldn't the rate of pay for many jobs have to improve greatly in order for individuals to spend/save their money more intelligently? I guess I'm looking at it as better wages, better incentive to save. I don't know of anyone that doesn't like the aspect of a "cushion". Living exactly check to check without hardly anything leftover to save/spend isn't the greatest way to live, IMO. Oh and lower prices for goods and services wouldn't hurt either.

Better hope there isn't any major drama in that family that's supposed to provide for those members that are in need. That could put a *slight* damper on receiving any funds/aid. In many cases, "blood" doesn't mean a damn thing, except that you share DNA.

Understood. :thumpsup:

I think you are correct in your perception that the extremes on either end have little faith in their fellow citizens. I don't consider myself an extremist (I may be a liberal, but I don't believe in socialism, for example). However, I'm afraid I don't have much confidence in the American voter either. The percentage of those who vote continues to drop, and those who do vote seem to be remarkably ill-informed. To quote Yeats' famous lines:

"Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity."

This seems to me even more appropriate now then at the time when Yeats first penned those words.

Wow, too true.

The US is a bit different but I know that in many countries 'labour' or left wing parties underwent a dramatic change over the last 20 odd years and moved away from their union power bases. It was the rational thing to do but it moved them to the right and made both parties very similar, while both have their stigmas they are becoming less and less true.

I feel it's one of the biggest sources of voter apathy, both major parties are just too damn similar, this problem is even more extreme in the US where both are massively beholden to *ahem* external interests and fighting over a very narrow patch of political ground. Plato got it right in republic, soldiers, businessmen and politicians and never the twain shall meet.

The similarity runs deeper than that though, economic policy has matured to a point where there isn't much room for variation outside dodgy political moves like Bush's tax cuts. Protectionism is out and in most cases downright illegal and health and education policy seems more driven by budgetary realities than ideology.

The death of the nation state has ben predicted for a very long time, we're nowhere near there yet but maybe it'll be though stagnation, inaction and the resulting irrelevancy, merely filling out certain functions without variation rather than working to change the face of a nation.

And therein lies the fundamental difference between liberalism and conservatism. Liberal ideology holds that it is the function of the state to change the face of the nation. They believe that social engineering is a valid function of the government. Conservative ideology holds that it is the function of the state to serve the limited universal goals of the nation as efficiently as possible. Justice, common defense, education.

It is more difficult to chance the face of the nation by changing the hearts and minds of the people within it, but it is ultimately more effective, and more just.

Mari, it’s quite a jump to go from opposing a welfare state to “hating poor people.” Yes, I love this country, no I don’t hate its people. My brother can’t hold down a job. I love him dearly, but I don’t give him money. Does that mean I hate him? Is it possible that I can see an “enlightened self-interest” (to hijack a phrase) for him in being self-reliant rather than knowing that he can hit up his younger brother for a check whenever things get tight

-sm

Well bush can't be very concervative then can he?
Show me a government that doesn't. By it's very nature it does, for a government wields great power and power exists only to be weilded. A state will do what is in it's interest, whether that be accepting immigrants and massively changing the ethnic makup of the population or providing education that will change the socioeconomic landscape, the examples are endless. Like a giant, every footfall leaves an imprint.

There are 7367 employees at the Veterans Administration making more than $100,000.00 per year. :mad:

At least I remember my response originally posted to this one ...

I'm gonna bet that most of those people aren't the doctors providing direct care. :mad2:

Note to UT: trying to post this I got stuck in a loop with the "30 seconds between posts" timer. It wouldn't let me post at all!!

I even dragged out the stopwatch and let it go for a full minute before trying to post.

And do you know what they do at the Vets. Adim? Well, the joke goes, "What has arms and legs and flies? The dumpster at the VA!" If they can't cure it (and they can't) they cut it off! :mad:

Quo Vadis?
 

And I might add, the Vet in need of help that they send flying out the door. The VA is very inconsistent. If a vet gets let go from the service because of a service connected disability, they'll bend over backwards trying to help. But if a vet is already out of the military with a service connected disability, he'll have to go through 7 different hells trying to prove his case. And the quality of medical care dispensed by the VA mostly sucks. But back to the topic at hand:


I tried to reply to this, SM, just as the Cellar had its massive meltdown, so I don't think anybody saw what I wrote before it became a million dancing electrons somewhere in the Philly area.

Please define what you mean by "social engineering." The term sounds Orwellian to me. Would you consider compulsory education to be social engineering? Certainly, compulsory education has changed the face of society. Today most Americans can at least read the names of those whom they vote for. Our national Interstate system greatly adds to the ease with which citizens can travel from one area to another. We are a far more mobile society than we would be without it. Public libraries allow even the poorest citizen access to the great works of literature, to the latest information on science and technology, and to the complete set of both our federal and state laws. Knowledge is power, and the public library is there to empower any individual with information that only the wealthy would have access to otherwise. All these things sound like social engineering to me. Are you against them?

I couldn't agree with you more that change first begins in the hearts and minds of the citizens of a democracy. Government imposed change is little short of tyranny. However, isn't it tyranny, also, when the government refuses to make changes that a majority of the people want? Something like 62% of all Americans are in favor of universal health care*, yet the government is making no moves in this area due to the fact that special interests with plenty of money are in control of the congress. I fear our democratic ideal is quickly becoming a thing of the past.


* I had the citation for this in my original post which got gobbled up by the cyber demons. If you are interested, I'll track it down again.

You raise an interesting point Marichiko. I wonder if America would be the powerhouse it currently is in the world, if she had SubSaharan African levels of literacy.

Of course not. :cool: