Social The Nixon appeal to jerks

[IanEdwards]

Nixon understood poverty and there is a part of me that has always felt that believed the rich always looked down on him and that is why he always had a chip on his shoulder.

from everything i have read that was definitely always a massive part of Nixon

 

[Possum Jenkins]

I only came across the excellent Galbraith definition of conservatism relatively recently like in the last year or so, it hit me like a brick when i read it:

The modern conservative is not even especially modern. He is engaged, on the contrary, in one of man’s oldest, best financed, most applauded, and, on the whole, least successful exercises in moral philosophy. That is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness

its such a wonderfully concise take that its always worth going back to. He goes on to flesh it out:

It is an exercise which always involves a certain number of internal contradictions and even a few absurdities. The conspicuously wealthy turn up urging the character-building value of privation for the poor. The man who has struck it rich in minerals, oil, or other bounties of nature is found explaining the debilitating effect of unearned income from the state. The corporate executive who is a superlative success as an organization man weighs in on the evils of bureaucracy. Federal aid to education is feared by those who live in suburbs that could easily forgo this danger, and by people whose children are in public schools. Socialized medicine is condemned by men emerging from Walter Reed Hospital. Social Security is viewed with alarm by those who have the comfortable cushion of an inherited income. Those who are immediately threatened by public efforts to meet their needs — whether widows, small farmers, hospitalized veterans, or the unemployed — are almost always oblivious to the danger.

What i realised recently though is that MAGA (and their equivalents in Europe following hard on their heels) are engaged in something that is both less, and more, than searching for 'a superior moral justification for selfishness'. The emotion they wish to leverage or trigger in their adherents is something much more toxic and violent than mere 'selfishness', not least because they are a party organised for high-income people that are trying to appeal to lower-income voters.

Updated, I guess Galbraith's phrase would read something more like 'the modern MAGA 'conservative' is engaged.... in the search for the optimum way to create fear of out-groups and leverage nationalism in direct replacement for class-consciousness'

Yeah, selfishness is a big aspect of it. It's definitely an innate part of humans (which is why conservatives are constantly deriding leftists for not being "realistic" enough) and it's been around from the beginning. The desire for hierarchy is also closely tied to this. I remember reading an article that compiled pre-modern, medieval, and even ancient declarations of this. In those days, religion and nature were the things dictating this but the result was the same: those at the top deserved to be at the top.

But of course, collaboration, sharing, solidarity, etc. are also part of human nature. The trick is to enhance this part of our nature while suppressing the selfish/hierarchical parts. Conservatives don't like this and want to go all in to our worst instincts: vengeful, selfish, bigoted, etc.

But like the GOAT Peter Kropotkin said: "If competition is the law of the jungle, cooperation is the law of civilization."