Anyone wbo has read this blog for any length of time is well aware how adept Men’s Rights Activists are at convincing themselves (if not necessarily anyone else) that they are the true victims in any given situation.
Indeed, writer and workshopper Warren Farrell, whose books have provided much of the intellectual underpinning of MRA ideology, has argued in complete seriousness that men are victimized by women’s butts. A shapely posterior, you see, has such a hypnotizing power over your typical horny man that young women have what he once called “miniskirt power” over their male bosses at work.
An article in today’s New York Times suggests that many Trump voters are equally adept at painting themselves as the victims — in their case not of butts but of liberal meanies.
It’s an absolute must read. Not because it’s a good article — it’s terrible — but because it is so revealing, not only about Trump voters but also about the strange reluctance of so many in the supposedly liberal press to hold Trump voters accountable for anything they say or do. Indeed, the basic thesis of the piece — titled “Are Liberals Helping Trump?” — is that liberals are being so mean to Trump voters that they’re pushing them even further into Trumpland.
The piece starts with a brief portrait of Jeffrey Medford, a South Carolinian who voted “reluctantly” for the most dangerous man to ever occupy the Oval Office. Trouble is, when he brings this up in any venue also frequented by liberals, they’re like all mean to him.
Mr. Medford should be a natural ally for liberals trying to convince the country that Mr. Trump was a bad choice. But it is not working out that way. Every time Mr. Medford dips into the political debate — either with strangers on Facebook or friends in New York and Los Angeles — he comes away feeling battered by contempt and an attitude of moral superiority.
“We’re backed into a corner,” said Mr. Medford, 46, whose business teaches people to be filmmakers. “There are at least some things about Trump I find to be defensible. But they are saying: ‘Agree with us 100 percent or you are morally bankrupt. You’re an idiot if you support any part of Trump.’ ”
He added: “I didn’t choose a side. They put me on one.”
Uh, dude, you put yourself on the side of an unstable, authoritarian bigot by voting for him. If you didn’t know what you were getting when you voted for him, then you weren’t paying attention. Trump started out his campaign with an explicitly racist attack on Mexican immigrants, and it pretty much went downhill from there. During his campaign, he revealed himself to be a bully and a chronic liar with no understanding of the job he felt he deserved, a man morally and practically unfit to be president.
And now Trump is making good, or at least trying to, on his terrible promises. His only redeeming feature is that he is so ignorant and inept that he’s fucking it up.
Oh, and did I mention that he’s hellbent on taking away the insurance I and literally millions of other Americans depend on for necessary treatment for the chronic health issues that insurance companies like to call “ongoing conditions?”
So, yeah, some of us are a bit testy.
The article’s author, Sabrina Tavernise, sets forth a thesis that more or less mirrors Medford’s self-pitying “argument.”
Liberals may feel energized by a surge in political activism, and a unified stance against a president they see as irresponsible and even dangerous. But that momentum is provoking an equal and opposite reaction on the right.
“Provoking.” I don’t want to sound, you know, mean here, but this is the logic abusers use to blame their victims for their own abusive meltdowns. It’s a kind of argument that seems to come naturally to MRAs, Trump supporters, and Trump-supporter enablers.
In recent interviews, conservative voters said they felt assaulted by what they said was a kind of moral Bolshevism — the belief that the liberal vision for the country was the only right one.
Assaulted? You know who else feels assaulted? The longtime residents of this country who have been arrested and deported by ICE, including one woman picked up at a courthouse after she complained of domestic abuse. The Muslims held for hours in airports as a result of Trump’s profoundly un-American executive order.
Is it “self-righteous” for those opposed to Trump to point out the actual effects of his bigoted policies?
Protests and righteous indignation on social media and in Hollywood may seem to liberals to be about policy and persuasion. But moderate conservatives say they are having the opposite effect, chipping away at their middle ground and pushing them closer to Mr. Trump.
Again, it’s the logic of an abuser: “You made me hit you!”
“The name calling from the left is crazy,” said Bryce Youngquist, 34, who works in sales for a tech start-up in Mountain View, Calif., a liberal enclave where admitting you voted for Mr. Trump is a little like saying in the 1950s that you were gay.
First, it’s not “a little like” that at all. Second, are you seriously complaining that the left is … calling you names?
I mean, you do remember all of this, don’t you?
I feel just terrible for these people.
Mr. Younquist wasn’t quite so open about his Trump support.
“The only place he felt comfortable wearing his Make America Great Again hat,” Tavernise informs us,
was on a vacation in China. Even dating became difficult. Many people on Tinder have a warning on their profile: “Trump supporters swipe left” — meaning, get lost.
POOR BABY
“They were making me want to support him more with how irrational they were being,” Mr. Youngquist said.
I hate to tell you this, Mr. STEMLOGIC, but that’s not a very rational response at all.
Tavernise weighs in again with her equally stupid opinion. Which is pretty much the same opinion as all the Trump supporters she interviewed.
[I]f political action is meant to persuade people that Mr. Trump is bad for the country, then people on the fence would seem a logical place to start. Yet many seemingly persuadable conservatives say that liberals are burning bridges rather than building them.
How “persuadable” is someone who gets so mad that some women don’t want to date guys they violently disagree with politically that he decides he’s just going to SUPPORT TRUMP EVEN HARDER SO THERE TAKE THAT!!!1!!
But no Trump supporter may have suffered more for her beliefs than Ann O’Connell, a “retired administrative assistant in Syracuse who voted for Mr. Trump” despite being a registered Democrat. (She apparently liked Trump’s promise to build a big old wall to protect her from all the evil Mexicans who are creeping over our southern border and then I guess for some reason creeping all the way up to Syracuse, NY, not far from the Canadian border, where the percentage of Hispanics is far below the national average and which is actually a really terrible place to look for jobs right now.)
Anyway, Ms. O’Connell has suffered mightily for her beliefs. For she can no longer enjoy Meryl Streep movies! You know, because that mean actress lady gave that speech about how shitty it is to mock disabled people.
Mrs. O’Connell feels hopeless. She has deleted all her news feeds on Facebook and she tries to watch less TV. But politics keeps seeping in.
“I love Meryl Streep, but you know, she robbed me of that wonderful feeling when I go to the movies to be entertained,” she said.
BOO HOO HOO
Here’s my question: is it possible that these Trump supporters are feeling so defensive about their vote for president because on some level they know what they did was indefensible?
Or am I just being mean for even asking that question?
H/T — @ParkerMolloy, who posted a couple of the pics I used on Twitter.
@Skiriki
I built a tiny monument out of matches for the victims. Then my cat got bored and rolled over on it.
@Some Guy
I dunno that any conservative still thinks that’s what it means though. And it’s not just America, we’ve got pretty much the same thing here. I don’t know that the right has ever been about that, I’m pretty sure it hasn’t. And for that matter, when the very idea of “left and right” began, the right was all about keeping something broken, while sometimes forced to make concessions, and sometimes even trying to restore it to its former state in which they had all the power and the rest of us apparently existed for the entire purpose of serving them. Hey, you know who else does that ?
Don’t forget the single-issue voters. Among the practicing Catholics in my neck of the woods, that issue is abortion. One older man I know, was depressed because he didn’t want to vote for the Cheeto, but he felt he had to, because he believes that the Republicans are pro-life, and the Dems, well, they’re pro-choice.
Those voters, like this gentleman, profess the belief that a Republican, no matter how distasteful, must be President, because he will eventually appoint conservative judge(s), who will strike down Rowe vs. Wade.
I don’t even bother to ask these antiabortion voters, whether or not they aren’t basing their vote on a long shot. Who’s to say that an antiabortion judge will end up being appointed?
I do hope these antiabortion voters are being truthful about their rationale for their choice to go Cheeto, and aren’t simply bigoted, racist reactionaries. I can kinda-sorta have respect for their belief abortion is a sin, and they are protecting unborn humans, even though I don’t hold their views.
@Sinkable John
That’s kind of the whole point, people who are identifying as conservative are getting the benefits of representing the conservatism ideology without actually doing so, and are remaining unchallenged on this point. Calling them conservatives implicitly imputes the meaning of “a legitimate political ideology” onto them when in reality they’re just oppressing people. Ditto “right wing” or even “alt-right”, because “the right” HAS a meaning that is a legitimate position but it’s not the position that The Right as it currently exists is actually focusing on
Over here in Australia the political right is at least partly about keeping things going as-is and working with existing systems, and my impression is that the anti-Communist sentiment in America is a result of actual conservative ideology (make things work with the democracy we have vs. switch over to communism). At the very least, over here talking about “the socialist alternative” is very much understood to be a leftist thing.
EDIT: A FAR leftist thing. Less radical leftist positions advocate democratic overhaul instead.
@Some Guy
I accept that description of ‘conservative’ as valid. Thanks, I’d never actually heard of that one before. However, a description is not a vision. A vision is a goal. What’s the goal of this type of conservative. You say they would raise taxes on the rich. For what purpose? For example, I don’t want taxes on the rich increased for its own sake, but, instead, to pay for that safety net. The welfare is the vision, the tax increase/new brackets is just the means to that end. It seems less like we’re discussing a conservative vision and more of a conservative approach to a vision defined outside your spectrum. I know, semantics. But I think it’s actually important here. See what I’m getting at?
*refreshes page* and it seems you do see it with the whole political compass thing. I reject your compass (that moral axis too vague/poorly defined for my liking), but at least were on the same page. And I’m not deleting that 🙂
I also reject this:
Political prescriptivism is a fool’s errand. As much as this convo is decidedly situated above ‘the ground’, it still must be taken into account, imo. Language is whatever it is. That brand of ‘conservatism’ is defineable, somewhat consistent, and serves as a meaningful identifier. Yours is valid, so is theirs
@Axecalibur
The thing is that they’re accusing us using MY definition (EDIT: I should not have referred to “what conservatism actually is”! I see where that objection was coming from now) of conservatism (if implicitly) while defining themselves using THEIR definition. This is a fallacy that in my opinion is largely going unchallenged.
Like, say I take the word “box” to mean a square, while others take “box” to mean a cube. I then criticize “boxes”, by which I mean a group of cubes who have used the term “box” to refer to themselves, and a bunch of cubes accuse me of criticizing SQUARES when in fact I am criticizing them (and they have called their group “boxes” precisely so they can make this accusation when I make my criticism). Since they refer to THEMSELVES as boxes, they are applying two different definitions of “boxes” in an inconsistent manner.
It’d be like you criticizing me and me accusing you of criticizing some OTHER guy because my name happens to be “Some Guy”. It’s not so much prescriptivism as demanding that THEY be held to THEIR definition of conservatism as “the things they are doing” (rather than a broader ideological definition that they are laying claim to in order to gain legitimacy while not actually following), rather than being able to pick the definition that best suits them in whatever discussion is taking place.
The goal/vision point is fair and important, though. This whole discussion is semantics-based! And yeah the moral axis is super vaguely defined and would be defined differently by every individual according to their morals. The underlying point was less to build a fundamental political theory and more to illustrate “suppression of immoral behaviour is being conflated with suppression of political opinions”, and I would agree such a simplistic definition of morality is useless in practice.
RE: goals, yeah we all have to agree that income inequality is bad before any of that works. That reduces to the is-ought problem, which brings the discussion into the realm of philosophy, but my favoured argument is actually that less income inequality means more chances that the person who’s going to come up with a cure for the heart disease you rich old farts are probably going to die from won’t be trapped in poverty (essentially, less income inequality means you’ll have more things to buy with your money down the line, including better medical treatments and more advanced technology than you thought you’d be able to see in your lifetime)
In essence, that rich people would be better off if there were less income inequality and are broadly speaking just too short-sighted to recognize this.
This all ties back into “Trump hijacked the conservative brand”, really. Whether or not what the conservative brand meant before Trump arrived is anything like the conservatism I described isn’t really relevant, what’s important is that they can use “conservatism” to mean Trumpism in one breath and then use it to mean “the American tradition of conservatism” in the next, thereby accusing us of criticizing the latter when we’re aiming at the former
Which isn’t to say the American tradition of conservatism doesn’t deserve criticism, but it doesn’t deserve it to the same degree Trumpism does (very few things do)
EDIT: Basically, “You don’t have to support Trump to support the American conservative tradition” needs to become an accepted sentiment and right now I suspect it is not. To be a conservative IS to support Trump, and this has been brought about by brand hijacking and semantic trickery.
This is the true reason why Glenn Beck supposedly “moderated” hinself and pleass for the American Left not to repeat the “mistakes” of the american during the last 8 years i.e. The Obama administration: He actually fears the violent anger-rage of the Left, who in his mind, are younger and more numerous and according to their racist stereotypes, much more “physically Scary” , being non-White Third Worlders.
To be fair I prefer “reactionary”. I also don’t know that progressives are necessarily all about complete overhauls. For a start, those are pretty difficult to do unless you have all the power, and in a democracy that means a pretty stunning majority. Sure everyone’s hoping for a Grand Soir but progressives usually focus on achievable goals and work from there. It’s more about continually pushing left, all the while “conservatively” trying to stop the right from destroying what’s been built already. Exhibit A : the ACA.
When they claim that they only wanna keep what works, treat ’em with all the contempt they deserve. It’s just another dumb lie.
And as for the people who’re “on the fence” and who might need to know that it’s just another dumb lie, well they simply need to look at it. If they think that what conservatives defend is “what works”, they can fuck off all the way to the alt-rigt for all I care. And honestly, if they haven’t cared to look at it so far, they’re either young, in which case right now we’re trying to make sure they get to grow old enough to care, or they can go fuck off all the way to the bottom of whatever privileged hole they’re buried in.
@Some Guy
The thing is, that’s not what conservatism means, nor ever has done. And acting like it did, does, or ever will or could does nothing but provide a figleaf of respectability to actual conservatives. Who seek, as conservatives always have and always will, to conserve and reinforce existing patterns of privilege and oppression. Which, yes, privileged people usually claim work just fine. That’s conservativsm, and when you say “here IS a conservative vision for the future of the United States that’s acceptable”, you’re saying that you consider me, and Axe, and a bunch of the rest of us here, expendable. And fuck you for that.
The main point I am trying to make is that those are conservative ideas. Current conservative parties have the same fucking ideas as historical ones, because that’s what conservatism is.
Its brutally ironic that after mocking the left for being a bunch of whiny easily triggered snowflakes. Trump voters are the real snowflakes. They want safe spaces to protect their poor widdly hurt feefees from us big mean leftists. They whine about being mocked and insulted. Well, as your shirts said “fork your feelings” so stop whinning and suck it up buttercup
Given that I honestly can’t tell whether you’re talking about Trump or Assange, make that two moody rapists’ hack tantrums.
@Some Guy
Explain the difference. With historical citations, please. At what precise time was the American tradition of conservatism not about white supremacy with a side of patriarchy, and oligarchy to wash it down?
Every single time something like this is written they compare it to LGBT+ struggle – either overtly or though language about “coming out”.
It’s always bullshit, and by now it’s cliché bullshit.
“The American tradition of conservatism” contains slavery, the expropriation and slaughter of Native Americans, segregation, Jim Crow, the KKK, the John Birch Society, and claiming that all this is ordained of God. Not much worth defending there…
If you’d rather go the economic route, it contains laissez faire, the gold standard, and a minimum of taxes — except for the military. Again, not much worth defending.
But but but no TRUE conservative!
@Some Guy
K. I got what I needed. Thanks for the discussion ?
@Dali
Hiya, darlin. I see you’ve got this covered. I’ll leave you to it <3
The stuff you describe is essentially “politics where white people are involved”, as far as I understand it, so yeah it applies equally to both. I’d argue that things are getting worse (or at least more visible) though, and that attempts to say things are “only as bad as they used to be” are normalizing even worse behaviour than is ALREADY normalized. While de-normalizing the oppression that exists is important, so is preventing normalization of further oppression, I guess is what I’m saying.
In that sense, I suppose Trumpism is the latest in a long line of “slightly worse than”s which have seen conservatism slide consistently even further into the values you describe than any other form of white politics. Which isn’t to stay it didn’t START there, mind you, but it’s at the very least gotten louder and more emboldening.
Regardless, the tradition of conservatism I’m talking about is actually imaginary, yeah. Never existed. I’ll re-frame: Real conservatism is projecting itself as an imaginary conservatism in order to look acceptable, and yeah, the correct argument against this is that real conservatism (a.k.a. the thing I was previously calling Trumpism, which is really just a louder version of the same thing) isn’t an acceptable political position.
The problem is that conservatives are making up a version of conservatism that ISN’T oppression and criticizing us for criticizing THAT, and I don’t think the point that “we’d be fine with something called conservatism that isn’t oppressive but what you’re doing isn’t that” is being made, thus allowing conservatives to claim that we WOULDN’T be fine with their magical fairy version of conservatism that doesn’t hurt anyone as a matter of definition, and thus to claim that “liberals hate an ideology that doesn’t hurt anyone”. That’s the problem: We’re, in my opinion, acceding to that claim.
Also, the “acceptable” part of “acceptable conservative vision” was supposed to preclude ANYONE from being expendable. I guess that given this, the phrase is kind of oxymoronic and I can understand assuming I’d assume “conservatism” trumps “acceptable” because of how I’ve been acting :/
What I’m taking away from this is that Trump has just made a lot of things more visible (conservatives hating the media, conservatives wanting to ban all nonwhites from the country, conservatives wanting to just use the government to enrich themselves) and I’m a useful idiot, which is fair.
In summary, we’re being portrayed as fighting against the imaginary “doesn’t hurt anyone” conservatism and I guess I feel like we’re not fighting that portrayal. I’m probably wrong about that, too, but it’s not like I have any way to find that out other than saying it.
Like, if I hadn’t spoken up I’d presumably have kept thinking an acceptable version of conservatism had existed at some point. I guess THAT impression needs more contesting as well, because it’s granting legitimacy to conservatism too.
And yeah this post is mostly me defending my shittiness because I don’t really know what else to do at this point.
Relevant: http://observer.com/2017/02/i-helped-create-the-milo-trolling-playbook-you-should-stop-playing-right-into-it/
——
Did you see the “The mainstream media are lying liars who lie, ‘m I right?” survey Trump posted? It included this gem of a question:
I was like “what do you mean, ‘if ‘??”
@Zephkiel
It’s also very telling to me. It honestly seems sometimes like they’re so used to their beliefs being the ‘popular’/socially acceptable belief that they have no idea how to handle themselves when they’re suddenly not agreeing with everyone around them.
I have to think that anybody who thinks ‘my political opinion makes people dislike me’ is comparable to being lgbt+ must not have any perspective on being disagreed with.
SomeGuy, does the word “sporkle” mean anything to you? Because you’re starting to sound familiar . . .
@Some Guy
So in summary they’re just saying we’re using the strawman argument.
@Neremanth, 329 year old Contributor to Society
Did you learn nothing from our poetry slams? No one likes you, you wannabe bear grylls.
These motherfuckers voted in the Chinese Exclusion Act, banned opiates specifically to target Chinese people the same way they banned weed for African Americans and voted in a war against Vietnamese people the same way they voted in a several decade old war against Iraq because “muslims r scary really.” I’m Chinese/Viet. I got no sympathy for these POS. These low jos are advocating nazi propoganda and an implementation of a christian theocratic slave state. Fuck off brogressive asswipe, your words are worth less than the fur I comb off my pet dog.
@Ooglyboggles
Trivia: dog (or cat) hair can actually be used in the knitting of various things, including but not limited to mittens, sweaters, and even a throw.
Err, well, if the dog does not object to the amount of grooming necessary – mine did. 🙂
@Hippodameia
I’m afraid not…guessing that’s a username of some kind?
@Ooglyboggles
Yeah, basically. Their argument is that our portrayal of conservatism is a strawman and REAL conservatism isn’t harmful, but with a mixed in batch of semantic confusion and traditionalism (there’s also this idea that we “hate ideological conservatism” which…no. Just the real-world version that’s killing people, thanks. I don’t even know what ideological conservatism would BE at this point, I was attempting to describe it before but shrug)
@Troubelle: Moonbeam Malcontent + Bard of the New Movement
Wow, I never knew that before. Unfortunately I don’t see how I can make anything off the spare fur from a Jack Russell Terrier. Her hair is kind of short.
@ Some Guy
I’d go with “Nazis, but with star spangled banner instead.”