Inherently, in order to privilege being nice above all else, and to reject in principle all other principles, cognitive dissociation is absolutely, fundamentally necessary. You have to learn not to see, not to process, not to touch, emotionally, much of what happens in the world.
It is perhaps not overstating the case to say that what the press does is GRANT PERMISSION to see to people. They have granted permission to see Trump, who is imperfect, but not to see Hillary or Bill, who are horrific human beings who are disqualified in every possible way.
Human beings are complex creatures, and we have many instincts. Jonathan Haidt’s work in this area, as I have said, makes a great deal of sense to me.
To repeat one or more past posts, he posits six foundations of moral reasoning, as he calls it, but we might well also call it ‘Instinctual bases of human interaction”: Care, Fairness, Liberty, Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity.
As he says, self identified Liberals only stress the first two. Liberty, loyalty, Authority and Sanctity are not important to them. Conservatives value all roughly equally.
And on this basis one can readily explain the vast difference in the emotional charge generated among conservatives about the charge that our system has been corrupted. Clearly, the DoJ was pressured to not press charges on Hillary. The FBI cooperated. The IRS corruption scandal has gone virtually uninvestigated and no one has been punished. We read in Wikileaks Hillary has a plan to use an Executive Order to allow murder victims to sue gun manufacturers, which would of course put them out of business in short order.
We see, daily, the prostitution of media integrity to left wing narratives and a more or less open campaign to get HIllary elected, not least by not focusing on her many serious crimes, and instead building up and fluffing even the most flimsy and ridiculous charges against Trump. They mock factual objections–such as that airplanes had a uniform design in the period in question–as if “mere facts” should count when they have leveled a charge.
For those paying attention, I need not go on. Our system is broken. It has been corrupted. Let us look one at a time at the values the Left does not care about.
1) Liberty. Christians should have the right not to be forced to support abortions. Or gay marriage. Everyone should have the right to own a gun until they prove unworthy. People should be able to speak their minds in all times and places, within very broad lines of decorum. They should be free from abuse by the government, such as in the use of the IRS to punish and harass political enemies.
To take gay marriage as one example, most Leftists do not GET the fundamental principle that somebody has the right to disagree with them. Really, I could say ALL Leftists, since I would use this inability as a defining feature, differentiating them from genuine Liberals. They cannot balance the principles of Care and Fairness with the idea that someone else might have the right to say they are wrong, that homosexuality is inherently an emotional illness, or sin before God. I have often–really, generally–been misunderstood by Leftists on this point, because they don’t have this category “Liberty”, or this principle “right to your own opinion” with which to balance the argument.
For my own part, I will stand with whomever is being abused and bullied by the government, which in recent years is clearly the Christians. At one time it WAS the gays, and I would have stood with them then. That was before my time, as it was long ago.
2) Loyalty. Conservatives are willing to offer up our loyalty to the government, in exchange for the same. We expect our government to look out for the American people, to have our best interests at heart, and to pursue our national interest honestly. We expect specifically that it will not sell its soul to the highest bidder and defraud the American people, pursue agendas contrary to our interest, and otherwise show contempt for us.
And as I have said before, loyalty as a virtue is conspicuously absent on the Left. It has been replaced by conformity, which is a very different value. Loyalty in some respects is inherently a bit tribalistic, but we all need tribes. That is why the word has come back into use, as in “finding my tribe”. You look out for you and your own, first and foremost, and only later others. This can have negative consequences, obviously, but it is also very important for mental health.
In important respects the rejection of the notion of reciprocal loyalty is inconsistent with mental health. You can pretend otherwise, and many do, especially New Agey sorts, but at a deep gut level, it is necessary to belong, and to need to do nothing to belong. Loyalty, at root, is a family emotion. To lack this virtue is to lack a family. The Left attempts to mimic this with a tribalism based on hatred and violence, but in the end membership is highly conditional on you doing and saying exactly what everyone else says. To belong is to violate your sense of self, and there is no belonging, there is no rest: you belong as long as you are marching in the direction and at the pace of everyone else. That is not healthy.
3) Authority. Somebody needs to be in charge. We want freedom, but we also need leadership. If nobody is in charge, you get chaos. Chaos is a bad way to live. The Middle is the best place, and particularly when the States had first say on most things, Authority was distributed in this country sufficiently that most people could live according to laws they found congenial.
4) Sanctity. This is the value most violated by corruption. This is the value that Leftists DO NOT GET. Our system depends entirely on the integrity and honesty of the people running it, and those people have shown themselves dishonest and lacking in integrity. They do what is politically convenient, not what is right. Probity is gone.
The importance of sanctity is something best seen on a soul level, on a deep level. We see Leftists daily demonstrate their fundamental callowness and superficiality by mocking everything and everyone, even very important institutions.
Again, to use a recent example, when Joy Behar, a woman interacting with other women, in front of an audience largely composed of women, calls victims of sexual assault “Tramps”, she is demonstrating an inability to hold sacred space, to grant those women their right to their time and truth. She KNOWS on some level they are telling the truth, and some flippant and unserious part of her simply dissociated psychologically and launches in the profaning of what they had to say.
If nothing is sacred, then everything is profane. Life is banal, and 1 is equal to 2. That is no way to live.
At root, Donald Trumps message is THIS STUFF MATTERS. The American way of life matters. It is a beautiful thing, and it is in danger. Liberty is at risk, and we owe it to our children to put in place a government and system which takes its responsibilities seriously, which holds them as a sacred trust.