🎧 How To Understand Your Enemy
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We like to think the right argument could persuade our friend or uncle of our point of view. But what if our personality helps to determine how we see the world? Dr. John Hibbing, a professor of political science at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, believes that psychology, rather than culture or economic circumstances, explains much of our politics.
In this week’s episode of The Good Fight, Yascha Mounk and John Hibbing sit down to discuss the drivers of our political beliefs, why a longing for cultural security helps to explain the rise of Trumpism, and how to get on with those who are wired differently from us.
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Interesting show. Let me throw out what I think is a more accurate way to describe the people Hibbing talks about than either authoritarians or securitarians.
Despite everything he lied about, Trump was very clear about how he sincerely believes the world works. There are only two ways that two people, or two races, or two genders, or two nation's can relate to each other: either you're dominant and the other guy is submissive, or the other guy is dominant and you're submissive. (Or as he called it, winners and losers.) So anyone who doesn't submit to your dominance can only be trying to dominate you, and whatever you do to them, no matter how abusive, is self-defense. Securitarianism wouldn't explain how a parent would see a child as threat to their security, but many of these people do seem to fear that if they don't establish clear dominance, the child is going to dominate them. (Are you familiar with Matthew MacWilliams' research about Trump's initial supporters and authoritarianism?) One of my father's yelling-cliches when we were fighting was "I'm not going to kowtow to you!"
And isn't the whole point of liberal democracy to create a system where dominance and submission are not the only possibilities? (See Robert Wright's concept of nonzerosumness.) Captain Kirk used to snap "Gentlemen, I need that third option!" Constitutional democracy, the rule of law, and human rights are all inventions which helped expand the Turf of the Third Option. Maybe we should judge whether we're progressing or regressing by whether that turf is getting bigger or smaller.
Here's a question: if there is a genetic predisposition to a dominate-or-be dominated worldview, do those genes mean you'll automatically have it, or is it just a tendency that environmental cues might or might not activate? Big difference!
A few final points. There's nothing unusual about being an authoritarian when you approve of the authority and a lone wolf when you're not. There's nothing unusual about hating a group in general and being willing to make an exception for One of the Good Ones. Finally, this is yet another reason why a politics which believes that the road to racial justice is for whites to be submissive to "people of color" is a really bad idea.
My question - why is the assumption that "securitarians" are on the right? College students demanding to cancel a speaker they disagree with and claiming "danger" represent the same mind set.