It seems like a lot of my fellow
Americans, especially those who lean right in their political ideology, are
terrified of SOCIALISM (or whatever they think socialism is) above almost all
else. Some are convinced that we're on the verge of plunging into a dismal and
oppressive communist dystopia like Stalin's Russia, and that even the most
benign liberal policies like funding public schools or healthcare are pushing
us down that slippery slope to the gulag. Others don’t go quite that far but
are nevertheless convinced that any restraints on big business and the wealthy,
or mercy for the sick and the poor, will lead to moral decay and economic
collapse. Only ruthless, unfettered capitalism can prevent corrupt lazy losers
from taking over and turning us into the next Venezuela, right? SIGH.
It's a testament to the power of
propaganda that the GOP has been able to stoke this inordinate terror of the
left at the very same time that their own party is engaged in alarming attacks
on American democracy itself. I won’t get into all the details of the right’s
voter suppression, gerrymandering, purging truth-tellers and protecting liars
within government, pushing conspiracy theories about a “stolen” election, encouraging
armed insurrection, etc. Let it suffice to say that under Trump, the GOP have come
perilously close to achieving an "autocratic transition" - a switch from
democracy to dictatorship. Yet, most conservative people still see Trump as a
savior and not a threat.
Indeed, it’s ironic that these
70ish million conservative Americans; folks who are earnestly patriotic and
scared of losing democratic freedoms, have empowered an authoritarian strongman
who closely resembles the freedom-stealing autocrats they revile; the power-mad
charlatans who’ve led their countries into dysfunction, disgrace, and worse. Trump’s
macho image, his appeals to the grievances of “the common man,” his fiery
demagoguery, his scapegoating of foreigners and minorities, his constant lying,
his efforts to control the press and suppress the vote, his ostentatious wealth
and trophy wives, his nepotism, and even his bizarre hair and style, all PERFECLY
fit the mold of a dictator. Cuba’s Castro, Venezuela’s Chavez, North Korea’s
Kim, Libya’s Gaddafi, Russia’s Stalin, and even Nazi Germany’s Hitler are cut
from the same cloth as Trump. How is this not obvious to those under his spell?
I think the failure of so many to
see the obvious has to do with how we have confounded the left-right spectrum
with other types of societal variation. (In this context, “confound” means to
mix something up with something else; to fail to recognize them as distinct
things, like thinking that “hot” and “spicy” are the same thing.) Some other
dimensions of societal variation that can get wrongly lumped-in with the
right-left spectrum include autocracy-democracy, corruption-integrity, wealth-poverty,
and dysfunctionality-functionality. All those things greatly affect the quality
of society, and they can vary *independently* of the left-right spectrum. For
example you can have a left-leaning society that is autocratic, dysfunctional,
and poor, like Venezuela or North Korea, but you can also have a left-leaning society
that is democratic, functional, and wealthy, like Norway or New Zealand.
Anyway, when we develop a
blinding commitment to a right- or left-wing idealogy, many of the real
complexities of the world collapse into an oversimplified, “right is always good,
left is always bad” kind of thing. Our tendency to latch onto certain
simplified views is a natural response to living in a scarily complicated and
often hurtful world. For example, it’s totally understandable that someone who
grew up under a left-wing dictator like Castro would associate socialism with
corruption, oppression, and poverty, and would be generally averse to the
political left. And of course, American politicians on the political right are
in no hurry to disabuse Cuban Americans of those negative associations. Unscrupulous
people love to take advantage of our oversimplifying tendency. They get us all
emotionally riled up about something that genuinely concerns us, but then they hitch
our fervor onto a dubious agenda that serves only them. Regardless of whether
we’re tricked into the oversimplifying or we do it to ourselves, our
confounding of left-right and right-wrong leads to all sorts of trouble,
including:
1. Failing to recognize and address problems
like corruption and incompetence when they’re coming from our own side of the
left-right spectrum.
2. Reflexively rejecting anything and everything
we associate with the other side of the spectrum, even if it might be
beneficial.
3. Uncritically accepting lousy people and
policies just because they’re under the banner of right or left that we’ve
pledged to.
4. Thinking, “if right is good, further right
must be better,” leading to extremism. (Or the same thing but with left.)
5. Believing lies or baseless conspiracy
theories about the other side because they fit in with our feelings and ideologies.
The way to get out of this “confounding”
problem might be to increase awareness of all those other, important societal
gradations besides just right-left. I think it would be especially helpful to
recognize integrity-corruption and democracy-autocracy as important societal
variables separate from the right-left axis. Autocracy and corruption are not
endemic to left-wing societies. They can absolutely afflict right-wing
societies, too, as folks now suffering from oppression in Turkey, or Saudi
Arabia would attest.
There’s a kind of X-Y plot called the “political
compass,” which has an up-down axis as well as a left-right axis, and which is
accompanied by a quiz that places you in one of the four quadrants based on
your personal views. https://www.politicalcompass.org/about
On that, typical, political compass, the up-down axis is designated as “liberty-authority,”
and it helps distinguish libertarians from classic conservatives, democratic
socialists from authoritarian socialists, etc. That helps a little with the “confounding”
problem that I’m talking about, but it’s not quite what I’m looking for. I
think it would be more useful to make the up-down axis be more clearly a
good-bad axis, with something like “functional democracy” at the top and “corrupt
dictatorship” at the bottom. Then you could put different countries that we’re
familiar with in the different quadrants to better illustrate that both right
and left can fall into corrupt dictatorships.
Rough draft diagram-
 |
Final thought: I’ve said that many important aspects of societies, such as integrity-corruption and democracy-autocracy, are independent of the left-right spectrum. An implication of that is that we do not need to be inordinately afraid of moving right or left, as long as we’re watching out for those other aspects of how society can go good or bad. However, I do think there is some danger of going to the EXTREMES of right or left because an extreme philosophy is more likely to get blinded to the other nuances.
