Political bias

I really appreciate this article, which I disagree with: The Secret of Trump’s Appeal Isn’t Authoritarianism by Matthew Schmitz.

He suggests that the excessive claims and other noise hides the fact that Trump mostly is a pragmatic negotiator, and he suggests that gets us the best deals. 

It's true that people can take exaggerated stances publically to make space for negotiation. 

It's more complicated than that, and if the rhetoric is accompanied with insurrection attempts and a rise in hate crimes, that even if the rhetoric provides softer negotiation grounds, that it's still the wrong thing to do.

That it dismisses white supremacy and other hate rhetoric is convenient. That is overlooks so much is convenient. Humans are quite limited and simplifying appeals to people.

My political orientation sees Schmitz's orientation as quite a threat. But I really appreciate the articulation of the position for Trump because honestly to me, he's so obviously evil, I need that belief shaken. The article persuades me zero amount, but it does help me to understand the pathology of Trump support. I would argue that it's even unethical to publish this essay. 

It is a rare naked attempt to justify him that is so hidden from me in my bubble. I do not think the New York Times is so left wing, and honestly I find it astonishing this article was published there. I think the Times is right wing. 

I do think it's important to try and step out of your comfort zone of biases, but I don't think you have to live there, or overthrow you instincts. Necessarily we have biases, and pretending that we don't is unhealthy. I assume half of the people have conservative instincts, a repulsion of government. My hero Henry David Thoreau was against government, though he would admit that it wasn't all bad, and that civil disobedience had it's limits. I had friends who are more sympathetic to Trump. I have family who support Trump. It's still going to always perplex me. But I do want to hear thought about why he is good, even if I would just use it to pick apart their arguments. I still want to understand the other side.

I do think we need to come together to all the threats our society is facing, our hyper polarized political landscape is blinding us to the threats of global warming, war and basic injustices, poverty. In a way I don't think it's OK to have an ideology that brushes aside these concerns. I think the rigidity on the left is provoked by the extremism on the right, and I don't think it's an essential feature of the left to pathologize the right. If the right's policy is pathological, murderous, unjust then it might not just be a difference of opinion. But the conservative instinct isn't pathological.

I find Chaney, Christie, Romney and Haley profoundly horrible, but the fact that they can be 1% humane and rational makes them miles ahead of the other candidates. I really struggle to accept the right at the moment. I don't think they fight fair, and I don't think democrats are far left, I think they're centrists and the right is very far right these days. You could say that I'm so far left that I can't see clearly and have moved the goalposts, but to me as an American who is in his 50's, I think the goal posts were moved so much by Reagan that it's impossible to see the left and the right clearly. Moving the fight back further into history doesn't win the battle, it just contextualizes it some. My grandparents who grew up during the depression loved him. Those people who grew up when the government wasn't so big have an excuse for wanting things to go back to the way they were. Modern day Republicans don't. To me they're just mean spirited. We're not going back to Hoover times, no matter how much critics on the left called homeless encampments Biden Camps, and those on the right pick it up. Biden is like FDR not Herbert Clark Hoover. 

We need left wing candidates that know how to soothe the conservative instinct. Our administration needs conservatives in the administration for inclusion and diversity. Academia needs conservatives. I saw in Wisconsin they created a political science chair for conservatives because the fear is that it's so left in academia that it's not diverse enough. I agree. 

I still hate what Republicans have done to Wisconsin, and I think the gerrymandering and other dirty tricks are profoundly unethical. Just like Israel needs to listen to peaceful Palestinians and find some that are reasonable to work with, so too the left needs to form alliances with conservatives to work together. That has been lost in these hyperbolic times. The nostalgic past I want to harken back to was bipartisan, not partisan. Where there wasn't so much ideological insistence on the right to always be right. For there to be mainly centerists, and not so many far right hacks.

I wish Trump was just a negotiator, that would be acceptable for the USA. His racist and Nazi rhetoric can't be normalized, can't be voted for. Sorry. The success of the right has embolden them to overlook things that shouldn't be overlooked. Their stance on abortion and turning a blind eye to white supremacy will cost them. Trump's criminality isn't political, but the right is politicizing it. That doesn't make it true. Overlooking things isn't political, it's blinding. Yes, we have to make choices, and those choices are political, but come on. I'm probably just not transcending my political bias, and I hope that gives me sympathy for others not transcending theirs.