The difference -- or A difference -- beween Left and Right
DiscussiePolitical Conservatives
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1Doug1943
Although I continue to think that I am pretty familiar with all the heavy hitters on the Right (and most of them on the Left), I continue to be proved wrong. “There is more between heaven and earth …”, etc.
A friend just sent me this link (last line of this post) , to someone I had never heard of.
It is the most perceptive, useful, deepest, understanding of the differences between Left and Right that I have ever read.
WARNING: this is not a ‘Feel Good’ essay for our side, showing how hypocritical, how dishonest, how self-centered, how shallow, how hateful, the Left is. Anyway, we already know that.
This is a cold-blooded analysis of the differences between, as he puts it, liberals and conservatives.
At first, you might be offended. Don’t be! Read it all the way through. Maybe pour yourself a stiff whiskey first.
You will see that his fellow is not a liberal – he even says that one component of the liberal left coalition are people who are insane – but … he is not out to flatter conservatives, just to give the results of his own analysis. Even if you don’t like what he has to say, he provides plenty of useful information.
He is an academic, so he operates under the constraints of the Thought Police. So I note that he leaves out the very important racial/ethnic divide in the US – everything that could be said to be negative about the conservative base, applies – can I still say “in spades”? – to the Hispanic, and especially Black, components of the Left’s voting base. But this is a radioactive topic in academia and I’m pretty sure that’s why he leaves it out.
Another point is this, although I am not sure how significant it is: you can learn serious things from YouTube and similar sources, without doing much reading. I first encountered this fact with some of my brightest tutees ... I found that there were some things -- like how the formula for the area of a circle is derived -- which are better shown in animation ... and YouTube is full of excellent videos on topics like this. And then I discovered that some -- not all -- of my smartest tutees were not readers. They just won't borrow a book I try to lend them ... but .. they are very familar with many excellent YouTube sites that explain lots of things, like Kurzgesagt.
So ... maybe not being a reader is not automatically to be uninformed and easy meat for demagogues and scammers.
And … I don’t see that there is anything of a practical nature that our side can take away from this, that will alter what we’re already doing. If you are one of the minority of conservatives who is a reader, you may be a bit depressed by his analysis, but if so … remember this:
Traditionally, for the last century and a half, and especially in Europe, the Left had the support of the bottom half of society (as measured by income, status, years of education) and the Right had the support of the top half. (This is just on average and of course there were many exceptions.)
So until recently, and probably only, or at least mainly, in the US – the readers vs TV-watchers (or pre-TV equivalants) went the other way: we had the readers, they had the non-readers. What has changed is that the middle class is no longer mainly small business owners, farmers, educated professionals … but has expanded to include college graduates – from the huge expansion of colleges which took place fifty years ago – who work in various government and quasi-government institutions, large corporations, and the like.
And of course the capture by the Left of the educational intitutions, and of the cultural apparatus in general, has also played a major role in influencing what everyone is supposed to think.
Anyway, read this! It’s probably best read in two or three chunks, because it’s rather long. And, if you’ve been around a while and ranged over the internet, most of what he says will not be new: he just puts it all together and gives substance (and numbers) to what you have seen as individual impressions.
Here’s a brief bit of background on the author: https://www.richardhanania.com/ 1
Here’s the essay. Don’t forget that whiskey. (Or whatever your mind-altering substance of choice is.)
And remember, he's not talking about YOU, but about the broad mass of average conservative.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/liberals-read-conservatives-watch
A friend just sent me this link (last line of this post) , to someone I had never heard of.
It is the most perceptive, useful, deepest, understanding of the differences between Left and Right that I have ever read.
WARNING: this is not a ‘Feel Good’ essay for our side, showing how hypocritical, how dishonest, how self-centered, how shallow, how hateful, the Left is. Anyway, we already know that.
This is a cold-blooded analysis of the differences between, as he puts it, liberals and conservatives.
At first, you might be offended. Don’t be! Read it all the way through. Maybe pour yourself a stiff whiskey first.
You will see that his fellow is not a liberal – he even says that one component of the liberal left coalition are people who are insane – but … he is not out to flatter conservatives, just to give the results of his own analysis. Even if you don’t like what he has to say, he provides plenty of useful information.
He is an academic, so he operates under the constraints of the Thought Police. So I note that he leaves out the very important racial/ethnic divide in the US – everything that could be said to be negative about the conservative base, applies – can I still say “in spades”? – to the Hispanic, and especially Black, components of the Left’s voting base. But this is a radioactive topic in academia and I’m pretty sure that’s why he leaves it out.
Another point is this, although I am not sure how significant it is: you can learn serious things from YouTube and similar sources, without doing much reading. I first encountered this fact with some of my brightest tutees ... I found that there were some things -- like how the formula for the area of a circle is derived -- which are better shown in animation ... and YouTube is full of excellent videos on topics like this. And then I discovered that some -- not all -- of my smartest tutees were not readers. They just won't borrow a book I try to lend them ... but .. they are very familar with many excellent YouTube sites that explain lots of things, like Kurzgesagt.
So ... maybe not being a reader is not automatically to be uninformed and easy meat for demagogues and scammers.
And … I don’t see that there is anything of a practical nature that our side can take away from this, that will alter what we’re already doing. If you are one of the minority of conservatives who is a reader, you may be a bit depressed by his analysis, but if so … remember this:
Traditionally, for the last century and a half, and especially in Europe, the Left had the support of the bottom half of society (as measured by income, status, years of education) and the Right had the support of the top half. (This is just on average and of course there were many exceptions.)
So until recently, and probably only, or at least mainly, in the US – the readers vs TV-watchers (or pre-TV equivalants) went the other way: we had the readers, they had the non-readers. What has changed is that the middle class is no longer mainly small business owners, farmers, educated professionals … but has expanded to include college graduates – from the huge expansion of colleges which took place fifty years ago – who work in various government and quasi-government institutions, large corporations, and the like.
And of course the capture by the Left of the educational intitutions, and of the cultural apparatus in general, has also played a major role in influencing what everyone is supposed to think.
Anyway, read this! It’s probably best read in two or three chunks, because it’s rather long. And, if you’ve been around a while and ranged over the internet, most of what he says will not be new: he just puts it all together and gives substance (and numbers) to what you have seen as individual impressions.
Here’s a brief bit of background on the author: https://www.richardhanania.com/ 1
Here’s the essay. Don’t forget that whiskey. (Or whatever your mind-altering substance of choice is.)
And remember, he's not talking about YOU, but about the broad mass of average conservative.
https://richardhanania.substack.com/p/liberals-read-conservatives-watch
