We don’t have to like our allies. There are plenty of Dems I wouldn’t want to have dinner with. These days I’d rather chit-chat with Nicolle Wallace or Steve Schmidt or Michael S. Steele or David Frum or Jennifer Rubin or Max Boot, because I like how they’re currently speaking the truth, crisply. Much more palatable than, for example, those in my own party famous for their sweeping, holier-than-thou, attacks on institutional Dems. I know I should feel simpatico with them, since their vision of society is so much more in sync with mine than any Republican.
But distaste for one’s allies can ratchet up extra quickly when they fail to live up to our expectations. It’s like when you meet someone who you assume, through social cues, is an attractive fellow liberal, only to discover an Infowars bumper sticker on the back of his Prius. Talk about ruining your appetite.
In the spirit of the 1992 pop-sensational best seller, Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus — a conceit, ostensibly, for “improving communication and getting what you want from your relationships” by “understanding and respecting the differences” — I suggest reading through a recent robust discussion hosted by SlateStarCodex about another fanciful, political, binary: “Conflict Theorists” vs “Mistake Theorists.” *
I’d already been wondering whether our pie fights here are fueled, not by our differences, so much as by the mistaken sentiment that we have more in common than we actually do. We feel like banging our heads against the wall when we pretend everyone here is basically the same as us — Why are they behaving so damned misguided and ignorant?? Whereas, if we enter the conversation with the knowledge that we are from different planets we may be more likely to enjoy the fruits of collaboration and compromise, as political and cultural allies should. The criteria for choosing lifeboat companions are not the same as for choosing dinner companions.
Here’s a proposed summary of our different tendencies, cribbed in part from the SlateStarCodex debate. It’s not meant to be definitive, or true, and it’s prejudiced by my own “mistake theory” bias. I offer it simply as a jumping-off point for discussion.
Progressives**
(Mistake Theorist, Liberal, Incrementalist, Technocrat, Pragmatist)
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Revolutionists
(Conflict Theorist, Progressive, Marxist, Anti-institutionalist, Idealist)
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- Moral struggle is more essential
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- World is incrementally reformed by more shared information
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- World is revolutionarily improved by shared passion
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- Embraces enlightened elites
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- Racism is mainly ignorance
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- Racism is mainly a battle for dominance
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- Technocracy is death by a thousand cuts
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- Wants to harness populism
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- Favors diplomatic, negotiated resolutions
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- Favors winner-take-all resolutions
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- Believes in pragmatic collaborations of convenience (parties, unions, etc), even when imperfect
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- Believes moral collaborations of a united vision are necessary to overturn corrupt institutions
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- Believes revolutionists are mistaken
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- Believes incrementalists are the enemy
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The thought here is that — after the shared shock of 2016 (Susan Sarandon notwithstanding) — we get a little better at realizing that the language we use to describe the world only sounds familiar. We’re like the owl whose call sounds just like a whinnying horse.
This from SlateStarCodex’ Scott Alexander, speaking as a mistake theorist:
Conflict theorists aren’t mistake theorists who just have a different theory about what the mistake is. They’re not going to respond to your criticism by politely explaining why you’re incorrect. […]
There’s a meta-level problem in trying to understand the position “don’t try to understand other positions and engage with them on their own terms” and engage with it on its own terms. If you succeed, you’ve failed, and if you fail, you’ve succeeded. I am pretty sure it would be wrong to [idealize] conflict theory into a nice cooperative explanation of how we all need to join together, realize that conflict theory is objectively the correct way to think, and then use this insight to help cure our mutual patient, the State.
In other words, I’d be fooling myself to think that any possible dialogue prompted by this diary could somehow correct our misunderstandings. I’d be diminishing the revolutionist conflict theorists here if I thought I’d figured you out. And how could I possibly expect you to figure me out? The chart above predicts that you would likely reject the entire thrust of this diary out of hand, since its goal seems to be limited to musing about our communication errors.
In fact, would it be fair to say that conflict theorists have little patience for meta in general? If you have already decided that I am not just merely mistaken, but that I am a de facto enemy because I unwittingly participate in the continuance of a corrupt system, then you would have little interest in getting to know my brain better for the purposes of better communication. Your interest in me would be limited to how I respond to your rallying cry, and whether I ultimately jumped on your train. Right?
Still, reading through the 1000-plus comments on the SlateStarCodex thread (as well as follow-up threads), I found the widely differing perspectives surprising, illuminating, and maybe even productive.
Some conflict theorists, for example, felt the entire exercise was simply an attack on them — an attempt to ostracize them on the basis of their supposedly anti-dialectical constitutions; others embraced the categorizations.
As one conflict-theorist mused:
Maybe conflict theorists are mistake theorists who have applied the same methodology to “how do we get our ideas implemented” and decided based on the empirical evidence that emotional appeals and group action are more effective than policy analysis.
I wouldn’t hazard a guess as to whether any revolutionists here would embrace such a statement. If so, may I assume you are not so much a conflict theorist as you are a post-theorist who privileges strategy debates over strategic patience (for example). I could certainly respect that, as an ally.
That said, I’m compelled to offer a final caveat as a red flag: I’m of the camp who believes that today’s biggest, most urgent, issue is the battle over reality. Evidence, scientific facts, and truth had, for the most part, won out as the world’s lingua franca, after a steady battle that raged since the Enlightenment. Suddenly, this common ground is under serious threat. That’s why it’s so easy to adore Nicolle Wallace, and relatively easy to tire of [insert name of revolutionist Dem]’s passionate hyperbole. In normal times I wouldn’t hesitate to choose the Dem’s lifeboat over Wallace’s, but, since these are not normal times, I’d have to think about it for a minute.
*For those who can’t stomach such binary definitions, you’ll be happy to know there are finer gradations among the camps; e.g., you may be an “easy mistake theorist” or a “hard mistake theorist,” or even, possibly, a “hard conflict theorist.”
**I am purposely pushing back on today’s distinction between the terms “progressive” and “liberal.” Conventional wisdom says that a liberal is now a squishy “neo-liberal,” while a progressive is a Bernie Sanders-style revolutionary. To me, the term “progressive” captures the more incremental movement toward a liberal polity better than when it’s used to label revolutionists.