In my
"Biggest Bully" explanation of conservatives, I noted close overlap with Siderea's explanation of
The Two Moral Modes and George Lakoff's
comparison to families.
However, I also disagree with their notion that the conservatism of the masses is about the way they think the world should work.
It's not so much a desire for an authoritarian social hierarchy, as a simple belief in it. This is an instinctive and unconscious belief, shielding it from scrutiny. The "desires" attached to it constitute the small comfort that people on a totem pole can take: That there's always someone lower. I think they don't precisely
want their social group to be able to dominate and abuse others: Rather, they strongly feel that that's simply how the social totem pole already works. Those who lack a sense of self worth, in particular, resent liberals for implying that it isn't, and for making it taboo to publicly acknowledge that they (the right-wingers) are better than LGTBQ+ folks, black people, women, Mexicans, Muslims, poor people, people with disabilities, et cetera, excluding those groups to which they themselves belong.
They love Trump, not because he promised to give them the right to abuse people beneath them, but because he validated their understanding that they already had that position and that right.
The fact that everyone who voted for him is getting shafted by him doesn't change that! The irrationality of voting against their own interests, while blindingly obvious (even to some of them in hindsight), is irrelevant. Suffering is the price of being low on the totem pole: Those above you, like the government, can do what they want to you. Their votes didn't mean, "We prefer to be part of a hierarchical, authoritarian totem pole than not be," but rather "Life is a hierarchical, authoritarian totem pole, and you have to submit to the dominance of the people above you; deal with it." Trump acknowledged the totem pole and claimed dominance. Clinton, being a woman in America, wasn't in a position to claim dominance even if she had wanted to: The totem pole puts women below men.
The refusal to acknowledge this is part of the insidiously fascist undercurrent of the self-flagellating "Liberal America didn't reach out to poor white people" sentiment. (Also, that sentiment ignores all of the unethical things that Republicans did to win the election, in favor of blaming compassionate people for not expressing sufficient sympathy for views based on hatred, bigotry, misogyny, and lies. I suspect that the sentiment arises in the same way that causes many Christians to blame others' misfortunes on their lack of piety: It's comforting to pretend that our fate is entirely in our own hands (or God's), making us feel safe from malign forces outside of our control. Of course, that pretense leaves people ill prepared for their own misfortunes, so one must keep rationalizing: They/we must have done something to deserve it!)
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