Dinosaurs and Narrative

Actually, the cliché is “divide and conquer”.

But I don’t think it’s as conscious and cynical a strategy as BrianSierk protrays it. It is so (to varying degrees) amongst the conservative establishment, but grassroots conservatives generally mean it when they say, for instance, that “blacks should vote Republican because they are culturally conservative.” Much of this kind of rhetoric among rank-and-file conservatives is just trickled down propaganda, to be sure, but I wonder if it has another source. Please consider the following hypothesis (which, for the sake of clarity, I’m presenting with more certainty than I actually feel):

Most conservatives are just quite blind when it comes to issues of social domination. Hierarchy is central to the conservative worldview, but they are surrounded by the modern American culture of populism – i.e. radical egalitarianism – so their rhetoric has to conform to that populism. They fiercely resent, in good populist fashion, effete liberal snobs who sip wine, drink lattes and look down their noses at pious, Nascar-watching, real Americans. They perceive modern liberals as aristocrats. And the one thing they will not abide is condescension aimed at them, the Protestant, white middle class.

But they are not really populists in the egalitarian sense. In effect, they believe themselves to be the true cultural elites, morally superior to liberals, other races, women, people of other religions, homosexuals, foreigners. They do hate liberals, but not because liberals are elitist; conservatives are profoundly attached to social hierarchy (consider their submissive attitudes toward rich conservatives). They hate liberals because liberals are in fact morally inferior, their elite status has a false basis, i.e. education, sanctimony, aristocratic manners, etc. Conservatives deserve to be the true social elite. Many conservatives appear to be conscious or unconscious racists (David Duke vs. Trent Lott), but many of them believe that members of those lower groups can attain higher moral stature by fully adopting conservative cultural values. That is, Obama is not equal, but Thomas Sowell is. Ideology is the new race, and non-conservatives are the new blacks. Sowell is ideologically white, while Obama is still just a … well, you know.

This is the mindset behind their moralist outreach to minority groups. In the movie “Full Metal Jacket”, a gung ho general dresses down Matthew Modine for not being sufficiently pro-war, saying, “We are here to help the Vietnamese, because inside every gook there is an American trying to get out.”