wait’ll they find out about henry rollins and black flag.

That honestly makes sense. Ever talk to a conservative white straight cis guy about racism, sexism, queerphobia, or any other kind of discrimination that doesn’t apply to them? They seem to have a really hard time empathizing with anyone who isn’t firmly seated in their own experience, especially if the experience of that person sheds light on a perspective they don’t have access to. Talk about privilege and they tend to immediately bristle at the idea that they should ever even attempt to think at something from a perspective that isn’t identical to their own. It’s like they think recognizing the struggles that other people face diminishes their own struggles and the legitimacy of their own perspective.

I think in a sense, the essence of conservatism is breaking things down into teams or in-groups. If something bad happens to somebody else’s team, it’s not a big deal, but if something happens to my team it’s a dire emergency. Of course the last thing we could ever do is recognize that our team might have actually meaningfully hurt another team or have anything to account for.

I don’t think this is strictly limited to people who vote Republican either. The same habits are readily visible in Democrats. Like, for example, the other day I was on the phone talking with my Dad about politics. We’re like probably about 80% on the same page with supporting leftist policies and causes, but sometimes I get surprised. We were talking about Harris, who we’re both strongly in support of, and I mentioned her snubbing Netanyahu. I trotted out my hope that it’s an indicator that her ‘Israel has a right to protect itself’ line was basically lip-service to the status quo and a calculated move to win the election, after which maybe she’ll actually stop sending bombs to kill thousands of children in Palestine. He immediately went off and the team mentality appeared. He got into this perspective that the reason politicians still pay homage to Israel is because of Jewish money in the US, painting with pretty broad strokes that came off as a fair bit more antisemitic than I imagine he intended, in a way that clearly had triggered a nerve. He did accept that it’s more complex than that and there are plenty of Jewish folks in the US who oppose Israel too, as well as Christians who are funding Israel for their own religious reasons or otherwise, but he also elucidated his reasons for opposing Israel, which go back a long time.

My Dad was a marine; for him the bombing of the Beirut Airport in 1983, which killed 241 US service members (mostly marines), is personal. He blames Israel for this, as their invasion of Lebanon sparked the attack and, according to him, the Israeli military was aware that the bombing would occur and did nothing about it. His reaction was visceral and emotional. The marines are his guys, so what Israel allowed to happen to them they also allowed to happen to him in a psychological sense.

On a similar note, yesterday I was talking to a lady I picked up in my cab. Big hippie vibes, really stylish outfit, and we clicked right away. Like my Dad, a big life-long Democrat. We again find ourselves in firm agreement, talking about Harris, until Israel comes up. Her perspective is that it’s dangerous for Jewish Israelis to live in Israel, and she sides with the IDF. I pointed her at John Oliver’s recent episode on the subject to elucidate some of the stuff the settlers do and the blatantly and casually cruel way they talk about it. In the end, she says that the bible says the Jews are granted Israel forever, so she takes that as a given regardless of anything else. She herself is Jewish, and she sees that as her team and doesn’t really seem to push past that to examine whether it’s okay to assume a country where other people live belongs to you.

The disconnect isn’t being a marine or being Jewish, it’s that lens of seeing everything as us vs them. Both my Dad and this fare see things from a pretty leftist perspective until it comes to their team. Then morality goes out the window and it turns to a strategy that focuses on protecting the in-group rather than considering the totality of the moral implications.

With conservatives, the impulse just seems to be turned way up. The in-group isn’t just one segment of their identity that they’ve felt a challenge to at some point or another and a need to protect, it’s everything. It’s how they take their coffee, it’s factory farming, it’s race, sexuality, gender identity, religion, political affiliation. Everything.

Obviously there’s a gradient there, but to me the recurring theme is this attitude of it’s my way or the highway. They literally plaster themselves in ‘freedom’ iconography while giving the stink eye to anyone who looks like they’re not on board with their authoritarian bullshit. It seems like a complete contradiction, until you realize the freedom they’re talking about is the freedom for their camp to completely ignore the impact or implications of anything they do to any other camp.

That, to me, is the root of cruelty. The inability to change one’s mind or actions, or to consider that one might have been wrong in the past. It’s inflexibility, stagnation.

I think this is why Daryl Davis has been so successful in converting racists. He comes with empathy, bonds with people over the things they do have in common (which for any two human beings is likely to be a great many things), and then lets the barrier dissolve on its own once the realization sets in that the division is bullshit.

I also think a big part of why they cling so hard to these camps to begin with is self-protective. Our society is very much about absolutes. We’re trained to strive for the highest numbers, the best of everything, the most polished and pristine, and to look down on the rest. From childhood we’re trained to learn through praise on the one hand and shame on the other, it’s no surprise that we internalize the idea that there are ‘winners’ and ‘losers’ and we’d better be the one and not the other. But that’s bullshit. Winners lose, losers win, it’s not down to some sort of eternal damnation sticking us in one category forever.

Conservatism increasingly embraces these divisions, as they’re both their way of measuring their own worth as well as a smoke screen to hide the self-serving behaviors focused on elevating their in-group to the exception of others. They can’t believe in climate change because industry and energy are part of the in-group, even though it’s killing them just as much if not more than it’s killing the rest of us. Literally anything can be written off as long as it serves the interests of the in-group and maintains that self-protective outlook.

Democrats have the same problem, even proper leftists, but it’s not our rallying cry. It’s not the thing we bond over, it’s something we seem to try to dismantle or at least view with suspicion. But neither are we immune to it.

As far as a solution? Compassion, self-examination, and forgiveness seem like pretty good options. We’re not going to change anyone’s minds by stuffing them back into their box and putting them on one side of the room and us on the other. Obviously there’s a lot of shit we need to oppose while this is still going on, and we need to do it passionately and sincerely, but we also need to figure out how to start to give people the opportunity to grow out of the toxic perspectives that are causing all of us so much harm. To try to bring them around with patience instead of seeking them out to tattoo a category on their foreheads. That’s just our own impulse toward team bias, which we need to learn to grow past too.

It isn’t easy. It’s even contradictory in a sense, but I don’t think that makes it less true.