Trump is your fault (repost)

I wonder how much left-wing intellectuals have contributed to the rise of Trump and the alt-right. Wait, hear me out! I think there are three main ways this is true.

I. Left-wing identity politics contributes to the alt-right.

How so? Two conjectures:

a. The intellectual elite have a huge influence on what ordinary people, even right-wing people, find salient, and what they consider as an important issue or phenomenon.

Why? Because for X to be salient to you, it is sufficient that you hear people talking about X a lot. You don't have to agree with what they are saying, and you don't have to like those people. The academy and the media control to a great extent what people hear publicly discussed. So they largely control what are the salient issues and phenomena. But . . .

b. The intellectual elite have little influence on the substantive views about those issues or phenomena held by typical right-wing people.

Why? Because (i) typical right-wing people distrust the media, and (ii) substantive views about political issues are largely caused by broad personality traits, possibly genetically programmed, and these are very difficult to alter.

Consequence: the focus of the intellectual elite on race (and gender, sexual orientation, and other group memberships) succeeds in making race (etc.) salient, so that the race of different individuals seems like a very important distinguishing characteristic. People identify with their race, and see those of other races as different in a large and important way.

But the intellectual elite fail in convincing average conservatives that they should value difference and 'otherness'. The elites likewise fail in convincing ordinary people that their own group is morally bad. The predisposition to favor one's own group is extremely widespread in human experience and probably genetically programmed. Most human beings simply cannot be convinced to turn against their own group or to regard the Other as superior. Telling them that their own group is bad will just turn them against you instead.

The result: a bunch of white men who find their race and sex salient aspects of their identity, but who react against those who are telling them that their group are immoral oppressors.

II. Media bias contributes to ‘alternative-facts’ media.

Two important things to understand:

a. Most people have no knowledge of almost any of the facts that are discussed in the media. In addition, many have no ability to judge basic plausibility. E.g., if they hear a story that says Obama is setting up child labor camps on Mars, and another story that says that automobile exhaust is making the Earth warmer and raising sea levels, many see no difference in prima facie plausibility between these two stories.

b. There are, however, a few facts that ordinary people have access to, and when you compare media stories to the facts in these cases, you often find that media reports are blatantly biased and false. E.g., if you watch a Trump speech, and then you watch a media report about the speech, you’ll see that the media is clearly trying to portray him in the worst light, in the least charitable way, and even lying about what he said. (Note: This observation is compatible with the fact that Trump is a bastard whom the media hate for good reasons.)

Consequence: conservative viewers increasingly conclude that the mainstream media is untrustworthy across the board, and they look for alternative media. If someone is unreliable about the few things you can check, you don’t trust them about the things you can’t check.

III. Extremists feed on each other.

Extremists on one side energize the opposition. They motivate extremists on the other side to be more active, and they cause moderates on the other side to feel like moving more toward the extreme. E.g.,white nationalists and antifa protestors feed on each other. Now America seems locked in a cycle of increasing polarization.

(Originally from 10/2017.)