Blue tribe is starting to win by adopting the best of conservative values
This is very good news, for both the left and the right
I was ~30 years old when I learned how to think for myself. Since then I’ve been getting a lot of insights about how the world works. A big one was: “conservative” is not good or bad, it’s a tool:
Saying that conservatism is about being anti progress is like saying that the brakes in your car are there to stop the car from moving
This is obvious if you look clearly at the problems in the world & why they’re not getting better. My path to this was to admit I know nothing, and to earnestly talk to everyone on twitter from both sides. I noticed a pattern; people are attached to tools:
They don’t want to solve problem X,
they want to solve problem X, with tool Y
The reason for this is that tool Y is how they identify their tribe. If you suggest using tool Z, you are pushing in the wrong direction. You’re making the world a worse place, and why would you do that?? (what if tool Z solves the problem? no, don’t say that, people who use tool Z are bad people!)
The twist here is that they are not wrong for drawing a line around “bad people”. The mistake is in equating “anyone who uses this tool” with the bad people. That limits your access to the tool, and you fail to solve problems that need it.
I tried to solve this by tweeting things like:
instead of saying "the problem with conservatives" you should say "a failure mode in being a conservative"
I was trying to draw a clear distinction between1:
“this tool is bad”
“people who use this tool, in this way, are bad”
The good news: this is changing
Marie Gluesenkamp Perez won a congress position, running a campaign that is pro deregulation. This is confusing because deregulation is supposed to be a conservative thing, and conservative things are supposed to be right-wing things.
Joey Politano is left-wing, and he criticizes his own tribe for being against this2. He says: she found a regulation that was hurting the community, and she removed it. Why is this a bad thing?
The winning strategy spreads once it is discovered
My prediction is that the blue tribe is going to update their narratives to see “conservative / anti regulation” as a useful tool, not as a blanket bad thing. They’re going to do this not because they will suddenly start loving their enemy, but for the opposite reason: they don’t want to keep losing to their enemy.
This will accelerate if the red tribe adopts the same strategy: they can start winning by adopting the most useful of their opponent’s tools, giving them access to the full range, while their opponents are still stuck with a subset. The ultimate test of course is whether you can actually use the tools to solve real problems (this includes making society better, but more importantly: gaining the public’s trust & winning elections).
I think the blue tribe is currently starved for conservative values that would genuinely make them happier3. I think as they start winning politically with this strategy, their lives will get better, and it will create a flywheel effect where other tribes have to compete. This is good for those that hold conservative values, since the good parts of that will spread.
The red-conservative/blue-progressive split is not normal, nor inevitable.
I like this meme template a lot, about how it’s not “rich” vs “poor”, it’s “those who want to harm you” and “those who want to make things better”. I think you can draw a similar picture for every tribal conflict.
I have more examples of this in: “Criticizing your own tribe is how you win”
This will not necessarily lead to more unity between blue/red tribes. I think humans need tribes, and healthy competition between tribes is good for everyone.
Forgot to add, the discussion on the original tweet that Joey was criticizing is itself really interesting. As always, they are reasonable people. They are saying, "of course this specific case makes sense, but in general, deregulation is not a good thing" (because, it can't be a good thing, if your tribe's identity is defined by being against it)
> There's also not many common sense opportunities for deregulation
https://x.com/stylianos_k/status/1855658263238607282
A related issue is that a lot of people simply assume that the name of the tool is what it does, and will never be persuaded otherwise.
That is, they simply can’t (or won’t) consider unintended consequences or second order effects. No, the regulation has a sympathetic intent, so it must be good, and anyone against it must have bad intentions.
I’m sure “prevent unqualified workers from giving children food borne illness” was a very sympathetic reason to support the original regulation, and they probably did not intend to ban peeling bananas for preschoolers. But even when it’s pointed out that the latter is what actually happened, you’ve got people defending the regulation as the only stop on a slippery slope to poisoned toddlers.
I remember having a debate with an otherwise very intelligent classmate way back in the lead up to Obamacare, discussing my concerns about political capture creating some problems with the proposed law (e.g. that “preventative care” might get expanded to an unreasonable degree by lobbying from various interest groups, and some of the means to pay for the bill like medical device taxes and “Cadillac plan” insurance penalties might get nixed for the same reason). It was very frustrating because I could never get this person past their hangups that profit is evil, Democrats just want everyone to have good health care, and this is the Affordable Care Act sponsored by Democrats and opposed by evil profit seekers, so it must be an unalloyed good.