Republican Collectivism Follow Up

In my previous video “Republican Collectivism is different from Democrat Collectivism” I made three basic points. First, Democrats make collective judgments based on A, B, and C. Second, Republicans make collective judgments based on D, E, and F. Third, Democrats refuse to believe that anyone has different standards than they do and insist Republicans secretly believe A, B, and C and only use D, E, and F as cover.

I got reactions in my comments (and also my like-dislike ratio) essentially saying that I’m wrong and that Republicans do actually use A, B, and C, just like Democrats do, but don’t admit it.

To those telling me that I’m wrong, thank you for showing that I am right.

On an internet forum one time I was challenged to say something negative about the party and candidates I support. This was in response to trying to get major party supporters to do the same about their own candidates. I think I disappointed the person who gave me the challenge because I responded with my opinion about the last several Libertarian Party candidates for President, when he was hoping I’d talk about the Republican Party. He was forced to concede that I had followed through on his request though.

So I pointed out that in my opinion, the Barr/Root ticket was the worst we had ever run. I also stated that I wasn’t thrilled with the two times Gary Johnson ran. The most controversial part of my post was when I wrote that Jo Jorgensen and Spike Cohen were (to that point) the most successful campaign the Libertarian Party had run in many years.

One of the other forum participants was flummoxed by the idea that I would call the Jorgensen campaign successful, because she didn’t win, and only a winning campaign could be called successful.

My reply was simple. I said “Since everyone judges by the exact same standards you do, then of course it wasn’t successful. Oh, but I called it successful. Maybe I’m using different standards.”

Even after that he still couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that I would call her campaign successful, because in his mind there is only one standard. He insists that a successful campaign is one that wins, and that everyone agrees with his definition of a successful campaign.

He couldn’t believe that other people judge things differently from how he does. This guy isn’t stupid, but he does hold a position that I think is stupid. I quickly realized there was no way I could ever convince him that I held a different standard and dropped the discussion with him.

In the comments to my previous video, we see people who cannot understand that there are people who hold different standards than they do. They came in to my comments to tell me that I’m wrong, that the Republicans really do judge by standards A, B, and C.

The reason Republicans do indeed judge by standards A, B, and C? Because the people telling me that I’m wrong judge by A, B, and C, and therefore everyone else does as well.

When I point out that they generally judge by D, E, an F, they did exactly what I described before, and insisted those were just cover stories to prevent people from knowing that the evil Republicans are evil for judging by A, B, and C, just like those making the comments do.

It seems a bit of a farce.

Okay, so the standard in particular that I said Democrats use and Republicans don’t use is race. Of course not all Democrats do this, but a lot of the rhetoric put out by those who are arguing on behalf of the party or the ideals is very racially focused. The so-called Progressive Stack makes a big deal about race. Also sex, gender, orientation, and to a certain extent religion.

I pointed out that Republicans generally prefer to use citizen versus legal alien versus illegal alien, and also law abiding versus criminal.

At the start of this video, I said my third point in the previous video was that Democrats refuse to believe that anyone has different standards than they do and insist Republicans secretly believe A, B, and C and only use D, E, and F as cover. So to tie it together, Democrats say “Republicans secretly make it about race just like we do, but they use law abiding versus criminal as a cover, and they use citizen versus legal alien versus illegal alien as a cover.”

I had people coming in to the comments to say “Republicans do so make it about race, just using the other stuff as a cover.”

So, to those angry commenters, thank you for proving my point. You are living demonstrations of everything I was talking about.

To everyone else who can understand the concept of “they judge by a different standard than I do,” let us all point and laugh at those commenters. They are so sadly desperate for attention anyway.

Republican Collectivism is different from Democrat Collectivism

It is well known that the Democrats divide people into collective groups by which to judge them, categorize them, determine their amount of oppression or privilege, and so on. They divide people by race, by sex, by gender, by sexual orientation, by religion to a certain extent, and other categories as well. That is why others who are outside the Democratic Party consider them to be racist, sexist, et cetera, because they obsessively judge people into increasingly minute racial categories. In the past it was white or non-white, now it is BIPOC. In addition to racial categories, with B and I in one group, POC in a second group, and white in a third group, they do use gender based and sex based classification.

What isn’t seen as much is that Republicans also create their collective groups, but they don’t do so based on race. Their primary division is citizen and non-citizen. There are sub-divisions, such as legal aliens and illegal aliens. They have their hierarchy, based not on race but on citizenship. They also have a hierarchy based on law abiding and criminal, but for some crimes people can be redeemed because of the religious nature of many Republicans that allows them to accept repentance and give forgiveness.

Based on that, the Republican drive to close the border and remove illegal aliens makes some sense, from within their paradigm. They see those who are legally here, those who are illegally here, and want to remove the latter. The former includes citizens and legal aliens. The latter includes non-citizens and criminals.

What results is a very interesting consequence. Some people are able to say “they are judging by a different standard than I am”. Other people are not. Democrats are very bad at that, and have shown themselves to be so on very many issues. Since for them, race is a primary issue, they assume for everyone else that race is a primary issue. Therefore they assume that Republicans are using citizenship and legality as code words for race.

Meanwhile Republicans think Democrats are making a confession, thinking that criminal equals non-white.

If only it were that simple.

When Republicans accuse Democrats of saying “oh you think non-citizen and criminal describe minorities” the Democrats see that as Republicans saying “you’ve caught us and are trying to shift the blame.” Neither side is talking the language of the other.

Democrats probably don’t automatically equate non-citizen and criminal with minorities. They just think that since Republicans “obviously” think the same way they do that it must be code words to disguise the exact same classification. Meanwhile Republicans don’t care about the race of the law-abiding citizen, they care that the person is a law-abiding citizen.

I tried to explain this once to some Democrats and people farther left. I described small town Americana, a place they are convinced is full of backwards deplorable racists clinging to their bibles and guns.

In this stereotypical small town, most of the people work in the same one or two businesses. Some of them go to the Baptist church, others to the Methodist church. Their kids all go to the same High School, and most of them shop at the same stores. They don’t see each other as all that different, but they see people from outside their town as different. In particular they see people from the big cities as different.

And then the Democrats see that and misinterpret that collectivist view as racial again, trying to force-map white onto rural and black onto urban.

I don’t endorse either kind of collectivism. But I am doing better than the Democrats by at least noticing what collectivism people are using to make their own judgments instead of using different collectivisms. Republicans can see that Democrats see everything through a racial lens. Republican can see that Democrats don’t share the Republican lens of law abiding vs. criminal or citizen vs. non-citizen. Democrats cannot see that others don’t see everything through a racial lens.

The only explanation I can see is that the Republican distinction is more subtle, because it crosses racial and ethnic lines. And since it is more subtle even some libertarians fall for it, though they should know better. Most do know better, but a few fall for it. Then again, maybe the reason Democrats don’t see it is because it seems to be hard for Democrats to even see that other viewpoints can exist in the first place. They instead think that everyone agrees with their premises and choose different conclusions out of a desire to be evil.