Winning an election is easier than it looks: all you have to do is convince a bunch of different groups that you will use power to achieve their desires. Bonus points if you can convince groups with mutually exclusive goals that you'll deliver for them - the coalition of "people who disagree about everything" is hard to assemble, but it sure is large!
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If you'd like an essay-formatted version of this thread to read or share, here's a link to it on pluralistic.net, my surveillance-free, ad-free, tracker-free blog:
https://pluralistic.net/2025/01/06/how-the-sausage-gets-made/#governing-is-harder
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Politically, a "conservative" is someone who believes that there is a small group of people who were born to rule, and a much larger group of people who were born to be ruled over.
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As Corey Robin writes in The Reactionary Mind, this is the one trait that unifies all the disparate strains of conservative thought: imperialists, monarchists, capitalists, white supremacists, misogynists, Christian nationalists, Hindu nationalists and supporters of Israeli genocide in Palestine:
https://coreyrobin.com/books/the-reactionary-mind/
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These groups all agree that power should be hierarchical, that your position in a hierarchy is something you're born with, and that letting people who were "meant" to be at the bottom of the hierarchy rise to the top puts society so out of balance that it's actually a threat to human survival.
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That's why conservatives of all stripes get so furious about "DEI" - any kind of affirmative action program serves as a defective sorting hat, putting the incompetent and unsuitable into positions of power over other peoples' lives. It's why "DEI" is the go-to scapegoat for any kind of disaster, including giant ships crashing into bridges:
https://www.axios.com/local/salt-lake-city/2024/03/26/baltimore-bridge-dei-utah-lawmaker-phil-lyman-misinformation
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But while conservatives all agree that some of us are born to be in charge and others are born to be bossed around by our innate superiors, they have irreconcilable differences about who is meant to be in charge. British imperialists who pine for the Raj have views that are fundamentally at odds with the views of Hindu nationalists. They're both "conservative" movements, but they're actually bitter enemies.
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For a conservative movement to win power, it has to convince the people whom it would relegate to the bottom of the hierarchy to support that goal (AKA "getting turkeys to vote for Christmas"); and it must convince other conservatives that they will be able to esablish a hierarchy that accommodates multiple, co-equal ruling elites.
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The first tactic is well-established. LBJ summed it up neatly:
If you can convince the lowest white man he's better than the best colored man, he won't notice you're picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he'll empty his pockets for you.
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The second one requires far more tactical thinking. Some elite groups are able to form coalitions by carving out exclusive zones: think of the friendly feeling among Modi, Orban, Erdogan, bin Salman, Trump, Milei, et al. These people all aspire to dictatorship, all espouse their superior blood - a source of personal and racial superiority - and hypothetically all believe that the world would be better if everyone (including their foreign counterparts) would take their orders.
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One way to resolve this tension is to carve up the world geographically, which is why so many despots who seized power by promising to build ethno-states can co-exist with one another and even cheer one another on. Let Orban have Hungary, give Turkey to Erdogan, and let Bibi Netanyahu annex all of Gaza.
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Sure, in their secret hearts, each of these men secretly believe themselves to be racially and personally superior to the others, but so long as they all stay out of one another's turf, there's no reason to make a big deal out of it.
Another way to resolve this is to carve up the world temporally: think of the alliance between Christian nationalists and Israeli genocidiers. In the US, "Christian Zionists" outnumber Jews who identify as Zionists:
https://www.trtworld.com/magazine/qanda-for-every-1-jewish-zionist-there-are-30-christian-zionists-and-netanyahu-exploits-this-15656249
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But Christian Zionists aren't philosemites. They hate Jews and believe that we are all going to hell for murdering Christ. Their support for Israel isn't grounded in a belief in the necessity of a Jewish ethno-state - it arises out of the apocalyptic belief that Christ will return once Jews "return to the Holy Land" - albeit only briefly, before being cast into a lake of fire for all eternity.
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Like British imperialists and the Hindu nationalists, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists are not on the same side. However, unlike British imperialists and Hindu nationalists, Christian Zionists and Jewish Zionists want the same thing...for a while. Both groups support the establishment of a Jewish entho-state in Israel, they just differ sharply as to what happens after that comes to pass.
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So long as they don't dwell on that moment in the future, they can stand shoulder to shoulder, fighting together for an Israeli state that operates with absolute US support and total international impunity.
Coalitions who defer the question of how they'll use power to after they've gained power are using time (rather than space) as a buffer that keeps their differences from smashing together until they shatter.
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But time and space aren't the only buffers for the differences between coalition partners - there's also class.
"Class" has been the most important, most useful buffer for conservativism since the Reagan revolution. Reagan came to power by forging an alliance with evangelicals, whose cult leaders had historically demanded that members focus their energies (and cash donations) on the church, while avoiding politics as "worldly."
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Reagan promised the Christian right a ton of culture war - bans on abortion, punishment for uppity women and racial minorities, prayer in school, segregation academies, etc - that his financial backers didn't give a shit about. By all means, let working class evangelicals homeschool their kids and teach them that the Earth is 5,000 years old, it doesn't matter to Wall Street, who will reap a giant tax-cut and also send their kids to private schools with rigorous curriculum.
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Bankers' wives and daughters will always be able to afford to fly out of state (or across the border) for abortion care, they will never die of AIDS in the charity wing of a community hospital, their daughters won't be trapped by bans on no-fault divorces.
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For the past 40 years, American oligarchs and would-be oligarchs have entered into enthusiastic coalitions with virulently racist, sexist and homophobic groups, and maintained peace within their coalition by passing punitive, cruel laws that the rich can buy their way around.
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For many self-styled libertarians, the most important liberty is "not paying taxes" and this subordinates all other liberties, such that a "libertarian" will vote for a coalition whose platform promises to ban abortion, birth control, "interracial" marriage, and queer sex, so long as it also promises tax cuts. It's a weird kind of pro-freedom ideology that happily trades away (others') freedom for (your own) tax cuts:
https://pluralistic.net/2021/09/29/jubilance/#tolerable-racism
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Remember, Trump's first CPAC speech was sponsored by Goproud, a group of "fiscally responsible" gay Republicans who believed in gay rights, sure, but not as much as they believed in getting so rich that even if poor gay people were ground into dust, they could float above it all:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GOProud
Class is the third buffer between the oligarchs of the right and the mass movement that provides the bulk for winning elections.
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Ew, Hrry Ptter reference. Pls do better.
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@pluralistic "Klown Kar of Krazies" -- I see what you did there; the initialism is very much appropriate for today's Republican Party.
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@sspopovich I didn't; thank you!
@pluralistic
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@pluralistic this is a phenomenal piece of writing.
The rise of #TheNetworkState alongside of all of this is also terrifying, because rich vulture capitalists are creating cities in the sky (best way I can think to describe it) on the promise of techbro utopia. A few people have written about it but it's still happening in the background, and it's all built on colonising areas in the global south that are ripe for exploitation aka tech colonialism and fascism. I'm probably preaching to the choir but it's so fucking devastating to watch and nobody cares.
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@Grey @pluralistic semi-related but ICYMI part of the the reason they want Greenland is to plant some Network State on it.
https://universeodon.com/@cryptadamist/113800921537248238
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@cryptadamist@universeodon.com @pluralistic@mamot.fr oh I know. I've been following the antics of Dryden Brown and Praxis Nation.
Dryden initially wanted to find land in the Mediterranean for Praxis, but he didn't succeed. If he can get his fascist paws on Greenland, it will be fucking awful. I don't think Denmark is going to let that happen, however.
https://www.praxisnation.com/news/declaration-of-ascent
This is so fucking cringe.
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@Grey @pluralistic yeah none of this is happening but hopefully they'll waste time on it.
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@cryptadamist@universeodon.com you might find this site informative: https://www.vcinfodocs.com/
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@pluralistic Of course my family was more "libertarian" but always voted republican because they were "against" "big government". They didn't believe in hierarchies, they were just tricked into thinking that the conservatives would reduce government hierarchy. There there was the abortion issue which they voted on based on bad science and arguments that it was murder. When I found out about 5 years ago that most conservatives are in fact hierarchical it broke my brain. No one I knew that voted republican thought that way in my small town, or at least they never said it out loud.
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"Libertarians" are hierarchical, they just prefer to whitewash their hierarchality as "meritocracy." While meritocracy is probably a lesser evil than nepotism, I insist on distrusting anything that ends in -ocracy. Except (maybe) democracy.
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@pluralistic
"It will take many years for American-born workers to be so brutalized and broken that they capitulate to the working conditions that American guest workers and undocumented workers accept, and bosses are impatient."
Actually, it isn't. Look at Alabama's use of Slavery via Prisoners. They work outside jobs for little yo no pay, have no benefits or protection, and are punished with torture if they refuse to work.
DJT simply needs to round up the American workers, suspended Habeous Corpus and fully implement the 13th Amendment, just like after reconstruction.
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@pluralistic Aye, the coalition of total cunts.
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@pluralistic
It helps that we have a system with almost zero consequences for not delivering on your promises, especially if they're mutually exclusive.
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@pluralistic
Coalition of negatives 101! :ablobcatknitsweats:
Plus, I have to appreciate an absolutely stellar illustration.
You must pay the artist very well for all this wonderful work. ;)
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@pluralistic Orrr...allow a billionaire who has his filthy fingers in everything that requires security clearances to use his apparatus to electronically stuff ballot boxes with bullet ballots. Tada!!! You win!!!
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text/gemini
