This is one of your best articles yet, Anu. And you just convinced me I need to read Original Sin. I thought it was just about Biden's decline & the coverup but apparently it's about a lot more including the family's corruption. Adding this to my Christmas wish list!
I've never been entirely convinced that Biden was the only Democrat who could have beaten Trump in 2020. I backed Klobuchar until she dropped out, and I still think she could have won. She combined populism and moderation in a way that foreshadowed Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden.
Many on the left talk about Sanders as the left's natural answer to Trump, but all Trump would have had to do to beat him (in either 2016 or 2020) was yell "socialist!" and point to the taxes Sanders would have imposed (on everyone, not just the rich) to pay for single payer, free college, and renewables.
In any case, Biden definitely shouldn't have run for a second term. I just started reading Original Sin, and already my jaw has hit the floor multiple times. Then, even if only one or two Democrats had run against Harris in the primaries, she at least would have been toughened up and savvier by the time she was facing Trump.
I think the sanders question is still debatable - have you seen definitive numbers about whether Bernie had enough people who would have voted for Trump? I’m not sure that socialism would have scared populists away as much as it might have scared away college educated people. Original Sin though convinced me that the Biden administration has no claim to morality. Happy reading? I’d like to know what you think after.
I'll let you know my take when I've finished Original Sin. Hopefully I won't be writing from a hospital with my jaw wired shut because of all the times it's dropped to the floor. But whatever his moral failings, I would have voted for a blind, deaf, and semi-comatose Biden over Trump. January 6 was all the reason I needed.
From what I've glimpsed, the vast majority of Sanders voters in 2016 backed Clinton. (I've always thought she could have won if she hadn't said "basket of deplorables.")
You're right that many PMC types would have been scared away by Sanders - there certainly would have been fewer Romney-Sanders than Romney-Clinton voters. But I remember the reports of pro-Trump Hispanic voters in 2020 (especially in Florida) invoking anti-socialism as a reason to back him, even when he was facing Biden (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/14/latino-voters-2020-election-524190).
Outside educated millennials and Gen Z, I doubt the crisis of capitalism has made people less opposed to socialism and higher taxes on themselves. The middle class socialism that appeals in deep blue cities is different from heartland populist sentiment. Anger at economic and cultural elites doesn't easily translate into support for big government programs everyone has to pay for.
Plus, there's immigration. The way Sanders reversed himself after he called open borders a Koch brothers idea showed just how powerful left-wing sentiment on immigration was becoming among Democrats and in progressive media. Even though neither Clinton nor Sanders favored open borders, the mere fact that Trump wanted less immigration gave him an edge on that issue over any Democrat.
As always, bold and incisive. Over six weeks of reading Anuradha’s essays and comments, my judgement of her ideas (the writing is consistently superb) evolved from “interesting but questionable” to “some solid positions” to “thoroughly persuasive and vitally important.” Hopefully upgrading my subscription today will help protect and magnify her desperately needed critical voice.
Thank you, Patrick, for sticking with me and for your pledge of support; it means a lot.! Curious what you found yourself strongly disagreeing with versus agreeing with.
You strengthened what I already held tepidly, that modern feminism is obsolete, that discrimination in the workplace, for example, is not a significant problem. I appreciated your observation, consistent with my professional experience, that men are happy to hire, mentor, and promote women. (Many people on the Left fail to recognize that businesses—capitalistic, competitive enterprises—cannot afford to neglect talent because of prejudice.)
Initially, I was skeptical of your warning about the “feminization” of organizations and society. Likewise, I resisted the idea that feminism is the primary pathogen on the Left, not merely another symptom. Your arguments and persistence, however, along with reading other heterodox thinkers and observing the real world, won me over.
A unique and important aspect of your work is highlighting the personal toll (e.g., depression—something I know intimately) of wallowing in victimhood. Furthermore, your example of standing unapologetically in the face of invective inspires.
I don’t know about the Hindu "thing." In another lifetime, perhaps. Seriously, though, your experience is interesting. I’m curious: do you believe mythologically, or literally? For reference, I am an atheist, former Evangelical Christian.
Do you find yourself naturally rooting for the underdog team in sporting events? As the winning team starts to dominate there is something in our evolutionary psychology that causes us to become stronger advocates for the strongest being defeated. The exception is when you are a true fan of a team. When you have true affection for your team, then you are happiest when that team crushes their opponent.
Canadians were so offended by Trump's "51st" state" comments that they voted again for a left authoritarian politician because he opposed Trump. This love of tribe, team, country, culture... it is an emotional thing... it isn't often rational. As with all decisions made on emotion and not pragmatic considerations, they are prone to being mistakes.
It seems to me that this is all just tribal evolutionary behavior. The first is a twitch of ours to prevent the consolidation of too much winning by other members of the tribe... because it threatens tyranny. The second is simply a tribal tendency... people will always be stronger advocates for the group they feel the strongest emotional belonging to.
Teddie Roosevelt warned us of the dangers of the hyphenated American. He was referring to this second tendency... where immigrants maintained their emotional connection to their home country, their home culture, people like them... and not America in general.
My observation of Democrats is that they are the cohort of people owning weaker emotional regulation capability. Science has confirmed this to be a thing... and a gender thing too with females more likely to own emotional regulation deficiencies relative to males. This challenge is compounded by their secularism... their lack of grounding moral philosophy of religion to help them understand and order their thoughts and behavior while dealing with the normal flood of human emotional reactions.
Our most educated and well-off elites are ironically also the most emotionally uncontrolled. They are the most apt to have their thoughts and behaviors influenced by evolutionary biology... and it often looks like hysteria and mass psychosis to the rest of us being more aware of the emotional tug, but able to power through with rational moral considerations and tradeoff analysis.
Just look at the trendline for pride of country. https://news.gallup.com/poll/692150/american-pride-slips-new-low.aspx Only 36% of Democrats claim to be. Conversely, 92% of Republicans are proud. And the Republican trendline remains relatively consistent even when Democrats are in political power... falling to a low of 84% when Joe Biden was in office and we were dealing with a global pandemic. Democrats have always been less proud, but not by much until 2015 when their love of country plummeted.
Democrats are the people that don't feel like they fit in, or that don't believe that they have been provided enough to meet their expectations and are resentful about it. Ironically, they also tend to be the upper-class... the people that have the most. But science has proved that having more results in wanting more... and having stronger resentment when more is not available. People that have less also want more, but just a little more.
That is the political filtering that has taken place. Democrats are the most well off, the most secular, the most resentful... they don't have a strong enough emotional connection to their country... and they cannot stop rooting for the underdog even when doing so harms their own country.
Some people think that the left is using multiculturalism in a malicious/subversive way. I see it differently: multiculturalism is a natural worldview for people insulated by wealth and privilege who’ve been taught to value superficial diversity and are unaware of the downsides of other cultures (because they haven’t experienced them). It’s easy to believe that everyone just wants status and money and will be outwardly nice when everyone in one’s milieu only wants status and money and is outwardly nice.
“The left… remains spectatorial rather than agentic in achieving our country.”
Bingo. People have gotten so used to virtue signaling and displaying opinions and relying on massive bureaucracies and programs to meet their needs that they’ve forgotten that were supposed to BUILD changes in the world-with our selves and families and communities. So many on the left see ‘politics’ as a matter of posting and liking and voting. They’ve forgotten the fact that America allows you to actually intervene in society in real and active ways. This seems insufficient to many because it doesn’t involve compulsion: volunteering and building and organizing doesn’t allow you to control the speech or behavior of others, or take their money. But that’s why it’s such a beautiful option!
This is one of your best articles yet, Anu. And you just convinced me I need to read Original Sin. I thought it was just about Biden's decline & the coverup but apparently it's about a lot more including the family's corruption. Adding this to my Christmas wish list!
Thanks! Your jaw will repeatedly drop just fair warning. Good thing you don’t live here.
I've never been entirely convinced that Biden was the only Democrat who could have beaten Trump in 2020. I backed Klobuchar until she dropped out, and I still think she could have won. She combined populism and moderation in a way that foreshadowed Gluesenkamp Perez and Golden.
Many on the left talk about Sanders as the left's natural answer to Trump, but all Trump would have had to do to beat him (in either 2016 or 2020) was yell "socialist!" and point to the taxes Sanders would have imposed (on everyone, not just the rich) to pay for single payer, free college, and renewables.
In any case, Biden definitely shouldn't have run for a second term. I just started reading Original Sin, and already my jaw has hit the floor multiple times. Then, even if only one or two Democrats had run against Harris in the primaries, she at least would have been toughened up and savvier by the time she was facing Trump.
I think the sanders question is still debatable - have you seen definitive numbers about whether Bernie had enough people who would have voted for Trump? I’m not sure that socialism would have scared populists away as much as it might have scared away college educated people. Original Sin though convinced me that the Biden administration has no claim to morality. Happy reading? I’d like to know what you think after.
I'll let you know my take when I've finished Original Sin. Hopefully I won't be writing from a hospital with my jaw wired shut because of all the times it's dropped to the floor. But whatever his moral failings, I would have voted for a blind, deaf, and semi-comatose Biden over Trump. January 6 was all the reason I needed.
From what I've glimpsed, the vast majority of Sanders voters in 2016 backed Clinton. (I've always thought she could have won if she hadn't said "basket of deplorables.")
You're right that many PMC types would have been scared away by Sanders - there certainly would have been fewer Romney-Sanders than Romney-Clinton voters. But I remember the reports of pro-Trump Hispanic voters in 2020 (especially in Florida) invoking anti-socialism as a reason to back him, even when he was facing Biden (https://www.politico.com/news/2021/12/14/latino-voters-2020-election-524190).
Outside educated millennials and Gen Z, I doubt the crisis of capitalism has made people less opposed to socialism and higher taxes on themselves. The middle class socialism that appeals in deep blue cities is different from heartland populist sentiment. Anger at economic and cultural elites doesn't easily translate into support for big government programs everyone has to pay for.
Plus, there's immigration. The way Sanders reversed himself after he called open borders a Koch brothers idea showed just how powerful left-wing sentiment on immigration was becoming among Democrats and in progressive media. Even though neither Clinton nor Sanders favored open borders, the mere fact that Trump wanted less immigration gave him an edge on that issue over any Democrat.
As always, bold and incisive. Over six weeks of reading Anuradha’s essays and comments, my judgement of her ideas (the writing is consistently superb) evolved from “interesting but questionable” to “some solid positions” to “thoroughly persuasive and vitally important.” Hopefully upgrading my subscription today will help protect and magnify her desperately needed critical voice.
Thank you, Patrick, for sticking with me and for your pledge of support; it means a lot.! Curious what you found yourself strongly disagreeing with versus agreeing with.
You strengthened what I already held tepidly, that modern feminism is obsolete, that discrimination in the workplace, for example, is not a significant problem. I appreciated your observation, consistent with my professional experience, that men are happy to hire, mentor, and promote women. (Many people on the Left fail to recognize that businesses—capitalistic, competitive enterprises—cannot afford to neglect talent because of prejudice.)
Initially, I was skeptical of your warning about the “feminization” of organizations and society. Likewise, I resisted the idea that feminism is the primary pathogen on the Left, not merely another symptom. Your arguments and persistence, however, along with reading other heterodox thinkers and observing the real world, won me over.
A unique and important aspect of your work is highlighting the personal toll (e.g., depression—something I know intimately) of wallowing in victimhood. Furthermore, your example of standing unapologetically in the face of invective inspires.
I don’t know about the Hindu "thing." In another lifetime, perhaps. Seriously, though, your experience is interesting. I’m curious: do you believe mythologically, or literally? For reference, I am an atheist, former Evangelical Christian.
Thanks for this Anuradha. Very well done.
Do you find yourself naturally rooting for the underdog team in sporting events? As the winning team starts to dominate there is something in our evolutionary psychology that causes us to become stronger advocates for the strongest being defeated. The exception is when you are a true fan of a team. When you have true affection for your team, then you are happiest when that team crushes their opponent.
Canadians were so offended by Trump's "51st" state" comments that they voted again for a left authoritarian politician because he opposed Trump. This love of tribe, team, country, culture... it is an emotional thing... it isn't often rational. As with all decisions made on emotion and not pragmatic considerations, they are prone to being mistakes.
It seems to me that this is all just tribal evolutionary behavior. The first is a twitch of ours to prevent the consolidation of too much winning by other members of the tribe... because it threatens tyranny. The second is simply a tribal tendency... people will always be stronger advocates for the group they feel the strongest emotional belonging to.
Teddie Roosevelt warned us of the dangers of the hyphenated American. He was referring to this second tendency... where immigrants maintained their emotional connection to their home country, their home culture, people like them... and not America in general.
My observation of Democrats is that they are the cohort of people owning weaker emotional regulation capability. Science has confirmed this to be a thing... and a gender thing too with females more likely to own emotional regulation deficiencies relative to males. This challenge is compounded by their secularism... their lack of grounding moral philosophy of religion to help them understand and order their thoughts and behavior while dealing with the normal flood of human emotional reactions.
Our most educated and well-off elites are ironically also the most emotionally uncontrolled. They are the most apt to have their thoughts and behaviors influenced by evolutionary biology... and it often looks like hysteria and mass psychosis to the rest of us being more aware of the emotional tug, but able to power through with rational moral considerations and tradeoff analysis.
Just look at the trendline for pride of country. https://news.gallup.com/poll/692150/american-pride-slips-new-low.aspx Only 36% of Democrats claim to be. Conversely, 92% of Republicans are proud. And the Republican trendline remains relatively consistent even when Democrats are in political power... falling to a low of 84% when Joe Biden was in office and we were dealing with a global pandemic. Democrats have always been less proud, but not by much until 2015 when their love of country plummeted.
Democrats are the people that don't feel like they fit in, or that don't believe that they have been provided enough to meet their expectations and are resentful about it. Ironically, they also tend to be the upper-class... the people that have the most. But science has proved that having more results in wanting more... and having stronger resentment when more is not available. People that have less also want more, but just a little more.
That is the political filtering that has taken place. Democrats are the most well off, the most secular, the most resentful... they don't have a strong enough emotional connection to their country... and they cannot stop rooting for the underdog even when doing so harms their own country.
Some people think that the left is using multiculturalism in a malicious/subversive way. I see it differently: multiculturalism is a natural worldview for people insulated by wealth and privilege who’ve been taught to value superficial diversity and are unaware of the downsides of other cultures (because they haven’t experienced them). It’s easy to believe that everyone just wants status and money and will be outwardly nice when everyone in one’s milieu only wants status and money and is outwardly nice.
“The left… remains spectatorial rather than agentic in achieving our country.”
Bingo. People have gotten so used to virtue signaling and displaying opinions and relying on massive bureaucracies and programs to meet their needs that they’ve forgotten that were supposed to BUILD changes in the world-with our selves and families and communities. So many on the left see ‘politics’ as a matter of posting and liking and voting. They’ve forgotten the fact that America allows you to actually intervene in society in real and active ways. This seems insufficient to many because it doesn’t involve compulsion: volunteering and building and organizing doesn’t allow you to control the speech or behavior of others, or take their money. But that’s why it’s such a beautiful option!
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/surveying-the-anti-patriotic-party