Have Differing Levels of National Pride & Shame Caused the Partisan Bubbles?
During some weekend, I stayed up until 4 in the morning digging a deep Google. I wanted to know “What do the American people want” then moved onto “What makes up American culture?”
Some arguments I’ve been having with a dude on social media inspired the inquiry. He consistently argued that policymakers should be conservative, especially with money, because they don’t know what the PEOPLE want. I had pointed out that Congressional staffers don’t really understand the American people and they're understaffed so maybe they should get more staff to figure out what the PEOPLE want. He kept arguing the conservative argument that money shouldn't be spent, and I pointed out that he was using circular reasoning. After all, how else will Congress know what people want without investing in the means to study the PEOPLE?
All that arguing had gotten me thinking and wondering about my first search string. That only yielded write ups of polls that addressed single issues. I wanted something a lot more general.
That's why I expanded the theme to culture. Results from that search came out too broad and general. Somewhat enlightening. Find the articles I posted to the social media group here. None of it provides any sense of urgency for posting here.
Then I stumbled onto the idea of “National identity”. Not bad progress from my search strings over the weekend. I couldn't find anything useful then, either. After all, Trump has made comments about how he feels that the American national identity gets changed by foreign influence and immigration. I got results but nothing concrete enough to explain what the American National Identity is except for that of the usual privilege: Judeo-Christian Greco-Roman cis-gendered hetero white. Nothing exciting or constructive.
I asked Google why social conservatives felt disrespected. It didn't come down to international respect (other than feeling that non-citizens need to “respect American sovereignity and law” by entering the country with the proper documents. . . But if that were the case, Trump would follow the rule of law, hire more judges, and not try all these crazy schemes to discourage immigration, but no).
Otherwise conservatives said they didn't want to be exposed to non-privileged or be talked down to by elitist liberals. That argument doesn't make sense to me either. If you deny respect, you show respect, and conservatives are the first to show disrespect. If it’s about a hierarchy with them at the top, that’s not looking for sincere respect. That's looking for dominance.
I may have found the answer to what conservatives want: National Pride. Podcast The Indicator episode ”Space Economics” brought up National Pride as one benefit of NASA’s success in the space race.
A web search brought a lot of consistent polls since the beginning of the decade that consistently showed that
All fine and good, but numbers can only tell you so much. A couple more searches focused on the above trends turned a couple interesting results:
These results don’t surprise me. They hadn’t boiled up to my attention in the past, but reality seems to fit the numbers on this one. All in all, conservatives tend to show more pathos about America while liberals can have a more measured, critical viewpoint. Stronger sentiments might even think conservative, bathos, and liberals, ashamed.
Conservatives fly the flag. They want to protect and strengthen the borders. Soldiers and police have their support, even if wars hasve stretched on forever and crime seems to increase (though facts and trends show that crime has generally gone down though murder rates get complicated. Conservatives remain pretty stubborn about “traditional” values that America, barring the blips of social progressivism in the ‘60s and the Obama years (some blips previously, too, but the ‘60s and Obama really push some issues forward that America didn't even consider before).
Politicians, bankers, bureaucrats, and other groups might get a share of scorn from conservatives. Conservatives have some good narratives about the corruptness inherent in positions such as those. Anyone can easily comb through American history to find such narratives, both real and made up like a conspiracy. You can probably just focus on electoral politics just before and during Andrew Jackson to see a bunch of narratives that fit into this zeitgeist.
Still conservatives carry on with their national pride, expressing it as much as they can, almost like the status or results of the country don’t matter. Whether out of power and not advancing their causes or in power and advancing their causes, conservatives have the compulsion to show their national pride. Have they made that national pride one if their causes?
Take a look at Colin Kaepernick and football players bowing during the anthem in protest of the treatment of black people by the police. Trump and conservatives use it as an opportunity to argue that supporting police and veterans during the anthem is ALL IMPORTANT (even though Trump offends the military is so many other ways. . .remember when he was speaking with veterans about Agent Orange and Full Metal Jacket or when he made a political attack on the Khan’s who participated at the Democratic National Convention?). To conservatives,having pride in the United States, no matter what, is more important than trying to make the nation better, trying to realize a reality that we can all be proud of.
The Kaepernick issue illustrates one reason why liberals may not feel the national pride that conservatives do. Making things worse, liberals can easily put the fault for their lack of national pride in the laps of conservatives, including how much importance that conservatives put into having national pride and supporting the nation, no matter what. I think this article, "Trump is making Americans see the U.S. the way the rest of the world already did", illustrates perfectly why many progressives and liberals don't feel much national pride better than any list of factors that I could list. Then add to that article: slavery, Native American genocide and land grabbing, and persecuting of other non-white people through just over two centuries of the existence of the United States.
In a way, progressives and liberals that criticize the conservatives and neo-liberals feel like the melancholy person who sees reality for what it is. Conservatives, on the other hand, have delusions of grandeur for the country, perceiving the rituals and traditions of the United States reflecting back that them the heritage that brought us here, the heritage that makes them proud. Conservatives find their heritage in the symbols of the United States:
Honestly, I can't think of much else (anyone want to add more in the comments?).
But the United States has a second heritage that motivates progressives and liberals:
I've exhausted my mind of other liberal/progressive things that I can recall. If anyone else has some good ideas, please add them to the comment section.
The Right in the United States focuses on a jingoistic exceptionalist image of strength so that we can impose our will onto the world. The Left wants to believe in a nurturing, pluralistic country/world that wants to get along, learn, discover, and grow while supporting each other. The Right wants to flex might and be imposing while the Left wants to welcome the outside in and develop peace on Earth.
As one of the articles I linked to, I want to propose that the Left should bring up more things that have happened, dreamed up, or can be thought about in the United States. Many people, especially non-white non-straight non-Christian non-male people have a lot to complain about. I don't think people who fit this category should feel the need to be grateful for living in the United States, for having a job, or anything like that. Some people do have a lot to be resentful about, I can understand that.
The United States does have elements to it for the Left to feel national pride about, though. Even though the United States still hasn't realized freedom and liberty for all, it has provided an inspiration to do so and to fight for human rights in the rest of the world (even though American Exceptionalism and American imperialism has tainted that image and ideas). I think the Left could do some soul searching of the United States to find more about it to be prideful over and to make us feel more comfortable about flying the American flag and displaying other symbols of the United States without feeling jingoistic or hokey. Admittedly, I would feel that way if I put the flag on display somewhere I work or live.
Does the differing levels of national pride and reason for pride in the Right and Left divide the two political sentiments? Has the pride on one side and shame on the other side caused partisan (media) bubbles to develop? Has the Right stopped seeing people on the Left as American because of the shame about America that the Left feels while Left can see images of how great American can be? Can the Left see the Right as anything more than jingoistic, scared people, even hateful people moping in victim culture?
What would happen if instead of asking ourselves, "What can we do to win, to defeat the other side?" or even "What can we do to defend ourselves, to get the other side to respect us as people?", we asked ourselves, "What can we do to make this country somewhere and something to be proud of? How can we come together to become a nation and create a state that provides inspiration rather than embarrassment? Who can work with or who can I reach out to to make this nation a better place rather than argue with to make it into the image of me and my own?" What could happen?
The articles I found during the late night Google deep dive exploring what Americans want or what is American culture:
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