You Can't Argue With A Shudder

I have a friend who I discussed politics with in the early 90s. She told me that her parents "loved Pat Buchanan" and she shuddered while smiling a bit.  I had not long been conservative, so I was suspicious of Buchanan myself, so I understood her regarding him as thoroughly beyond the pale, but I noted the shudder. He was nowhere near shudder category for me. She would also make her points by rolling her eyes as well, as did my brother, who had a Jon Stewart caliber eye-roll.

It pays to notice that shuddering is not actually an intellectual argument, but it is a powerful social argument. Because it is sometimes entirely involuntary, it carries the message of "any decent person feels this way." But shuddering is not always involuntary.  It can be consciously initiated, after which the remainder is involuntary, mimicking the full involuntary nature. These semiotics circulate among groups, so that a shudder or something like it becomes not merely an acceptable but a preferred response.

We had lunch last week and one of us mentioned JD Vance.  She shuddered.  I asked why she hated him, and she gave an answer that made some plausible sense, but was thoroughly unconnected to any disgust or horror response.  It was a mere disagreement. I concluded that she has some other reason for her disgust that she did not say.  Perhaps she is herself unaware of her true motive. As she shudders at the mention of a large percentage of her political opponents, that may be the bulk of it, but the "childless cat-lady" incident, which had mentioned when it happened months ago, may represent the type of disagreement she has which is especially visceral.

The list of who conservatives disagree with is long, including each other. But I can't think of anyone who is regularly in shudder category for them.  My claim that liberalism is primarily a social position would fit with that - eye rolls are less common, and shudders nonexistent. The liberals who use them are often fully capable of intellectual arguments. Jon Stewart can do that well when he chooses to, for example. Yet they choose the purely social she-is-beneath-consideration as a primary means of persuasion anyway.

Yet that can't be.  There must be someone conservatives shudder at.