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.
6 comments:
Just thinking out loud, here, so it may come to nothing, but:
Conservatives hate the new, sort of definitionally. So maybe conservatives shudder at new outrages, but then it wears off. And, if you're looking for shuddersome, it helps if the issue is intrinsically visceral. That largely means sex or violence.
On the sexuality front, by now, promiscuity, homosexuality, transexuality, and pronoun games are all old hat. Something new is "needed."
On the violence front, new people to beat up hardly seems possible, so maybe new forms of violence would take the form of, I dunno, elective surgery or something. (It's not like I want to help, here.)
At least some of the Never-Trump conservatives came to it from the "purely social [he]-is-beneath-consideration" standpoint. If their reaction to Trump isn't a shudder, nothing is.
I never saw any actual shudders, but I imagine you are right.
Yet they choose the purely social she-is-beneath-consideration as a primary means of persuasion anyway.
The shudder, eyeroll, sarcasm, etc. are infuriating to opponents. These are emotive value statements that make clear that the speaker starts from a definition of Trump (or whoever/whatever) as bad. It's like a mathematical identity or a statement of faith and is not subject to rational refutation. Conservatives aren't immune to making this kind of values statement, but lefties seem much more likely to do it and also to respond favorably to other people on their side who do it. It's the main method of the lefty comedians, for example. I don't think it plays well with many readers/listeners who are not already on their side.
A corollary of all of this is that it seems that political arguments that are framed in empirical terms, subject to testing and falsification, tend to be conservative.
Good observation. Shuddering and eye-rolling are decidedly liberal. Conservatives more often go in for hot indignation. These are all ways of pointing out rule breaking, the former rule breaking by proles, the latter rule breaking by fancy folk who think they are above the rules. This is why liberals so often sound patronizing, why conservatives so often sound angry.
Shuddering and eye-rolling make me think about what Lewis wrote about Flippancy in Screwtape Letters. You remember that he wrote: “Among flippant people the Joke is always assumed to have been made. No one actually makes it; but every serious subject is discussed in a manner which implies that they have already found a ridiculous side to it.” Shuddering and eye-rolling assumes that the political critique has been made, although no one actually makes it; it is a manner that implies the shuddering eye-roller and his audience both see the ignorance or immorality of the politician or policy in question.
Good pickup from Screwtape. I imagine that is where I originally learned the concept back in the 70s and I should have included exactly that quote here.
Post a Comment