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http://grist.org/politics/david-roberts-explains-postmodern-conservatism-in-36-tweets/
Poll Results
| Option | Votes |
| Idea that tech+sci advanced society could be dragged down by what is effectively a large-scale cult seems unthinkable | 2 |
| And simple morality tales will always yield more motivated, organized constituencies than "it’s complicated" | 2 |
| Oh hell, 26. Problem is, this is not a quirk of the American right but a feature of conservative psychology more broadly | 1 |
| The right has realized that if you just brazen it out, there’s no authority that can "settle the argument." N | 1 |
| The key is just to brazen it out, to be unaffected by social disapprobation or scolding | 1 |
| So there will only be increasing impetus for cons to retreat into fantasy, into simple morality tales & ideological tru | 0 |
| And I mean "unthinkable" literally — media/political elites do not allow themselves to consider it. Cling to | 0 |
| But it’s time to start thinking it. Can’t let the ship sink while we insist, "everything’s fine, this will work it | 0 |
| Problem is, every institution & practice in US politics is designed *not* to acknowledge radical break in politics. Des | 0 |
| Hard to even envision, at this point, what it would look like for elites to say, "enough." The both-sides men | 0 |
| I trust it’s obvious how all this applies to climate change, but 25 is probably long enough for a tweet essay | 0 |
| See: the way the right’s nihilistic oppositionalism has redounded entirely to Obama’s detriment. Low-info voters can’t | 0 |
| Modern science is all about probabilities; modern global problems all about uncertainties and risks | 0 |
| If US right is unique, it is only in that structure of US gov’t makes it virtually impossible for citizens to assign re | 0 |
| All of this is why I think the Halbig fight is a kind of rubicon. If right can brazen through this, that’s it -- no res | 0 |
| But conservative psychology is notoriously averse to ambiguity. Likes clean lines, hierarchy, clear divisions of good & | 0 |
| IOW, the very nature of global, interconnected, complex modern life rubs conservatives the wrong way (& will more & mor | 0 |
| Right has systematically and progressively destroyed the very notion of a nonpartisan arbiter of information | 0 |
| Default hope among smarter lefties seems to be that right’s strategy will just burn itself out - but it doesn’t seem to | 0 |
| Clinging to standards just seems to lead to sputtering losses. But jettisoning them leads to law of the jungle - fight | 0 |
| The implications are epistemologically radical, but it has taken the right a while to truly embrace them. Held back by | 0 |
| The Halbig argument, in my mind, marks the point at which the right finally & completely embraced postmodernism | 0 |
| It’s like pointing to an apple and saying, "this is an orange." It takes practice to train your mind to be ab | 0 |
| You have to convince yourself, not so much that an apple is an orange, but that there is no such thing as what the obje | 0 |
| Or rather, that on the question of what the object is, there are *only* competing answers — no objective fact of the ma | 0 |
| As you get used to thinking this way, you get more bold, moving from highly contestable interpretations to flat matters | 0 |
| Halbig is endpoint of that process: arguing that a law says something that literally everyone involved knows it doesn’t | 0 |
| In this way every dispute, even over matters of fact, becomes a contest of power — loudest, best funded, most persisten | 0 |
| Most on left are congenitally unable to think this way; still vulnerable to scolding, to exhortations to "be reaso | 0 |
| Danger for the right, obviously, is that once you lose your mooring to nonpartisan epistemological standards, you are a | 0 |
| There are no signs or markers against which to steer. Epistemology becomes competing tantrums. Projection & reality blur | 0 |
| You start thinking you really can "make your own reality," forgetting there’s anything rigid in the world tha | 0 |
| It can be a successful short-term political strategy, but governing a country that way is disastrous, as history repeat | 0 |
| The dilemma the left faces: Cling to standards of reason & discourse the other side rejects, or "join 'em" — | 0 |
| It’s really difficult to see how these trendlines stop or reverse, absent some serious exogenous shock | 0 |
― reggie (qualmsley), Tuesday, 12 May 2015 14:59 (nine years ago) link
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