Conservatives, COVID, Agency and Autism, some insights into political worldviews

[Rev. Rye]

So, I was watching Hannah and Jake take on Dave Rubin's new book (it's come up in two videos so far, but I can't remember which ones), and Hannah mentioned a study that explained how to get conservatives to take COVID more seriously: give the virus agency.

Since they didn't actually give a link to the study, I had to find it myself. And here it is.

The abstract:

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic, political ideology has been perhaps the strongest predictor of consumers’ perceptions of the coronavirus’s threat. This article demonstrates that differences between conservatives’ and liberals’ responses to COVID-19 are mitigated when people perceive the virus itself to have agency. We propose that conservatives are generally more sensitive to threats that are relatively high (vs. low) in agency. Consequently, we find that greater perceived agency of the coronavirus increases its perceived threat among conservatives but not liberals, and that this interaction is driven by differences the tendency to attribute responsibility to agential entities.

And a lightbulb started to go off in my head. I find that, in practice, one of the defining aspects of conservatism (far more than things like an obsession with small government or even tradition) is an emphasis on hierarchy. But one thing I keep noticing when I look at how conservatives talk about things like race, poverty, gender, and the like is how incapable they are at engaging with the ideas of "people are influenced by forces outside their control in ways that aren't easily solved by giving the Republicans more power." For one example, take this video of Ben Shapiro "debunking" a famous video about systemic racism:



For one example, the first point of the video is how systemic racism is perpetuated by the legacy of redlining and schools being funded by property taxes. How does Benny-boy respond to this? Give Jamal school vouchers so he can go to Kevin's school, of course! Whatever you think of school vouchers, this might be an okay solution if we're talking about one case, but this doesn't fix the fact that his neighbours still have to go to the same shitty school as they always have. And if they all manage to do so (which is not very feasible), well, given that there's a sudden influx of students who haven't gotten as far ahead as the students who are already there, it's kind of hard to not see this as like Camp of the Saints except it's actually plausible and not the Robot Monster of nightmare racial scenarios. Vaush has a good video demolishing this one, and he goes into detail about why he's wrong. 



And this is a shockingly common phoenomenon on the right. The old argument about how black people make up 13% of America's population and commit 50% of the crime, for instance. It's brought up so often that it's not only become a meme, but has turned into shorthand: 13/50. And while it's often brought up, it's alarmingly rare for the people who do so to try and figure out why this is the case, mostly because the answers either boil down to "black people are just naturally stupid and violent" or "A long history of racist policies has made this the case." The former is still too socially unacceptable for most people to say in public, and the latter is, for whatever reason, anathema to the right. Why? Are they explicitly racists (either trying to hide their power levels, not bothering to do so, or closeted even to themselves)? Do they just think the well-being of a large section of the African-American community is an acceptable sacrifice on the altar of small government? Are they arguing in bad faith? Are they just lazy? But with that paper, another possibility came to my mind: are their minds legitimately blind to the idea that political problems might be caused by factors bigger than personal agency?

It makes a bit more sense to me, largely because I'm on the autism spectrum. Before I should go on, I should point out that every case of autism is different. It's a spectrum that covers everything from a physicist whose contributions to the discipline rival Einstein's, but lacks social skills to some people with more profound cases that, to neurotypicals, don't seem capable of much of everything. In my case, I'm pretty damn high functioning, and it took a LONG time to get a hold of many of the social graces that neurotypical society takes for granted, and in many cases I still don't get why people don't like some things. And sometimes, you're going out to a restaurant with your writing group, you go to the bathroom, find some idiot has tossed a condom in the toilet, and you're so pissed off at the stupidity of the act that the next time someone asks you something, you forget that maybe yelling about the idiot who tossed something that isn't supposed to be flushable down the toilet is probably not good form at a restaurant. Or maybe you see someone and it might take a while for you to figure out whether the noise they're making is crying or laughter. Point is, even after 31 years of living with autism and the rest of the human race, often, just being a part of society is like being thrust into a foreign land where everyone fluently speaks a language you might have studied for a semester or two. And, of course, sometimes, it's, well:




(Also, as an ironic note, one of the voices of The Brain would grow up to be Steven Crowder. Fortunately, that was only in seasons 5 and 6, and this was season 13.)

And now I can't help but wonder if there's something similar going on with the right. Yes, I know that autism does not equal conservatism, and I, as a socialist with an ASD, know that full well. But maybe something similar is going on with many conservatives when presented with issues that aren't easily explained by personal agency. And if you try and explain how, for instance, the legacy of policies like redlining and the war on drugs are still perpetuating oppression even though the Civil Rights Act of 1965 was passed 56 years ago, it may as well make as much sense to them as telling them "GREAT NIGHT FOR A BANANA FIGHT, RIGHT?"

I'm not sure if this is nature (like some sort of neurological issue that predisposes people to think in a certain way) or just the result of social conditioning that renders thinking beyond personal agency extremely difficult, and I think that this would definitely need more research to be definitively proven either way (although, that said, I highly doubt that it's going to come down to 100% nature, and just fitting conservatism in the "neurological disorder" box really rubs me the wrong way, especially as someone who has an ASD and isn't conservative.) But I think this does help explain why the right has such a difficult time engaging with the whole idea of systemic problems.

[Belacqua]

...social conditioning that renders thinking beyond personal agency extremely difficult...

An interesting theory. Something you could do a lot of research on.

My first reaction is to wonder whether this is more prominent among conservatives. It may be common on both sides. 

For example, I've read that two-thirds of Democrats believe that Hillary lost because of election interference by Russia -- even though no one has ever proved there was any such influence at a significant level. It may be that they found the theory of personal agency (i.e. evil Putin) more easy to understand than more complex ideas about the economic and social factors leading to Trump's victory. Certainly the news people who want to dumb things down prefer to blame some evil agent, but this seems to be true at both MSNBC and Fox. No one has spread more foolish Russia-bashing than Rachel Maddow. 

It may be that such thinking among conservatives annoys us more, just because they are so generally annoying to lefties like you and me.

[Rev. Rye]

Admittedly, my argument was specifically about an apparent system-blindness that seems to make it difficult to understand what's even happening with given issues or what political opponents are even trying to say when they talk about them.

[Belacqua]

Admittedly, my argument was specifically about an apparent system-blindness that seems to make it difficult to understand what's even happening with given issues or what political opponents are even trying to say when they talk about them.

Yes, I think that such filters or blindness-inducing preconceptions are important things to identify. And I think that a tendency to oversimplify by blaming a simple scapegoat is always a danger.

It's true politically, and in the atheist/religious arguments, as well.

You are tougher than I am, if you can sit through those Ben Shapiro videos!

[The Grand Nudger]

They're capable of accepting that factors beyond personal agency are effective and extremely difficult to remedy. They just think it's happening to them, not the other guy. Shapiro types are easy, they essentially unwrap themselves. He's stated that he doesn't think that there is any racism embedded in us law, but boy oh boy is he worried about the "polarization" of anti-racism. Yeah, heaven forfend the us be separated into two halves, one of them american - the other full of ben shapiro.

White victimization has become a fundamental article of conservative ideology.

[Rev. Rye]

Admittedly, my argument was specifically about an apparent system-blindness that seems to make it difficult to understand what's even happening with given issues or what political opponents are even trying to say when they talk about them.

Yes, I think that such filters or blindness-inducing preconceptions are important things to identify. And I think that a tendency to oversimplify by blaming a simple scapegoat is always a danger.

It's true politically, and in the atheist/religious arguments, as well.

You are tougher than I am, if you can sit through those Ben Shapiro videos!

Vaush helps.