In my last post, I talked some about how, for me, feminism is an inseparable part of liberal politics, and an invaluable tool for understanding that a lot of folks just skip over. And then, fortuitously, I read this post of Sean Quinn’s at FiveThirty Eight about why people become Republicans. He links the vicious, irrational loathing of the federal government that he saw at CPAC with his irritating conflict over $7 worth of train fare with the bureaucrats covering their asses at the Metro, and suggests that is is a major reason people are vulnerable to crazed anti-government propaganda. He’s got a point, and I’ve said stuff like it in the past—-people hate speed limits and filling out tax forms, and if they’re gullible, stupid people you can easily channel that frustration into blind hatred. But this explanation really only goes so far, because it fails to address two major flaws in the non-reasoning that are glaring enough that even the people having “Tea Parties” should be able to see them. Sean deals with one—-if bureaucracy bothers you that much,* then it’s fucking bone stupid to hate the government and worship corporations, who have the government beat in the sucky customer service department beyond a shadow of a doubt. Sean treats the frustrations as equal, but there’s no way. The government doesn’t outsource call centers to India, for instance, hoping that language and cultural barriers between customer service and customers will force the customers to give up seeking real service in despair, while also exploiting cheaper labor. Bureaucrats in the government might be bored and covering their own asses, but in general I’ve found they’re likelier to be mellow than corporate ones, probably because they get paid a living wage and have health care benefits, and are not given demoralizing faux-friendly scripts to use, but are expected to be smart enough to speak with you without having someone monitoring every syllable. If I call the IRS to get some info on my tax return, they don’t heave a painful sigh and try to upsell me on something that they know I won’t buy, and that they’ll get in trouble for being unable to sell to me. On the whole, dealing with government bureaucrats is a lot less horrible.
The other thing that’s missing is the fact that conservatives don’t actually hate the federal government’s massive power if it’s used towards their ends. The federal ability to tax citizens and streamline that money into the coffers of Halliburton and Blackwater doesn’t seem to bother right wing warriors, and certainly the all-out worship of the military is an important aspect of right wing mythology. True, the Bush administration took the anti-government, pro-corporate ideology so far that they tried to privatize the military, but I don’t think your average wingnut is cognizant of the extent of that problem, and generally they think that the Army, Navy, etc. are the best thing that’s ever happened in the history of things that have happened. I personally can’t think of a better example of federal power than the military, so clearly it’s not, for wingnuts, strictly a hostility to federal power.
Really, the demonization of federal power makes no sense if you think it’s primary and prejudices like sexism and racism are secondary. Sean doesn’t say that, but he comes close, saying: