Much of the discussion here misses the thrust of Haidt's "structurally stupid" model. Party X could have an utterly insane platform, but still not be structurally stupid, if it allowed its politicians and members to dissent from portions of that platform. Party Y could have a perfectly reasonable platform, but still be structurally stupid, if it required rigid and unquestioning adherence to every plank from all of its members. The "structurally" part doesn't mean that the platform is smart or stupid, but that the party itself is missing the element of internal dissent and criticism that could lead it to better ideas.
My main criticism of Haidt's position on this is its application. Pointing out that two Senators can dissent from the party leadership -- Senators Sinema and Manchin are the obvious cases -- doesn't mean that the Democratic party allows dissent generally. Let a Democrat say that he's pro-life, disagrees with affirmative action, or thinks believes that society needs to support male-female marriage specifically, and see how long he remains in good standing.
But let's suppose he's thinking about the factionalization in the Democratic party, such as the Squad vs. Speaker Pelosi, which might be seen as making it not "structurally stupid". Such factionalization also exists in the GOP, and is so deep-seated that the term "RINO" (Republican in Name Only) has been around for years to pinpoint it, long before Donald Trump fragmented the party further. Compare Romney and Boebert. If the factionalization of the Democratic party represents the dissent that could possibly make the Democratic party smarter, doesn't the factionalization of the Republican party represent the same thing on their side?
This leads me to think that Haidt knows his own party well but the opposing party only through stereotypes, which necessarily wipe out important distinctions -- and that suggests to me further that Haidt is living in a bubble that doesn't let in relevant information about the Republican party. I don't know him well enough to say, but it's possible that he has a personal level of structural stupidity that blocks out important information, thereby preventing him from seeing the full picture, and, because he's blocking that information out, he may _never_ see the full picture. I could hope otherwise, but that's what it looks like to me.
Ikr. I'm a big fan of Haidt's work to help kids and his ideas about reforming social media. But I think he's biased about the GOP. I also don't appreciate how he's always hating on Fox News. They have turned out to be right on many important news stories. I wonder if he has ever really watched it? I hope he's not like the people who criticize the Catholic church but have never attended one mass. Or worse, criticize a book without reading it. If he can't stomach Fox, he could always watch Fox Business. The stock market can't be biased.
Glenn - I'm here because you and John McWhorter had an honest discussion regarding Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Trayvon's death was tragic. The truth is out there, but the truth does not fit the current political agenda.
Glenn - what's up? Why do you give Jonathan Haidt a platform? Looks like you two had fun per the photo. Twice. This guy blames social media (and Republicans) for everything that's wrong in America - polarization, bullying, misinformation, Donald Trump, cancel culture, conspiracy theories, teenage depression – the list goes on and on. One can agree to a certain extent, but he's OTT.
Wait. I get it. Clicks.
“How Diverse Should Viewpoint Diversity Be?” received 44 likes and 85 tweets, er, comments. Whereas, “Turning Pain into Purpose” with the gracious Sylvia Bennett-Stone received only 9 comments (clicks). The disparity between what Haidt emits versus the inspirational work of Sylvia Bennett-Stone is not even close. America needs to hear more about Sylvia Bennett-Stone's work than Jonathan Haidt's rhetoric.
It’s over a year since Substack has become home to The Glenn Show. I'm a newbie on Substack just trying to figure out this thingy. To me, Substack appears to be just another form of Twitter. Your Q&A session is for subscribers only, but perhaps you could gently persuade TGS’s Creative Director Nikita Petrov to chime in now and then with the unpaid (cheap) commentors, like me. Otherwise the comments are nothing but a Twitter thread. Disappointing.
Perhaps you can secure former POTUS Obama for a podcast on The Glenn Show. The mansion in Hawaii should be done. You could cross-examine him, asking:
How many in this generation are we willing to lose to poverty or violence or addiction? How many? Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child - it's the courage to raise one.
I just had such a wicked thought. I'd love to see Glenn confront Obama about his silly remarks after Trayvon Martin and worrying about their daughters getting hassled by cops. That really gets him going. He was so disappointed. BHO only validated the false narrative of the street rioters instead of promoting peace and spoke not a word in support of law and order. It was a teachable moment.
While I appreciate Dr. Haidt's perspective on many things, I disagree with almost everything he says here.
Lets start with the notion of "structural insanity". The hypothesis that organizations which lack moderate voices acts in a stupid or insane way is a reasonable one, but the evidence that he provides that the congressional GOP is structurally insane - the reaction of the GOP to Donald Trump's conduct pertaining to the 2020 election - is actually rather bad.
First, what substantive actions does he expect Republicans in Congress to take to "hold Donald Trump to account"? Trump is not currently president. He is a private citizen, and our Constitution is (I think) fairly clear that it is not the job of Congress to go after private citizens.
Second, the idea that Trump's conduct around the 2020 election was beyond the pale, and thus in need of some for of censure, depends upon a simplistic take of that election that is out of step with the facts. I'm not saying Joe Biden didn't win, or that Trump handled the outcome perfectly, but there are enough serious critiques of the way in which the election proceeded that it's not crazy to doubt its results. The level of (publicly admitted!) coordination to prevent him from winning reelection means that *any* Republican presidential candidate is going to have to take election "fortification" seriously.
There are other areas, such as how the GOP of the present compares with its past, or the role of the political center, which I disagree but would need to ask him questions to better clarify the the nature of the disagreement.
I believe, even as a sympathetic third party, that Haidt really needs to explain "structural stupidity" in greater detail. Even after re-reading his article in the Atlantic, I am unclear how he defines the term. What does Haidt mean by contending that the "moderates" have been shot? I say that as one individual, a Republican Party member, and as a very unhappy Trump voter. Is Candace Owen a moderate? Is Tucker a moderate? Is Ron Johnson a moderate? And, Yes, I am assuming that "Lindsey" strives to even considered as an authentic Republican.
I am not a "Never Trumper," but I observe the obvious: Trump is shallow, intellectually unsophisticated, narrow-minded, and generally, uncouth. Trump does not have the intellect to replace, negate, and counter the resident members of the Swamp. Trump followed several progressively conservative policies, but he was defeated by the swap on so many levels and in so many arenas. Among the most egregious was his failure to share with John Solomon (and the press) the declassified documents that proved his innocence about Russiagate. Trump caved to Gina Haspel and the CIA. He remained clueless about Fiona Hill and others within his policy advisor group, a strategic blunder.
I do not know whether the election was "stolen" from Trump. Too many factual assessments remain unanswered about several states' election procedures. To me the question remains: How can any election be certified if there is no consensus about the final vote tally?
I respect much of Haidt’s work but some of his comments here about Republicans seem very wide of the mark to this political independent. He calls the party “insane” and says “There are no moderates left [in it].” But it is not the Republican Party that is facilitating and encouraging illegal immigration on a massive scale never seen before. And it is not the Republican Party that has thrown aside the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is replacing it with the overweening illegalities, hypocrisies and jargon of the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity” juggernaut. Not that the Republican Party looks all that great except by comparison with a Democratic Party in greater disrepair than at any time over at least half a century.
Perhaps Haidt’s vision of “moderate” corresponds to the agenda of the Anti-Defamation League, now run by Jonathan Greenblatt, a former operative in the Obama administration.
A bit more than a year ago I began learning about the degree to which a hyperpartisan and unethical ADL had penetrated K-12 public education systems in San Diego and elsewhere via its “No Place for Hate” program. It was a surprise to see how many people even in the Jewish community had low regard for the modern day ADL. My findings were published on the website of Californians for Equal Rights: Anti-Defamation League: A Compilation of Information on Its Political Nature (https://cferfoundation.org/get-adl-out-of-schools/). This was expanded, with some minor editorial changes, just a week ago. It consists of a critique of the Coordinators Handbook for ADL’s NPFH programs plus, without comment, excerpts from 106 articles about or mentioning ADL. A bit of a slog, even if you don’t go beyond the excerpts.
I’ve learned a lot from and am admirer of Jonathan Haidt. But I’m not sure his analysis of the difference between the parties, “structurally”, or in terms of their operational sanity works, even when limited to the federal level as he does. What’s the difference between a Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski in one party, versus a Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema in another? Both parties have purged their moderates both as retaliation for not complying with leadership and as part of the structural polarization of having to pander to more radical primary electorates. Of course this is most pronounced where districts can be Gerrymandered, but it’s still happening statewide in US Senate races, too. And not just because Trump, the singular bogeyman, is playing kingmaker in primaries (e.g. in Georgia he failed; in Ohio, Rob Portman’s replacement would have likely always been well to the populist right).
Re: Trump’s worst and most reckless moment, Mike Pence, who’d been derided as a pushover, did stand up to him. It’s in the Democrats’ interests to portray an entire party gone crazy, entirely enthralled by a madman would-be despot, and consumed at the base by Q-anon conspiracy theories and support for “insurrection”. Even Dems running the literal show were dead set on only amplifying and showcasing two Republicans who have become close political allies of theirs and who are distinguished by their own personal monomania re: destroying Trump. As much as Dems have suddenly fallen in love with her and try to promote her as a paragon political virtue, the rest of us know we’re still looking at Liz Cheney, scion of an actually far scarier right-wing Republican, and standard-bearer of a remorseless, relentless Neocon branch of the party enraged to have been mocked (finally!) and displaced, supplanted by Trump. I don’t even know how to begin to evaluate Adam Kinzinger, except to note his district is just far enough outside Chicago’s burbs to elect a moderate Republican, and his views on military intervention everywhere, all the time, seem to be in close alignment with Liz Cheney’s. There is a core point here I don’t dispute: yes, too many Republican leaders saw what Trump did to his 2016 primary opponents, the intensity of support he could command, and cravenly got on board with many of his excesses.
I’ll join others in saying I’m not quite sure how one can cleanly separate policy from the structural. The sense I honestly get sometimes is that for some leading academics coming from the left of center (as I always did, too) and living in NYC, condemning and dismissing basically the entirety of the Republican Party as a cult led by madman or an institution that’s structurally ceased being rational or reasonable, is like the initial price of admission to even have any standing or get any hearing from even the more open-minded and moderate in the deep blue milieu which comprises almost the water they’ve got to swim in, personally, professionally, as public intellectuals. This is the case even if one knows plenty of pro-business libertarians who teach at business schools, or makes an effort to cultivate a lbroader intellectual network. It still strikes me as a bit of an easy false equivalency. Something on the right has to be condemned as a fair handed equivalent. And it’s the entire other major party, the only realistic alternative to the party that’s achieved extreme cultural as well as political and policy hegemony over the geographic, cultural, and professional regions they inhabit.
But the Dems? No, they’re sane, reasonable, moderate, diverse in opinions and welcoming of debate? I’d disagree. There is no equivalent to Trump among the Dems. But we have to be honest about a party that has put Stacey Abrams on as high a pedestal as imaginable, based in large part on not only her identity but her shameless refusal to concede a very high-turnout statewide election she lost by a good fifty thousand votes. Why is her claim to fame Donald Trump’s claim to shame? She didn’t recklessly excite a crowd of true believers and encourage them to march on the state capitol. But her whole image and career (and personal windfall for what that’s worth) have been based on her pushing a divisive lie that only was an election stolen from her because she’s a black woman and her opponents don’t want black Georgians to be able to vote, and on the larger contention central to her party nationally, that we live in an emergency of revanchist white supremacist voter suppression, in which “our very democracy is at stake”. She’s even compared her cause to Ukrainians being slaughtered defending their homes and country. The chair of the Jan 6th Commission himself opposed certification of a Presidential election result he did not like. But for those of us who have spent decades as volunteers and activists and sometimes staffers within that very party and now feel politically homeless - it’s not because the party has remained intellectually diverse and welcoming of debate. I’m not sure how Haidt even draws a line between all of the institutions on the left he argues have become captured by very narrow and dogmatic ideologies, in part by expanding and attempting to enforce such dogma into all areas of public and private life, and the party which houses and increasingly panders to, depends on the zealotry and amplification, of those true believers and their institutional power. It’s been posited that many Republicans disagreed with Trump about various issues or means of pursuing them, but were afraid their political careers would be ended if they took a stand. I’m not sure how different that dynamic is among Democrats. Look at the crazy commitments Dem primary candidates made almost in lockstep, debate after debate. Was it really possible for a candidate to disagree politely but firmly and remain viable, after explaining why they didn’t support, say, removing any formal prohibition, any penalty, from crossing our borders without authorization - and to top it off, somehow guaranteeing full access to health care for any and all unauthorized border-crossers which many long-suffering American citizens do not have? Joe Manchin is a vestige, just as Susan Collins is a vestige. The energy, the ideological force, the base activists, and the rising and future leaders among the Dems are represented by ideas like: black Americans in 2021 are not and have never been free; any nominee to be Sec of Health and Human Services must first be vetted by a trans child. If that sounds out there, a distraction from the real guy in charge: common sense, middle of the road Joe Biden, I’d counter: look at why he was chosen and for what purpose. He’s to a large extent a figurehead who was meant to reassure by his familiar shtick as much of the political middle and unaffiliated voters as possible.
Here, I just get the impression Haidt is trying to force the present Democratic Party to fit a characterization it no longer does. One of the first things Joe Biden did in office was order that not only must every decision throughout every agency and every department of the federal government comply with a new “equity” regime, which imposes a new ideological schema and racial hierarchy not only throughout the federal government but seeks to impose it on any entities doing business with or receiving funds from the federal government. Sure, those are mainstream ideas on the left of center now. But that’s the same institutional left of center Haidt correctly describes as having gone crazy or become stupid. This is the full force of the federal government under what is supposed to be the most moderate, reasonable, centrist Dem’s administration, imposing and enforcing ideas from Ibram Kendi and embedding them not just in internal staffing decisions but throughout legislation proposed by the executive and passed by partisan majorities in Congress and signed by the President, expressly privileging certain racial groups and excluding others. They’re just getting started. Opposing defund the police? What about all of the White House meetings just last year in which top admins officials met with several of the leaders of top organizations pushing for defunding if not abolition. Just because Joe Biden finally very belatedly realizes that “defund the police” rhetoric and movement is not only extremely unpopular outside Dem activists but has done real damage to cities and the vulnerable people most directly exposed to exploding violent crime, and theatrically repeats “no, we’re going to fund the police, we’re going to fund them” does not mean that’s where he and his party have actually been on that issue and demand from the time it arose. Others have effectively listed further examples of just how crazy the supposedly sane, functioning, non-stupid party has behaved on key issue after after issue. How is such a sane, non-stupid party continually producing a combination such unhinged extremist rhetoric (precise timing and context matter a lot re: incitement, but Chuck Schumer sure sounded like he’d lost control and was indirectly with the crowd as his proxy physically threatening Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh) and extreme policies? On the other hand, look at the Trump Admin. In rhetoric, Trump was obviously both petty and divisive, to say the least. But I don’t remember him referring to up to half the country and all of the voters who strongly opposed him as being akin to if not literally domestic terrorists who needed to be tracked, censored, monitored, maybe imprisoned, using the combined weight of the federal government (most chillingly federal law enforcement and spy agencies), Big Tech, and mass media as amplifiers and propagandists. I don’t remember Trump relentlessly singling out one group by skin color and cheering on their demographic dilution and marginalization and scapegoating them for every problem in American life, past, present, or future, by endlessly conflating Americans who are opposed to him politically with actual violent white supremacists almost entirely of the distant past. I don’t remember Trump creating a “Misinformation Bureau” to generate politically targeted propaganda and track and monitor and marginalize if not censor opposing viewpoints and housing it within a huge department with vast law enforcement and domestic security powers. None of these actions taken by the Biden are normal. And I don’t mean “not moderate policywise”. They’re the fundamentally illiberal, despotic actions of a party that when in power increasingly treats political opponents as enemies of the state.
Policywise, there was much I strongly disagree with during the Trump Admin. Not surprising, given I’ve only volunteered for and donated to and occasionally worked a staff job for Democrats. But I also saw a lot of fairly mainstream conservative policy goals and accomplishments, as well as policies which proved broadly successful and popular in terms of the common material interests of most Americans (e.g. a rising standard of living that also benefited some of the lowest income Americans and included progress for some of the lower-wage workers of all colors or ethnicities).
One final point, and it’s hardly a novel one: I’m not sure framing our parties, institutions, voters, as mainly sitting on one side or another of a left-right, Dem-GOP dichotomy is the most insightful lens anymore. As many have posited, we are in a global moment in which elite institutional actors, who/which often transcend borders in their self-perception and goals, are both imposing ever-more sweeping and undemocratic policy agendas on publics, but are facing inchoate populist uprisings from publics who correctly object that they never democratically supported nor often even had a meaningful opportunity to deliberate and express a preference re: some of the most monumentally impactful policy changes imaginable. And global elite actors are certainly engaged in trying to scapegoat, smear, marginalize, and bypass these publics as ignorant, backwards, irrelevant. This is where much of the real tension in our society lies. Trump may largely be a phony populist who keyed in on some legit grievances being ignored almost everywhere else in our politics, or being held out of reach and determined by elites beyond public deliberation, and somewhat cynically echoing those grievances back. But it’s telling the answer from so many of Trump’s critics who say they only want a return to a “normal” “sane” “functioning” Republican Party really seems to mean they want truly dangerous corporatist Neocon authoritarians like the Cheneys back at the center of the party. Or they’re cool with a restoration in which more of the apparently now saintly Bushes are in charge. A GOP led by politicians of Mitch McConnell’s ilk entirely of by and for the corporate and upper middle class Republican business elite is reassuringly normal. I guess I’d ask: normal for whom? Maybe that’s a familiar GOP for your own party to usually oppose and occasionally work with, if you’re a very comfortable, established left of center academic or professional. But maybe that kind of leadership isn’t and wasn’t so normal and sane for the large swath of working poor and working class voters of both or neither party, who found themselves absolutely ignored but hammered (materially and in their standing as citizens) by the self-serving tacit consensus imposed by elites of both major parties around issues like immigration, trade, or even what it meant to be an American (cause mostly for unity and pride - or division and shame?)
We can all see our country is riven by extremes and is in political crisis and that many institutions seem to be behaving irrationally or at cross-purposes with their supposed missions (how about the chilling specter of an extreme-woke military brass which seems to advance by focusing on “white rage” seeing enemies within, but can’t manage a withdrawal or winning a war). But the insider-outsider frame sometimes captures more re: what fueled Trump’s rise and support for other at least nominal populists, here and in many other countries. The “normal” Republicans like GW Bush not only started senseless forever wars of choice, and justified torture on a large scale, opened black sites around the world, and ran renditions, and illegally spied on a law abiding public, and imposed an environment of intimidation and fear on critics of their wars. They also ignored the broader public including their base when it came to trade, immigration, and ever more reckless financialization of the economy - always choosing elite profits at the expense of battering their own core voters financially and leaving them to feel forgotten if not despised in their own country. If much of this actually sounds like a collaboration between the establishments of both major parties, it’s because it was. There are ways of course for the GOP to become a more populist Conservative party, without Trump. We may be well on our way to getting there. Democrats and their media allies often appear to be more addicted to Trump’s centrality as a foil and ratings boon than much of the actual GOP. But it’s hard to blame voters for losing patience permanently with the GOP establishment that came before and responding to someone who at least could describe and pretend to care about their concerns.
Ikr. I agree with a lot of what you said but one thing really struck me that I haven't heard anybody talk about, and that is the effect on the military. It really creeped me out when Milley and that black general were talking about thinking the troops were white supremacists with "white rage". Is that what they're doing when they're supposed to be doing their jobs? I mean, can you picture Al Haig or General Schwartzkopf or even Colin Powell saying such things? Is that why Afghanistan went down the way it did? It seems they have really lost their way. And I think that is dangerous.
"Viewpoint Diversity" is a term perhaps useful as a counterpoint term to "Racial Diversity," but also is problematic for the same reason that the bare bones "Diversity" is. The administration of my university, like that of many others, is always paying lipservice to "viewpoint diversity." but then they have a hissyfit whenever some antisemitic or white nationalist flyer is distributed or posted on campus. They are so scarce , that having more antisemites or white nationalists on campus would definitely increase campus "viewpoint diversity." So either our prez doesn't understand English or she actually opposes "viewpoint diversity," contrary to her claims.
The problematic word is "diversity" almost all uses of which in political contexts are hypocritical and code for "forget the 1964 Civil Rights Act."
Ron Wakabayashi, former director of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, was one of the rare truth-tellers: "Politicians like to say that diversity is our greatest strength. That is b.s. Diversity simply is. The core question is: How do we extract its assets while minimizing its liabilities?"
"Viewpoint diversity" can be misleading as you say. I think Haidt is referring to a competition of ideas, an openness to competing ideas in the decision-making process, as being essential to maximizing your opportunity to figure out a problem. (Forgive him for his Democrat/Republican favoritism/hostility. He clearly has a blind spot there.)
Dr. Haidt, love ya man. But you call the Democratic Party the party with moderates. The plural is wrong. Who among the Democrats VOTES with Joe Manchin and the Republicans? How many Blue Dog Democrats remain? How many who are pro Second Amendment or pro life? The Democratic Party used to have space for such people. They don’t anymore.
I don't view Trump as a fascist. 75M people voted for Trump because they thought he was best capable of ending rampant corruption; they thought he would reduce federal subsidies to MNC's, close the double dutch tax loopholes that increase centralization of industry, and other entry barriers which not only create obstacles to form new businessses but also force mom and pops out of business. In some ways, Trump resembles the "old right". I know that is a bit of a stretch, because the man himself subscribes to no philosophical view, but his instincts are more aligned to Rose Wilder lane, Garett Garrett, Mises, Hayek, and others who sought the risk of liberty over the subjugation of mechanized order. I know Glenn isn't a fan of the austrians, and the classical view of economics, but I don't equate laizze faire and community power over centralized power as "radical" or "fascist". There is no doubt that certain institutions, like the WEF and other supranationals, seek to centralize power away from local representatives. I think Trump's attack on these institutions are valid. When he attacks the Supreme Court, I don't like it. I wish he would refrain from that behavior, but you have take the good with the bad. And sadly, we only have two choices.
People keep saying stupid stuff like Biden's a moderate. He sure hasn't governed as one. He tried to push through 3.5 TRILLION build back better. That's not moderate.
He's trying to get rid of the title 9 due process protections that just got put back in, that's not moderate. Or trying to push woke BS in education
He nominated a women for the Supreme freaken court that can't answer what a women is??? That's not freaken moderate.
Being slightly to the right of AoC or Sanders doesn't make you a moderate.
You might not think the Democratic party is trying to do all these terrible things. But tens of millions of Americans disagree,
“So let's start with the right. On the right, the Republican Party, I believe, has become structurally stupid. It is the insane party, much more so than the Democrats.”
Uhh. No, the Democratic Party is more insane than the Republican Party( although I won’t mind if someone argues they are equally insane). This is very aptly demonstrated by Democrats, such as Haidt who seem to be incapable of seeing the utter lunancy and hypocrisy of many of the core narratives that the Democratic Party pushes. The biggest one of being that the Democratic Parry is the party of “democracy” and civil rights, and somehow has always been so. Seriously it’s on their fuking website that they have been fighting for civil rights for 200 years: when they were fighting a war for slavery they were apparently fighting for civil rights according to their official timeline. The fact that people like Haidt don’t see this as a problem but are obsessed with the demagoguery of Trump is obscene. The only reason the Democratic Party currently has a majority support from black people is because of pure demagoguery and deceit.
Good gawd, can people like Glenn please push back more on “liberals” who have this love affair with the Democratic Party? It’s the party that fought a war to to keep its slaves and now is the party that wants Vietnamese immigrants to pay reparations to black people for the crimes of the Democratic Party. Why? Cuz demagoguery.
And the constant bullshit whining about Trump being delusional about the election outcome is completely bonkers given the 4 years that the Democratic Party took trying to delegitimize the 2016 election. It’s just stupid. Which is why people who are obsessed about it are clearly “insane.”
Haidt isn’t stupid. He is clearly intelligent in the sense his iq is probably fairly high. But he fails to apply that iq equally to his faction. Which is why he can call the Republican Party insane (whatever) but think that the party that supports the notion that men and women can change their sex based on their feelings isnt. Or he can complain about Republican demagoguery but see nothing wrong with a party that once fought for slavery and argued in court that they have no obligation to run fair democratic elections wearing the banner of anti racism and democracy. So much partisan garbage from people who talk so highly about objectivity and not being biased.
I wrote a thorough and explicit essay on the blaring deceit that the Democratic Party has not reckoned with. I really wish Glenn would pass it along.
And can political “experts” please stop using the language of “left” and “right” to label various political perspectives. Possible political philosophy isn’t a binary. Although some political philosophies definitely construct the world in such a way, such as Haidt’s apparently, but it’s wrong.
It just so happens that one of the biggest sins of many Democrats these days is to label anyone who breaks from whatever insane orthodoxy they belong to as being “right wing.” Oh you don’t like marx- right winger. Oh you don’t think men can become women if they alter their sexual organs and take hormones? Right winger. Oh you didn’t vote for Biden? Right winger. Oh you don’t think climate change is apocalyptic? Putin lover. Oh and you are an atheist and don’t believe in gender norms? Wait a second... brain shuts down.
Seriously, the depth and nuance of thought that I witness from our political “elite” is not elite at all. It is pathetically amateur. Probably because it is just profitable *demagoguery*.
Perhaps Haidt’s biggest delusion is that his party is “center left”. If his party ruled this country, and there was no political resistance, in short time everyone would be required to wear pronoun pins, black people wouldn’t have to pass exams to get their medical license, and their would be insufficient energy production to fuel electric vehicles. Because the “center” of his party is rapidly moving to the “left” beneath his feet.
"And can political “experts” please stop using the language of “left” and “right” to label various political perspectives. Possible political philosophy isn’t a binary. "
We should be able to have as many political philosophies as genders, right? 67?
Well, with regard to that, people should work on being less common. I’ve never thought that a vice being common makes it any less of a vice. Just more virtuous to overcome it.
Jonathan Haidt is guilty of the structural stupidity with which he blames the Republican party -- just read BigT below who has the relevant *facts*. So, he pretends that we need more diversity of thought while his thought process is recursively stupid. I suggest that he spends more time with Glenn to understand how markets contributed to his success and wealth and try to discuss these topics with his colleagues at NYU. He will find a lot of stupidity and most of them leaning left...
I haven't voted for a GOP presidential nominee since Bush I. I voted for both Clinton and Obama. With that preface, I want to say I'm confused by the contention that the GOP is the insane party, the party that has no room for viewpoint diversity. Whether it is the Tea Party or the Never Trumpers, there seems to be some pretty vocal viewpoint diversity. Romney, the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, gave a speech in 2016 savaging Trump.
As for the Democrats, where were the dissenters during the impeachment voting? Or during the Russiagate hoax? The BLM riots? Where were the cool heads after Ferguson? And look what they did to Al Franken. Talk about groupthink!
I just don't see the difference Jonathan posits. I understand when making an argument, it's sometimes good to attack "both sides." It's easier to criticize the media, universities, movie industry, etc. when you offset that with criticism of the GOP. Now, I'm not suggesting the GOP is anything wonderful. I'm just saying I don't see the distinction Jonathan Haidt does.
Granted I don't follow the ins and outs of either party's elected officials, so maybe I'm out of touch. But the idea that the GOP is structurally insane and the Democrats aren't -- well, I just don't see it.
Frankly I think Haidt is vastly over rated. He is a pontificator extraordinaire and has Bs'ed his way to a successful academic career. He is a phony public intellectual. He, like other such creatures live in a coastal elite bubble. I am glad Glenn pushed back somewhat. His strongest pushback was when he said (to the founder of the Heterodox Academy) something like 'how do you expect to foster constructive dialog when you call one side insane?'
Haidt is a clone of John McWhorter minus the melanin.
I've heard his name a million times but knew little about him. I think, based on his book titles, I had the impression he was a moderate or even conservative. I enjoyed the conversation, though.
My favorite moment was when Dr. Loury kind of turned the tables. Let me see if I can reconstruct it. Dr. Loury listed a bunch of things that we pretty much know are true. Haidt counters that J.S. Mill would say we should still listen to the opposing arguments (for all Mill's well-known reasons). Dr. Loury then points out that it is actually the speech that is almost certainly true -- his list -- that is banned by colleges!
Jonathan Haidt: “the Republican Party, I believe, has become structurally stupid. It is the insane party, much more so than the Democrats.” Glenn, did he have a straight face while declaring this?
Quoting your conclusion, “But the idea that the GOP is structurally insane and the Democrats aren't -- well, I just don't see it.”
Consider how the shootings in Uvalde were handled by the republican party both locally in Texas and nationally: Within a very short time. Two people bought A.R. 15’s to kill people: one of them murdered children and teachers, and the other killed a doctor he was frustrated with. The second bought the gun at 2pm and killed at 4pm.
I would characterize the Republican party’s stance in response to these recent shootings as structurally insane.
The insistence on keeping the Big Lie alive is structurally insane.
Let’s define what structurally insane might mean for a political party: to me the above illustrates what I think it means for a political party.
Forget Democrats, forget guns, forget the big lie: let’s look at behavior and rationality.
This is addressing policy positions, which Haidt wanted to avoid, rather than the idea that there was no room for dissent, which is what makes an organization "structurally insane" in his mind. There are tons of ways the right and left will argue that the other's policies are insane, but that's not Haidt's point.
Haidt is wrong, by the way. Seeing two people who can hold things up -- Senators Sinema and Manchin -- doesn't mean the Democratic party allows dissent generally. Let a Democrat say that he's pro-life and thinks trans women (i.e., men) shouldn't be allowed to play women's sports and see what happens. Meanwhile, one of the major problems with the GOP is the proliferation of RINOs -- Republicans In Name Only.
I’m in agreement. With so much cultural change happening, it’s hard to even figure out where either party stands. For the sake of political survival they have to be shape-shifting chameleons with little short or long term memory. Add a lightning-rod personality, and it makes the analysis of parties very difficult. It is also helpful to remember that the Democrats used to have conservative southern members and that the Republicans had liberal, urban east coast members as well. If that proves viewpoint diversity has reduced, then both parties are afflicted. Haidt may need to improve his own viewpoint diversity.
I believe the U.S. approach to gun control is structurally insane, and that is really a bipartisan issue. It seems like the GOP is the most structurally insane of the two parties on issues of gun control over gun violence.
RINO, interesting concept with which to demonize anyone with whom you disagree: what is the Democratic equivalent?
X is no worse than Y: that is total whataboutism rearing its ugly head in the most fundamentaly dishonest manner; what about me?
> I believe the U.S. approach to gun control is structurally insane, and that is really a bipartisan issue. It seems like the GOP is the most structurally insane of the two parties on issues of gun control over gun violence.
I would agree that there are a lot of right-wingers who help make the right structurally insane about gun violence: They're emotionally driven and refuse to even have a discussion with people on the left.
That said, your response shows that you might be someone who also hasn't exposed himself (herself?) to rational argumentation about guns, since you set up this dichotomy: "gun control over gun violence". Most anti-gunners (which includes many but not all Democrats), in my experience, have entirely insulated themselves from the issues related to gun control. For example, they will discuss all the ways in which gun control is supposed to prevent gun violence -- usually at the soundbite level -- but not have a basic understanding of what pro-gunners think, much less that they have counterarguments to the claims of anti-gunners.
Note that the problem isn't that they understand the arguments and disagree with them -- it's not a policy question -- but that they've never encountered the arguments, and they shut down attempts to make arguments with sloganeering and appeals to emotion -- which is structural stupidity.
Maybe that's not you: If you'd like to have that discussion, I'd be happy to have it. But as a conservative living in the NYC area, I've seen that problem a lot.
> RINO, interesting concept with which to demonize anyone with whom you disagree: what is the Democratic equivalent?
The point isn't whether there's an equivalent Democratic term. The point is that the existence of RINOs indicates that there are significant differences of opinion in the Republican party, because if there weren't, there'd be no reason to "demonize anyone [in your own party] with whom you disagree." Having differences of opinion within the party is one of the ways to avoid structural stupidity, and Haidt claimed that the lack of dissent within the GOP made it structurally stupid. That claim can be discarded once we note that the existence of RINOs implies dissent within the Republican party.
If the GOP contains both Romney and Boebert, it isn't a monolith.
At any rate, you might know better than I do with regard to your question. What would you call a Democrat who, say, is pro-life and disagrees with affirmative action?
> X is no worse than Y: that is total whataboutism rearing its ugly head in the most fundamentaly dishonest manner; what about me?
It's not whataboutism to engage in the argument being made in the original article. I was showing that Haidt's claim (that the Republican party is structurally stupid in a way that the Democrats are not) doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Is it rational to think a man can become a woman because he feels he is a woman?
There is no bigger lie than the Democratic Party’s claim publicly available to witness on their website that it has been the party of civil rights for 200 years.
Can we have Trump’s “Big Lie” and also the Democratic Party’s “Huge Lie”? When I hear some talking about Trump plausibly lying about the election (he could also plausibly believe it himself) I’m always perplexed by the fact that they don’t care equally about any of the Democratic Party’s equally sized or much greater sized lies.
The “Big Lie” is just Big Propaganda.
I think the Republican Party’s general stance on gun control is bad, but I think some of the Democratic Party’s views on gun control is even worse.
Comparing and contrasting the two parties is not “whataboutism”. It is rationality. Claiming such a comparison is whataboutism is irrational though.
I remember in grade school we were once taught to juxtapose different ideas and people. Now, any rational analysis of politics that doesn’t fit with a speakers original claim is too often labeled “whataboutism” when a person cannot provide a rational objection to an analysis offered.
When someone implies “x is worse than y” it is completely valid to counter such a claim with “x is not worse than y” or “y is worse than x.” We are discussing politics, which means we are discussing what decisions and judgements to make about different options; thus evaluating the options is actually the rational thing to do. Insisting that it is illegitimate to evaluate the options -- calling the exercise “whataboutism” -- is a vice, as it discourages the rational and moral evaluation of political options. I’m sure Jefferson Davis approves though.
The fact that Trump was able to win the Republican ticket despite deep opposition by establishment Republicans while Bernie Sanders was systematically blocked from winning the ticket *twice* by establishment Democrats is I think a testimony of the “viewpoint diversity” permitted by the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party argued in court they have no obligation to run fair democratic primary elections. The DNC admitted that it’s “democracy” was just a show. Yet people, even when learning that, still think that the Democratic Party is trying to “save democracy” from the Republican Party.
*That* is insane. It’s even more insane than believing Trump is a Christian.
Trump became POTUS because of the Third Estate - a mass of normal, everyday people voted for him. It will not happen again because of the Fourth Estate and the Swamp.
Much of the discussion here misses the thrust of Haidt's "structurally stupid" model. Party X could have an utterly insane platform, but still not be structurally stupid, if it allowed its politicians and members to dissent from portions of that platform. Party Y could have a perfectly reasonable platform, but still be structurally stupid, if it required rigid and unquestioning adherence to every plank from all of its members. The "structurally" part doesn't mean that the platform is smart or stupid, but that the party itself is missing the element of internal dissent and criticism that could lead it to better ideas.
My main criticism of Haidt's position on this is its application. Pointing out that two Senators can dissent from the party leadership -- Senators Sinema and Manchin are the obvious cases -- doesn't mean that the Democratic party allows dissent generally. Let a Democrat say that he's pro-life, disagrees with affirmative action, or thinks believes that society needs to support male-female marriage specifically, and see how long he remains in good standing.
But let's suppose he's thinking about the factionalization in the Democratic party, such as the Squad vs. Speaker Pelosi, which might be seen as making it not "structurally stupid". Such factionalization also exists in the GOP, and is so deep-seated that the term "RINO" (Republican in Name Only) has been around for years to pinpoint it, long before Donald Trump fragmented the party further. Compare Romney and Boebert. If the factionalization of the Democratic party represents the dissent that could possibly make the Democratic party smarter, doesn't the factionalization of the Republican party represent the same thing on their side?
This leads me to think that Haidt knows his own party well but the opposing party only through stereotypes, which necessarily wipe out important distinctions -- and that suggests to me further that Haidt is living in a bubble that doesn't let in relevant information about the Republican party. I don't know him well enough to say, but it's possible that he has a personal level of structural stupidity that blocks out important information, thereby preventing him from seeing the full picture, and, because he's blocking that information out, he may _never_ see the full picture. I could hope otherwise, but that's what it looks like to me.
Ikr. I'm a big fan of Haidt's work to help kids and his ideas about reforming social media. But I think he's biased about the GOP. I also don't appreciate how he's always hating on Fox News. They have turned out to be right on many important news stories. I wonder if he has ever really watched it? I hope he's not like the people who criticize the Catholic church but have never attended one mass. Or worse, criticize a book without reading it. If he can't stomach Fox, he could always watch Fox Business. The stock market can't be biased.
Glenn - I'm here because you and John McWhorter had an honest discussion regarding Trayvon Martin and George Zimmerman. Trayvon's death was tragic. The truth is out there, but the truth does not fit the current political agenda.
Glenn - what's up? Why do you give Jonathan Haidt a platform? Looks like you two had fun per the photo. Twice. This guy blames social media (and Republicans) for everything that's wrong in America - polarization, bullying, misinformation, Donald Trump, cancel culture, conspiracy theories, teenage depression – the list goes on and on. One can agree to a certain extent, but he's OTT.
Wait. I get it. Clicks.
“How Diverse Should Viewpoint Diversity Be?” received 44 likes and 85 tweets, er, comments. Whereas, “Turning Pain into Purpose” with the gracious Sylvia Bennett-Stone received only 9 comments (clicks). The disparity between what Haidt emits versus the inspirational work of Sylvia Bennett-Stone is not even close. America needs to hear more about Sylvia Bennett-Stone's work than Jonathan Haidt's rhetoric.
It’s over a year since Substack has become home to The Glenn Show. I'm a newbie on Substack just trying to figure out this thingy. To me, Substack appears to be just another form of Twitter. Your Q&A session is for subscribers only, but perhaps you could gently persuade TGS’s Creative Director Nikita Petrov to chime in now and then with the unpaid (cheap) commentors, like me. Otherwise the comments are nothing but a Twitter thread. Disappointing.
Perhaps you can secure former POTUS Obama for a podcast on The Glenn Show. The mansion in Hawaii should be done. You could cross-examine him, asking:
How many in this generation are we willing to lose to poverty or violence or addiction? How many? Yes, we need more cops on the street. Yes, we need fewer guns in the hands of people who shouldn't have them. Yes, we need more money for our schools, and more outstanding teachers in the classroom, and more afterschool programs for our children. Yes, we need more jobs and more job training and more opportunity in our communities. But we also need families to raise our children. We need fathers to realize that responsibility does not end at conception. We need them to realize that what makes you a man is not the ability to have a child - it's the courage to raise one.
Oh, my bad. Obama said that in June 2008.
I just had such a wicked thought. I'd love to see Glenn confront Obama about his silly remarks after Trayvon Martin and worrying about their daughters getting hassled by cops. That really gets him going. He was so disappointed. BHO only validated the false narrative of the street rioters instead of promoting peace and spoke not a word in support of law and order. It was a teachable moment.
Hey, how do you spell sophomoric.
While I appreciate Dr. Haidt's perspective on many things, I disagree with almost everything he says here.
Lets start with the notion of "structural insanity". The hypothesis that organizations which lack moderate voices acts in a stupid or insane way is a reasonable one, but the evidence that he provides that the congressional GOP is structurally insane - the reaction of the GOP to Donald Trump's conduct pertaining to the 2020 election - is actually rather bad.
First, what substantive actions does he expect Republicans in Congress to take to "hold Donald Trump to account"? Trump is not currently president. He is a private citizen, and our Constitution is (I think) fairly clear that it is not the job of Congress to go after private citizens.
Second, the idea that Trump's conduct around the 2020 election was beyond the pale, and thus in need of some for of censure, depends upon a simplistic take of that election that is out of step with the facts. I'm not saying Joe Biden didn't win, or that Trump handled the outcome perfectly, but there are enough serious critiques of the way in which the election proceeded that it's not crazy to doubt its results. The level of (publicly admitted!) coordination to prevent him from winning reelection means that *any* Republican presidential candidate is going to have to take election "fortification" seriously.
There are other areas, such as how the GOP of the present compares with its past, or the role of the political center, which I disagree but would need to ask him questions to better clarify the the nature of the disagreement.
I believe, even as a sympathetic third party, that Haidt really needs to explain "structural stupidity" in greater detail. Even after re-reading his article in the Atlantic, I am unclear how he defines the term. What does Haidt mean by contending that the "moderates" have been shot? I say that as one individual, a Republican Party member, and as a very unhappy Trump voter. Is Candace Owen a moderate? Is Tucker a moderate? Is Ron Johnson a moderate? And, Yes, I am assuming that "Lindsey" strives to even considered as an authentic Republican.
I am not a "Never Trumper," but I observe the obvious: Trump is shallow, intellectually unsophisticated, narrow-minded, and generally, uncouth. Trump does not have the intellect to replace, negate, and counter the resident members of the Swamp. Trump followed several progressively conservative policies, but he was defeated by the swap on so many levels and in so many arenas. Among the most egregious was his failure to share with John Solomon (and the press) the declassified documents that proved his innocence about Russiagate. Trump caved to Gina Haspel and the CIA. He remained clueless about Fiona Hill and others within his policy advisor group, a strategic blunder.
I do not know whether the election was "stolen" from Trump. Too many factual assessments remain unanswered about several states' election procedures. To me the question remains: How can any election be certified if there is no consensus about the final vote tally?
I respect much of Haidt’s work but some of his comments here about Republicans seem very wide of the mark to this political independent. He calls the party “insane” and says “There are no moderates left [in it].” But it is not the Republican Party that is facilitating and encouraging illegal immigration on a massive scale never seen before. And it is not the Republican Party that has thrown aside the 1964 Civil Rights Act and is replacing it with the overweening illegalities, hypocrisies and jargon of the “Diversity, Equity and Inclusivity” juggernaut. Not that the Republican Party looks all that great except by comparison with a Democratic Party in greater disrepair than at any time over at least half a century.
Perhaps Haidt’s vision of “moderate” corresponds to the agenda of the Anti-Defamation League, now run by Jonathan Greenblatt, a former operative in the Obama administration.
A bit more than a year ago I began learning about the degree to which a hyperpartisan and unethical ADL had penetrated K-12 public education systems in San Diego and elsewhere via its “No Place for Hate” program. It was a surprise to see how many people even in the Jewish community had low regard for the modern day ADL. My findings were published on the website of Californians for Equal Rights: Anti-Defamation League: A Compilation of Information on Its Political Nature (https://cferfoundation.org/get-adl-out-of-schools/). This was expanded, with some minor editorial changes, just a week ago. It consists of a critique of the Coordinators Handbook for ADL’s NPFH programs plus, without comment, excerpts from 106 articles about or mentioning ADL. A bit of a slog, even if you don’t go beyond the excerpts.
The comments clearly indicate that Haidt's attempt at gaslighting has failed with Prof. Loury's readers.
But, the collectivist mind, being powered by gaslight, he'll keep trying.
I’ve learned a lot from and am admirer of Jonathan Haidt. But I’m not sure his analysis of the difference between the parties, “structurally”, or in terms of their operational sanity works, even when limited to the federal level as he does. What’s the difference between a Susan Collins or Lisa Murkowski in one party, versus a Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema in another? Both parties have purged their moderates both as retaliation for not complying with leadership and as part of the structural polarization of having to pander to more radical primary electorates. Of course this is most pronounced where districts can be Gerrymandered, but it’s still happening statewide in US Senate races, too. And not just because Trump, the singular bogeyman, is playing kingmaker in primaries (e.g. in Georgia he failed; in Ohio, Rob Portman’s replacement would have likely always been well to the populist right).
Re: Trump’s worst and most reckless moment, Mike Pence, who’d been derided as a pushover, did stand up to him. It’s in the Democrats’ interests to portray an entire party gone crazy, entirely enthralled by a madman would-be despot, and consumed at the base by Q-anon conspiracy theories and support for “insurrection”. Even Dems running the literal show were dead set on only amplifying and showcasing two Republicans who have become close political allies of theirs and who are distinguished by their own personal monomania re: destroying Trump. As much as Dems have suddenly fallen in love with her and try to promote her as a paragon political virtue, the rest of us know we’re still looking at Liz Cheney, scion of an actually far scarier right-wing Republican, and standard-bearer of a remorseless, relentless Neocon branch of the party enraged to have been mocked (finally!) and displaced, supplanted by Trump. I don’t even know how to begin to evaluate Adam Kinzinger, except to note his district is just far enough outside Chicago’s burbs to elect a moderate Republican, and his views on military intervention everywhere, all the time, seem to be in close alignment with Liz Cheney’s. There is a core point here I don’t dispute: yes, too many Republican leaders saw what Trump did to his 2016 primary opponents, the intensity of support he could command, and cravenly got on board with many of his excesses.
I’ll join others in saying I’m not quite sure how one can cleanly separate policy from the structural. The sense I honestly get sometimes is that for some leading academics coming from the left of center (as I always did, too) and living in NYC, condemning and dismissing basically the entirety of the Republican Party as a cult led by madman or an institution that’s structurally ceased being rational or reasonable, is like the initial price of admission to even have any standing or get any hearing from even the more open-minded and moderate in the deep blue milieu which comprises almost the water they’ve got to swim in, personally, professionally, as public intellectuals. This is the case even if one knows plenty of pro-business libertarians who teach at business schools, or makes an effort to cultivate a lbroader intellectual network. It still strikes me as a bit of an easy false equivalency. Something on the right has to be condemned as a fair handed equivalent. And it’s the entire other major party, the only realistic alternative to the party that’s achieved extreme cultural as well as political and policy hegemony over the geographic, cultural, and professional regions they inhabit.
But the Dems? No, they’re sane, reasonable, moderate, diverse in opinions and welcoming of debate? I’d disagree. There is no equivalent to Trump among the Dems. But we have to be honest about a party that has put Stacey Abrams on as high a pedestal as imaginable, based in large part on not only her identity but her shameless refusal to concede a very high-turnout statewide election she lost by a good fifty thousand votes. Why is her claim to fame Donald Trump’s claim to shame? She didn’t recklessly excite a crowd of true believers and encourage them to march on the state capitol. But her whole image and career (and personal windfall for what that’s worth) have been based on her pushing a divisive lie that only was an election stolen from her because she’s a black woman and her opponents don’t want black Georgians to be able to vote, and on the larger contention central to her party nationally, that we live in an emergency of revanchist white supremacist voter suppression, in which “our very democracy is at stake”. She’s even compared her cause to Ukrainians being slaughtered defending their homes and country. The chair of the Jan 6th Commission himself opposed certification of a Presidential election result he did not like. But for those of us who have spent decades as volunteers and activists and sometimes staffers within that very party and now feel politically homeless - it’s not because the party has remained intellectually diverse and welcoming of debate. I’m not sure how Haidt even draws a line between all of the institutions on the left he argues have become captured by very narrow and dogmatic ideologies, in part by expanding and attempting to enforce such dogma into all areas of public and private life, and the party which houses and increasingly panders to, depends on the zealotry and amplification, of those true believers and their institutional power. It’s been posited that many Republicans disagreed with Trump about various issues or means of pursuing them, but were afraid their political careers would be ended if they took a stand. I’m not sure how different that dynamic is among Democrats. Look at the crazy commitments Dem primary candidates made almost in lockstep, debate after debate. Was it really possible for a candidate to disagree politely but firmly and remain viable, after explaining why they didn’t support, say, removing any formal prohibition, any penalty, from crossing our borders without authorization - and to top it off, somehow guaranteeing full access to health care for any and all unauthorized border-crossers which many long-suffering American citizens do not have? Joe Manchin is a vestige, just as Susan Collins is a vestige. The energy, the ideological force, the base activists, and the rising and future leaders among the Dems are represented by ideas like: black Americans in 2021 are not and have never been free; any nominee to be Sec of Health and Human Services must first be vetted by a trans child. If that sounds out there, a distraction from the real guy in charge: common sense, middle of the road Joe Biden, I’d counter: look at why he was chosen and for what purpose. He’s to a large extent a figurehead who was meant to reassure by his familiar shtick as much of the political middle and unaffiliated voters as possible.
Here, I just get the impression Haidt is trying to force the present Democratic Party to fit a characterization it no longer does. One of the first things Joe Biden did in office was order that not only must every decision throughout every agency and every department of the federal government comply with a new “equity” regime, which imposes a new ideological schema and racial hierarchy not only throughout the federal government but seeks to impose it on any entities doing business with or receiving funds from the federal government. Sure, those are mainstream ideas on the left of center now. But that’s the same institutional left of center Haidt correctly describes as having gone crazy or become stupid. This is the full force of the federal government under what is supposed to be the most moderate, reasonable, centrist Dem’s administration, imposing and enforcing ideas from Ibram Kendi and embedding them not just in internal staffing decisions but throughout legislation proposed by the executive and passed by partisan majorities in Congress and signed by the President, expressly privileging certain racial groups and excluding others. They’re just getting started. Opposing defund the police? What about all of the White House meetings just last year in which top admins officials met with several of the leaders of top organizations pushing for defunding if not abolition. Just because Joe Biden finally very belatedly realizes that “defund the police” rhetoric and movement is not only extremely unpopular outside Dem activists but has done real damage to cities and the vulnerable people most directly exposed to exploding violent crime, and theatrically repeats “no, we’re going to fund the police, we’re going to fund them” does not mean that’s where he and his party have actually been on that issue and demand from the time it arose. Others have effectively listed further examples of just how crazy the supposedly sane, functioning, non-stupid party has behaved on key issue after after issue. How is such a sane, non-stupid party continually producing a combination such unhinged extremist rhetoric (precise timing and context matter a lot re: incitement, but Chuck Schumer sure sounded like he’d lost control and was indirectly with the crowd as his proxy physically threatening Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh) and extreme policies? On the other hand, look at the Trump Admin. In rhetoric, Trump was obviously both petty and divisive, to say the least. But I don’t remember him referring to up to half the country and all of the voters who strongly opposed him as being akin to if not literally domestic terrorists who needed to be tracked, censored, monitored, maybe imprisoned, using the combined weight of the federal government (most chillingly federal law enforcement and spy agencies), Big Tech, and mass media as amplifiers and propagandists. I don’t remember Trump relentlessly singling out one group by skin color and cheering on their demographic dilution and marginalization and scapegoating them for every problem in American life, past, present, or future, by endlessly conflating Americans who are opposed to him politically with actual violent white supremacists almost entirely of the distant past. I don’t remember Trump creating a “Misinformation Bureau” to generate politically targeted propaganda and track and monitor and marginalize if not censor opposing viewpoints and housing it within a huge department with vast law enforcement and domestic security powers. None of these actions taken by the Biden are normal. And I don’t mean “not moderate policywise”. They’re the fundamentally illiberal, despotic actions of a party that when in power increasingly treats political opponents as enemies of the state.
Policywise, there was much I strongly disagree with during the Trump Admin. Not surprising, given I’ve only volunteered for and donated to and occasionally worked a staff job for Democrats. But I also saw a lot of fairly mainstream conservative policy goals and accomplishments, as well as policies which proved broadly successful and popular in terms of the common material interests of most Americans (e.g. a rising standard of living that also benefited some of the lowest income Americans and included progress for some of the lower-wage workers of all colors or ethnicities).
One final point, and it’s hardly a novel one: I’m not sure framing our parties, institutions, voters, as mainly sitting on one side or another of a left-right, Dem-GOP dichotomy is the most insightful lens anymore. As many have posited, we are in a global moment in which elite institutional actors, who/which often transcend borders in their self-perception and goals, are both imposing ever-more sweeping and undemocratic policy agendas on publics, but are facing inchoate populist uprisings from publics who correctly object that they never democratically supported nor often even had a meaningful opportunity to deliberate and express a preference re: some of the most monumentally impactful policy changes imaginable. And global elite actors are certainly engaged in trying to scapegoat, smear, marginalize, and bypass these publics as ignorant, backwards, irrelevant. This is where much of the real tension in our society lies. Trump may largely be a phony populist who keyed in on some legit grievances being ignored almost everywhere else in our politics, or being held out of reach and determined by elites beyond public deliberation, and somewhat cynically echoing those grievances back. But it’s telling the answer from so many of Trump’s critics who say they only want a return to a “normal” “sane” “functioning” Republican Party really seems to mean they want truly dangerous corporatist Neocon authoritarians like the Cheneys back at the center of the party. Or they’re cool with a restoration in which more of the apparently now saintly Bushes are in charge. A GOP led by politicians of Mitch McConnell’s ilk entirely of by and for the corporate and upper middle class Republican business elite is reassuringly normal. I guess I’d ask: normal for whom? Maybe that’s a familiar GOP for your own party to usually oppose and occasionally work with, if you’re a very comfortable, established left of center academic or professional. But maybe that kind of leadership isn’t and wasn’t so normal and sane for the large swath of working poor and working class voters of both or neither party, who found themselves absolutely ignored but hammered (materially and in their standing as citizens) by the self-serving tacit consensus imposed by elites of both major parties around issues like immigration, trade, or even what it meant to be an American (cause mostly for unity and pride - or division and shame?)
We can all see our country is riven by extremes and is in political crisis and that many institutions seem to be behaving irrationally or at cross-purposes with their supposed missions (how about the chilling specter of an extreme-woke military brass which seems to advance by focusing on “white rage” seeing enemies within, but can’t manage a withdrawal or winning a war). But the insider-outsider frame sometimes captures more re: what fueled Trump’s rise and support for other at least nominal populists, here and in many other countries. The “normal” Republicans like GW Bush not only started senseless forever wars of choice, and justified torture on a large scale, opened black sites around the world, and ran renditions, and illegally spied on a law abiding public, and imposed an environment of intimidation and fear on critics of their wars. They also ignored the broader public including their base when it came to trade, immigration, and ever more reckless financialization of the economy - always choosing elite profits at the expense of battering their own core voters financially and leaving them to feel forgotten if not despised in their own country. If much of this actually sounds like a collaboration between the establishments of both major parties, it’s because it was. There are ways of course for the GOP to become a more populist Conservative party, without Trump. We may be well on our way to getting there. Democrats and their media allies often appear to be more addicted to Trump’s centrality as a foil and ratings boon than much of the actual GOP. But it’s hard to blame voters for losing patience permanently with the GOP establishment that came before and responding to someone who at least could describe and pretend to care about their concerns.
Ikr. I agree with a lot of what you said but one thing really struck me that I haven't heard anybody talk about, and that is the effect on the military. It really creeped me out when Milley and that black general were talking about thinking the troops were white supremacists with "white rage". Is that what they're doing when they're supposed to be doing their jobs? I mean, can you picture Al Haig or General Schwartzkopf or even Colin Powell saying such things? Is that why Afghanistan went down the way it did? It seems they have really lost their way. And I think that is dangerous.
"Viewpoint Diversity" is a term perhaps useful as a counterpoint term to "Racial Diversity," but also is problematic for the same reason that the bare bones "Diversity" is. The administration of my university, like that of many others, is always paying lipservice to "viewpoint diversity." but then they have a hissyfit whenever some antisemitic or white nationalist flyer is distributed or posted on campus. They are so scarce , that having more antisemites or white nationalists on campus would definitely increase campus "viewpoint diversity." So either our prez doesn't understand English or she actually opposes "viewpoint diversity," contrary to her claims.
The problematic word is "diversity" almost all uses of which in political contexts are hypocritical and code for "forget the 1964 Civil Rights Act."
Ron Wakabayashi, former director of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations, was one of the rare truth-tellers: "Politicians like to say that diversity is our greatest strength. That is b.s. Diversity simply is. The core question is: How do we extract its assets while minimizing its liabilities?"
"Viewpoint diversity" can be misleading as you say. I think Haidt is referring to a competition of ideas, an openness to competing ideas in the decision-making process, as being essential to maximizing your opportunity to figure out a problem. (Forgive him for his Democrat/Republican favoritism/hostility. He clearly has a blind spot there.)
Dr. Haidt, love ya man. But you call the Democratic Party the party with moderates. The plural is wrong. Who among the Democrats VOTES with Joe Manchin and the Republicans? How many Blue Dog Democrats remain? How many who are pro Second Amendment or pro life? The Democratic Party used to have space for such people. They don’t anymore.
I don't view Trump as a fascist. 75M people voted for Trump because they thought he was best capable of ending rampant corruption; they thought he would reduce federal subsidies to MNC's, close the double dutch tax loopholes that increase centralization of industry, and other entry barriers which not only create obstacles to form new businessses but also force mom and pops out of business. In some ways, Trump resembles the "old right". I know that is a bit of a stretch, because the man himself subscribes to no philosophical view, but his instincts are more aligned to Rose Wilder lane, Garett Garrett, Mises, Hayek, and others who sought the risk of liberty over the subjugation of mechanized order. I know Glenn isn't a fan of the austrians, and the classical view of economics, but I don't equate laizze faire and community power over centralized power as "radical" or "fascist". There is no doubt that certain institutions, like the WEF and other supranationals, seek to centralize power away from local representatives. I think Trump's attack on these institutions are valid. When he attacks the Supreme Court, I don't like it. I wish he would refrain from that behavior, but you have take the good with the bad. And sadly, we only have two choices.
Sometimes rational discourse is impossible.
And sometimes, there's vegetables.
People keep saying stupid stuff like Biden's a moderate. He sure hasn't governed as one. He tried to push through 3.5 TRILLION build back better. That's not moderate.
He's trying to get rid of the title 9 due process protections that just got put back in, that's not moderate. Or trying to push woke BS in education
He nominated a women for the Supreme freaken court that can't answer what a women is??? That's not freaken moderate.
Being slightly to the right of AoC or Sanders doesn't make you a moderate.
You might not think the Democratic party is trying to do all these terrible things. But tens of millions of Americans disagree,
Sorry one final thought, maybe some compare and contrast will help.
Bill Clinton worked with Republicans to balance the deficit, Biden tried to ram through $3.5 trillion in new spending.
Clinton also helped pass the Religious protect act. Biden is trying to push through the equality act which would gut religious protection.
etc, etc
“So let's start with the right. On the right, the Republican Party, I believe, has become structurally stupid. It is the insane party, much more so than the Democrats.”
Uhh. No, the Democratic Party is more insane than the Republican Party( although I won’t mind if someone argues they are equally insane). This is very aptly demonstrated by Democrats, such as Haidt who seem to be incapable of seeing the utter lunancy and hypocrisy of many of the core narratives that the Democratic Party pushes. The biggest one of being that the Democratic Parry is the party of “democracy” and civil rights, and somehow has always been so. Seriously it’s on their fuking website that they have been fighting for civil rights for 200 years: when they were fighting a war for slavery they were apparently fighting for civil rights according to their official timeline. The fact that people like Haidt don’t see this as a problem but are obsessed with the demagoguery of Trump is obscene. The only reason the Democratic Party currently has a majority support from black people is because of pure demagoguery and deceit.
Good gawd, can people like Glenn please push back more on “liberals” who have this love affair with the Democratic Party? It’s the party that fought a war to to keep its slaves and now is the party that wants Vietnamese immigrants to pay reparations to black people for the crimes of the Democratic Party. Why? Cuz demagoguery.
And the constant bullshit whining about Trump being delusional about the election outcome is completely bonkers given the 4 years that the Democratic Party took trying to delegitimize the 2016 election. It’s just stupid. Which is why people who are obsessed about it are clearly “insane.”
Haidt isn’t stupid. He is clearly intelligent in the sense his iq is probably fairly high. But he fails to apply that iq equally to his faction. Which is why he can call the Republican Party insane (whatever) but think that the party that supports the notion that men and women can change their sex based on their feelings isnt. Or he can complain about Republican demagoguery but see nothing wrong with a party that once fought for slavery and argued in court that they have no obligation to run fair democratic elections wearing the banner of anti racism and democracy. So much partisan garbage from people who talk so highly about objectivity and not being biased.
I wrote a thorough and explicit essay on the blaring deceit that the Democratic Party has not reckoned with. I really wish Glenn would pass it along.
https://minorityreport.substack.com/p/accepting-the-obvious
And can political “experts” please stop using the language of “left” and “right” to label various political perspectives. Possible political philosophy isn’t a binary. Although some political philosophies definitely construct the world in such a way, such as Haidt’s apparently, but it’s wrong.
It just so happens that one of the biggest sins of many Democrats these days is to label anyone who breaks from whatever insane orthodoxy they belong to as being “right wing.” Oh you don’t like marx- right winger. Oh you don’t think men can become women if they alter their sexual organs and take hormones? Right winger. Oh you didn’t vote for Biden? Right winger. Oh you don’t think climate change is apocalyptic? Putin lover. Oh and you are an atheist and don’t believe in gender norms? Wait a second... brain shuts down.
Seriously, the depth and nuance of thought that I witness from our political “elite” is not elite at all. It is pathetically amateur. Probably because it is just profitable *demagoguery*.
Perhaps Haidt’s biggest delusion is that his party is “center left”. If his party ruled this country, and there was no political resistance, in short time everyone would be required to wear pronoun pins, black people wouldn’t have to pass exams to get their medical license, and their would be insufficient energy production to fuel electric vehicles. Because the “center” of his party is rapidly moving to the “left” beneath his feet.
"And can political “experts” please stop using the language of “left” and “right” to label various political perspectives. Possible political philosophy isn’t a binary. "
We should be able to have as many political philosophies as genders, right? 67?
" But he fails to apply that iq equally to his faction. "
Agreed, but this is a common failing that is easy to be guilty of.
Well, with regard to that, people should work on being less common. I’ve never thought that a vice being common makes it any less of a vice. Just more virtuous to overcome it.
Agreed, but this is definitely a problem most (all?) of us suffer from to one degree or another
Jonathan Haidt is guilty of the structural stupidity with which he blames the Republican party -- just read BigT below who has the relevant *facts*. So, he pretends that we need more diversity of thought while his thought process is recursively stupid. I suggest that he spends more time with Glenn to understand how markets contributed to his success and wealth and try to discuss these topics with his colleagues at NYU. He will find a lot of stupidity and most of them leaning left...
I haven't voted for a GOP presidential nominee since Bush I. I voted for both Clinton and Obama. With that preface, I want to say I'm confused by the contention that the GOP is the insane party, the party that has no room for viewpoint diversity. Whether it is the Tea Party or the Never Trumpers, there seems to be some pretty vocal viewpoint diversity. Romney, the GOP presidential nominee in 2012, gave a speech in 2016 savaging Trump.
As for the Democrats, where were the dissenters during the impeachment voting? Or during the Russiagate hoax? The BLM riots? Where were the cool heads after Ferguson? And look what they did to Al Franken. Talk about groupthink!
I just don't see the difference Jonathan posits. I understand when making an argument, it's sometimes good to attack "both sides." It's easier to criticize the media, universities, movie industry, etc. when you offset that with criticism of the GOP. Now, I'm not suggesting the GOP is anything wonderful. I'm just saying I don't see the distinction Jonathan Haidt does.
Granted I don't follow the ins and outs of either party's elected officials, so maybe I'm out of touch. But the idea that the GOP is structurally insane and the Democrats aren't -- well, I just don't see it.
Frankly I think Haidt is vastly over rated. He is a pontificator extraordinaire and has Bs'ed his way to a successful academic career. He is a phony public intellectual. He, like other such creatures live in a coastal elite bubble. I am glad Glenn pushed back somewhat. His strongest pushback was when he said (to the founder of the Heterodox Academy) something like 'how do you expect to foster constructive dialog when you call one side insane?'
Haidt is a clone of John McWhorter minus the melanin.
I've heard his name a million times but knew little about him. I think, based on his book titles, I had the impression he was a moderate or even conservative. I enjoyed the conversation, though.
My favorite moment was when Dr. Loury kind of turned the tables. Let me see if I can reconstruct it. Dr. Loury listed a bunch of things that we pretty much know are true. Haidt counters that J.S. Mill would say we should still listen to the opposing arguments (for all Mill's well-known reasons). Dr. Loury then points out that it is actually the speech that is almost certainly true -- his list -- that is banned by colleges!
Jonathan Haidt: “the Republican Party, I believe, has become structurally stupid. It is the insane party, much more so than the Democrats.” Glenn, did he have a straight face while declaring this?
Quoting your conclusion, “But the idea that the GOP is structurally insane and the Democrats aren't -- well, I just don't see it.”
Consider how the shootings in Uvalde were handled by the republican party both locally in Texas and nationally: Within a very short time. Two people bought A.R. 15’s to kill people: one of them murdered children and teachers, and the other killed a doctor he was frustrated with. The second bought the gun at 2pm and killed at 4pm.
I would characterize the Republican party’s stance in response to these recent shootings as structurally insane.
The insistence on keeping the Big Lie alive is structurally insane.
Let’s define what structurally insane might mean for a political party: to me the above illustrates what I think it means for a political party.
Forget Democrats, forget guns, forget the big lie: let’s look at behavior and rationality.
This is addressing policy positions, which Haidt wanted to avoid, rather than the idea that there was no room for dissent, which is what makes an organization "structurally insane" in his mind. There are tons of ways the right and left will argue that the other's policies are insane, but that's not Haidt's point.
Haidt is wrong, by the way. Seeing two people who can hold things up -- Senators Sinema and Manchin -- doesn't mean the Democratic party allows dissent generally. Let a Democrat say that he's pro-life and thinks trans women (i.e., men) shouldn't be allowed to play women's sports and see what happens. Meanwhile, one of the major problems with the GOP is the proliferation of RINOs -- Republicans In Name Only.
I’m in agreement. With so much cultural change happening, it’s hard to even figure out where either party stands. For the sake of political survival they have to be shape-shifting chameleons with little short or long term memory. Add a lightning-rod personality, and it makes the analysis of parties very difficult. It is also helpful to remember that the Democrats used to have conservative southern members and that the Republicans had liberal, urban east coast members as well. If that proves viewpoint diversity has reduced, then both parties are afflicted. Haidt may need to improve his own viewpoint diversity.
What happens is structural insanity. (I think.)
I believe the U.S. approach to gun control is structurally insane, and that is really a bipartisan issue. It seems like the GOP is the most structurally insane of the two parties on issues of gun control over gun violence.
RINO, interesting concept with which to demonize anyone with whom you disagree: what is the Democratic equivalent?
X is no worse than Y: that is total whataboutism rearing its ugly head in the most fundamentaly dishonest manner; what about me?
> I believe the U.S. approach to gun control is structurally insane, and that is really a bipartisan issue. It seems like the GOP is the most structurally insane of the two parties on issues of gun control over gun violence.
I would agree that there are a lot of right-wingers who help make the right structurally insane about gun violence: They're emotionally driven and refuse to even have a discussion with people on the left.
That said, your response shows that you might be someone who also hasn't exposed himself (herself?) to rational argumentation about guns, since you set up this dichotomy: "gun control over gun violence". Most anti-gunners (which includes many but not all Democrats), in my experience, have entirely insulated themselves from the issues related to gun control. For example, they will discuss all the ways in which gun control is supposed to prevent gun violence -- usually at the soundbite level -- but not have a basic understanding of what pro-gunners think, much less that they have counterarguments to the claims of anti-gunners.
Note that the problem isn't that they understand the arguments and disagree with them -- it's not a policy question -- but that they've never encountered the arguments, and they shut down attempts to make arguments with sloganeering and appeals to emotion -- which is structural stupidity.
Maybe that's not you: If you'd like to have that discussion, I'd be happy to have it. But as a conservative living in the NYC area, I've seen that problem a lot.
> RINO, interesting concept with which to demonize anyone with whom you disagree: what is the Democratic equivalent?
The point isn't whether there's an equivalent Democratic term. The point is that the existence of RINOs indicates that there are significant differences of opinion in the Republican party, because if there weren't, there'd be no reason to "demonize anyone [in your own party] with whom you disagree." Having differences of opinion within the party is one of the ways to avoid structural stupidity, and Haidt claimed that the lack of dissent within the GOP made it structurally stupid. That claim can be discarded once we note that the existence of RINOs implies dissent within the Republican party.
If the GOP contains both Romney and Boebert, it isn't a monolith.
At any rate, you might know better than I do with regard to your question. What would you call a Democrat who, say, is pro-life and disagrees with affirmative action?
> X is no worse than Y: that is total whataboutism rearing its ugly head in the most fundamentaly dishonest manner; what about me?
It's not whataboutism to engage in the argument being made in the original article. I was showing that Haidt's claim (that the Republican party is structurally stupid in a way that the Democrats are not) doesn't stand up to scrutiny.
Is it rational to think a man can become a woman because he feels he is a woman?
There is no bigger lie than the Democratic Party’s claim publicly available to witness on their website that it has been the party of civil rights for 200 years.
Can we have Trump’s “Big Lie” and also the Democratic Party’s “Huge Lie”? When I hear some talking about Trump plausibly lying about the election (he could also plausibly believe it himself) I’m always perplexed by the fact that they don’t care equally about any of the Democratic Party’s equally sized or much greater sized lies.
The “Big Lie” is just Big Propaganda.
I think the Republican Party’s general stance on gun control is bad, but I think some of the Democratic Party’s views on gun control is even worse.
Behavior and rationality: not whataboutism.
Comparing and contrasting the two parties is not “whataboutism”. It is rationality. Claiming such a comparison is whataboutism is irrational though.
I remember in grade school we were once taught to juxtapose different ideas and people. Now, any rational analysis of politics that doesn’t fit with a speakers original claim is too often labeled “whataboutism” when a person cannot provide a rational objection to an analysis offered.
When someone implies “x is worse than y” it is completely valid to counter such a claim with “x is not worse than y” or “y is worse than x.” We are discussing politics, which means we are discussing what decisions and judgements to make about different options; thus evaluating the options is actually the rational thing to do. Insisting that it is illegitimate to evaluate the options -- calling the exercise “whataboutism” -- is a vice, as it discourages the rational and moral evaluation of political options. I’m sure Jefferson Davis approves though.
The fact that Trump was able to win the Republican ticket despite deep opposition by establishment Republicans while Bernie Sanders was systematically blocked from winning the ticket *twice* by establishment Democrats is I think a testimony of the “viewpoint diversity” permitted by the Democratic Party. The Democratic Party argued in court they have no obligation to run fair democratic primary elections. The DNC admitted that it’s “democracy” was just a show. Yet people, even when learning that, still think that the Democratic Party is trying to “save democracy” from the Republican Party.
*That* is insane. It’s even more insane than believing Trump is a Christian.
Trump became POTUS because of the Third Estate - a mass of normal, everyday people voted for him. It will not happen again because of the Fourth Estate and the Swamp.