The American political opposition, whether on the right or the left, tends to adopt a ‘savior mindset.’
The general model that they operate under is in thinking that if only enough people hear ‘the truth,’ enough people will be converted over to the new way of thinking, and the day will be saved. Happiness will return to the country, the budget will be balanced, social justice will come to the land, everyone will be equal, the income tax will be eliminated, and the mountain will come down to Muhammad.
You get the idea. The spiel tends to be “listen to what I have to say, eat my red pill, and you’ll get everything you want.”
This tends to ignore how effective political change tends to happen. Effective political change happens through conflict and displacement. It just about never happens through internal reform, because, as a rule, most people have little ability to change their ways, even when there is a strong desire to do so.
The savior mindset leads to an indiscriminate way of speaking and acting politically — the leaders speak endlessly to the crowds in an attempt to convince the crowd about what is and isn’t righteous. Whom they speak to is less important than growing the size of the crowd. There’s often also a strong tendency to want to debate and convince people that they are wrong and that the ways of the savior-politico are correct.
In the real world, the rhetorical part is only really important insomuch as it builds up a large enough crew of supporters to use to clobber the other group’s supporters through physical and legally repressive means. Shay’s Rebellion did not succeed because George Washington’s gang was bigger and stronger. However right Shay’s men might have been in a cosmic sense from a certain perspective, Washington could muster more and better guys when the conflict came up, so the rebellion failed.
In a more contemporary context, it’s mostly a waste of time to attempt to convince people who have no interest in being convinced of something. Vestigial ideas of national unity also tend to get people trapped into mystical ways of thinking, because to win elections, democratic politicians have to promise impossible programs to compete with the rival political parties which are also promising impossible programs.
Syriza in Greece was never going to be able to both keep the Greek welfare state intact and regain Greek independence from the dictates of the European Union and the European Central Bank. An American politician will have to promise that taxes will be cut, there will be no resort to inflationary policy, entitlement programs will be expanded, crime will be suppressed, infrastructure will be constructed, forward progress in technology will be made, pollution will be reduced, and aggressive wars against evil will be fought.
Bismark called politics “the art of the possible,” but in the case of universal suffrage democracy, winning elections is the art of pre-selling every childish voter a unicorn that excretes gold.
By comparison, it’s more achievable to form a competitive faction and focus on breaking away from the people dazzled by incredible promises. That’s why it’s better to emphasize exit over voice.
The competition in the ‘voice’ space is all around puffing up imaginary futures, whereas ‘exit’ is wholly practical… if a bit rougher and more dangerous, but perhaps no more so than sitting tight and waiting for your unicorn to come in the mail.
The past couple of essays, this one and the Making Impossible Thoughts Possible certainly are speaking directly to me. But I wonder.
There was an essay from Donovan Greene, that in a way spoke more directly towards SJW type people. It said to stop trying to save the world.
“You wish to save the world not because you are driven by compassion but because you burn with a mad desire to assuage the nagging feelings of doubt simmering in the darkest corners of your psyche that tell you that your existence is meaningless and you were put on this earth for no other reason than to die. You think it is altruism that guides you? It is fear, nothing more, fear of the horrifying truth that maybe, just maybe, you are exactly as worthless as you think you are.
“Compassion. Empathy. Altruism. Self-sacrifice. Do not let me be the one who must tell you that you fetishize those things because you do not have them, for I will not sweeten this pill with honeyed words and soothing lies.”
So where does the line get drawn between the legitimate effort and what Donovan speaks of?
I have this idea that “Those that can, should.” and if I begin to begin, that I can effect the end result I seek. I have specific knowledge others don’t have and as a member of our internet community, there could be a better path, if only that path were lighted for others to follow.
That’s a good question. I’m skeptical of my own motivations, often.
Some people in eastern Ukraine have figured out that exit is desirable. Of course it helps to have a big, powerful friend to your north. A giant problem is what happens after a successful exit? Will a new state simply repeat failed policies of the old? In most cases–yes. Keysianism, blank slate ism, etc. are all whole heartedly believed.
This is exactly why the mental exit must occur prior to the physical one. Our new country has to exist in our minds before we try to reify it, otherwise, yes, we’ll just be USG v. 5.01. Exit is important, but choosing the right exit even more so.
I think they will probably flail around after victory, but in their case, it was separate, suffer second class citizenship, or be killed off.
I wish that you would elaborate more on your concept of “exit.” Short of joining an isolated Mormon colony, I have difficulty understanding what people mean when they say this. It sounds good, but “exit” in regards to social circumstances seems to more closely resemble misanthropy or a surrender to liberal primacy. This seems obvious when Red Pillers encourage men to flee from modern marriages, etc. My understanding of groups like MGTOW is that they are attempting to “exit” awhile doing more or less what feminists want them to do.
To be clear, I’m not suggesting that proselytizing the masses is a viable (or desirable) course of action. Sure, nations want to exit the EU and many students want to exit their liberal-studies university. It just seems that the notion of “exit” is an unfinished concept. Seems incredibly important. I’m trying to think of all the circumstances where an exit scenario could realistically apply.
In this case, it means secession.
Scott Alexander, I believe, has made a similar argument to the one you are — “they oppose divorce, but favor giving up citizenship or secession, and one is the same as the other — their argument is a contradiction.”
So, for example, when Crimea and other parts of E. Ukraine wanted to leave the union following the recent coup, they declared independence, Ukraine invaded the breakaway regions with NATO support, and the defenders recently crushed the invasion, with Russian support.
That is probably not a great example, because the people running the coup made the people in Eastern Ukraine think that they would either have to secede, accept second-tier citizenship, or be expropriated/exterminated by the Poroshenko government.
So, not hard to build consensus for this sort of thing when coup leaders openly talk about slaughtering your ethnic group. Harder if the political leadership of the state you want to break off from is halfway competent.
It’s not the same as something individualistic like ‘MGTOW’, because political consensus needs to be developed, or a political shock needs to occur, to have a chance of successfully pulling it off.
I could expand on this further, and probably will.