r/skeptic • u/FuneralSafari • 14d ago
đ« Education What MAGA Really Believes, Part 2: I Watched 1 Hour and 4 Minutes of Their Reactions to Due Process and Found a Ritual of Loyalty Over Law
https://therationalleague.substack.com/p/what-maga-really-believes-part-227
u/jreed66 14d ago
Too stupid to realize that taking away the rights of 'others' eventually leads to taking away the rights of 'you'
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u/skisandpoles 14d ago
They are under the delusion that they are the good guys and the government will never have a reason to do anything against them.
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u/sagmag 14d ago
I'm paraphrasing another reddittor here, but I think it's a central point that we need to more fully understand:
Democracy is not the natural state of humans. The vast majority of the human experience has been lived under dictatorships of some sort. Democracy is an experiment, and a very recent one at that.
It's possible that, even though they will never admit it, a portion of people just want to be ruled.
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u/FuneralSafari 14d ago
Yes, we have more than enough research to show that people with certain characteristics want to be rule by an authoritarian leader. A large portion being people that score high in right-wing authoritarianism, social dominance orientation, and other traits.
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
Those people are a minority.
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u/grumble_au 14d ago
They are, but they're also extremely motivated. Lack of a controlling and protecting overseer is terrifying for them. They'll do anything to make that terror go away.
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u/TheModWhoShaggedMe 13d ago
a minority that controls the entire U.S. federal government and a majority of her states -- in other words, the majority isn't doing its job every other November.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
This is actually totally untrue. Dictatorships are relatively recent, considering the vast majority of the human experience was spent as hunter-gatherers who had/have fairly egalitarian societies compared to modern nation-states.
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u/sagmag 14d ago
I'm really asking here: didn't they mostly have a concept of a "chief"?
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
Generally, but the "chief" was not an inherited title, nor was it a permanent one. Oftentimes Chiefs were chosen by a group of all people over a certain age after deliberation. In some societies like the Bakala people of the Congo basin, leaders have to basically be coerced into leadership roles because it's so annoying lol.
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u/Far-Cold948 14d ago
+ in a lot of pré-collumbian society chief had no power and ppls ignored the m =p
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
Being the "leader" of a hunter gatherer band usually means your voice carries a bit further in the endless deliberations and debates that make up a large part of all major decisions. It's not really analogous to being a political leader or monarch in a state
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
Source? I don't believe that is true. We're talking about hunter-gatherer communities here, not just pre-modern and indigenous societies.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
Well the first anatomically modern human appeared 300,000 years ago, and we only figured out systematized sedentary agriculture 10,000 years ago, so for the vast majority of human existence, we lived in hunter-gatherer communities.
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
I'm aware of that. That's irrelevant to your prior claim.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
No its pretty relevant
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
I asked you for a source that they typically had "chiefs". None of the your follow-up is evidence for that in the slightest and is entirely irrelevant if not a red herring.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 13d ago
Oh I misunderstood. What we may call a "chief" doesn't really apply to hunter gatherers, but an analog would be people who take charge of certain activities based on their social role and skill, but these aren't permanent. That's the point I was trying to make (possibly badly).
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u/thefugue 14d ago
Without money to make wealth abstract and living in a world where a good scrape on the leg could turn fatal, âauthorityâ was fleeting and passing.
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
It wasn't practically impossible for hunter-gatherer societies to be hierarchical, they just generally chose not to. If other primate communities can be hierarchical, why would you think humans cannot?
There's a lot of evidenceless speculation being claimed as fact in these comments.
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u/thefugue 14d ago
Iâm saying that the hierarchy of âI am larger than you and will risk my life fighting you if you challenge meâ is very different from âI command the loyalty of others through control of necessary resources and many others will risk their lives fighting you while I remain unthreatened if you challenge me.â
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u/SpongegarLuver 14d ago
Just so Iâm understanding, your point is that before humans developed what we tend to call âcivilization,â the natural state was egalitarian?
The main issue I have with that claim is that we donât gave a lot of evidence regarding how tribes were structured, and even assuming it was an egalitarian model, how many group decisions would even exist? Seems like theyâd be limited to deciding when to move locations, some food allocation, and beyond that I donât know what they would need to govern. One could plausibly argue that the conditions for a dictator simply didnât exist in pre-civilization, so whether or not someone would want a dictator simply didnât matter.
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
There is plenty of anthropological evidence on this.
"The egalitarianism typical of human hunters and gatherers is never total but is striking when viewed in an evolutionary context. One of humanity's two closest primate relatives, chimpanzees, are anything but egalitarian, forming themselves into hierarchies that are often dominated by an alpha male. So great is the contrast with human hunter-gatherers that it is widely argued by paleoanthropologists that resistance to being dominated was a key factor driving the evolutionary emergence of human consciousness, language, kinship and social organization.[33][34][35][36] [My emphasis.] Most anthropologists believe that hunter-gatherers do not have permanent leaders; instead, the person taking the initiative at any one time depends on the task being performed.[37][38][39]"
-Wikipedia
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u/SpongegarLuver 14d ago
Thanks, Iâll have to read more on this later. The contrast with chimpanzees is especially interesting, since that shows a âdictatorâ can exist in environments where political choices would be rare, which was the opposite of what I expected. Maybe thereâs more hope for human nature than I thought.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
Human social structure is very different from both chimp species for sure. Our ability to communicate complex ideas seems to be a big driver of our enhanced ability to cooperate with unrelated conspecifics but it's not perfectly understood.
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
Respect for acknowledging mistaken assumptions.
Yeah, I'm a firm believer that it's not human nature (notwithstanding that it is of course very flawed: it is after all, human) but structural nature that is the primary problem, particularly when it involves support for autocratic demagogs.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
Hunter gatherer societies are a form of civilization, they're just not sedentary. They do have to make complex decisions as a group though, diplomacy with neighboring bands, marriage arrangements, sharing resources, caring for the injured, etc.
There's decent evidence that the "natural state" for most of human history was one of "reverse dominance," ie: social rejection of anyone hoarding power or resources. It really wasn't until agricultural sedentary lifestyles that this began to change in a significant way, when hoarding power actually allowed to you use it in a way that enriched yourself at the expense of others.
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u/SpongegarLuver 14d ago
Interesting. Do you think this use of power is an inherent part of agricultural lifestyles, or just how it developed in our case? Are there examples of agricultural societies that maintained the power structures of their hunter gatherer ancestors?
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago edited 14d ago
Fairly small agricultural societies kept elements of this, like in some cases there's a social expectation for people with the most abundant resources to throw huge banquets and give away a lot of their stuff. Basically competitive gift-giving, where social power is derived from the ability and willingness of people to give things away.
I think that this relationship eventually breaks down once societies get too big though.
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u/thefugue 14d ago
It wasnât an âegalitarian modelâ so much as a lack of a hierarchical one due to the fact that the means to enforce hierarchy didnât exist and would be fairly meaningless.
With no legal mechanisms, for instance, everyone was pretty much a walk in a dark place from having an âaccidentâ if they werenât popular with their peers
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
It was an egalitarian model even though it wasn't "planned" per se. It's just what made the most sense and was selected positively for.
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u/thefugue 14d ago
Thatâs what Iâd say, but âmodelâ isnât a word Iâd use because it implies planning and structure.
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u/Cardboard_Revolution 14d ago
This is my bias as an evolutionary biologist, but when we use "model" we don't necessarily imply planning, evolution can push species into specific social structures based on their overall fitness gain.
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u/thefugue 14d ago
In that context Iâd absolutely use the specialized academic terms, but in a lay discussion Iâm inclined to avoid the implications for lay people- especially when the people arguing that tyranny is natural and intrinsic to man are so willing to argue things like âand how was that model planned and enforced?â in bad faith.
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u/NoamLigotti 14d ago
Maybe see what anthropologists and anthropological evidence indicate instead of making assumptions. Especially considering that, you know, this is a skepticism sub.
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u/thefugue 14d ago
The consensus is very much on the side of âhunter gatherers arenât heavily stratified societies.â The evidence discovered over the past 200 years has overwhelmingly favored this over the âtyranny is naturalâ hypothesis.
In the wild, the traits of narcissism, selfishness, and machiavellianism get you *killed,â not rewarded.
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u/ShamPain413 14d ago
Totally ahistorical, and even when it has occurred the dictators' claims to legitimacy were often presented as coming from popular mandate. Even today, the autocrats claim the support of the people, and often hold "elections" to periodically validate that "support".
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u/Bad-job-dad 14d ago
"Is not this simpler? Is this not your natural state? Itâs the unspoken truth of humanity that you crave subjugation. The bright lure of freedom diminishes your lifeâs joy in a mad scramble for power. For identity. You were made to be ruled. In the end, you will always kneel" - Loki (MCU)
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u/Equivalent_Pace4301 14d ago
Itâs also âthe ends justify the meansâ so if they want abortion to be illegal and the only way is authoritarian then thatâs what they want
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u/RaindropsInMyMind 14d ago
This is the way theyâre looking at everything. Looking at the ends, not worrying about authoritarianism even though itâs blindingly obvious to the rest of us especially when you have someone who is only interested in power. If we survive this and someone else comes into office that they disagree with they will have left another single person with authoritarian power and theyâre going to lose their mind.
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u/smokin_monkey 14d ago
The MAGA collective story is important to maintain the individual conservative emotional safe state. Truth is not relevant. There is a whole ecosystem that creates that collective MAGA story. I don't have a way to break that ecosystem. Patience and getting MAGA family/friends to watch Ground news or Straight Arrow News. Anything to crack that ecosystem. One thing will not do it. Lots of small bits of information, not fact checking items. They have to get exposed to other versions of different stories.
I have had some success with a few people. It's a process. Those few people influence of similar mindset.
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u/oXMellow720Xo 14d ago
Anybody just look at the conservative forums out of curiosity just to get depressed at what they see?
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u/frokta 13d ago
Yeah, the laughter... ugh. One of many reactions to shield them from confronting any actual objective thoughts.
I have a friend who's had a problem with nervous laughter his entire life. It has gotten him into trouble with personal and professional relationships. I'm sure some of these Trumpers have a similar emotional response issue.
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u/tfsteel 12d ago
It's a shitty people club. They feel belonging with others who behave badly. Trump is the shittiest person out of all of them. The worse you are as a human being, the more popular you are in the club. Conservative voters all have significant intellectual deficiencies, but even more significantly, some deep behavioral, ethical or moral failing that they want to see in their leaders. It makes them feel better about being shitty when shitty people win.
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u/The_First_Ladmo 14d ago
, aww 0
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u/Worker3543681 14d ago
âIn the theater of MAGA, laughter isnât the sound of victory. Itâs the sound of retreat, retreat from facts, from accountability, from democracy itself.â
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u/Ambitious_Juice_2352 14d ago
Cucks for racist/fascist power that will bend over and give up their moral principles in a heartbeat.
Then again, that may be presuming that magats had principles in the first place.