The Right Wing and Fakeness

 
I recently finished the great Doppelganger by @naomiaklein.bsky.social and her ruminations on the mirror world keep resonating.  When Sec Leavitt invoked “cruelty is the point” re: Dems and TSA lines it was another corkscrew moment. But something has been gnawing at me.

On the far left we've been calling conservatives fascists since day one - to everyone else's chagrin.  But we could see the prerogative state at work amongst the marginalized.  We could see the procrustean eroticisms.

We could see the fakery - the conformity. 

And maybe because I'm now at 50 an official aging lefty I feel I can intuit better a pattern of co-option in which  conformity runs parallel with cheap imitation. 

It all started with the bejazzling. WTF was up with this glittering plastic bullshit smeared across facebook posts and denim hats?

Then the spray tans and the die jobs and the fillers and the lifts and the truck nuts and the constant performance™ that represented nothing - no values. The term virtue signaling at least refers to virtue.  What is the virtue in looking like a fuck-doll or a GI Joe with the kung fu grip?

They will *tell* you it’’s some kind of real American shit but c'mon its a clown costume for a clown world of weird little arbitrary traditionalisms that don't make sense half the time and the people telling you about it half-understand it themselves. OK, but that's MAGA and obvious.

Let’s dig back into boring old conservatism.  Ronald Reagan.  City on a Hill. Leave it to Beaver. John Wayne. Davey Crockett. Thomas Jefferson. Christopher Columbus.

The far left called these glories fascist too.The exploitation. The profiteering.The patriarchy.

The jingoist xenophobic attitudes abroad and the racism at home. The God-damned certainty of right and wrong. The meanness, the cruelty. The dysfunction hidden behind fake smiles, child labor, 60 hr. weeks, domestic abuse, and entire neighborhoods where everyone makes poverty wages.  Oops.

But something I've always noticed when I've hung around conservatives is a weird sunny optimism, that is, when they aren't constantly bitching.  You know, if the egg-head weirdo freaks would just stop trying to control everyone, we could all go back to living in the greatest country on Earth.

Who makes the most money, worships the best God, has the smartest, hottest, coolest people (who are also the toughest), and can kick any other country's ass. It's like this utopian vision, where if everyone just acted the right way, they would be upper middle class and awesome like them.  And if they aren't they only have themselves to blame. (And if *they* aren't personally, well that's probably because of the government or immigrants taking their taxes or jobs).
 
But we're already half way into this fantasy.  The more religious among them will go deep into Jesus and prosperity. Gotta get right with God.  This whole personalist framework fits right in with the utopian fantasy that The System is perfect the way it is.  Follow Tradition.  To move up the Hierarchy you have to follow the Hierarchy.

It's so literal. So solid. Impenetrable. You can't think about it or question it (because it doesn't make sense, at least for more than a brief encounter with critical thought*).  But you can get into it and bathe in it, wear it like a suit.  Bejazzle yourself with it. Hang it from your truck.
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But you need to conform to it.  What else are you going to do - this is definitional.  Because something about it feels good.  "Don't be a downer man!"  You don't want to be one of the losers.

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​In order to be RW you need to live with at least one foot in a fantasy world.  Whether this is motivated by a psychological fear/escape function to avoid discomfort or for some other reason is hard to say. 

One wonders whether studies on sensory processing might point at emotional sensitivities to exploring new experiences and epistemological relativism.  Regardless, I think its still largely a skill issue - fortunately given that conservatism is clearly maladaptive.

But this fakeness, this unreality core to the worldview helps make sense of its susceptibility to grifters, whether conmen, cult-leaders/preachers, CEOs, demagogues or strongmen.  It needs to *buy-in* to something as it is *always selling something*.  Because that is what a fake is. Right?

You're pawning something off that is not original.  Ronald Reagan was an actor.  Christopher Columbus was a rapist.  Jefferson owned slaves.  Socialists ended child labor.  Jerry Falwell is a piece of shit.  Etc. But you put on the plastic jewels, the tactical fanny pack, the suit and tie. And you laugh at the hippies and their broccoli. You laugh at the liberals with their liberalism.

Because that's what liberalism does: it steps outside of the comfortable ooze. It compares, evaluates on its own terms. It asks questions and isn't satisfied with "common sense" or "just because".

Hah - so the liberals are the "real" ones and the conservatives are "fake"?  Good one!

Yes, in a way. But what is real? We've returned to epistemology, values and knowledge.  Which in the modern world is basically liberalism.  The way we get to generally agreed upon truths is via liberal means.
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And part of this is the value of tolerance and pluralism, which means accepting weirdos living in fake worlds full of magic. They just can't make policy with us, or make rules that affect our lives with their magical bullshit.  But that is by definition *illiberal* and we're not about that.