Summary of modern political fault lines

(A further follow-on to this.)

• Democrats and the left are for the cool people and their mascots. The cool people are interested primarily in showing how cool they are. One method of doing this is to adopt mascots (i.e. poor people, minorities) and make a big show of ‘helping’ them. The mascots play along and even get excited about the partnership in the hopes that they’ll benefit. At the same time, the cool people have to constantly be on watch to make sure that the uncool people don’t get attention or their way (which threatens the cool peoples’ self-image, as being exclusively cool).
• Republicans and conservatives are for the uncool people and people who value things besides coolness. They are therefore traditionally bad at showing themselves to be cool, and none are good candidates for cool peoples’ mascots. (This is why Sarah Palin bothers the left so much: she’s a female, which could have (and in their minds, should have) made her a good lefty-mascot, yet she’s independent-minded, has a family, and doesn’t need them, so the left has no use for her as a mascot.) Thus people who don’t value coolness (because they value e.g. independence, liberty, family, and boring stuff like that) have to try to argue for the things they do value (please don’t take all my stuff, please don’t prevent me from defending myself) by way of trying to minimize the importance of coolness and keep the focus on things not related to being cool, which is an uphill struggle.

Western politics are basically the plot of a John Hughes movie writ large.

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