So What Does Drive Political Disagreement?
If you’ve read The Psychopolitics Of Trauma, you already know my answer to this: it’s all psychological. People support political positions which make them feel good. On a primary level, this means:
\* Successful people want to hear that they deserve their success.
\* Unsuccessful people want to hear that successful people don’t deserve their success, lied / cheated / nepotismed their way to the top, and are no better than they are.
\* People want to knock down anyone who makes a status claim to be better than them.
People want to feel like their own identity group is heroic net contributors, and that their outgroup are villainous moochers.
People want to feel like their own identity group deserves more power.
* People want to feel like their preferred lifestyle and policies have no negative implications at all and they don’t have to feel guilty about them.
* People want to feel like they’re part of a group of special people poised to change the world, and everyone else is hidebound bigots who resist temporarily but will eventually be forced to recognize their genius.
People want to virtue-signal: demonstrate that they have the good qualities that their ingroup considers most important.
* But people also want to vice-signal: demonstrate their willingness to breezily dismiss the supposedly good qualities that the outgroup considers important.
* People want to feel like their preferred lifestyle and policies have no negative implications at all and they don’t have to feel guilty about them.
* People want to feel like they’re part of a group of special people poised to change the world, and everyone else is hidebound bigots who resist temporarily but will eventually be forced to recognize their genius. People want to virtue-signal: demonstrate that they have the good qualities that their ingroup considers most important.
* But people also want to vice-signal: demonstrate their willingness to breezily dismiss the supposedly good qualities that the outgroup considers important.