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George Lakoff will tell u:
https://georgelakoff.com/2016/11/22/a-minority-president-why-the-polls-failed-and-what-the-majority-can-do/#more-5389
The Strict Father and Conservative Values
In the strict father family, father knows best. He knows right from wrong and has the ultimate authority to make sure his children and his spouse do what he says, which is taken to be what is right. Many conservative spouses accept this worldview, uphold the father’s authority, and are strict in those realms of family life that they are in charge of.
When his children disobey, it is the strict father’s moral duty to punish them painfully enough so that, to avoid punishment, they will obey him (do what is right) and not just do what feels good. Through physical discipline they are supposed to become disciplined, internally strong, and able to prosper in the external world. What if they don’t prosper? That means they are not disciplined, and therefore cannot be moral, and so deserve their poverty.
This reasoning shows up in conservative politics in which the poor are seen as lazy and undeserving, and the rich as deserving their wealth. Responsibility is thus taken to be personal responsibility not social responsibility. What you become is only up to you; society has nothing to do with it. You are responsible for yourself, not for others, who are responsible for themselves.
The Moral Hierarchy
The strict father logic extends further. The basic idea is that authority is justified by morality (the strict father version), and that, in a world ordered by nature, there should be (and traditionally has been) a moral hierarchy in which those who have traditionally dominated should dominate.
The hierarchy is: God above Man, Man above Nature, The Disciplined (Strong) above the Undisciplined (Weak), The Rich above the Poor, Employers above Employees, Adults above Children, Western culture above other cultures, America above other countries. The hierarchy extends to: Men above women, Whites above Nonwhites, Christians above nonChristians, Straights above Gays.
On the whole, conservative policies flow from the strict father worldview and this hierarchy. Trump is an extreme case, though very much in line with conservative policies.
Strict Father Complexities
There are political policies that follow from strict father morality. As we discuss them, please bear in mind that many if not most conservatives are bi-conceptual, that is, that have a strict father major worldview and a nurturant minor worldview on some issues or other.
In-Group Nurturance: More importantly, it is common for conservatives to show in-group nurturance — care for members of some in-group. What counts as an in-group varies.
The minimal in-group is your family.
The in-group can be members of your church or your religion — and the church or religion may offer help to the needy members of the church or religion.
The in-group can be in the military, with military family getting housing, education, health care, and cheaper goods on the military base, and where platoon-members (“bands of brothers”) are taken care of and never left behind.
In small towns all over America where people are mostly conservative, the in-group can be community members and whoever lives in the town. The small-town nurturance for long-term neighbors can override differences in politics, race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, and so on.
This means that in national or state politics, one may be a typical conservative, but those political views can be adjusted locally by moderation or in-group nurturance. Part of the conservative revolution of 1994 was the move by Newt Gingrich to rid the Republican party of moderates by running extreme conservatives against them in primaries.
It is also important to remember that moderate progressives are biconceptuals, that they have a minor conservative worldview on a certain issues, and that they can be made more conservative by repeated conservative language
Strict Father Political Policies
The most obvious strict father political policies are the following, group by group.
White Evangelical Christians:
Right-wing white evangelicals offer you a strict father God you are to fear — who can send you to burn in hell for eternity. Sinners get a second chance, to become “born again.” After that, sinners who don’t follow his commandments will burn in hell. Those who follow the commandments will be “saved.”
The moral hierarchy creates a white evangelical politics:
God above Man: Churches get major tax breaks, and seek public funding for religious schools.
Men Above Women: Men get to decide on reproduction. Against Planned Parenthood, abortion, and morning-after pills. For laws requiring spousal and parental notification prior to abortion.
Marriage between a man and a woman: no gay marriage.
Child-rearing should follow the strict father model.
Religious Christmas scenes in public places funded by public money.
Large crosses erected on public land.
The Ten Commandments in courtrooms.
Political candidates must proclaim their religion.
Laissez-Faire Free Marketeers:
Corporations and those who own and run them are metaphorical strict fathers. Corporations are “persons” who can engage in political lobbying, who seek to maximize their profits, set rules for their employees and can punish them in various ways, ultimately by firing them or laying them off.
Corporate conservatives want laissez-faire free markets, where wealthy people and corporations set market rules in their favor with minimal government regulation and enforcement. They see taxation not as investment in publicly provided resources for all citizens, but as government taking their earnings (their private property) and giving the money through government programs to those who don’t deserve it. This is the source of establishment Republicans’ anti-tax and shrinking government views. This version of conservatism is quite happy with outsourcing to increase profits by sending manufacturing and many services abroad where labor is cheap, with the consequence that well-paying jobs leave America and wages are driven down here. They profit from many cheap imports important for business profits, such as steel, building materials, electronic parts, etc.
They also want to privatize public resources as much as possible: eliminate public schools, publicly financed health insurance, drill and mine on public lands, build private highways, and so on.
The White Working Class:
Many members of the white working class have strict father morality, even those in unions. Many have their strict father views limited to their home life, but many have them as a major worldview. As conservatives, they believe in individual responsibility not government “handouts;” they may resent union dues and prefer “right to work” laws; and they may implicitly accept the moral hierarchy and believe they are superior to nonwhites, Latinos, nonChristians, and gays and should be in a higher financial and social position. Conservative women may accept their position as inferior to their men, but still see themselves above the rest of the hierarchy. The white working class has been hit hard by income inequality, globalization and outsourcing, computerization, the decline of coal mining, low-wage chain stores driving out small business, and if older, ageism. They are largely uneducated and see themselves as looked down on by the educated “elite” who tell them that everyone should go to college to merit today’s jobs. They also resent “political correctness,” which directs resources to those who need them even more, but are lower on the conservative moral hierarchy. They want the respect of being on the right side of politics, of having their moral views— and hence their deepest identity — confirmed.
Political Correctness
Nurturant parent morality puts a premium on helping those in the family who need it the most: infants, sick or injured children, and so on.
In liberal politics, those lower on the conservative moral hierarchy are seen to have been victimized by those who are more powerful. The result is a reverse moral hierarchy, in which the less powerful are more deserving of assistance than the more powerful: the poor more than the non-poor, non-white more than white, women more than men, immigrants more than residents, and so on.
The white working class calls this view “political correctness.” It leaves out poor whites, especially in nonurban areas, who have had to face the problems of a culture that, as we have just seen, has been devastated by corporate greed (income inequality, globalization and outsourcing, computerization, and low-wage chain stores driving out small business) and factors like the decline of coal mining.
All three of these groups — evangelicals, corporatists, and the white working class correctly saw the Supreme Court issue as central to upholding their values across the board, on all issues.
The Main Issue Is Identity
For each type of conservative, the main issue is one’s identity, which is defined by strict father values. One can have a religious version, a business version, or a working class resentment version, but in each case self-identity is the issue. That is why those who voted for Trump didn’t care if he constantly lied, or if he treated women outrageously, or if he was ignorant of foreign policy. What mattered was the voter’s moral identity, the voter’s sense of right and wrong, the voter’s self-respect as a conservative.
Trump and those in his campaign understood this. Those in the Democratic party, the media, and pollsters did not.
Double 0
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Producer in Kidz In The Hall
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