Schrödinger's Cat and Right-Wing Punditry

Back in the days of yore, when Curmie was an undergraduate Government major, one of the core principles in his Political Ideals class, only slightly oversimplified, was that conservatives tend to think in terms of individuals, whereas liberals tend to think in terms of groups. When the discussion is about who gets the job or promotion or college admission or whatever, this distinction comes to the forefront.

That is, the definition of “level playing field” comes into dispute.  If we assume it up front, then in a field like academia that cis white male over there with the “best” credentials—GPA, board scores, publication record, grant money attracted, student evaluations, whatever—gets the gig.  But if we notice that some group—based on gender, race, religion, whatever—is under-represented and attempt to… wait for it… “level the playing field,” then maybe that guy isn’t the best choice.  Perhaps adding a different perspective is worth more than a couple of points on a standardized test.

In other words, liberals are looking for a socially equitable solution, whereas conservatives are looking to find the best-qualified individual irrespective of demographic profile.  Neither is inherently right or wrong, except at the extremes.  Claiming that, say, a black woman got an academic job based solely (or primarily) on DEI concerns is problematic if (hypothetically speaking) she has a doctorate from Harvard and received tenure at Stanford; saying that her firing is based solely (or primarily) on an anti-DEI agenda is just as bad if (hypothetically speaking) she’s a university president busted for plagiarism.

The paradigm breaks down, however, in the political sphere.  After all, here’s Curmie, well to the left of center politically, harping on and on about Confucian principles of looking at each case (and by extension each person) individually.  Meanwhile, look at any right-leaning publication or blog.  We don’t expect them to point out things like the fact that the economic “misery index” (unemployment plus inflation) is substantially lower now than it was when President Biden took office, or that if Republicans really cared about border security as anything but a campaign issue, they’d pass the supplemental spending request which earmarks $13.6 billion (with a “b”) specifically for that purpose.  That would be too much to ask, apparently.

Rather, look at the “honest” sites, the ones that recognize that Donald Trump is an unstable narcissist (even if they still prefer him to Biden), that Lauren Boebert is a vulgar hypocrite, that Nikki Haley will never answer a question truthfully if she sees an advantage to do otherwise. 

But look at how those stories are framed.  Chris Christie is a has-been blowhard.  George Santos is a mendacious jerk.  Marjorie Taylor Greene is a certifiable idiot.  But when the politician saying or doing something stupid or unethical is Rashida Tlaib, Jamaal Bowman, or Chuck Schumer?  These are Democrats, and their boneheadedness is taken as representative of their kind.

This is a phenomenon Curmie calls the Schrödinger sentence, simultaneously true and untrue.  Yes, “Democrats say X,” because more than one of them say that, but the implication is that all Democrats say X, whereas a lot, perhaps even most, of them think X is downright moronic.  The other variation on the theme is the line beloved of Fox News, that “people are saying…”  No one outside the Fox studio is saying that, and they’re only saying it because their bosses told them to, but they are in fact saying it and they are in fact people, so it’s deceptive but not exactly a lie.

Curmie is neither partisan enough nor stupid enough to suggest that left-leaning sites like MSNBC, Alternet, or Raw Story don’t do exactly the same thing, or that the right has a monopoly on hypocrisy.  But sex scandals involving Republican pols schtupping the pool boy are more interesting (and newsworthy) than those involving Democrats because the Bill Clintons of the world aren’t yammering on about “family values” or whatever the latest right-wing catchphrase is.  Similarly, the cognitive dissonance alarms ring a little louder when the party that preaches individual merit is the one lumping everyone to their political left into an amorphous lump of Otherness. 

Let a single Democratic pol suggest that the minimum wage ought to be raised, that slavery existed in this country and that students ought to know about it, or that we ought to investigate the way higher education is funded in Western Europe, and there’s a dead cert guarantee that some on the right (notice that Curmie said “some,” not “all”) will start screeching that the moderate Democrat in question is a Communist.  If they’re really in a bind—losing an argument, for example—they’ll fall back to their go-to: “liberals [all of them!] hate America.” 

Curmie can’t think of a liberal in his acquaintance about whom that could reasonably be said, although he is getting more forgetful of late, so he refrains from saying it never applies.  Trying to fix the things that are wrong is precisely the opposite of hatred.  And disagreeing, even outspokenly, with this or that governmental policy or proposed legislation is no indication of hateful or even unpatriotic predilections. 

Curmie does admit, however, that whereas “hate” is a very strong word, he does have contempt for a small minority of Americans (as opposed to the country they were born into).  Those who ignorantly and arrogantly make sweeping generalizations about entire groups of people are on that list.  The ones who know better but use that rhetoric anyway are worse.