I have read so many versions of this that I feel like screaming:
A concept you often hear among organizers (but less in electoral politics) is meaning making. Organizers tend to think of voters as being in a constant process of making sense of the world, and they see their job as being not simply to ask for people’s vote but also to participate in the process by which voters process their experiences into positions. . . .
And while the right inserts itself into this meaning-making process 24/7, the left mostly just offers policy. Policy is a worthy remedy for material problems, but it is grossly inadequate as a salve for the psychological transitions that change foists on citizens.
This irritates me because it is flatly wrong. The left in the US and Europe is constantly trying to shape how people see the world – to "make meaning" in this sense. What was "Black Lives Matter"? What about Occupy Wall Street and the one percent? Love is love? No human is illegal?
If you ask me, all of this chatter is just the latest version of the activist's complaint that the politicians on my side are losing becasue they aren't doing exactly what I want them to.
Maybe some people are conservative, not because liberals aren't doing enough meaning-making, but because they like things the way they are, or the way they used to be, and don't want them to change.
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Maybe some people are conservative, not because liberals aren't doing enough meaning-making, but because they like things the way they are, or the way they used to be, and don't want them to change.
Honestly, this is the simpler explanation by far, and Occam's Razor and all that...
Conservatives fundamentally want to preserve whatever historical privilege over others they fear they might lose nest. When abolition was on the table, slaver owners fought against it because they enjoyed owning slaves, with all the benefits that brought them. When the American revolution was fomenting, Loyalists fought against independence and democratizing because they enjoyed various degrees of royal favor, with all the benefits that brought them.
All throughout history, conservatives have championed "Tradition" and "Order" in the defense of institutions which unjustly enriched and empowered them at the direct expense of others, and that remains just as true today.
Some people are just beyond "making meaning" for, because they are fundamentally too selfish to sway away from their conservative position. They will always fight for their own privilege, no matter how unjust, purely because they enjoy having their privilege, and are unwilling to give up any of it in the name of justice, equality, decency, etc.
Some people will vote against providing food to children who are literally starving, because they prefer not to pay slightly higher taxes. That's conservatism in a nutshell: "I got mine, you get yours". (Virtually always with an added dose of rigging the game to ensure they get theirs, and others don't.)
I'm imagining a bunch of activists sitting around the campfire discussing the phrase Meaning-Making. It's a pretty funny image.
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