I think I may be a bit late to the ball on this topic, but I still see it often enough that I’d like to post about it, and it touches on political interactions more broadly so it’s better to do it first before going into more specific issues. It’s easy enough to see that people instinctively treat politics as a team sport, cheering for their party or candidate in much the same way as they might cheer for a favorite football team. This analogy, while correct in many senses, also tends to draw immediate revulsion when drawn. It seems like we should try to be rational and objective when considering serious matters of public policy, as opposed to mindlessly cheering on our chosen “side,” right?

While this is a noble sentiment, sometimes people get a bit too caught up in it, and the result looks something like this:

I call this guy the “400 IQ Enlightened Rationalist Radical Centrist.” While calling everyone stupid is the more obnoxious version of this, there are less abrasive manifestations as well, such as people who like to maintain that “both sides have a point,” people who seem to remain indecisive about everything, or any other variant of refusing to pick a side and sticking to the claim that they are “moderate” or “centrist.” All of these are driven by the same axiomatic principle. In the same way that libertarians follow the principle that government is bad, or feminists follow the principle that men are bad, these people follow the principle that Picking a Side is Bad.

It’s not hard to imagine how people came to believe this. If you’ve ever witnessed someone tie themselves into knots trying to write off and justify all the embarrassing behavior of Donald Trump, then you know that Having a Side can lead people into pitifully transparent displays of hypocrisy and motivated reasoning. This isn’t limited to Donald Trump, of course. I remember some truly eye-rolling attempts to cope with Hillary’s e-mails back in 2016. We’re seeing it play out in particularly sharp fashion right now with the scandal around Biden’s classified docs.

I think the 400 IQ centrist is thus motivated by a desire to not fall into this sort of behavior. Less charitably, I speculate that such people are further motivated by social desirability—they feel that it is more intellectually noble to be above the fray in some sense, that they are too smart to fall into low-brow partisan politics. There is a practical aspect to this attitude as well. If you pick a side, then you’re going to make the other side mad at you. So if you are someone who prefers to avoid conflict and just doesn’t want to be seen as an enemy by anyone, naturally you try to be Switzerland.

But how likely is it that the 400 IQ centrist’s position is actually true—that is, that “both sides” really are equivalent in some way, whether that be that they are equally stupid, or have somehow equally correct views of the world, or etc.? On its face, this proposition is implausible. How often has it been the case in history that “both sides” of a significant political conflict were morally and intellectually equal, whether we want to define it as equally right or equally wrong?

Pretty much never, that I can think of. It always seems pretty clear in hindsight that one view was correct, or at least much closer to it, and one was not. Furthermore, let’s suppose that if you dig, you can find a few things on which both sides really do have a point, and it really isn’t clear-cut which one is actually right. Politics in Current Year touches on every single little nook and cranny of our lives. What are the odds that every single issue or topic out of the totality of human experience fits into this category?

I suppose you could theorize that the distribution of right and wrong is distributed such that conservatives are right exactly 50% of the time and liberals the other 50%. But what are the odds of that being the case, truly? If that were really true, it would be such an extraordinary finding that it would warrant some serious evidence and reasoning in justifying it as such. But the best that I’m aware of on this front is Jordan Peterson’s rather flimsy “liberals and conservatives need each other” routine.

Again, if we dig and look for a specific example that fits Peterson’s mold, we might be able to find a few. But if we try to apply it broadly, it falls apart instantly. Take for instance the rise of the transgender craze. Is it necessarily true that sometimes transgenderism is a good idea because approximately half of society who are “higher in openness” or some such are willing to entertain it? No, of course not. Not even liberals believed in such garbage 10-15 years ago.

Which raises the question of, if political beliefs are primarily a result of inherent personality traits, why did liberals only just now start pushing the transgender craze within the past decade? Shouldn’t this have been some kind of timeless age-old conflict that the two sides are locked in eternal struggle over? Did the innate personalities of the population somehow shift massively within a period of just 10 years? That clearly isn’t plausible.

It seems clear that transgenderism is an outgrowth of the axiomatic belief in “blank slatism,” as I’ve seen it termed, the idea that underlying biological realities of human nature do not exist and that people’s behavior is infinitely malleable depending on their environment. Rather than inventing some sort of elaborate narrative about how this underlying belief is ackchyually essential to the functioning of society because a bunch of people currently believe in it, it is simpler to merely state that it is wrong on its face. As is the axiomatic belief that Both Sides Are Equal. They’re not equal on this. Conservatives are right and liberals are wrong. Lots of people have believed lots of false things throughout history, and this is no different. It’s actually that simple.

Peterson’s view seems motivated by the egalitarian notion that everyone is equally valuable, which is a bit ironic given that he’s mostly known for his criticism of the left’s extreme application of this principle. But it’s right there in the title of the clip: “Liberals and Conservatives Need Each Other.” Do they, though? It’s well known that a relative few people pull the lion’s share of the weight in practically any aspect of human existence. It’s not clear why this would be any different when it comes to politics and governance. This sort of political egalitarianism may seem useful for trying to keep the peace between two sides that might otherwise be at each other’s throats, but that has no bearing on whether it’s actually true or not.

What is much more plausible is that while the two political “sides” are not equal, it is also true that neither one is infallible. This is where we see people straying into rank hypocrisy and cope, when they appear to take the attitude that because their “side” did something, now they must defend it to the death, no matter what it was. Donald Trump is an easy reference for this because so much of recent politics has orbited around his center of gravity like debris circling a supermassive black hole.

I have no interest in defending any of Donald Trump’s personal behavior. As a human being, it seems clear to me that he leaves much to be desired. Despite that, I would certainly vote for him over Joe Biden, or any Democrat at all. This is not because I think Donald Trump is a great person or even particularly a good one. It is simply because he would enact, relatively speaking, more policies that I want and less policies that I do not want. That is the bottom line of politics, after all. Or at least, it should be, if we are approaching it in a halfway sane manner.

Another example from recent politics which illustrated this distinction in crystal-clear terms was the 2022 Pennsylvania Senate race between Dr. Oz and John Fetterman. This election, or at least the coverage of it that I saw from within the conservative media bubble, focused massively on Fetterman’s having suffered a stroke and the rather obvious consequences that this had for his mental acuity. It is true that Fetterman seemed to have trouble speaking and turned in an absolutely abysmal debate performance, which I remember hearing people describe as “historically” bad, as if that was supposed to matter.

Yet he went on to win anyways, and this makes perfect sense to me. How could the liberals possibly vote for someone who was so clearly unfit to hold office?, I remember people asking. Isn’t it irresponsible to put someone in a position of authority when their brain is addled from a stroke? Well, sure, maybe. But Fetterman was still going to do the things they wanted, while Oz was going to do the things they didn’t want. If the shoe were on the other foot, if Fetterman was the Republican and Oz the Democrat, I would absolutely vote for Fetterman, and tell my fellow cons to do the same. Wouldn’t you? When I tell other conservatives that I’ll vote for a potato before a Democrat, I usually get nods of agreement, after all.

This is what I mean when I say that you should be a team player. If you believe your ideas are correct, keep that as your focus, as that’s the real reason you should participate in politics. It’s dishonest and petty to pretend to care about things like Donald Trump’s phone call to Zelensky back in 2019 or John Fetterman’s stroke. These are shallow excuses that people latch onto instrumentally, as a means by which to try and beat up the other side. Don’t fall for that. Candidates are vehicles for policy, not celebrities to be treated with cults of personality.

But when it comes to the meat and potatoes, don’t fall for the 400 IQ centrist meme either. Just put your money where your mouth is and say what you think is true. If you’re too afraid of judgment to do that, then be this guy:

This is the only way to actually be politically neutral, to be apathetic towards politics and unaware of what is even going on, spending your time just grilling and drinking beer instead. If you pay any attention to politics and start to form beliefs about it, you’re going to end up on some side or another. Some people might try to pull the whole shtick of saying “well I agree with conservatives most of the time, but I’m not actually a conservative myself, I would never associate with those people, I swear.” As if, in a war, if you spend all your time firing at one side, they’re gonna believe you if try to say that you’re neutral. Don’t get coy. Just own it.

The left seems to understand this much better than the right, which is likely a result of their position as the side of power. You don’t really have any social consequences to fear from proclaiming yourself a leftist, whereas if you are known as a conservative, there is definitely some risk there. Still, you can take a lesson from the left here in observing how every conservative candidate they face always seems to be worse than the last. Trump was worse than Romney who was worse than McCain who was worse than Bush, and presumably DeSantis will be the most Hitlery of them all. While this seems ridiculous from an outside viewpoint, the left clearly does this because they actually want to win, and so they naturally pick up narratives that serve that goal.

The reality is that in order to be effective in politics, collective action is required. People must cohere and move as a large tribal mass in order to get results in “our democracy.” This does require a willingness to participate in a team mindset. If the results you are pushing for will genuinely lead to better social conditions, then there is absolutely nothing wrong with being a part of that, and possibly a degree of shame if you willfully distance yourself from it. Just remember why you’re actually doing it and don’t lose sight of the end goal.

I think this is perhaps best illustrated in the left-wing sentiment that right-wing views are so illegitimate that they shouldn’t even be aired, because why would you treat two worldviews as equally valid when one of them is good and loving and right and the other is evil and hateful and wrong?

A lot of right wingers will react to that sentiment with indignation. Why of course you should present both sides! Cue something something free speech and defending to the death your right to say it and blah blah blah. I get that that’s an instrumentally useful sentiment when you’re the out-of-power side, but that’s what it is, an instrumental viewpoint, not a true one. When I hear the sentiment that correct views should be aired and incorrect ones not aired, I’m like, yeah. Why would you treat two worldviews as equal if one is right and one is wrong? We don’t teach people that 2 + 2 could either equal 4 or it could equal 5. That’s crazy. Of course there’s a right answer, and a wrong answer, and we should differentiate them as such.

I just disagree with lefties about which answer is which. I’m on the conservative team, in case you haven’t noticed. And whatever team you’re on, it’s self-evident that it serves your team better to treat the opposing view—which, by definition of being on a team, you presumably believe to be wrong and to some degree evil—as anathema, not to walk around “defending to the death their right to say it” as if that’s something to be proud of. If you’ve been paying attention, then you might have figured out that the side who is more willing to do this has generally gotten their way on all of these culture wars we’ve supposedly been fighting.