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Alex's avatar

This is a really good framing of this issue, and I can think of several other moral homophones that are causing the general center-left coalition in the USA to fall apart (and, perhaps, enable MAGA victories at the polls):

1. Being pro-gay-marriage because you don't think you have a right to give a shit (me) vs. being pro-gay-marriage because you actually think gay people are cooler than straight people (most LGBTQ+ activists today, it seems)

2. Being anti-gun-control because you want to keep your collection of old pre-WW2 guns you inherited from your grandfather (me) vs. being anti-gun-control because you think everybody should be toting an AR around in public all the time (some gun rights activists, who call people like me "Fudds")

3. Being a "Motte Feminist", i.e. "women are human beings too" vs. a "Bailey Feminist", i.e. "all of society needs to be torn down and reconstructed around female social interaction preferences, plus women need all kinds of special help to compete with men on a level playing field".

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BumblingBea's avatar

I think the way we organise politics in most western countries (maybe others, but I'm less familiar with other countries) encourages moral homophonicity.

Our politics are based around parties, voting blocks, and coalitions; where members are incentivised to artificially correlate their voting on issues at risk of being kicked out of coalition.

Rather than risk a dispute, it's often much easier to gloss over fundamental moral differences, giving the public a false impression.

I recently saw this online with moral outrage towards "teal independents" (pro environment, pro capitalist, and usually wealthy) candidates pushing for tax breaks. This should've been entirely predictable given their platforms, and is representative of the preferences of their voters, but somehow took people by shock. Somehow people took "pro-windfarm" as being homophonic for "socialist".

I imagine a political system where heterodoxy is encouraged might help with this tendency.

Side note:

I suspect you might have glossed over a moral homophone between racial redistribution politicians.

As a relatively feverant socialist myself, I suspect there are two distinct groups there.

A) People who genuinely believe some race deserves benefits for past wrongs. For example, some people I met in London who thought black people had the right to "reverse colonise the UK" (Tottenham can be a strange place sometimes!).

B) Socialists who want to dampen capitalism's reward function, and see rampant racial inequity as an easy place to start.

This too, is a very uneasy alliance.

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