Resource Restriction Produces Conservatism – Example #15,784

The NY Times is baffled while contemplating how as areas grow poor, people reject the offer of handouts:

It is one of the central political puzzles of our time: Parts of the country that depend on the safety-net programs supported by Democrats are increasingly voting for Republicans who favor shredding that net…

It’s enough to give Democrats the willies as they contemplate a map where the red keeps seeping outward, confining them to ever narrower redoubts of blue. The temptation for coastal liberals is to shake their heads over those godforsaken white-working-class provincials who are voting against their own interests… it also keeps us from fully grasping what’s going on in communities where conditions have deteriorated to the point where researchers have detected alarming trends in their mortality rates.

The Times has noticed the shift in psychology, as have the Democrat Elites. This is that Conservative Policy Mood graph reaching for the sky. It is the economic foundations groaning before the collapse, combined with Obama doing to the Democrat Party what George W. Bush did to the Republican Party.

I have been wondering why every Democrat out there who could beat Hillary is taking a pass on this election. Why is the Democratic Party just ceding the floor to Hillary, who everybody knows could never beat a man unless the election was fixed?

Part of me thought maybe it is fixed, and they are now going to just be blatant about installing the most unliked candidate, as a sort of “fuck you” to those last stalwart souls who believed in America. But the more likely answer is that all the Democrats who could have beaten Hillary looked at the polls and concluded that this will be the year of the Republican. Hillary is the only one desperate enough to give it a go, and risk going down in flames.

In eastern Kentucky and other former Democratic bastions that have swung Republican in the past several decades, the people who most rely on the safety-net programs secured by Democrats are, by and large, not voting against their own interests by electing Republicans. Rather, they are not voting, period. They have, as voting data, surveys and my own reporting suggest, become profoundly disconnected from the political process.

The people in these communities who are voting Republican in larger proportions are those who are a notch or two up the economic ladder — the sheriff’s deputy, the teacher, the highway worker, the motel clerk, the gas station owner and the coal miner. And their growing allegiance to the Republicans is, in part, a reaction against what they perceive, among those below them on the economic ladder, as a growing dependency on the safety net, the most visible manifestation of downward mobility in their declining towns.

First it is amusing that we have come to the point that it is those evil “Motel Clerk Robber Barons” who are denying the poor their fair share of the reallocation of wealth that they deserve.

That said, this is all wrong. The long-term welfarites are by and large r-strategists. They have no loyalty, little motivation, they won’t vote unless you pay them, and even then they will skip voting if they can, after they get paid. Since the level of bribery has remained the same, so has their participation. They aren’t refusing to vote because they desperately need the welfare, and it will go away if they don’t vote. They aren’t voting because you can’t make their amygdalae think about future consequences. The wiring isn’t there.

The people a rung up on the ladder voted Democrat when resources were flush and they were exhibiting a more r-psychology in response. They are now paying two to four times what they were paying for food, housing, health insurance, etc, so it is as if their stagnant wages have been cut in half. As a result, they have become K-ified – more aggressive, more competitive, and less tolerant of being slighted unfairly by the government they fund.

The article goes on:

That pattern is right in line with surveys, which show a decades-long decline in support for redistributive policies and an increase in conservatism in the electorate even as inequality worsens.

They are talking about the Misery Index Curve which even with fake numbers, began a jump upward in 2006, immediately followed by the Conservative Policy Mood Graph rising exponentially as well. Now, I’d wonder if the economic problems causing the inequality were making people act more competitively, but that is just me. Here, the professionals think that as economic conditions worsen, everybody will increasingly want to turn the government into a professional thief who will steal other people’s nest eggs, and give the eggs to them. Reread that past bit with an eye to what it tells you about the psychologies at the NY Times, and about leftists in general.

More:

…polls find nonvoters are far more likely to favor spending on the poor and on government services than are voters

In other words, the lazy and unmotivated (ie weak amygdalae), tend to favor r-selected ideals.

Between destroying the economy in general (ignoring phony-soon-to-be-readjusted numbers about more jobs as the cost of everything skyrockets), destroying the coal industry in particular, flooding the jobs market with foreigners, feeding crime with the whole #blacklivesmatters bullshit, doubling or tripling healthcare costs as the services provided are cut dramatically and everyone is forced to buy in, destroying our dominant image overseas, and foisting endless executive actions the people didn’t want, Obama has done quite a number on the Democrat party.

Laying in wait behind it all is the Apocalypse, which will make all of this look less like a rightward shift in the populace, and more like a Communist Party Central Planning Session. I expect Democrats will come to view Obama in the next decade similarly to how we view George W. Bush. Especially since our next President is either going to be Trump or Cruz.

Rabbits will be lining up to attack Obama as inept because all of the alternative ideas, from rabbits being wrong about supporting him, to the nation rejecting rabbit initiatives, will all be amygdala-stimulating – and that will be on top of an already epic level of stimulation going on courtesy of the highly conservative President, and the Apocalypse which is just going to keep on creeping up on us.

Be very optimistic.