The Right-Wing Politics of Ressentiment

by Will Wilkinson on December 16, 2009

This glorious Julian Sanchez rant merits your attention:

Think back to the 2004 RNC—which I happened to be up in New York  covering. After witnessing three days of inchoate, spittle-flecked rage from the people who had the run of all three branches of government, some wag (probably Jon Stewart) puzzled over the “anger of the enfranchised.” And itwould be puzzling if the driving force here were a public policy agenda, rather than a set of cultural grievances. Jay Gatsby learned too late that wealth alone wouldn’t confer the status he had truly craved all along. What we saw in ‘04 was fury at the realization that ascendancy to political power had not (post-9/11 Lee Greenwood renaissance notwithstanding) brought parallel culturalpower.  The secret shame of the conservative base is that they’ve internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy—hence this obsession with the idea that somewhere, someone who went to Harvard might be snickering at them.

[...]

Even if conservatives retook power, they wouldn’t be able to provide a political solution to a psychological problem, assuming they’re not willing to go the Pol Pot route. At the same time, it signals a resignation to impotence on the cultural front where the real conflict lies.  It effectively says: We cede to the bogeyman cultural elites the power of stereotypical definition, so becoming the stereotype more fully and grotesquely is our only means of empowerment.

Emphasis added. Read the whole thing. Over to you, Jonah!

  • Robert Light
    If one were to take up Nietzsche's important critique of ressentiment in the Genealogy of Morals, it's interesting to note that that critique would justify, if it justifies anything public or political, the crushing of the priestly liberal ruling class not for sake of the Palins of the world, but for the very detachment from the ego to which Sanchez aspires. Sanchez isn't aware that, to the extent that the attempt at detachment of ego is political, it must take the form of something like fascism. Sanchez doesn't understand that his contempt for ressentiment requires particular contempt for his own libertarianism. Otherwise he is a last man like Palin. Fascism is closer to the superman than is communism, since it aspires to (though never achieved) something beyond self-satisfied mediocrity.
  • y81
    I think resentment is pretty basic to both parties' appeal. Most of the Democrats' constituents feel themselves disenfranchised and disrespected by the real powers that be. In the case of teachers, professors, writers, etc. the backbone of DNC attendees, it's because of status/income disequilibrium: You may have a college degree, but you can't live on the Upper East Side like your classmates at Davis Polk. Other Democratic constituencies have similar stories.
  • Sam M
    "so becoming the stereotype more fully and grotesquely is our only means of empowerment."

    Hey, going "camp" can work. Ask Susan Sontag.
  • I hate to say this, but Julian lost some credibility with me when he announced he was going to vote for Obama.
  • Nimed
    I'm sure you're breaking his heart.
  • Paul Zrimsek
    Life's not worth living if you can't impress people like Julian Sanchez.
  • Julian Sanchez
    Absent means for a controlled study, I fear this one has to stand or fall at the level of: "Survey the scene and see if this account rings true to you."
  • Nimed
    What I meant by hopelessly subjective is that I have difficulty even in imagining the form of an hypothetical controlled study to approach the internalization hypothesis.

    Absent constraints in resources, what would such a study look like?
  • Nimed
    The Julian Sanchez excerpt sounds right to me. But isn't it hopelessly subjective? What kind of evidence would support the idea that conservatives " internalized the enemy’s secular cosmopolitan value set and status hierarchy"?
blog comments powered by Disqus

Previous post:

Next post: