I was reminded this week about a great book I read last year - Jonathan Haidt's "The Righteous Mind". In it, he showed that while humans have five essential morality axes
Care/Harm
Fairness/Cheating
Loyalty/Betrayal
Authority/Subversion
Sanctity/Degradation
(with Liberty/Oppression as a proposed sixth axis)
What's interesting is that liberal/progressive people really really value Care and Fairness, and don't really worry about the other three, conservatives value all five roughly equally.
It's why there is the fundamental divide in our world views. For instance, a liberal thinks about a homosexual couple and feels that no one is being harmed by them, so go for it! A conservative thinks about a homosexual couple and his Sanctity bells go off. It just isn't right (for the conservative).
I was going to write a post about how Democrats need to get so much smarter with their messaging and start supporting progressive policies in the language of Loyalty, Authority, and Sanctity that the conservatives would understand. Move their emotions, not their intellects.
But then I found that
Haidt had already addressed this a bit this week:
I think there are two main approaches. The first links to deep moral intuitions about fairness versus cheating and exploitation. Trump presents himself as a successful businessman. But a good businessman creates positive-sum interactions. He leaves a long trail of satisfied customers who want to buy from him again, and a long trail of satisfied partners who want to work with him again. Trump has not done this. He thinks about everything as a zero sum interaction, which he usually wins — and therefore the person who dealt with him loses. I think the Democrats should give voice to a long parade of people — former customers and partners — who deeply regret dealing with Trump. Trump cheats, exploits, deceives. Trump is a con-man, and we are his biggest mark yet. Don’t let him turn us all into suckers.
The second approach is to link to moral intuitions about loyalty, authority, and sanctity. These are the moral foundations that authoritarians and ultra-nationalists generally appeal to, and Trump sure did this in his convention speech. But these can be turned against him too. Trump talks about patriotism (a form of loyalty), but he seems to be pals with one of our main adversaries (Putin) while telling our friends in the Baltics that we may not defend them. In these ways he brings shame to America and weakens our stature among our friends. The moral importance of authority is in part that it creates order, and Trump talks a great deal about law and order, yet he is the chaos candidate who will throw America into constant constitutional crises, throw the world into recession, and throw our alliances into disarray. The moral importance of sanctity is that it brings dignity and exaltation to people, places, and institutions that can unite people who worship things in common. The psychology of sacredness evolved as part of our religious nature, but people use the same psychology toward kings, the constitution, national heroes, and, to a decreasing degree, to the American presidency. Trump degrades it all with his crassness, his obscene language, his fear-mongering and his inability to offer soaring rhetoric. What a contrast with Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Reagan.
It's excellent advice, and Democrats need to think this way - strike out at conservative voters through their emotions, and you'll finally be talking to them the way they understand. With their guts.
