the end of centrism.

breaking down the trend.

Polarization is increasing. More people are identifying as conservatives, more people are identifying as liberals, and fewer people identify as moderates. This could be attributed to an overall decline in mental health (as extreme people seek extreme ideologies), or it could be attributed to the decline of religiousness as a tribal marker of identity.

Since 2000, “very liberal” and “liberal” have been growing steadily.

The most rapid growth has been among whites, not Hispanics or blacks. Between 2000 and 2004, there was no significant racial gap in liberal identification among Democratic voters (less than 5%). In 2019, the racial gap expanded to 18% between whites and Hispanics, and 8% between Hispanics and blacks. Even though blacks vote the most tribally for Democrats, they were the least ideological liberal.

A similar shift has occurred among Republicans, where the percentage of conservatives has risen from 58% in 1994 to 74% in 2021. Still, this is only a 16% shift, which is significantly less than the 25% increase in liberalism among white Democrats.

Overall, the percentage of liberals increased from 41% in 2000 to 48% in 2016; the percent of conservatives increased from 37% in 2000 to 39% in 2016.

If the total Republican percentage only increased by 2% in 16 years, then how did the shift within the Republican party occur? The answer is that Republicans aren’t convincing other Republicans to be more conservative. Quite the opposite.

Republicans have been attracting existing conservatives from the Democratic Party and convincing them to switch over. Any Democrat who isn’t thoroughly liberal, like Tulsi or RFK, is switching over to the Republican Party.

Meanwhile, liberals within the Democratic Party have been successfully “bluepilling” fellow Democrats with their tactics of nagging, hectoring, and bullying, and also offering the carrot of high social status and the approval of celebrities and social media.

Republicans are sopping up the dregs of the cast-out or cancelled Democrats. Democrats, meanwhile, are radicalizing and expanding their hardcore liberal base among whites. Polarization is a story of one side radicalizing and the other side moderating their position.

When liberals fear-monger that “young men are becoming radicalized,” what they actually mean is that young men are maintaining exactly the same views that they had 20 years ago. They haven’t changed at all — it’s the liberal dominated culture around them that has changed.

The youngest Republicans aren’t more radical than older generations, but more ambivalent. They aren’t more positively dedicated to Christianity, pro-life, pro-gun, freedom of speech, or any other conservative issue than prior generations. They are tired of being rejected, disciplined, and degraded by the left. They are the left behinds.

Why the left wins.

• Fear-mongering;

• Hysterics;

• Bullying;

• Status games;

• and passive-aggression:

These are effective tools at winning moral arguments. These are the tactics that all religions use:

• “You’re going to hell if you don’t convert today;

• you could die tomorrow;

• if you don’t convert we will exclude you;

• we avoid eye contact and sharing meals with non-believers.”

Conservatives are confused, bewildered, and frustrated by status games. They see the rules as random, irrational, and superstitious. This is part of the reason why conservatives think of liberals as hysterical and mentally ill. Conservatives aren’t good at adapting to dynamic or shifting status games.

Conservatives prefer status games that are explicit, static, and predictable. Their preferred status game, Christianity, is dried out and shriveled up. They correctly perceive social games to be feminine, because females are better at playing them. Women more easily adapt to novel moral structures, whereas men have a difficult time making the switch to unwritten rules. Sort of like how women are better at dancing than men: they pay better attention.

The Far-Right Solution to Leftism

The far-right solution to the Gordian knot is to cut it open. At Trump’s Madison Square Garden rally, Tony Hinchcliffe called Puerto Rico, which has been part of America since 1917, an island of trash.¹

4chan memes, of Hinchcliffe caliber or greater, cut through liberal status games by inverting them. Instead of respecting marginalized groups, they are attacked and threatened with “the day of the rope,” Naziism, and the KKK. This produces a sadistic Schadenfreude and vice signaling. Anyone who “counter-signals” is shamed as a “cuck.”

When conservatives like James Lindsay refer to the “woke right,” they are correctly identifying a similar social structure between “extreme liberals” and the 4chan right. Both play status games that alienate average people; both of them are able to push through the alienation with sheer force of will and eventually convert people (especially the youth) over to their side.

Between 2000 and 2016, the number of independents decreased from 17% to 11%. America is bifurcating into two parallel and opposite religious systems: liberalism and Trumpism. If Trumpism peters out, liberalism will rush in to fill the void. Either way, the center cannot hold.

Centrists in the middle believe that both the far left and the far right are delusional and mentally ill. Both of these camps have higher rates of narcissism, anxiety, sadism, Machiavellianism, and depression, and other abnormal personality traits. But all new religions are led by such people, and all new religions attract such people. It is the centrists, who believe in moral relativism, who are the most delusional of all.

Thanks for reading.

1. You can’t call Puerto Ricans refugees, H1Bs, illegal aliens, green card holders, foreign students, or any other euphemism. They are Americans, and have been so for 107 years — longer than anyone in Trump’s family.