Thursday, July 21, 2016

I need a Vox explainer for this one

Tyler Cowen, who is extremely smart, and is someone whose writings I regularly read, has written something that seems very important, but which is totally over my head: Does Lucifer in fact inhabit the corpus of Hillary Clinton?

Cowen's terse essay links to Cass Sunstein's essay: The Republican Convention, Translated for Liberals. Sunstein is also very smart, and although I don't read him regularly, this is a pretty interesting (and easier to comprehend) essay.

The core of Sunstein's essay appears to be this:

The best explanation comes from New York University’s Jonathan Haidt, who has produced some of the most illuminating recent work on political psychology. Haidt’s central finding is that across many cultures, human beings have embraced five distinct moral foundations: fairness, avoidance of harm, respect for authority, purity (as opposed to disgust), and loyalty. Contemporary U. S. conservatives embrace all five; liberals emphasize the first two, but care much less about the last three.

Even though most of each essay escapes me, I found a LOT to agree with in:

Whatever Democrats think of the current Republican Party and its nominee, they should stop mocking.
and a certain amount to agree with in:
You may or may not agree with the true message of the Convention, but if you think it is merely stupid you are, sooner or later, in for a big surprise.

I just wish I understood the other parts.

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