Bring Back Respectability Politics: Right Wing Edition

I would love to respect more people

Part of a series: check out the left wing edition part 1 here and part 2 here!

At present, you’re most likely to hear the word “class” as it’s used by Marx: a designator of where you fit in your societal hierarchy, heavily related to (but not interchangeable with) socioeconomic status. I’ve written some of my thoughts on class here, but I’m currently interested in talking about how those ideas intersect with another definition of class: behavioral grace, decorum, politeness.

As with many of my posts, this one was inspired by someone else and presaged in a Note I wrote:

The ever-hilarious Cartoons Hate Her wrote about a recent teapot tornado on the timeline centering on three right wing women prominent enough to have attended the Turning Point USA conference and in some cases, be household names (to the very online, if to no one else).

Following her example, I won’t name these women, but I will note that they all in one way or another have benefitted from or even been promoted by the right wing media apparatus. These women represent at least a small portion of what the right chooses to be known by in current year.

You’ll also note that post title, which unfortunately is largely a direct quote (the tradwife part is the bit that isn’t, tragically) of this brouhaha.

So, what was I saying. Class. Right. The new right is extremely tacky, painfully lacking in the non-Marxist variety of class. The worst offenders might be some women on the right, but that could just be downstream of the soft bigotry of extremely low expectations that I and everyone else has for male social graces. It would seem that good things are good until it demands something of you other than existing while having good genes, wearing dresses, or lifting weights. This classlessness is costly for the right, despite its present adaptiveness for the media landscape, diminishing the quality of discussion and a sense of our national dignity both at home and abroad. It is also predictable given the currents that have shaped our economy and politics this century so far.