Right and Left: Self-Interest vs. Self-Loathing

Anybody else ever get the following kind of impression:

The right tends to be motivated largely (though, of course, not entirely) by a kind of self-interest (where this can include national self-interest. The left, on the other hand, tends to be motivated largely (though, of course, not entirely) by something like self-loathing. Economically, folks on the right like to spin things in a way that gets them more money, whereas at least part of the left seems to say "take my money--I don't deserve it anyway!" In international affairs, on the right we get "foreign policy realism," the view that we don't even have any moral obligations to other countries and people. We also get constant/repeated campaigns to convince us that we should almost always undertake courses of action that will benefit the U.S., even if only minutely, and even if at great cost to others--that is, a radical skewing of the kinds of calculations we normally do when weighing our own interests against those of others. (The kind of skewing that leaves you basically friendless if you do it on an individual level.) On the left (usually, but not always, the leftier left), you get the "blame America first" crowd, which seems to be composed largely of self-loathing Americans. Though more broadly you get the "blame Western culture" first crowd, which seems to be composed largely of westerners.

This could, of course, all be BS.

But when I do think along these lines, I also wonder whether or not this could partially explain why the left is more alarming to most people than the right, even though the right has almost certainly been responsible for more badness than the left. (And weighing one's own self-interest too heavily has been responsible for an extremely high percentage of the world's badness. The harm produced by self-loathing has to pale by comparison.)

Anyway, the thought goes like this: cheating on account of self-interest--spinning the facts and the calculations in order to rationalize your own greed and disregard for others--that's something everybody knows about, and almost no one even finds surprising or worthy of comment. It's one of the first human tendencies we learn about as children (largely from our own case...). It's the most human of pathologies. Self-loathing on the other hand reeks more of sickness--though perhaps only on account of its unfamiliarity. When the greedy clash politically with the self-hating, people who have to choose up sides naturally gravitate towards the former. They know what they're getting there. It's a known quantity. Predictable. It's an ordinary, every day kind of craziness that they understand. The other kind of craziness just seems crazier, less familiar, more alien...and so, among other things, more of a political gamble, i.e. risk.

Of course the political spectrum is circular, and both phenomena show up on the other "end," too. Many on the religious right are motivated largely by self-loathing (especially loathing of human bodies), for example. And those on the left are more than capable of skewing the scales when interests are weighed.

This is obviously nothing more than a kind of hypothesis...a bit of speculation...a suggestion. That's all.