Sam Seder the host of the progressively disposed webcast Majority Report recently went on the Jubilee YouTube channel to participate in an event called Surrounded, in which according to some labyrinthine rules I did not hang around long enough to figure out, he sequentially debated a set of premises of his own construction with a series of conservative Gen Z fashion victims, all of whom in spite of the diverse mix of races, ethnicities, genders and sexual orientations seemed united in opposition to Diversity Equity and Inclusion (and sometimes Accessibility) known colloquially as DEI. DEI was itself one of the topics -- specifically "Trump's attacks on DEI hide his real goal which is to give corporations more power."-- which gave rise to the clip perhaps most widely shared in which a young latino gay gentleman with a man bun confidently asserts incorrectly that government agencies get tax breaks from the government for making DEI hires. (Spoiler: Government agencies are not taxed by the government that creates and funds them from taxes.) The young man's certitude and wrongness were exceptional but emblematic of the caliber of opponent and quality of argument that Seder was up against.
Some of the combatants were better armed. For instance debating the proposition that "Unless you're a billionaire, religious fundamentalist, or xenophobic nationalist, voting for Trump was a mistake.", Seder faced a young fundamentalist who had a point of view about the basis on which morality should be formed. His argument went along the lines of:
If you don't have a foundation for your beliefs it's not morality, it's a preference. A humanist foundation which seeks the least harm for the most people is considered consequentialist or utilitarian, not moral. In that light, to a non fundamentalist, the belief that killing is wrong is merely a preference-- there's no basis for a difference with those who would say killing is right. If society tomorrow said trans folks don't deserve rights, a moral relativist should be ok with that. Take relativism to its logical end, however and you have low reproductive birth rates, a reproductive dead end (two men together can't reproduce). Religion prioritizes the nuclear family. Gay people have no justification for being gay outside of "it just feels good". Are pedophiles, like gay people, "born that way"? To prevent them from acting on their urges we create duties. Religion provides those duties and obligations to behave according to religious morality. Life isn't about freedom and exercising what you want. The leftist view in contrast is only about "It makes me feel good."
Seder admits that he was slow in cottoning to the argument being put before him, and for this reason feels this may be the one segment that he did not rise to. (His argument amounted to: Religion having a number of differing viewpoints, no one of them should have the right to corner what god is telling us is right or wrong. No one has a corner on religious truth. The reason we have a democracy is because we don't want a king. Kings came from the idea that their authority comes directly from god.) Seder ultimately condeded (to the extent that you can consider a point that is utterly consistent with the premise being debated a concession) that religious fundamentalism won with Trump. To which the fundamentalist boasted: Sorry we're going to have more kids, less abortion, more families, stable family households, better education. If liberal rights were rolled back, Gay people should be straight anyway. Women should submit to their husbands. It doesn't mean they're slaves (which has become a bad thing since the end of the civil war apparently, even to rightwing American Christian fundamentalists). Seder: I don't want to live under a theocracy, you on the other hand are at home in the Trump universe. To which the young fundamentalist could only beam.
I don't want to debate necessarily, but for lack of a better idea, I am a little inspired to try to amplify why what is good for fundamentalists only, and particularly American conservative Christian fundamentalists, is objectively less good-- much much much less good-- than what is good for me and I assume for Sam Seder. Sam may have hit on this but if he did it was not in any of the segments I could stomach watching.
The fundamentalist world view is too stunted and provincial to see this, but morality, even their own is a betrayal of preference. For the fundamentalist, the preference is for dictated standards of behavior. For whatever reason, the fundamentalist prefers to attribute morality to an authority, and particularly an authority that theoretically metes out consequences for misbehavior. By and large, the fundamentalist adheres to this morality both in fear of consequences of being found to fall short of adherence to the morality and occasionally due to a shared preference for whatever the authority's perceived preference may be, but the fundamentalist always projects and models his behavior as though he strictly adheres to the morality. When morality is dictated to you, it is hoped that you will adhere to it, but it is expected that you will broadcast the sincere desire for others-- specifically, those outside the fundamentalist tribe--to be forced to comply with it (which could arguably be the primary motivation of fundamentalists to adopt such a petty and unforgiving world view to begin with). The preference is to avoid eternal consequences (or short-term social ones) of being discovered by God, or worse, by one's fellow fundamentalists to stray from the dictated code, but especially to be perceived as being faithful to it. A flawed human being can aver that their morality is from God, but truthfully, their morality is at best a preference to be seen as being faithful to the morality of their God.
Disbelieving in the authority of a pretty distasteful tradition (and I'm speaking in particular of the experience I've had of the American conservative Christian Fundamentalist tradition), it would be immoral of me to "base" my "morality" on the authority of a "god" or even to pretend to respect a tradition so at odds with what I consider to be the rightest to the best of my ability way to behave in this one life I'm given (by parent humans). For starters, it would be immoral of me to yield my moral sense (to pretend to feel any duty or obligation) to a racist, xenophobic, nationalist, misogynistic, homophobic, transphobic, ageist, lookist, ableist, liberty-for-me-bondage-for-thee tribalist selfish asshole of a god. But it isn't because of a hatred for the god (there is no such entity, thank the heavenly void) but rather a fundamental (pardon the pun) disagreement about the best way for people to behave toward each other and toward the planet we find ourselves on. Sam Seder's opponent may have been "sorry" about the imposition of his extremely tiny stultified notion of morality on those who rue the victory of his kind in the last election. If my morality ever wins, it would mean that his kind would have to suffer the agony of universal healthcare and social security for all at every age. They would need to deal with a state that assists a woman in realizing whatever choice she makes of whether or not and when to reproduce, either through safe and legal abortion if the time is not right or in tools to raise her child when she feels the time is right. They would have to cope with a society in which work is done as a communal project to meet the needs of everyone, even the least capable of working, and not for the profit and benefit of a tiny self-selected elite. They would need to deal with a society that lives and lets live, loves and lets love, is and lets be however a person feels they need to be. True, they might be prevented from ever attaining billions in wealth or dominion over planet raping corporations, but they could very well find consolation as thriving citizens of a world in which needs are met with such little resistance and to such an extent that poverty does not exist, crimes are rare, inequality is not a thing and the best things in life are free. Never in the history of this capitalism enthralled society has such a morality prevailed, regardless of fundamentalist claims (and blames) to the contrary. Some day void willing.
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