Temperament: American Polarisation and Revolution

---

Temperament:  American Polarisation and Revolution

American politics looks like a knife-edge. Yet if you sort the population by temperament rather than party, you find a skew that seems to favour the Right: a large plurality of “Guardian” personalities who prefer order, duty, and the familiar.

Why, then, are presidential races close? Because temperament is not destiny, coalitions are messy, and different types wield different kinds of power.

---

Two lenses: FFM and MBTI/Keirsey

The Five-Factor Model (FFM) treats personality as degrees of Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. 

MBTI/Keirsey clusters people into temperaments: Guardians (SJ), Idealists (NF), Artisans (SP), and Rationals (NT). These categories do not pick parties; they arrange priorities. But that’s enough to shape coalitions.

---

The stock types that drive the narrative

The MAGA working-class archetype presents as lower Openness, higher Conscientiousness, in-group loyalty, and a concrete, rule-informed worldview. In MBTI terms, that looks SJ (e.g. ISTJ or ESTJ), what Keirsey called the Guardians.

The progressive “woke” student archetype sketches as high Openness, high universalist Agreeableness, and a future-oriented, abstract style. In MBTI, that often looks NF (e.g. ENFP or INFJ), the Idealists.

---

Why the numbers don’t settle the election

Guardians are numerous - roughly four in ten Americans. Idealists are fewer, perhaps one to two in ten, but clustered in universities, media, nonprofits, and culture industries. The first group has mass; the second has the megaphone.

Elections hinge on how these energies combine with race, religion, class, region, and education. The balance is not so much arithmetical as ecological.

---

How the big Guardian bloc actually splits

ISTJ (“Inspector”): rule-following, security-minded. Many in the military, police, trades, agencies. Often conservative, yet a substantial public-sector slice leans Democratic - think unions.

ESTJ (“Supervisor”): managerial, pragmatic. Small-business and community leaders trend Republican; union-linked ESTJs in the Midwest historically voted blue. Realignment has shifted many rightward.

ISFJ (“Protector”): caregiving, duty-bound. White churchgoing ISFJs lean Republican; Black and Hispanic churchgoing ISFJs are overwhelmingly Democratic. Net effect: strong blue presence despite “traditionalist” vibes.

ESFJ (“Provider”): sociable, community-first. Suburban white ESFJs swing; minority ESFJs vote Democratic. These voters are often decisive in the suburbs that call elections.

---

FFM tilts that cross-cut politics

Openness drives a taste for change and theory. High-Openness progressives dominate discourse and the institutions that set narratives. 

Conscientiousness steers regard for rules and duty. High-Conscientiousness Guardians dominate electoral turnout and local institutions. 

Agreeableness splits: universalist empathy points left; loyalty-centric empathy points right.

Neuroticism raises perceived threat on both sides but with different objects: cultural decay vs systemic injustice, often with a moralistic tinge.

---

The other temperaments that tip the scales

Artisans (SP, ~30%) value spontaneity, autonomy, and performance. Non-college men in SP-heavy environments often trend Republican; creative-industry SPs lean Democratic (think Bruce Springsteen). Volatile, turnout-sensitive.

Rationals (NT, ~10%) value systems and competence. Educated professionals historically skewed Democratic on general libertarian grounds, but a vocal NT minority now defects right on their repulsion from emotional moralising, over-regulation, and institutional-capture.

---

Why elections stay close

Neither party can monopolise the Guardians.

Democrats hold large Guardian contingents through minority religious communities, public-sector unions, and care professions.

Republicans hold large Guardian contingents through white church networks, small business, and rural/exurban infrastructure.

Idealists and Rationals shape elite rhetoric and policy pipelines; Artisans and a swath of Guardians decide margins in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Georgia, and Arizona.

The result is equilibrium by counterweight, not equality of type.

---

Coalition mechanics in one sentence

Republicans are powered by SJ + SP mass with rising non-college minorities; Democrats are powered by NF + NT institutions plus minority SJs; both sides win only by persuading and turning out the overlapping Guardian middle.

---

What this suggests for strategy

Appeals framed as order, duty, continuity speak Guardian.

Appeals framed as meaning, justice, authenticity speak Idealist.

The winning campaigns translate between these grammars without triggering the other side’s threat detectors. That is rare. When it happens, landslides follow. When it fails, America seesaws.

---

Historical perspective

These dynamics are not uniquely American. History shows the same recurring division: the conservative majority of Guardians, the idealistic minority of Idealists, the hard-nosed and strategic Rationals who seize conceptual leadership of upheavals, and the volatile Artisans who supply muscle.

Revolutions often follow the same pattern: Idealists provide moral fire, Rationals plan the revolt, Artisans execute with force, and Guardians resist until concessions or collapse.

Lenin, Trotsky, Robespierre - system-builders in the NT mould - rode intellectual/cultural NF angst and SP muscle to overturn SJ structures of the ancien régime.

America’s cultural wars are a local expression of this timeless cycle: the clash of conserving majorities and visionary minorities, with strategic Rationals and opportunistic Artisans shaping whether change is blocked for a while, gradual, chaotic, or catastrophic. We shall see.

---

The Pathological State and the Prospects of War

 

"No Two Democratic States Have Ever Gone to War"

This oft-cited claim is at least approximately true. It holds not as an iron law but as a reflection of the dynamics within and between democratic states. Understanding why this holds - and when it doesn’t - requires analysing the nature of democracy, the capitalist economy and the specific phenomenon of the pathological state.

The Democratic State is Generally Reactive

Capitalism is unique as a mode of production where economic power resides with the private owners of capital, while the state's role is almost entirely non-economically productive: setting and enforcing the rules for commerce, providing public goods like education and defence - and otherwise staying out of the way.

Critically, the default capitalist state lacks its own economic resources. Revenues depend on taxes and borrowing, tethering the state to the economic vitality of its capitalist and working classes.

In bourgeois democracies, the government and the state remain distinct entities. The government - composed of elected officials - sets policy and provides direction but the sprawling state bureaucracies, influenced by diverse civil society lobbying, operate in their own sphere - and generally in their own interests.

In the modern era, capitalism has transcended national boundaries. The most powerful firms and financial institutions are transnational, motivated to influence democratic states in the direction of harmonised regulations, free trade rather than tariffs, and stable markets. 

The pathological state stands in stark contrast.

The Pathological State: A Breeding Ground for Conflict

Pathological states are those captured by elites whose ambitions go beyond purely economic rationality. These regimes are often characterised by a fusion of government and state, where the ruling elite purges the state apparatus to serve visions such as territorial expansion, national pride, and dominance.

Historical examples abound. Nazi Germany sought Lebensraum in Eastern Europe, aiming for territorial control to directly support its perceived agricultural and resource needs. Similarly, contemporary Russia and China - while not identical - exemplify the pathological state in their proactive use of state power for revanchist ends and national-ethnic dominance.

In these regimes, economic elites are often subordinated to the state’s broader ideological goals. The calculus of transnational capitalism - focused on profitability, efficiency and stability - gives way to the more visceral drives of power and status backed by military action. It has to be said that in this the state is often backed by the patriotism of popular opinion - while few in democracies have felt impelled to die for their company...

How Democracies Resist Pathological States

Pathological states often provoke democratic ones into confrontation. For a pathological state, war and aggressive policies are not anomalies but extensions of its raison d’être. History shows that democracies targeted by such states face a stark choice: capitulate or fight.

Take current conflicts in Ukraine and around Taiwan. In both cases, pathological states (Russia and China) confront democracies, threatening territorial integrity and sovereignty. War for these kinds of objectives is not congenial to developed bourgeois democracies, but they are not given the choice.

The Limits of Pathological States

While democracies rarely devolve into pathological states, the reverse is even less likely. Pathological states tend to sustain themselves until they are forced to collapse, often by losing a war. The cases of Spain and Portugal may serve as exceptions - examples where entrenched repressive regimes after many decades eventually transitioned into democracies as militarism and authoritarianism became inefficient shackles, to be thrown off by new elites amid popular pressure.

---

Q&A on Pathological States and Political Movements  

Q: How do pathological states come into existence?

A: In cases like Russia and China, the collapse of the 'ancien régime' occurred without prior significant capitalist development or the presence of a robust civil society. The revolutionary governments in both cases seized control of the state apparatus to forcibly drive industrialization, embedding dysfunctionality from the outset. This reliance on the state for economic transformation created a system of repression and inefficiency - pathologies that have persisted over time.  

By contrast, in Nazi Germany, the bourgeois democratic state disintegrated under the weight of internal divisions that proved irreconcilable through peaceful means. The National Socialist movement, a mass political force, rose by exploiting economic despair and ideological polarisation. Through violence and suppression - primarily targeting trade unions, socialists, and communists - the Nazis dismantled institutional opposition and restructured the state to align with their extra-economic ideological objectives. This transformation rendered the state pathological, prioritising coercion and ideological conformity over functional governance - and launching the world to war.  

Q: Some people have called the Trump MAGA movement in America fascist. Is this an accurate statement?

A: No, the comparison is misplaced. The MAGA movement under Trump is better understood as part of a broader realignment within bourgeois democracy, akin to Margaret Thatcher’s transition in the UK during the 1980s.  

Thatcherism arose in response to the exhaustion of the post-war Keynesian economic model, introducing neoliberal reforms to revitalise capitalism. While fiercely contested - at times violently - the transition maintained the framework of bourgeois democracy, redirecting it along new deregulated and globalised lines.  

Similarly, the Trump phenomenon represents an attempt to pivot away from the now-declining neoliberal, globalising model that has dominated American (and Western) politics for decades. This shift is partly driven by the pressures of geopolitical competition from coordinated adversaries like China, Russia, Iran, and North Korea, which expose the vulnerabilities of the existing global order, but also by a popular revolt against internal stagnation.

However, unlike the Nazi seizure of power, the MAGA movement does not seek to dismantle democratic institutions wholesale, or impose an ideologically rigid state. Instead, it signifies the reconfiguration of bourgeois democracy to meet the demands of a changing global and domestic landscape.  

While the process is polarising, the trajectory remains rooted in the competitive pluralism that defines democratic capitalism, not the totalitarian impulses characteristic of fascist regimes.

---

This essay was drafted by ChatGPT from my extensive notes, and then lightly post-edited.