It probably has never occurred to you, personally, to go someplace far away, where the laws of your country which frown on such things don't extend, and kidnap someone, or several someones, for your personal use: to sell, to exploit for free labor, to torment for kicks and giggles... If you're operating in Mode 1, it's so beyond the horizon of anything your moral sensibilities suggest is even remotely acceptable in interpersonal conduct, that it simply has never come up to be considered, much less rejected.
But people did this. Actual human beings actually did this, in great numbers. And people continue to do this, and various variations on it. It behooves us to ask What were they thinking, that they thought this was an okay thing to do?
Liberals are wrong to say these people are motivated by hate. From Part 2:
Lions don't hate gazelles. In fact, if you could ask them, I think lions would tell you they love gazelles -- they find them delicious... What the cheering throngs at Trump's rallies are feeling is joy. They're delighted by the uplift of being told, both implicitly and explicitly by Trump, that their Mode 2 morality is good, worthy, and valid... They're thrilled by the prospect of an overturn of the Mode 1 hegemony in American culture, and the possibility of making Mode 2 the dominant norm of the land.
This reminds me of a general process in political revolution: if there's something people believe strongly, but they're not allowed to say it publicly, they still think it privately, and it simmers under the surface until all at once it becomes acceptable to say it publicly, and then all the people who believe it can organize to overthrow the old system.
But I'm wondering how many Trump supporters really want to openly subjugate others, and how many just want to feel like they're participating in a political system that has been blocking them from participating -- and for superficial cultural reasons they like Trump better than Sanders.
Here's a fascinating analysis from fivethirtyeight, The GOP's Wacky Delegate Rules Are Helping Trump. The Republican rule-makers decided to award delegates based on the total population of each district, not the Republican population. So Republicans in heavily Democratic districts have way more influence, per person, than Republicans in heavily Republican districts. These supervoters love Trump, and I think it's not because they want to own slaves -- it's because they feel beseiged by an alien culture. (Although maybe, because they're in Mode 2, they assume that being a cultural minority means being a slave.)
I'm guessing that only 10-20% of Americans are in full-on Mode 2 morality, but I wonder how many others would switch over if it became socially acceptable, like it did in Nazi Germany. A deeper question is whether we're making moral progress. In ten thousand years will we still be flipping between the two modes, or will we be permanently and universally in Mode 1? And if we get there, where will we go next?
This rhetorical substitution of economic class for social class has a particular virtue for people in more privileged social classes: it allows them to discuss the lack of privileges of the lower classes in a way that holds them blameless of bigotry. So it is okay -- preferred, even -- to discuss the difficulty of the poor to become non-poor due to lack of resources: how terrible it is that the poor are thwarted in their efforts to improve their employment by not having the money for interview clothing, for transit to better jobs, for qualifying education or training. Real problems all -- but also handy substitutes for discussing the much, much more uncomfortable topics of discrimination against job applicants and promotion candidates for having an accent, a hair-do, a sense of style, an address on one's resume that is lower-class.
Siderea goes on to cover several angles of the subject of moving from one social class to another, and this makes me think of a whole other subject:
People really hate changing their culture, and lots of political issues come down to cultural standoffs, where two cultures are incompatible and neither side wants to change, like when immigrants don't want to assimilate, or when old people don't want to adopt the values of young people. It's not always clear who's right, and sometimes the disagreements are over silly things like how to pronounce words.
But it gets interesting when political and technological changes favor certain cultures. The internet helps cultures that value transparency, and undermines cultures that value secrecy. Birth control helps cultures that value sexual freedom, and undermines cultures that want to harness sex to family obligations. I can even put my support for an unconditional basic income in cultural terms: it would undermine a culture of striving for conventional success, and feed a culture of learning to navigate free time.
By guaranteeing basic survival, a government provides a service as necessary as, say, policing the streets or fighting off foreign enemies. At the same time, once this service is provided, the government can get out of trying to regulate the labor market: Its goal of keeping people fed and clothed is already achieved.
Something fun, Every Meal In Wuthering Heights Ranked In Order Of Sadness. In college I was obsessed with Wuthering Heights and took four different classes that covered it. People think it's about romantic love when really it's about how modern society is a prison for the soul -- and apparently also about crappy food.
Finally, one of my favorite reddit threads ever, with hundreds of creative answers to a good question: You just died. God escorts you to a door, telling you that this is your own personal heaven. What's behind your door?