The political environment since Trump’s election seems to get worse and worse by the day, as much of the American public becomes increasingly divided, embittered and downright insane. People across the political spectrum are enthusiastically fueling this destructive behavior in their varied quests to show how right they are and how hopelessly wrong everyone else is. Meanwhile, those who truly wield power in our society continue to laugh all the way to the bank.
Earlier today, I came across a prescient and powerful article written by Pamela B. Paresky in Psychology Today titled, Angry About the Election?
Although the piece was composed only a few weeks after the 2016 election, the writing was already on the wall and she identified and warned about the dangerous direction we were headed in. Here are a few choice excerpts:
Peruse any Facebook page and you’re sure to find plenty of anger and disgust there, too. Some Clinton supporters are “unfriending” Trump voters. Others proclaim they are no longer speaking to friends who voted for Trump. It’s not uncommon for people to explicitly state that they have no desire or intention to “come together” with nor even “have compassion” for anyone who voted for Trump.
The hostility is not all one-sided, of course. Isolation from those with different political ideas combined with aggressive political rhetoric has created the sense in people on both sides that “hostility directed at the opposition is acceptable, even appropriate. Partisans therefore feel free to express animus and engage in discriminatory behavior toward opposing partisans,” explain political scientists Iyengar and Westwood. After so many years of feeling trampled, belittled and maligned, for angry Trump voters, one Presidential victory does not clean the slate. Across the country, anger and disgust burn with righteous fervor. But anger eventually consumes everything in its path. Angry people create angry homes, angry spouses, angry children, and eventually find it hard to maintain their relationships and careers. Contrary to Wieseltier’s advice, being angry is a fairly reliable way to become lessprincipled. We need only recall the last thing we said in anger to recognize that it is a rare instance in which principles are more likely to be upheld with anger than with equanimity.
Emotions not only impact the things we say and do, they also have a way of influencing judgment. Increasingly researchers are able to see precisely how. According to psychologists Yoel Inbar and David Pizarro, anger “seems to encourage the use of cognitive‘shortcuts’ such as stereotypes,” so especially for those committed to combatting bigotry, anger is hardly the right tool. Adding disgust to the mix is even more destructive. Psychologists Buckels and Trapnell found that disgust “appears to have the unique capacity to foster the social-cognitive dehumanization of outgroup members.”
Resentment, as Wieselteir rightly appreciates, “even when it has a basis in experience, is one of the ugliest political emotions and it has been the source of horrors.” Resentment is closely related to contempt. Contempt between married couples is the single best predictor of divorce, and is destructive in other relationships, too. In examining speeches given prior to major events by leaders of extreme political groups, psychologist David Matsumoto and his colleagues discovered that anger, contempt, and disgust work together to create devaluing of the other group, and to motivate action against and even the elimination of their members. When leaders speak using these three emotions, they can succeed in generating violence against others—in other words, anger, contempt, and disgust are a dangerous and deadly combination…
Still, we allow for only a single story, and there seem to be only two options for how we interact with people who tell a different one. We can teach them; or if they are unwilling to learn, we can oppose them. The one thing we seem unwilling to do is to listen. We have somehow come to believe that when we have strong views, listening is something we do only when a person’s perspective is one we share, or while formulating arguments to convince people they are wrong—and then we must believe they can be convinced. Otherwise, not only do we avoid conversation, more and more we seem to experience a righteous combination of anger, contempt, and disgust; a poison that propels us to perform the same kind of dehumanization we work so hard to prevent.
Perhaps because at its core, listening is an act of love, we are unwilling to listen to the people we would rather hate. “An enemy is one whose story we have not heard,” contends international peacemaker, Gene Knudsen Hoffman. Rabbi Phillip Bentley, who spent time with Israelis and Palestinians as part of the Compassionate Listening Project founded by Hoffman, discovered, “those who have sympathy for only one side in a conflict become part of the conflict.”
What Dr. Paresky describes above is precisely what’s been happening to a concerning number of Americans over the course of 2017. Many thinkers and writers I found meaningful and trenchant prior to last year’s election, have becomes dull, partisan and pandering in the era of Trump. It appears the “strategy” of many partisans is to simply dehumanize the other side in a misguided pursuit of a political “win.” This sort of zero sum game thinking when it comes to your fellow humans is a recipe for disaster and can never lead to positive change. I don’t care what those playing this deadly game claim to stand for, I know that this mindset and the tactics they employ represent a very real danger to society and human progress in general.
Moving on, if I claim the above is perverse and destructive, what’s a realistic alternative? My answer is unity, and I wonder why almost no one is talking about that option. If we take a step back and analyze the situation, it becomes undeniable that it wasn’t your average fellow Americans that created the neo-feudal, insufferably corrupt and imperialistic society we live under today. Rather, those who created this world and encourage its continuance consist of both Democrats and Republicans working in bipartisan fashion on behalf of high-powered donors, i.e., oligarchs. Again, this is pretty much undeniable, yet in the emotionally charged, hysterical post-Trump environment we inhabit, everyone seems to be focused on dehumanizing their fellow Americans, 99.9% of whom have absolutely no power over policy.
I want to argue for a completely different approach. I think we need to look at some of the vast problems plaguing our society from a far more strategic and methodical perspective. We need to ask ourselves, what are the issues that donors are united on, but go against the best interests of 99.9% of us. We then need to focus our energy on building unity movements against this predatory donor agenda.
These aren’t minor issues either. We’re talking about stuff like the two-tier justice system (the rich and powerful gets slaps on the wrist, while poor people go to jail), pointless, barbaric wars abroad, monopoly capitalism, Wall Street bailouts and more. I’m confident we could build widespread consensus on the issues above and many others. In aggregated, these issues have a tremendous impact to society as a whole and our ability to improve our everyday lives.
We need to start reframing politics in terms of “the people” against the donors, as opposed to one half of the public against the other half. We seem to be doing much more of the latter versus the former, and if it continues, we’ll be building our own graves.
That’s not to say there aren’t very real, meaningful differences amongst the population. I’m not arguing that these must be discarded or totally ignored, I’m pointing out that we are spending almost all our energy on fighting about our differences, as opposed to talking about the stuff we agree on.
Tomorrow I’ll write about how I propose we think about some of these differences in the context of a new politics we must start to build. If we fail to unite against donors on key existential issues — and do it soon — we’ll be rapidly divided and conquered into a dust cloud of anger and violence before we realized what happened.
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In Liberty,
Michael Krieger
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Yes… that’s the heart of ‘their’ manipulation… divide and conquer. Now how to communicate it… like a savvy marketer ( the donors’ agents) would. You’re cooking with gas (as we said in the olden days 🙂 …. and I’m looking forward to next post 🙂
It all makes sense. But a large majority of people in these United States are far from logical nor have much common sense. Without these qualities I can’t imagine they will be capable of any constructive change.
I prefer to sit back and watch this mob of brainwashed loonies run amok and burn the country into the 3rd world. I’m not going to get in their way. In fact, I’m trying to get as far away as I can from any gathering of Americans.
We all can see where this is headed. Embrace it and be ready or start creating something new.
Thou speaketh for a great multitude of people on this planet! Let it be …
Surprise, It’s really interesting to read your comment because you exactly illustrate the dehumanization of other people that Micheal is talking about. You describe Americans as: “far from logical nor have much common sense who can’t be counted on for any constructive change”. Later on you write: “I prefer to sit back and watch this mob of brainwashed loonies run amok and burn the country into the 3rd world.”
Do you feel ordinary Americans are actually the people running amok and burning down our country? How do you see them doing this? Do you feel ordinary people run the US and world military? Do you feel the people run our courts and Congress? I don’t see that but maybe you do? Would you tell me how you see that happening?
Also, we share the idea that US imperialism must end. But I don’t share the idea that our people should be forced to suffer and die for this goal. That’s what’s happening in the US imperium right now. Our people and people around the planet are all being killed off on behalf of this desire of a few to rule of world.
I don’t think having more people die is an alternative to more people dying.
Its tough trying to be the good guy. I know because I am trying to launch a plan to greatly reduce co2. The problem is perception is more important than reality. Here are to perceptions where billions of dollars flows to. Elon Musk hasn’t reduced any co2. Electricity makes more co2 at the average power plant by three times NG and 2.5 CL. Yet everybody notices no tail pipe and thinks the air is cleaner. The largest study ever done on the Green Building council and the LEED program show how they increased CO2 by 29% with each building in the study.
So I have a plan for a new”World Wide Energy Efficiency Building Standard for Buildings” that will reduce more co2 than all the solar panals in the USA combined.
I just get ignored.
Its [sp] tough trying to be the good guy.
Especially when what you’re doing is bad.
Brief summary for those who don’t click the link: Actual science – as opposed to politically corrupted pseudo-science – indicates that a catastrophic natural deficit of CO2 is a far – if not infinitely (that whole divide by zero thing) – greater risk than catastrophic anthropogenic excess of CO2.
I applaud your efforts but ask the larger question of why you are being ignored? Perhaps it is because the financial and corporate hierarchy that runs this planet, with their own business plan, views your efforts as contrary to their plannings? If you developed a new weapons system you would be greeted with open arms.
In Canada we see the imposition of a universal carbon tax on the end consumer to pay the mounting debt of government all owed to the banking class as part of the financial business plan to bankrupt nations. This despite any alluded to rhetoric of ‘saving the planet.’. This while the same venal Canadian government champions a tar sand ‘dilbit’ pipeline to the earthquake prone west coast of British Columbia.
If we view the world and the imposed human structure we see that all human suffering is a part of this business plan. In viewing the larger scope of the of this planning how can it be otherwise?
I’ve thought about this for a really long time now and I don’t think listening is the best first step. Rather, it seems better to announce a community project that will actually help a person or a larger part of the community and do that.
During the course of the project political “enemies” have a chance of contact with each other! It is a chance to find out that one’s “enemy” is not so bad after all. Once this occurs, listening can begin.
It’s already possible for some people to listen to each other and agree on things. Libertarians and old time liberals agree on many issues such as anti war, alternative energy, organic food, more local control of govt. entities such as police etc. Hunters and environmentalists can agree on a lot of things. We definitely come at these things from completely different angles but their is agreement on outcomes.
I have not found it possible to find any point of agreement between myself as an old fashioned liberal and neocons or liberals. That’s my experience. I hope others have a different one! However, unbeknown to neoliberals I have been able to work on community projects with them for the common good. I have to keep my mouth shut and I am resigned to listening to a lot of crap but it can be done. I think it’s wrong that I have to shut up so we can get a project done, but apparently, that’s what it takes.
Let’s face it, Mike: our common foes and the struggles that require us to unite in order to solve them are not glamorous. Social media memes about them are drab and boring, unemotional and utilitarian. Even worse, they require REAL WORK to achieve. They are not something that can be solved by clicking “Share”. Remember all that “End the Fed” business during Ron Paul’s presidential runs? “End the Fed” was a dead end because there was no way for libertarian activists to glam up all those drab, boring men in monochromatic suits and make them out to be the society-destroying vipers that they are. We would not be in this cauldron of vacuous pudding-heads fighting over inane memes if it wasn’t for the ghastly consequences of central bank manipulation driving down wages, depressing job prospects, amassing wealth to the 1% while draining the middle class through mortgage fraud and student loan scams, etc., etc. Seeing how people flee from real issues and latch onto moronic social justice memes, it must be more fun to “live in the moment” with Social Media than to build one’s future — as though these people are wolves with no concept of where their next meal comes from.
Here’s why:
https://youtu.be/8rh6qqsmxNs
Thanks, George Carlin.
It should be required before every public debate that this clip be shown.
In terms of working together, look at Trump, Pelosi, and Schumer. The media is playing it as if Trump got duped by the Democrats, but once the tax bill comes around (the major bill that personally affect Trump the most), I’m sure we’ll see what Trump got out of that deal.
The timing matches. If the tax cut (there’ll be no reform) doesn’t benefit Trump as much as he wants, he’ll show a different face in December when the debt ceiling comes up again.
“We need to start reframing politics in terms of “the people” against the donors, as opposed to one half of the public against the other half.”
Spot on. Need to get people to look left instead of right. But what a job ahead, to get people to stop looking at the false enemy (their fellow pleb neighbours) and make them aware of the real enemy (the institutions providing “day to day stability”).
Need to provide alternative solutions to the current institutions, so they are seen to be a really bad deal, and worth disengaging from. There must be enough good, smart and influential people in the world to achieve this? Changing how we horde, save and use our money would be a good start to edging out the power crazies.
The financial and corporate entity and its individual preferred share owners that run this planet are well aware of the psychological behavorial patterns of humans and use these very real profiles in its own interests through various manipulative operations. When viewing the larger scope of things we see that all human sufferings are a part of this business plan. How can it be otherwise?