Thoughts on Reconciliation
Nov. 24th, 2016 03:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lydyI have some complicatedly connected but nevertheless disjointed thoughts on the various calls I have seen for people on the left to empathize and sympathize with Trump voters.
There's a weird pairing of false equivalencies which I want to talk about, and tease apart. The story seems to be that the so-called white working class feels resentful because East Coast liberal elites condescend to them. Before I get to how this is a weird set of false equivalencies, though, I want to challenge a couple of the terms and assumptions, here.
First, let's start with "condescension." In 1979, at the age of seventeen, I moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Washington, Iowa. It was my senior year of high school. I was frightened, and I was desperately lonely. I was in an alien environment. Many people complained that I was rude, condescending, and hoity-toity. They were incensed that I knew nothing of them or their ways, that I found small town life and farming to be an alien landscape. Their proof that I was condescending was primarily my accent. They were also insulted that I talked too fast, and wouldn't meet their eyes. My accent was, you know, a pretty standard Pittsburgher accent, with bits of Upstate New York and Boston. It was a product of where I had lived, and not the least bit artificial. I was also extremely deferential, and that was manifested by talking very quickly, so as to not presume upon other people's time, and not making as much eye contact as I would with an intimate. I was sending out every signal I knew to say, "I am a stranger here, and would like you to like me" and the Iowans were hearing "I am so much better than you." It was years before I understood what had happened. I think it also notable that Iowans were infuriated that I knew so little about their state, and yet could not be bothered to get my home town right, and constantly referred to me as being from Philadelphia. They were, to my ears, deeply condescending when I tried to correct them, as if there was no actual difference between the two cities. I was mockingly known as Pennsylvania Polly.
This experience makes me very dubious of the claims that East Coast Liberal Elites are condescending towards the white working class. I suspect that a lot of the things that are being interpreted as condescension fall into two categories. One is the thing I just described, a failure to correctly read the social signals of people from a different sub-culture. The other is a failure to understand the frustration and anger that the left feels with people who voted for the fucking fascist, and their attempt to not say "fucking fascist" but instead, something less incendiary. I honestly think that they vastly underestimate the amount of anger we feel towards them.
The second term I really want to challenge here is "white working class." I am not sure that "working class" actually means anything useful, anymore. It was originally coined for a very different economy than the one we have, now. However, even if you let that go, your average Trump voter isn't working class. Your average Trump voter is middle class, and rural. Lots and lots of them are retirees. White, though, yeah, mostly white. But the things that seem to bind this voting bloc together aren't economics. Otherwise, you'd have seen more city-dwellers voting for Trump, and more minorities. This was a tribal identity, not an economic one. I think that one of the reasons the "economic insecurity" thing gets traction is because that's something you can think about, and work on. It's a problem that the left is actually interested in dealing with, and thinks is soluble. On the other hand, tribal identity is all about the feels, and incredibly difficult to address. (Are there tribal identities on the left? Yes, yes there are. But that's for another essay, I think.)
Now let's get back to the accepted narrative that the white working class voted for Trump because they are resentful towards the East Coast Liberal Elite condescension. If one ignores my terminological quibbles, and accepts this narrative on its fact, it still creates a moral equivalency between condescension and resentment. Condescension is based, yes, on a feeling that one is better than someone else. But the corollary is not that the person being condescended to should be hurt or damaged. Usually, it is coupled with a desire to help or uplift the benighted. And while that can be problematic in so many different ways, it is very different than resentment, which assumes that the other guy has something they shouldn't or something that you are entitled to and don't have. Resentment is also usually coupled with a desire to hurt the other person, or at very least to take something away from them. By trying to create a moral equivalence between condescension and resentment, it suggests that contempt is actually an attempt to do harm. This, then, justifies the attempt to harm the so-called liberal elites. It also artfully sweeps under the rug the attempt to dominate and harm vulnerable populations.
Let me state this very clearly: condescension may not be the best behavior in the world, but it cannot possibly excuse the wreck-it-all resentment that the Trump voters have shown.
Another strand here is the anti-intellectual bent of swaths of white voters. It is common for people to experience an attempt to explain something as an act of condescension. I have had this problem at various jobs, where any attempt to explain why a thing needed to be done a certain way was greeted with a huge amount of hostility. The types of resentment alleged by rural whites have to do with the cities getting too many tax dollars, their own concerns not being properly addressed, etc. However, any attempt to actually discuss this, to parse out where tax dollars actually go, what things are and are not being done to address their concerns, what things are and aren't feasible, all these conversations are impossible, because as soon as you do anything other than validate their emotional responses, you are "condescending." It's not possible to constructively engage with someone who believes that the use of facts is an act of aggression.
I keep on wondering about a way forward. What do we do, next. I don't know. I don't want to hurt the average Trump voter. I am furious with them as a group, and with several individual that I know personally. I am uninterested in sparing their feelings; they sure don't care about mine. Looking back at the two huge changes in my lifetime, civil rights for black people and civil rights for LGBT, I think it is clear that worrying about the tender feelings of bigots doesn't get you anywhere. Trying to gentle them along is not the way forward. Those attitudes, those laws, those behaviors are anathema and have to be treated as such. Are Trump voters redeemable? Who knows. This is not my problem. If they are, they must redeem themselves. People change, and that can be a wonderful thing. But I reject the idea of catering to their gross prejudices. Just because your feelings are hurt doesn't mean you get to try and kill me and mine.
I do think we need to work harder to get people who do not currently have power into power. Just as poor people need money, and homeless need homes, the powerless need access to the levers of power. I really hope that the DNC chooses Keith Ellison. He will bring a different voice, and a different set of experiences. Look, I don't expect to agree with every minority on the issues just because they're a minority. But multiple view points in the halls of power will help create new perspectives and new solutions. Diversity brings with it both strife and resilience. We need that.
And for those of you who think that the Trump voter is not trying to kill me and mine...one of the people I love most in the world gets their health insurance through the ACA. And has diabetes. That's just one example.
There's a weird pairing of false equivalencies which I want to talk about, and tease apart. The story seems to be that the so-called white working class feels resentful because East Coast liberal elites condescend to them. Before I get to how this is a weird set of false equivalencies, though, I want to challenge a couple of the terms and assumptions, here.
First, let's start with "condescension." In 1979, at the age of seventeen, I moved from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania to Washington, Iowa. It was my senior year of high school. I was frightened, and I was desperately lonely. I was in an alien environment. Many people complained that I was rude, condescending, and hoity-toity. They were incensed that I knew nothing of them or their ways, that I found small town life and farming to be an alien landscape. Their proof that I was condescending was primarily my accent. They were also insulted that I talked too fast, and wouldn't meet their eyes. My accent was, you know, a pretty standard Pittsburgher accent, with bits of Upstate New York and Boston. It was a product of where I had lived, and not the least bit artificial. I was also extremely deferential, and that was manifested by talking very quickly, so as to not presume upon other people's time, and not making as much eye contact as I would with an intimate. I was sending out every signal I knew to say, "I am a stranger here, and would like you to like me" and the Iowans were hearing "I am so much better than you." It was years before I understood what had happened. I think it also notable that Iowans were infuriated that I knew so little about their state, and yet could not be bothered to get my home town right, and constantly referred to me as being from Philadelphia. They were, to my ears, deeply condescending when I tried to correct them, as if there was no actual difference between the two cities. I was mockingly known as Pennsylvania Polly.
This experience makes me very dubious of the claims that East Coast Liberal Elites are condescending towards the white working class. I suspect that a lot of the things that are being interpreted as condescension fall into two categories. One is the thing I just described, a failure to correctly read the social signals of people from a different sub-culture. The other is a failure to understand the frustration and anger that the left feels with people who voted for the fucking fascist, and their attempt to not say "fucking fascist" but instead, something less incendiary. I honestly think that they vastly underestimate the amount of anger we feel towards them.
The second term I really want to challenge here is "white working class." I am not sure that "working class" actually means anything useful, anymore. It was originally coined for a very different economy than the one we have, now. However, even if you let that go, your average Trump voter isn't working class. Your average Trump voter is middle class, and rural. Lots and lots of them are retirees. White, though, yeah, mostly white. But the things that seem to bind this voting bloc together aren't economics. Otherwise, you'd have seen more city-dwellers voting for Trump, and more minorities. This was a tribal identity, not an economic one. I think that one of the reasons the "economic insecurity" thing gets traction is because that's something you can think about, and work on. It's a problem that the left is actually interested in dealing with, and thinks is soluble. On the other hand, tribal identity is all about the feels, and incredibly difficult to address. (Are there tribal identities on the left? Yes, yes there are. But that's for another essay, I think.)
Now let's get back to the accepted narrative that the white working class voted for Trump because they are resentful towards the East Coast Liberal Elite condescension. If one ignores my terminological quibbles, and accepts this narrative on its fact, it still creates a moral equivalency between condescension and resentment. Condescension is based, yes, on a feeling that one is better than someone else. But the corollary is not that the person being condescended to should be hurt or damaged. Usually, it is coupled with a desire to help or uplift the benighted. And while that can be problematic in so many different ways, it is very different than resentment, which assumes that the other guy has something they shouldn't or something that you are entitled to and don't have. Resentment is also usually coupled with a desire to hurt the other person, or at very least to take something away from them. By trying to create a moral equivalence between condescension and resentment, it suggests that contempt is actually an attempt to do harm. This, then, justifies the attempt to harm the so-called liberal elites. It also artfully sweeps under the rug the attempt to dominate and harm vulnerable populations.
Let me state this very clearly: condescension may not be the best behavior in the world, but it cannot possibly excuse the wreck-it-all resentment that the Trump voters have shown.
Another strand here is the anti-intellectual bent of swaths of white voters. It is common for people to experience an attempt to explain something as an act of condescension. I have had this problem at various jobs, where any attempt to explain why a thing needed to be done a certain way was greeted with a huge amount of hostility. The types of resentment alleged by rural whites have to do with the cities getting too many tax dollars, their own concerns not being properly addressed, etc. However, any attempt to actually discuss this, to parse out where tax dollars actually go, what things are and are not being done to address their concerns, what things are and aren't feasible, all these conversations are impossible, because as soon as you do anything other than validate their emotional responses, you are "condescending." It's not possible to constructively engage with someone who believes that the use of facts is an act of aggression.
I keep on wondering about a way forward. What do we do, next. I don't know. I don't want to hurt the average Trump voter. I am furious with them as a group, and with several individual that I know personally. I am uninterested in sparing their feelings; they sure don't care about mine. Looking back at the two huge changes in my lifetime, civil rights for black people and civil rights for LGBT, I think it is clear that worrying about the tender feelings of bigots doesn't get you anywhere. Trying to gentle them along is not the way forward. Those attitudes, those laws, those behaviors are anathema and have to be treated as such. Are Trump voters redeemable? Who knows. This is not my problem. If they are, they must redeem themselves. People change, and that can be a wonderful thing. But I reject the idea of catering to their gross prejudices. Just because your feelings are hurt doesn't mean you get to try and kill me and mine.
I do think we need to work harder to get people who do not currently have power into power. Just as poor people need money, and homeless need homes, the powerless need access to the levers of power. I really hope that the DNC chooses Keith Ellison. He will bring a different voice, and a different set of experiences. Look, I don't expect to agree with every minority on the issues just because they're a minority. But multiple view points in the halls of power will help create new perspectives and new solutions. Diversity brings with it both strife and resilience. We need that.
And for those of you who think that the Trump voter is not trying to kill me and mine...one of the people I love most in the world gets their health insurance through the ACA. And has diabetes. That's just one example.
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no subject
Date: 2016-11-24 10:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-24 10:47 pm (UTC)I am one of those people who are constantly saying that people on the left have to understand the people on the right. This is emphatically not, however, a position of thinking that we have to worry about their tender feelings. I think we have to understand their thought patterns and their feelings because they, as a group, have power and, as individuals, have agency. That power can work against our goals (as has been demonstrated) and if all individual lives are worth bettering, theirs must be included.
I think that we have to acknowledge that there is a group of people who have been lied to for their entire lives and basically formed into a voting block that consistently votes against their best interests because they are being fed lies about how things work. There are people who voted for Trump because:
- They think he can bring back coal and steel jobs (he can't)
- They equate being rich with being smart and successful (it's not)
- They have been trained for 30 so years think Hillary is a criminal mastermind (she's not)
- They believe that the reason their lives aren't where they want them to be is because they have faced unfair obstacles (this is true, though they are mistaken as to the source of these obstacles)
There is a lot more that could go on that list. What is interesting about they way they think, the way they make excuses for their leaders and continuously vote for them despite all evidence that they shouldn't, is that their thought patterns look very similar to those of abused spouses.
You don't convince an abused spouse to leave their relationship by yelling at them or ignoring them, and you can't convince these people to leave the Republican party that way either. You need to do it kindly, gently, and as community, taking advantage of every teachable moment. That's hard for people of particular temperaments to do, and I get that. I just don't think that the current approach is working.
We can either change their minds, stop them from voting, or wait for them to die. My stance is that the first option is likely to be more effective more quickly than the last, and the middle option doesn't fit in with my ethical code.
---
As to the bigger issue, I have no doubt that Trump and his cronies (and masters) are in this to improve their own lives and nothing else. I think they don't care one whit for anyone else and, while they don't actively want to kill any white people, they're not concerned at all about who will be harmed. They are very much in a "might makes right, take all you can get, fuck everyone else" mode. This allows them to talk about issues very plainly and avoid all of the nuance and complexity that enters into issues when you actually do care about other people. This mode of communication is a welcome breath of fresh air to many people who have been failed by the educational system, as they finally feel like they understand what is going on. This is why their metaphor of linking federal debt to a home budget, their tendency to reduce the bible and the constitution to a few key phrases taken out of context, and their impossible promises keep working.
The average person is not a reader. They have been trained from birth to get their ideas from soundbites off the TV and are now using the Internet the same way. The truth is there to be discovered but they don't even know where to look. They are ignorant and have built social structures around maintaining this ignorance because confronting it is so painful. I think the condescension interpretation on both sides is a manifestation of "I don't understand you, I don't understand the world you come from, and I don't understand how I don't understand it, so I feel uncomfortable, so you make me feel uncomfortable, so fuck you." The problem is that only one side has the tools to work on the "I don't understand how I don't understand it" problem, so the burden falls to the educated to educate others. I don't think this is fair, but I do think this is the reality of the situation.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 12:56 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 02:28 am (UTC)And for those of you who think that the Trump voter is not trying to kill me and mine
LOL! What on EARTH are you talking about? And no, I did not vote for either Trump or that criminal Clinton woman. But wow, to see the utter hysteria of liberals has been almost worth him winning!
Thanks for the laugh!
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 02:46 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 03:49 am (UTC)Shorter me: go fuck yourself, no one else will.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 05:14 am (UTC)I would add that Fox News has poisoned the United States. We could not have gotten to this point without without them. They lie and they know it, but it makes money and they don't care.
I hate them for what they've done to a country I love and to people I love.
Trump speaks of making America great again, but his mere election has made it weaker and worse than ever.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 05:59 am (UTC)Fox news poisoned the United states? How about the hillary Clinton campaign poisoned the United states by propping up the "pied piper" candidates such as trump? Clinton and her campaign collude with the media to give trump air time, to present him as a legitimate candidate, because she believed that was the only way she could win and take the throne she believed she deserved. She created Trump. Presented him as a serious candidate. And then lost to him.
You can't blame anyone but her for this travesty.
Is it crazy that he actually won? Yes! Would he have won if clinton hadn't stolen the primaries from bernie sanders? Probably not. Would trump be president if clinton and her campaign had just let things progress honestly instead of meddling with the press? Maybe. At least trump might never have become the Republican nominee. You dinks made your bed. Now lie in it and go to sleep. Stop trying to blame anyone but your shitty, shifty, entitled, "it's my turn" clinton.
She gave America nothing and she lost.
Now let's all hope that her mistakes won't destroy you. From your upstairs neighbor, good luck.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 06:10 am (UTC)but i know the schools here aren't helping.
the people graduating from them boast they can't read or do math.
the people in the firehall have not heard of Fahrenheit 451
or George Orwell's Animal Farm
basic literature is nonexistent ?
ironically the majority (80%)of folks here live on social security
and use medicare because they are retired I don't understand them
voting for people who want to eliminate?
why they think profits for the 3%
makes jobs when it only eliminated them?
i just do not understand
they seem to think people who can't find work,
because there isn't any, deserve to die.
first they eliminated badger care for the low incomes
then turned down the funding to help them afford it?
my aunt seemed to think working at minimum wage
part time- was enough for anyone to live on?
can't afford the transportation to go to it on that pay.
its a job she said. i just stopped talking with her
she's comfortable and has no clue what anyone else does to survive.
it just drives me crazy
this whole mess
i wonder if i should set up classes for kids
and let them tell me what they need to learn
and set about teaching them. reading, math, sewing, science,
art even music if that's what they need.
wish dad had not filled the town hall with garbage
and made it impossible to have classes in.
sigh
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 12:34 pm (UTC)This is not only a tissue of lies (or errors, if you believe them), but why the fuck are you assuming that
I like Sanders (though I liked him more six months ago, before he started talking as though the "white working class" was hugely important, and the black working class nonexistent), but I am not at all convinced that a Jewish socialist from Brooklyn could have been elected president, especially in the face of the current right-wing media machinery. (I'm not insulting Sanders: I'm a Jewish socialist from Queens.)
Is "you dinks mde your bed. Now lie in it" supposed to be compassionate, or create reconciliation? Or are you just here to demonstrate everything Lydy said about compassion needing to be a two-way street.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-25 04:55 pm (UTC)There's pretty much no evidence that the Clinton campaign propped up Trump. Trump was a perfect storm for the main stream media. They've spent literally decades teaching themselves not to call someone a liar. They've also spent decades turning news into entertainment. Trump capitailized on both of those, and the coverage he got comes directly from those trends, which I have watched develop over my lifetime.
Clinton in no way propped up or encouraged the incredibly unbalanced and bizarre stories about her "corruption." Benghazi was not her doing (nor did she do anything particularly wrong). The email story, which just wouldn't die, was a story of bad government technology and a candidate that didn't like computers, not corruption. For comparison, look at how the Bush administration's deletion of 33 _million_ emails was covered. The stories about the Clinton foundation were stories of people trying to pay for play, and being told, no, you can't do that. And yet those stories kept on coming. Comey's actions did actual, real damage.
Clinton didn't steal the primaries from Bernie. She played by the rules, and she won. Was there some snarky back chatter? Yep, there was. Did the votes get counted honestly? Yes, they did. Would she have won without the super delegates? Yes, she would.
But to the larger problem, even if your nonsense was true, how does that justify voting for an actual fucking fascist? Or failing to vote against the actual, fucking fascist? In what world is it better to elect an incompetent, vacillating, authoritarian, racist, misogynistic bastard who will cheerfully wreck the lives of millions of Americans, and probably do huge damage to the world? Even if Clinton is corrupt as you imagine, do you really think she would have done worse to you and yours than Trump is going to do to me and mine? If so, be specific. What would she have done, which policies, which cabinet appointments, which specific actions do you believe would have real world negative effects on your life?
I'm very worried about a lot of things under Trump. Starting with eliminating Medicare and Medicaid, and Obamacare. And we can move on. Abortion rights. Voting rights. Defunding public schools. Federal censorship of colleges and universities. Deregulating banks. Getting into more foreign wars. Deportation of law-abiding people (which will also damage our economy. Nobody likes to talk about it, but a significant portion of our economy is based un underpaying undocumented workers.) Reinstituting dangerous procedures like racial profiling and stop-and-frisk, which cause the deaths of minorities. A Muslim registry! OMFG. And they've bandied about the idea of camps...
And here's the final thing: I voted. I voted for Hillary. It's not that I loved every thing about her and her candidacy, but I accept that the political system I have is the one I've got. So I voted for the least evil, and the most good.
What did you do?
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 01:55 am (UTC)I exchanged email with one Trump supporter who said he had no illusions that Trump and his ultra rich cronies were going to make money while socking it to the little people, in which he counts himself. So he knows he voted against his own interests, but he thought that would be true no matter which candidate won. Which is . . . interesting.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 02:58 am (UTC)1. Reflexive Republican voters -- They've always voted Republican and can't really tell you why. It's just what their family or community always does. Might they be reachable in a grassroots, community level to redeem the concept of Democrat and make it palatable alternative for them?
2. Single-issue voters: Abortion, gun control, etc. -- These might be unreachable if their issue is diametrically opposed to Democrat beliefs. Unless some reframing is possible.
3. Intolerant people: Racists, neo-nazis, misogynists, homophobes, religious right -- Unreachable. They are a problem in our society, but short of a personal miracle, they will never embrace the tolerance that's a cornerstone of the Democratic party.
4. Thoughtful Republicans -- Obviously they exist, and a few have explicitly changed sides in this last election. Others didn't, but at least they are capable of carrying on conversation. Reachable.
5. Rhetoric spewers -- Unreachable, unless there's a thoughtful core hiding underneath the invective.
6. Angry people who feel powerless -- Reachable maybe. Possibly the best group to try to understand why they are angry and why they thought voting for Trump would do anything about.
7. Unknowing racists/homophobes/misgynists -- This is one of the saddest and most difficult categories. While it's appalling how many people have explicitly admitted believing in white supremacy, etc., there's an even bigger chunk who would declare they are not, yet still resist the social changes towards equality for all. Reachable, but very slowly?
8. People who see their way of life disappearing and are grasping at straws -- Reachable, especially if their problems can be addressed or ameliorated. Why they thought voting for Trump would help them is a question worth pursuing.
9. People moved more by emotional appeal than by facts -- Reachable! Even though it's tempting for us to dismiss anyone who won't talk facts with us. But plenty of successful Democratic candidates succeeded by making people feel good about voting for them, just as Trump sold his Make America Great Again message. People vote for a promise of hope.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 05:28 am (UTC)It's important to get rid of this because it completely hobbles the Left's ability to talk and think clearly. It is a case of bad boundaries. We need to expect the people who voted for Trump to take ownership of their own actions. We need to treat them like adults, whose actions have consequences. Our actions, too, have consequences, and we need to understand those. But this false consciousness, this load of guilt for a bunch of things we didn't do, that needs to go.
In every winning civil rights action I can think of, progress was made when the bigots became empathetic towards their targets, and not the other way around. All the empathy in the world from the Muslim community doesn't mean squat as long as the people wielding power can persist in failing to see that community as evil and perverted, and not worthy of compassion.
What we really need, most of all, is integration. It's the one thing I know that has worked. It doesn't always work. But actually living and working with other people is remarkably humanizing. No, other than schools, I don't know how to create integration. Although I believe there are a lot of tools out there, tools we have mostly abandoned. We know from endless studies that diversity leads to resilience. And for people who prefer low information intake, interacting on a regular basis with people of different backgrounds is a remarkably powerful communication tool, much more powerful than all the statistics on immigrants and the economy.
I'm babbling, now. Sorry.
I don't think we should stop trying to communicate. I think we must refuse to be gaslighted.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 06:00 am (UTC)Also, we need to figure out how we misunderstood what was happening, again so we can strategically counter it. I certainly expected Hillary to make a clean sweep and demonstrate that Trump's supporters were just an irritating minority. Frankly, I'm still in shock and am trying to make sense out of it, hence my exploratory list (below) of the wide variety of people who voted Republican.
Integration -- Yes, I think I agree. Although history is rife with examples of people peacefully living alongside each other for decades or centuries, then getting whipped up into conflict. This white backlash against the many social changes in the past few decades is ugly even if it was predictable. But certainly integration is a necessary step. We have also been seeing normalization in the media (of races, ethnicities, women, gays) all of which helps.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 02:21 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 02:26 pm (UTC)That's why approximately 100% of Clinton voters have had to worry about what to say to their families at the Thanksgiving table. I haven't seen one single word from any of them, worrying about how to talk to their Clinton voting families.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 03:02 pm (UTC)I am also thinking of my experience in Iowa. While the cultural disconnect was real, I think that I was coming in with a more charitable and more accepting set of assumptions, and was hammered (and traumatized, to be honest) by a much less charitable interpretation of my actions. From where I sit, it seems that the balance of the error was theirs and not mine, if only because they were so much less kind. If I had understood the problem with the rapidity of speech and lack of eye contact, and had corrected, would that have helped? Or would my accent have continued to cause them to hate me? I have very little conscious control over my accent, and so I don't think I could have managed to adjust that.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-26 03:19 pm (UTC)Now, how to communicate with Trump voters, people who believe that pack of lies liberally mixed with paranoia and insecurity, I'm a lot less clear on that. But they why? The why is Grover Norquist and Ronald Reagan and the Tea Party. The constant drum beat that government is evil and incompetent. All of this was captured how many years ago in the sign "Keep The Government Off My Medicare."
People have been convinced that they have no agency, and no responsibility. When stuff goes badly, they don't blame the representatives they voted for, they blame "government." We need to stop "understanding" them and start holding them accountable for their actions. We need them to start acting like adults, and the only way I can think to do that is to start treating them like adults. Their choices matter. They need to understand that, and we need to make it clear to them. The reverse also holds, of course. But the place where I'd start is to stop apologizing for treating gays and Muslims and women as if they are people. Because, quite honestly, if that hurts your fee fees, I don't fucking care. Show me how it actually negatively affects your life, and I'll listen. But I'm done with worrying about your insecurities. On the other hand, I'm happy to talk about the ways in which government is not working well, and why. That's real, too.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-27 10:32 pm (UTC)Ditto, the "Red" states collect more from the federal government than they pay in.
I can go along with most of what's been said here, but it's incomplete.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-30 10:09 pm (UTC)This is true for so many people, I think. Ever since Reagan and his damn "welfare queens" (a myth based on one person who committed fraud IIRC), the right has worked hard to conflate poverty with people of color and laziness. Not that those ideas weren't already out there, mind, but doubling down again and again? That didn't help.
Even people who are struggling but don't qualify for any governmental help find the system doubly frustrating. But then no one wants to pay to expand the safety nets, alas.
no subject
Date: 2016-11-30 10:41 pm (UTC)Found it! It was written byGeorge Lakoff -- you can read it here. The linked article expands on an article at Alternet. Here's the bit I mean:
(I also think that the cultural difference happens to be included in the class difference. You can probably tell that I've hung around some with Barb Jensen, who taught me that "class" covers stuff way beyond household income & job descriptions.)