Beyond Being Right
We’re Winning Hearts & Minds, But Losing Ground
A Question of Power
There were certain voices in the Democratic party that called for moderation and reconciliation after the humbling disaster of Trump’s election. Wizened white neo-liberal Democrats urged the further left to drop the identity politics, drop the Socialist nonsense, and to stop coming out as trans and nonbinary. They pondered that perhaps us city folks didn’t understand the feelings and needs of our country kin? A day back on the family farm shooting gophers and sharing corn on the cob would almost certainly sort things out.
Then Democrats and Republicans could return to a more civilized debate about whether a 2% or 3% tax on intergenerational blood money was most appropriate, or whether, say, 45% or 55% of our economy should be devoted to fighter jets and lethal drones.
I wanted to kick these people in the genitals.
Most of the lukewarm whining of these moderates amounted to victim blaming. If we didn’t have such ridiculous hopes and dreams Trump would stop punishing us and withholding his love. But one article (I‘ve forgotten where) introduced an image that I couldn’t shake from my mind.
The author argued that a presidential candidate’s job is not to lecture America on their sins, not to preach repentance, not to confront evil forces. A presidential candidate (really, any political candidate) needs to get elected. Then they need to wield political power in an authentically good way. Reigning in the wealthy white male ruling class, Advocating policy that honors trans folks, the undocumented, the sex workers. Prioritizing children over billionaires, our water and air over the Wall Street wealthy’s return on their daddy’s investment.
The question was, do we want Politician X who says all the right things and doesn’t get the vote, or Politician Y who only says moderate things, gets the vote, then actually changes policy for a better world.
Which do we prefer?
The role of politicians, this author believed, was not to transform public consciousness, but to transform public policy.
It reminded me of Stokely Carmichael’s admonition that racism wasn’t about opinions, it was about power.
“If a white man wants to lynch me, that’s his problem. If he’s got the power to lynch me, that’s my problem. Racism is not a question of attitude; it’s a question of power. ”
― Stokely Carmichael
Of course there’s the small problem of politician Y actually being politician Z, Joe Bidens who don’t have much to say or much to deliver, but just smile and reassure.
But regardless of that problem, that seed of an idea was stuck in my mind.
The Joy of Being Right
I’ve learned a lot about pop neuroscience in the last decade. I’ve been especially fascinated by self-deception and our ability to believe two contradictory things at once. How can my neighbors believe that CAT scans for example, invented in 1971, are reliable medicine, trusted and true. While vaccines, medical technology older than our nation, are new-fangled and untested technology?
Another one of the things that has stood out the most clearly to me is the reality that we all reliably reject facts that don’t match our beliefs rather than adjust our beliefs to line up with new information. More than that, we double-down on our beliefs when confronted with challenging facts. Contradictory evidence doesn’t lead to conversion, it leads to radicalization of the original stance.
Contradictory evidence doesn’t lead to conversion, it leads to radicalization of the original stance.
Another idea that gave me deep pause is the reality that we feel immense pleasure when hear our beliefs echoed back to us. A Black Lives Matter bumper sticker gives me a rush of fondness for my black neighbors, a sense of belonging and unity in our resistance to white supremacy and police violence, hope for a future where my children don’t have to deal with the horror of state violence against citizens. A pink, blue, and white heart sticker makes me feel like my family is loved and safe, like my children might be valued for who they are above their conformity to a gender assigned to them at birth.
It brings our nervous systems titillating joy to hear that we are, in fact, right.
Whether or not we are, in fact, right.
I’m not a relativist. I believe that there are ideas and beliefs that are visiting horrors on my neighbors and crushing the dignity and humanity of my children. Beliefs that are literally consuming our living ecosystem alive with their greed and arrogance. People’s beliefs are capable of producing holocausts or vaccines, slavery or symphonies, hate crimes or blood donors.
But I no longer believe I can test the outcome of these ideas based on how I feel about them.
Because the sense of deep loyalty and resistance to injustice that Christian rap rock group P.O.D. stirred up in me at 18 with their song Abortion is Murder is the literal, exact same chemical in my brain that a Planned Parenthood bumper sticker stirs up in me today. And the white hot righteousness I felt vandalizing public spaces with Fuck Trump stickers is identical to what my rural neighbors feel flying their Fuck Biden flag.
Winning the Culture War, Losing the Legal One
By all accounts, the Left has made startling progress on the cultural front in my lifetime. I saw no evidence that same sex relationships would be more than a fringe, niche part of the national conversation, akin to say vegans or stamp collectors, when I graduated from High School in the late 90’s.
The white media’s scoffing at affirmative action or their show trial of Gangsta Rap in that same decade offered no hint a future where our largest corporations would have ad campaigns about how they were specifically going to support Black Lives within their organizations and within their neighborhoods.
The rapidity with which queer young characters have blossomed in novels, graphica, TV shows, and streaming music seemed beyond my wildest imagination when my first child transitioned eight years ago. It seemed she was going to grow up in a silent identity mirrored almost nowhere in our collective dreams and fairy tales.
As a child, notions of Socialism were confined to imaginary games where we shot at Communist Russians to defend American Freedom™. Some dusty people a lifetime ago had been interested in Socialism before McCarthy had burned them all at the stake. But surprisingly today, even my Baby Boomer father has a begrudging respect for Bernie Sanders and his politics of kindness.
Amazon does not sell Confederate Battle Flags. NASCAR won’t fly them. Both roll around naked in rainbows every June. Giddily gay rappers are applauded on Twitter by country music legends.
If America were a democracy, where the will of the majority was reflected in law, the future Liberals want would have arrived by now.
But we aren’t.
Minority Rule
America is an Oligarchy in which the 1% Billionaires rule through a propaganda machine directed at the 30% most angry and least educated of us. This is neither hyperbole nor is it conjecture.
America was founded by conspiracy theorists simultaneously preaching hatred of Big Government while concentrating power in the hands of a few white, wealthy men. This reality has been deeply entwined into our DNA.
Fast forward to today, where Patriots™ are willing to have gunfights with the FBI over their entitlement to free grazing land for their cattle, willing to beat Capital police to death with fire extinguishers, all while proudly driving oversized pickup trucks with Back the Blue stickers on the back. A country where white ranchers’ cattle are entitled to Federal subsidies while black humans in cities are leeches for needing baby formula. A country where Roe V Wade was Federal overreach, but a standing army larger than the rest of the world’s military combined is just about right.
A nation sincerely framed around liberty and justice for all might not need to require its schoolchildren to chant about that in monotone five days a week.
The way the 1% leverage the 30% is well documented. America’s House of Representatives overrepresents rural America in mind-numbing ways. The electoral college keeps poisoning elections. The filibuster stifles popular legislation. Gerrymandering works. Unlimited dark money bulldozes elections. Disenfranchisement is easy. And voter suppression pays dividends.
By Any Means Necessary
I liked putting up Fuck Trump stickers on the back of stop signs. It was soothing. I like standing in the streets surrounded by thousands of protestors confronting corrupt police and fascist politicians, roaring and pumping our fists in the air. I love the thrill of watching anarchists bringing my city to a grinding halt. It is enlivening.
I’m good at angry diatribes. The depth of satisfaction I get in telling anti-vaxxers that they are full of shit, or anti-immigrant folks that they are failures of human beings is intoxicating. The number of political memes I have successfully launched into the interwebs is a source of private satisfaction for me.
But I increasingly believe that not only is this activism not accomplishing anything, it’s hurting our cause.
But not because it’s too ambitious, too honest, or too hopeful. Quite the opposite. It’s because it’s too selfish, it’s too myopic, it’s too centering of my pleasure and my identity.
It’s too tangled up in me being right.
How committed am I to providing housing for all my neighbors? To providing shelter to refugees? To seeing women equally represented at all levels of government? To seeing a tax code that supports the least powerful Americans rather than the most? To seeing police departments replaced by neighborhood food banks, mental health care, or affordable child care?
Am I willing to pursue political work that is humbling, muddled, that involves delayed gratification? Am I willing to do the work of accounting, or washing dishes, or supervising children while others network? Am I willing to be involved in political outreach to people I don’t agree with or even like?
For example, I am grateful to the work Antifa puts into keeping the white supremacists in check. And the invitation to get a black balaclava, some combat boots, and a large pistol is exciting. Who doesn’t want to kill Nazis while defending innocent children?
But what if the way forward involved getting white supremacist's children access to better public schools? Sitting in PTA meetings. Or what if it involved reducing the interest rates predatory lenders are allowed to charge? What if it involved letting rural white communities have better access to the fresh produce being produced right there.
I’m not suggesting that any of those methods are even slightly strategic. But I wonder about how excited I would be about them if it turned out they were the best way to reduce extremism?
The Red Herring of Trump‘s Basket of Deplorables
In the end, our collective disgust with the backward, hateful Republican voter shredding the fabric of public life does nothing to stifle the continued concentration of power and wealth at the top of the increasingly steep, hierarchical pyramid.
Yes, it is disappointing when our neighbors buy into manipulative and hateful rhetoric, siding against their own self-interest and the needs of our most vulnerable neighbors. And there can be times and places for evangelism that helps people escape these manufactured talk radio realities, as well as repentance, and amends. I can speak to that process as a former supporter of the right wing agenda.
But if our attention lies primarily at the level of the Trump voter, or the distorted caricatures of politicians who keep cropping up in rural America, or even the power brokers of Republican Party leadership, I suspect that we’re missing the hand that’s pulling the strings.
The Billionaire class, in some ways strategically and explicitly, but often in ways that are systemic and subconscious, continues to shore up legal structures that grow their wealth and power at the cost of the rest of humanity. Finding ways to sever their influence over a governing system that claims to be by and for the people feels essential to stabilizing this rapidly sinking ship.
Utilitarian Grit
If we are committed to the struggle for a humane, just, safe, livable nation (world), we have to find a level of sobriety and tenacity that matches the task.
The top 1% of Americans control more wealth than the entire middle class. Furthermore, their wealth is almost entirely discretionary, where the rest of us have basic needs that consume almost all of what we have. If it’s a question of ad budgets or political donations, there is no way we can win on that front.
The billionaire class is small group of incredibly similar people (older white men) with similar interests. The remaining 99% of our country is an incredibly diverse swath of humanity with deeply varied hopes, dreams, and needs. The humility and patience to form broad partnerships with groups we disagree with on important issues will be essential to confronting the increasingly fascist tactics of the elites. We have to develop an understanding that interacting with other humans doesn’t equate to a wholesale endorsement of their world view.
We need to be committed to evidence-based, not feelings-based, policy. We need a deep belief that the outcome is more important than the route to get there. If we’re devastated by police violence against Black people in our communities, we need to be committed to policy changes that actually reduce that violence, not policy changes that make us feel better. Satisfying my outrage at police shootings isn’t as important as reducing police shootings.
The adolescent fantasy that we’re one election cycle and one unicorn politician away from the promised land isn’t helping us gain ground in this reality.
We have to be committed to a lifetime of work. The adolescent fantasy that we’re one election cycle and one unicorn politician away from the promised land isn’t helping us gain ground in this reality. Politics is notoriously slow, frustrating, boring work. Good people put decades into inconspicuous local political careers to only have one moment where their vote, their voice, truly impacted a meaningful outcome. Court cases build on precedent from previous court cases. Impacting the constitution takes once-in-a-lifetime moments of pinpoint precise coordination of hundreds of millions of voices. Supreme court judges will live our their natural lives holding that power.
We need a strategic rethinking of the tools in our toolbelt. Because voting like we’ve been voting, unionizing like we’ve been unionizing, and direct actioning like we’ve been direct actioning haven’t fixed the problem. We are in deep need of an honest, hopeful, creative inventory of what works in what ways.
What do mass protests accomplish? What do hunger strikes accomplish? What does chaining ourselves to things accomplish? What does calling our senator accomplish? What does signing a petition accomplish? What does an angry bumper sticker accomplish? What does running for the schoolboard accomplish? What does donating to a nonprofit accomplish? Donating to a politician? A political party? A direct action network? A neighbor? What about boycotts? Letters to the editor? Voting? Extralegal steps to being ungovernable? Good trouble?
And we’re in need of fresh vision and curiosity. Where do we need more education? More history? More encouragement? More support? How can we retool for more sustainable, more joyful, more resilient resistance to to the trauma of soul-crushing power structures? How does mental health, neighborhood food banks, tiny libraries, or neighborhood barbeques fit into the picture?
What is the role of love in this movement? Compassion? How do we hold our outrage and our grief? How do we empower our traumatized while still inviting our more entitled community members to become more gentle and compassionate? How do we invite our children in, honor our elders for the decades they fought for human dignity while we were oblivious. What do we do with our white hot rage? How do we live with the horrifying injustices in our collective story up until now? How do we dance and what do we sing about? What can we forgive ourselves for?
How do we choose our battles? How do we operate out of hope and not fear?
How do we choose impact over identity?
Change over outrage.
The brainstorm
I’m worn from hearing hopeful voices shouted down. I’m tired of the timid getting spoken over in leftist spaces. I’m worn bone thing with snarky, condescending down-punching.
We need hope more than we need to be right. We need love more than we need correction.
I may not feel optimistic about postcard writing campaigns but I want to bring you homemade cookies when you’re working on one. I may not be up for chaining myself to city hall, but I’ll sure chip in $20 for some handcuffs. I don’t want to arm myself to face the Proud Boys, but I’m up for bringing cold water.
And we can still have boundaries. Strategies that are too violent, partnerships that cost us too much. But I want my boundaries to be about care and integrity. I don’t want to dehumanize people who dehumanize people. And I don’t want to be operating in the chemical ecstasy of being right.
Because I don’t personally know how to move America toward a hopeful, peaceful, safe, compassionate space. None of my strategies have worked so far. But I do deeply believe we need more ideas, not less. More dreaming, not less. More being-up-for-anything. Less rigidity. Less brittleness. We can’t afford the burnout of doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.
We need to fall in love with real world lived outcomes as more central than orthodox belief. While also falling in love with a journey full of compassion and mutual support, knowing that we can’t ever fully control the destination.
What sounds promising to you?
