What Now?
Time to Be Best
Anger at the media, post-Trump assassination attempt, is understandable. After all, even the existence of such a thing as left and right media betrays the principles of journalism. We should be digging for truth, offering perspective, giving people information so they can determine what they think and feel. Instead, each side spent the Trump presidency either elevating this morally bankrupt narcissist to god-like status, or insisting that everything he did was the Worst Thing Ever. Neither deifying nor vilifying him is the media’s job.
But, heck, it was awfully good for selling papers. And it was good for soothing the anxiety of young journalists—those who thought their job was to convince media consumers that they themselves knew the truth, without taking in new information that might even change their own minds.
The media I historically consumed—The New York Times, Washington Post, NPR, etc—did not help me understand how Trump got elected or what his policies actually wrought. (Batya Ungar-Sargon’s book BAD NEWS did, though.) I was told that the rollback of Obama-era Title IX regulations was Evil—instead of that it was protecting the spirit of Title IX, and due process of those accused of wrongdoing. I was told that America was racist, not that we Democrats alienated the working class and embraced identity politics, sometimes lording them over those who rejected them. We told people we believed in inclusion and excluded everyone who did not subscribe to a very narrow definition of it.
For an example of that narrow definition, see this flag welcoming kids to a sports summer camp—and un-welcoming anybody with different beliefs, politics, or values.
When I’ve pointed out to my fellow liberal friends that maybe not everything Trump did was pure evil, they’ve usually said: “Even a broken clock is right twice a day.” But I want more information, not a cursory dismissal.
For many of us, the shooting attempt this weekend, and the Black Power-appropriation fist bump after, feels like the end of the election. Those already deifying Trump—who indeed is as insecure and bombastic as the Old Testament God—likely now interpret his survival as proof of divinity. And now they get to use the ole “language is violence” fallacy, blaming the shooting on Biden’s bullseye analogy. We can no longer lean on “Trump is bad” as a campaign slogan—especially when the Republican Party has been courting moderate Dems by way of softening its stance on abortion (or at least saying they are?).
So here’s what I propose: If Trump wins, we liberals have a do-over. We don’t succumb to Trump Derangement Syndrome this time. We become the grownups, the calm and collected (and hopefully not demented) who can separate the politician and the policies. Trump’s refusal to embrace political norms, to uphold any kind of social contract, make that exceedingly difficult. And it’s okay to point that out—we’d never had a candidate who made fun of disabled people or is a convicted felon and rapist or who said he wanted to grab women by the pussy. It’s really hard to push past that outrageous behavior and evaluate the laws and guidelines and policies themselves. But we must.
I’ve been wrong about most elections. I thought we were too racist to elect Obama and not racist enough to elect Trump the first time. But even before Biden’s disastrous debate and the assassination attempt on Trump, I thought the former president had it in the bag. And that’s because no matter what Republicans think of him, he rolled their agenda through. He remade the courts, especially the Supreme one. They don’t care who he is, as long as he helps them advance a particular conservative agenda.
That agenda doesn’t include me any more than the “inclusive” flag at the summer camp does. I want old fashioned liberals. I want pluralism. I want regulations that put people and the environment first. I don’t want fundamentalism—whether Christian or gender-based—in schools, laws, medicine, or journalism. I want good jobs and better wages and affordable housing and lower inflation and less fighting. I want less partisanship. I want more purple people and purple policies. I want moderates. I want grownups.
No matter what happens, we need to move away from the primary colors. Let’s get purple. Please leave any ideas for how to get there in the comments.
It strikes me that the work to be done here is at the individual level. All media is nauseating me at this point. There's no solution to be found online, on Substack, in clips, with takes, with disembodied opinion. We need bodies in close proximity.
We — talking to our friends, neighbors, perceived local enemies, etc, one to one or in small living room meetings — need to do this ourselves. Face-to-face relationship building needs to happen all over. This view is informed by just having listened to Lulu Garcia Navarro's interview with Bob Putnam of Bowling Alone. He bemoaned the fact that his lectures and books and information has not moved the social needle in the past twenty-five years, which struck me as bizarrely naive. Facts delivered by a Harvard professor don't change hearts and minds! This is a news flash for the professor.
To change hearts and minds and behavior you need people in a room together delivering news of their personal experiences to one another. We do know this. We have forgotten how it's done.
To break myself out of my despair I'm thinking that the best way I could spend the next four months is by convening real world, in-person conversations with, on the Right Side, the guy down the road who flies not 10, not 12, but 16 Trump flags outside his house, and on the Left, with my estranged SJW friend who believes you can't be in relationship with people you disagree with, and with all those others in between.
A fine sentiment but it won't happen. Eight years of screaming, hate-filled rhetoric (from both sides) will not abate any time soon. An entire industry has been founded on outrage. Kneejerk outrage pays people's mortgages, puts kids through school, and gives its proponents fame and power. I'm 72, and I remember the way the country was divided over the Vietnam War. This is worse, because technology has given every idiot the means to amplify their views to a million other idiots, and indignant anger is FUN!. I don't know when the tide will turn back to favor grown-up discussion and considered debate, but I see no sign of it happening in the foreseeable future. Maybe it never will. I fear for my grandchildren, and for this country.