DEMOCRAT’S POLITICAL THINKING LOSES TO HUMAN NATURE IN PRESIDENTIAL ELECTION 2024
Many in Democratic politics and the liberal media blame racism, sexism and xenophobia on Trump’s victory in his comeback quest for the presidency. But that does not get at the deeper reasons; it only attends to what seems obvious to Democrats and the liberal broadcast media.
Americans like to stick to the surface. In general, Americans are concrete thinkers, not conceptually inclined. They seem not to have the time or temperament to consider underlying, multiple causes. But human beings also have a built-in sensitivity to authenticity. Ultimately, perceived fakes often will eventually be found out.
A Candidate Wins the Presidency by Embodying Realities of the Nature of Mind
Much of America media gets cause and effect mixed up. For example, a majority of the American media viewed Trump as reshaping the modern US state of mind. In reality, though, what Trump has done is to take the already existingemotional state of the majority of the American electorate — that of fear and anger against the economy and immigration (even though both are passed peak) — and reflected that sense of threat and resentment by those immersed in that horror story serving Trump’s main engine for regaining the presidency. Not to mention that incumbents all across the globe were cast out. People want change.
Historically, since Gorbachev brought the Soviet Union to an end in 1991, the US seemed to have won this “High Noon” binary duel which kept a lid on so much underlying feelings. In response, a Pandora’s Box of subterranean emotions were set loose.
In campaign 2024, Trump’s own story of his proclaimed abuse by the “deep state” as well as by coastal elites merged with similar feelings of the working class such that they can read their own story into Trump’s story. This dynamic is reflected, for example, in Trump saying “They’re not after me, they’re after you, and I just happen to be standing in the way.”
In contrast, Harris’ story was mainly aimed at the Middle Class. It did not to talk to the malaise felt by so many Working Class people, men and women. A typical sentiment I hear nowadays in informal discussions during the election was voiced as: “I used to see the future open up before my eyes; now I see the future receding.” These people were not concerned with transgenders and other woke concerns. They just feel like shouting out — as Fredo did to his younger brother, Michael Carleone, in The Godfather, “What about what I want?” Moreover, celebrities such as Beyonce probably did little or nothing to attract Working Class Blacks to Harris. And this group probably thought of Liz Cheney simply as just another politician they distrust. Moreover, the name Cheney probably conjured up the idea of forever wars (referring to her father, Dick).
Fear and anger, more than other emotions, seem to restrict cognitive functioning. Under this state of mind, people just want the pain to stop. They want change. Period.
Winning a U.S. Presidential Election Requires Attention to the Nature of Mind
To begin to understand the American electorate, attention must be paid to three fundamental human truths:
· The brain is not capable of pure logic; emotions rule the roost.
· Facts are puny in the face of belief.
· As a survival strategy, human nature seeks to minimize loss before it maximizes gain.
Furthermore, Identification with a candidate — not agreement with a candidate’s policy pronouncements — drives a voter’s selection at the ballot box. Those seeking to occupy the Oval Office must consistently intertwine three levels of experience:
1. their biography,
2. their persona (the mask or façade they projects in public), and
3. how they respond to up-to-the-minute contingencies.
If these three levels of voter assessment are in conflict for a candidate seeking to occupy the Oval Office, the game is over.
Attachment comes not from objective considerations, but from a feeling the candidate understands the voters and therefore makes them feel less alone. People’s opinions are mainly designed to make them feel comfortable; facts, for most people, are a secondary consideration.
It must be remembered that given all the societal changes — particularly of post-industrialization and immigration — the zeitgeist of America during election 2024 has Working Class America red with anger and wanting retribution. Trying to buck the current societal, political and cultural moment reminds one of a spawning salmon’s fate against a hungry bear.
Harris’ persona was not identifiable as working class, no matter how heartfelt and eloquent her biographical stories are of her mother and Harris’ own childhood are. How Kamala Harris dresses, how she speaks and her presentation of self is not an embodiment of a non-degreed hourly wage worker. She is also a too-cautious professional politician and from a liberal state. Maybe she could pass as Upper Middle Class, but not as Working Class. The irony is, Trump might be a multi-millionaire, but his way-of-Being is more outlaw Working Class: he can be brutish, crude, somewhat unkept, always looking to break traditional rules and roles, all without excuses or regret.
The fundamental assessment in presidential elections is candidates, political analysts, TV media people who are center-stage should start remembering that all people — most importantly, including voters — are constantly transforming theworld into their world — irony, paradox and logic derailments, included. How a presidential candidate metaphorically merges his or her identity with voters from various states will come to sit behind the Resolute desk. That’s the way of the human mind.
An Epilogue: Real Talk v Policy-Speak
Currently, there is no place for spontaneous conversation to replace shouting pre-scripted slogans between Red and Blue leaning voters. Other venues could be created.
Rainer Maria Rilke, an early 20th Century poet and novelist, suggests that to open up one’s set views — what he calls “verses” — requires having different experiences. Today in America people are tending to live near people who reason like them, behave like them. Assortative thinking is an endangered species.
Self-reflection and introspection have never been a high priority for most Americans. The American aesthetic is act now, win now, push through quickly. Historical forces and current circumstances have colluded to reduce America’s creative capabilities, but this is exactly what we need as resentments and humiliations are accruing. The past accumulates.
Now In America the tendency is to explain things in a single dimension. No time to look under the hood of how the complexities and contradictions of real life operate, and instead going for immediate expedience, the easy-extreme. But most things are not made up of one piece. Most things are a mash-up. Life is made up of cashmere and sawdust.
Uncertainty — partly driven by a competitive globalized economy, modern technology, climate change, as well as demographic changes are pushing more people to be absolutist thinkers whose assumption is of life as a fixed-pie and if you’re not for me you’re against me. No complexity, no subtlety, no gray area. Peoples’ world becomes simple, linear and flat, just like storybook stick figures.
In contrast, America was never an ideal. It was an idea. The idea was creativity: replace monarchy with a new form of government.
Creativity requires curiosity, not standing pat on what one’s present narrative is. Not being a Johnny-one-note, posturing in a defensive stance reciting a kind of perverse, instinct-like mantra of what your candidate feeds you: Make America Great Again or We’re Not Going Back.
Creativity is reduced by a candidate’s presentation being designed by data and its analytics. Data has no blood and guts in it. Data can denuder the nuance and complexity of real life.
You might recall when Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev met in 1985 in Geneva, Switzerland for discussions about arms reduction. Unexpectedly, the two leaders cut short formal talks to take what became known as “A Walk in the Woods,” opting for private discussions with only interpreters and no press releases. Not all that surprisingly, under these conditions, a good atmosphere was created. Real talk over political talk. Of course, the two leaders didn’t solve everything during that walk, but they acknowledged that the conversation they had opened the door for more meetings to come.
Similarly, a start to recognizing our shared humanness between Conservative and Liberal might be achieved by bringing people together from each side of the tribal divide and from up and down the social ladder — from the middle and not from the vehement extremes from the right or the left — to talk about a real-life situation in which each has felt misjudged or slighted. Sure, what will ensue will include arguments and insults, but what is also likely to ensue is a level of empathy that can never be achieved as long as we’re allowed to continue to ignore the feelings and ideas that unite us.
If one goes into such conversations willingly, it’s difficult not to be moved, at least a little, by expressed experiences of loss and longing, which everyone has on both sides of the political divide. When we begin to acknowledge each other as individuals rather than positions, we have no choice but to acknowledge that we are all complex beings and that there is a great deal in common with how we are complex and in what comprises each of us. We might still disagree, but our anger could be reduced.
Such conversations are what a warlike primitive tribe in the Amazon, the Yanomami, do as part of a ritual to end a war. In the Amazon, by mutual agreement, after some gatekeeping preliminaries, one tribal leader visits the enemy’s territory to engage with the host leader. First, the two leaders exchange an item of bodily decoration and then crouch with knees bent facing each other. In such postures, they start taking turns chanting, the goal of which is to find something in common. At first, commonalities are mundane and predictable. But the two leaders continue, looking for a joint familiar that is more recessed, more metaphoric. It might even be something they each did but in totally different contexts. Suddenly there is a visible release of tension that the unexpected — even the comedic — can supply. After all, a comedy is comedic because it contains a previously unexpressed truth. Afterward, some food is shared.
Yes, helping people to open their minds even a bit is asking a great deal — it asks people to modify a belief system. But that is what we must do. People must recalibrate their familiar without totally negating their familiar. That is the task of converting absolutist minds into more open, artful minds that can go beyond what they perceive as reality to imagine a future of what could be.
Let’s make the latent, manifest, by little, personal surprises. That’s what creativity does.
