I know I shouldn't, but I blame myself for Trump's victory
stonespring
Shipmate
in Purgatory
I should not blame myself for Trump's victory. Even if my actions or inaction in some way helped bring it about (I volunteered several times for and voted for Harris), it is not productive to blame myself. It just helps Trump and the GOP for the Democrats and anyone else who considers themselves in the opposition now to be demoralized and play a blame game rather than mobilizing to oppose anything harmful Trump and his administration try to do and prepare for any and all upcoming elections.
I also DO NOT blame any other person opposed to Trump on the Ship or any individual person I can think of, many of whom share at least some things in common with me. I think that the stereotype of elite out of touch liberals trying to cancel anyone who doesn't think, talk, or act like them is a bogeyman conjured by the right and it's pointless to point fingers at anyone else who superficially resembles this and blame them for Trump's loss.
That said, I can't help but acknowledge that I resemble this stereotype to the letter. I grew up in enormous houses in very wealthy suburbs and college towns. Almost everyone I knew who wasn't paid to provide me a service, especially after elementary school, either had a college degree (often an advanced one) or was the child of one or two (usually two) parents with such degrees (my mom never finished college, but she traveled the world as a flight attendant and dated a famous author before meeting and marrying my father, who up until right before his death was wealthy). I am more of a spoiled brat than any of the other spoiled children I knew in school. I've had periods of employment and managed (after many expensive tries) to get a college degree, but I haven't done any real work in my life. On any given day, I don't do anything for anyone. I act like I place no value on family, community, or the less fortunate people just outside my doorstep, despite my voting habits (twice for Bernie in the primaries, though I did knock on doors for Biden in 2020 when I was worried he would be knocked out of the primaries - yet another example of my hypocrisy) and the small token donations I make to organizations distant from my community to virtue signal and pat myself on the back.
When I canvassed for Harris, the Mercedes I drove and pretty much everything about the way I talked signaled that I was privileged and not a good messenger for the mostly working- and lower-middle-class people that I spoke to (although I was rapturously received in an affluent suburb in a college town). I often left a door knocking or a campaign phone call feeling that I had made the person on the other side, if they were in the "strong Harris supporter" category already, distrust and dislike Democrats even more.
My name and appearance pass as white Anglo cishetero male, but I have benefitted from my father's Latino heritage in school admissions and being queer and kinda-maybe-sorta nonbinary has only helped me in social situations.
I reflexively wince at politically incorrect words, phrases, and conversations, and I mansplain what people should say and believe all the time over things that are unimportant, while remaining quiet or even appearing to agree with something that I do not out of fear of conflict when some very important problematic things are said by others. I avoid most people, places, and situations that are outside my upper-middle to upper-class predominantly-white liberal secular or religiously liberal blue city/state bubble, even if those things I avoid are across the street from where I live or right next to me in public.
I'm well aware of my own racist, sexist, classist, ageist, you-name-it-phobic thoughts and feel guilty for them but do little to nothing to address injustice anywhere. I did almost nothing but complain in private and make political donations in Trump's first term (I did attend one local Women's March), and now as atrocity after atrocity has been committed in Gaza and Lebanon, I do nothing.
In other words, I resemble the people that both the right and the left hate most on social media to a T.
I'm well aware that all that matters is "so what are you going to do about it?" and my posting here about it is probably just one more way in which I resemble a good-for-nothing virtue-signaling liberal hypocrite. But if you think that this is a good topic for discussion, maybe because you feel a similar cultural, class, linguistic, and/or other chasm between people that resemble me (I have no idea how many of us there really are) and everyone else (many of whom did not vote for Trump) that is poisoning our politics and society, and think it is possible to talk about it in a non-Hellish way, here is a place to discuss it.
I also DO NOT blame any other person opposed to Trump on the Ship or any individual person I can think of, many of whom share at least some things in common with me. I think that the stereotype of elite out of touch liberals trying to cancel anyone who doesn't think, talk, or act like them is a bogeyman conjured by the right and it's pointless to point fingers at anyone else who superficially resembles this and blame them for Trump's loss.
That said, I can't help but acknowledge that I resemble this stereotype to the letter. I grew up in enormous houses in very wealthy suburbs and college towns. Almost everyone I knew who wasn't paid to provide me a service, especially after elementary school, either had a college degree (often an advanced one) or was the child of one or two (usually two) parents with such degrees (my mom never finished college, but she traveled the world as a flight attendant and dated a famous author before meeting and marrying my father, who up until right before his death was wealthy). I am more of a spoiled brat than any of the other spoiled children I knew in school. I've had periods of employment and managed (after many expensive tries) to get a college degree, but I haven't done any real work in my life. On any given day, I don't do anything for anyone. I act like I place no value on family, community, or the less fortunate people just outside my doorstep, despite my voting habits (twice for Bernie in the primaries, though I did knock on doors for Biden in 2020 when I was worried he would be knocked out of the primaries - yet another example of my hypocrisy) and the small token donations I make to organizations distant from my community to virtue signal and pat myself on the back.
When I canvassed for Harris, the Mercedes I drove and pretty much everything about the way I talked signaled that I was privileged and not a good messenger for the mostly working- and lower-middle-class people that I spoke to (although I was rapturously received in an affluent suburb in a college town). I often left a door knocking or a campaign phone call feeling that I had made the person on the other side, if they were in the "strong Harris supporter" category already, distrust and dislike Democrats even more.
My name and appearance pass as white Anglo cishetero male, but I have benefitted from my father's Latino heritage in school admissions and being queer and kinda-maybe-sorta nonbinary has only helped me in social situations.
I reflexively wince at politically incorrect words, phrases, and conversations, and I mansplain what people should say and believe all the time over things that are unimportant, while remaining quiet or even appearing to agree with something that I do not out of fear of conflict when some very important problematic things are said by others. I avoid most people, places, and situations that are outside my upper-middle to upper-class predominantly-white liberal secular or religiously liberal blue city/state bubble, even if those things I avoid are across the street from where I live or right next to me in public.
I'm well aware of my own racist, sexist, classist, ageist, you-name-it-phobic thoughts and feel guilty for them but do little to nothing to address injustice anywhere. I did almost nothing but complain in private and make political donations in Trump's first term (I did attend one local Women's March), and now as atrocity after atrocity has been committed in Gaza and Lebanon, I do nothing.
In other words, I resemble the people that both the right and the left hate most on social media to a T.
I'm well aware that all that matters is "so what are you going to do about it?" and my posting here about it is probably just one more way in which I resemble a good-for-nothing virtue-signaling liberal hypocrite. But if you think that this is a good topic for discussion, maybe because you feel a similar cultural, class, linguistic, and/or other chasm between people that resemble me (I have no idea how many of us there really are) and everyone else (many of whom did not vote for Trump) that is poisoning our politics and society, and think it is possible to talk about it in a non-Hellish way, here is a place to discuss it.
Comments
Being a member of a particular group doesn't make anybody guilty of whatever, much less when you've been actively working against the whats-it.
This.
Thanks for the suggestion. But there has to be some kind of truth to the stereotype of the out of touch privileged liberal hypocrite that both the right and the left are blaming for the global phenomenon of right wing populism that threatens liberal democracy. And even if I can't think of anyone else that it would be right for me to accuse of being one, that fact that I clearly am one means that there is some truth to the stereotype. I don't want reassurance that I am not one of these people. I just want to know what we can do to protect our democracy from the unintentional harm caused by people like me, and what I have to do to myself to go from being a parasite to a citizen that makes society better rather than worse. I'm not sure if it is possible without giving away most of my material possessions and moving far away from the bubble I live in, but even then I would still be privileged and arrogant. I think there aren't that many liberal elite bogeyman in the world, certainly not as many as the right wing claims, but those of us that do exist are so harmful that we perform the work of millions in helping people like Trump get elected.
I don't want to annoy you so I won't go on more. But if anyone else thinks that the idea of people who really are as bad as what the right wing claims about liberal elites is real and should be discussed, I'm curious about what you think.
This seems to confuse correlation with causation.
You think only women can be liberal, and since biological sex is inherited genetically, so is liberalism?
Or...?
Ah, perhaps. Thanks.
(Still seems pretty sociobiological to me, at least on the surface, and I don't really care to delve further.)
But if, as many commentators have suggested, economic issues were critical in the election, then to be supporting economic policies which would objectively have helped poorer people is not hypocritical. That many of those who are poorer did not recognise their own economic interests is surely an issue for the education system. My knowledge of the American education system is limited, but my encounters with US university exchange students have not been impressive. I am surprised that no-one is looking at this. There is much about the 'low information' voter - how come their knowledge is so low?
Result: zero free time in which to delve deeply into politics.
Despite Jonathan Haidt's invoking sociobiology too far, with unnecessary group selection, I found his The Righteous Mind and Moral Foundations Theory utterly compelling, although far from the last word, on the genetic basis of behaviour. That we come wired for experience. That our brains are biased right down to the neuron, as (the at the very least politically appalling but brilliant) Michael Shermer similarly popularized, for reasonable levels of popularization (not good enough for many here I'm sure), in The Believing Brain.
We are storytellers, of morality, of politics, of ourselves; we are stories. And we're actually not very good at it. At all. No education system has ever addressed that. Which nonetheless works for half of us and not the rest, politically. Conservative stories aren't any good at addressing social equality and liberal ones aren't any good at addressing that.
Even if the message is purely economic, if the messenger (in this case me) comes off as privileged and out of touch with the economic realities of the audience, the message seems inauthentic.
I don't know what country you're in but are your voters better informed than in the US? In France the Front National has horrendous policies on immigration and in other areas, but it strongly defends the welfare state for those it deems sufficiently French. In the UK, however, the Reform, Brexit, and UKIP parties all seem to attract working class support despite offering right-wing economic policies. The AFD in Germany has historically been firmly on the right economically (not sure where it is now), although this is in a German context where the economic right is not as far to the right as it is in most English speaking countries (this doesn't make the AFD any less extreme). So working class voters are being persuaded to vote for economically right-wing parties in the US, UK, and Germany (Italy too). Are they all equally uninformed?
It doesn't take much time or effort and it takes zero money to follow the news (often from unreliable sources) that is shared with you on social media and messaging apps, and that is recommended to you by algorithms on streaming apps. I think what differentiates "low-information" voters from other voters is that they do not actively seek this news out until right before an election, but they are exposed to a lot of it.
If my only exposure to news was what my social media connections share with me, I would likely be a left-wing conspiracy theorist that might have not voted at all or followed Bobby Kennedy, Jr., into the Trump camp. If my only exposure to news was what YouTube recommended to me while I was watching apolitical videos, I would very likely think like a Trump voter or be radicalized to the point of not trusting elections at all and supporting violence like Jan. 6.
All very fine. Until you spend some time on X and discover the successful rabble rousing of Elon Musk, "ably" assisted by Marjorie Taylor Green, Lauren Boebert and others. The consequential popularity of refusal to look at information, the encouragement of lynch mob mentality and retribution, the self righteousness, the gloating over winning, the denial of the pain of minorities, the demonisation.
Try it and see. I don't disgust very easily but they succeeded in arousing disgust in me. Also fear, to be honest. And a need for brain bleach. The emergence of these signs of populist barbarism, the signs that its popularity is growing, does engender a concern in me. It is not an academic concern.
I'm not saying it's fine at all. Y'u'v' got ter laff 'en't yer.
https://www.thelondoneconomic.com/news/media/european-federation-of-journalists-to-stop-posting-content-on-x-386598/
Martin, I’m not sure what the best response should be. As Thunderbunk says, there is an impenetrable wall on X. And an increasing distrust of mainstream media.
In some ways I am reminded of the 1930s in Europe. There was an underestimation and there was also appeasement.
I’m also reminded of McCarthyism in the USA. That certainly had it populist support.
But I’m not sure there is scope for a neo-Churchillian response at the political level, or a neo-Ed-Murrow response at the media level. Right now, I’m not sure what an effective response would look like.
To quote Jim Wallis, we need a “wind changer”. Ah, but I might as well try and catch the wind? A neo-Bob-Dylan might help.
I think there does need to be a zeitgeist change however. It’s time.
I know you don't, and who am I to tell you?, but our feeble little acts are all we have, and I was trying to encourage you not to let that ember dim with doubt as the towering walls of 'civilization' come crushing in.
It's been way past time since we developed food surpluses with agriculture.
Probably the angriest of all the Dylan songs, even more so than Masters of War. Still resonates with me and, paradoxically, gives me hope rather than induces despair.
I don’t do despair but I do get angry.
They don't deny the pain of minorities. They revel in it.
On reflection. Marvin, I agree with you. A lot of revelling is to be found there.
Where is such a prophetic voice now? A voice that could transfix 'hard working Americans' who need it most? Get them to say 'Men and brethren, what shall we do?'.
Not a bad homage. Or is that blasphemy?
I don't do anger, except at malevolent injustice in my face...
...as you say.
A truly remarkable song. But the Brian Ferry cover is OK.
Dylan was just 21 when he wrote that. “Out of the mouths of babes …”
I take encouragement from the fact that nobody saw him coming. And definitely did not appreciate the endurance of his work.
Watch this space.
The political Right in the US has been demonizing education for decades, and ever more loudly ever since Nixon voiced the idea that "the professors" were the enemy. Rush Limbaugh and his surrogates and would-be replacements have recapitulated it incessantly. I'm 54, and I can't remember a time when Republicans weren't beating a drum about eliminating the Department of Education, even when Laura Bush, a certified public school teacher and Masters degree-holding librarian was First Lady. Remember the MAGA ridiculousness about Jill Biden not being a 'real' doctor because she had a PhD in Education, and wasn't a Medical Doctor? The same precious creatures never had a problem referring to Sebastian Gorka as "Doctor,' though. Anyway, the anti-intellectualism of the American political Right has since wed itself to an increasingly frightening conservative evangelical Christian Nationalism which, among other things, insists that their version of everything be prioritized in their private education networks while their curriculums are sanitized of anything that could possibly be interpreted as undermining them, including fundamental exposure to the outside world.
I’m conscious that our last few paces have been somewhat off the point of your OP. I’m sorry about that.
It may indeed be true that you have inadvertently reinforced the stereotyping of some Trump supporters. In my book, we are all responsible for our own stereotyping, particularly if it gets in the way of giving proper respect to other individuals who are different.
But we aren’t responsible for the stereotyping of others. And particularly if they see us through stereotyping eyes.
I received personal attacks from Trump supporters on X. Not for my arguments. But for being a UK citizen and over 80 years old. And therefore, naturally, I could have no understanding of them or of the views they had on US politics. They never discussed seriously my arguments or the facts I used to support them. Once I had been successfully stereotyped and demonised there was no need. They saw no need to respond constructively.
So while it is right to show sensitivity to any effects we may have, inadvertently, on others, their jumping to conclusions about us, and by extension the opinions we hold is simply a sign that they are unfair to us. They do not show reciprocal sensitivity. They do not think we are worth it.