Dealing with obdurate opposition
Dissecting a discussion of what to do in the face of intractable MAGA-ness
For many Americans, politics has become a big deal. Even among those who claim to disdain politics, it’s not unusual to find that they have a cause or two to which they’re devoted—and often that they cannot comprehend how anyone would see things otherwise.
It’s okay to take politics seriously. After all, the political ‘game’ is that of obtaining control of the levers, knobs, and switches of government power, and of acquiring the authority to write the rules we have to live by. Everyone (including lots of politicians, especially those asking for votes) claim to hate politicians and the game-playing that politics entails. But when the random walk of conversation bumps into an important, sensitive topic, passions arise. Some people do all they can to avoid further entanglement in conversation, seeking to avoid conflict, others jump in and start splashing their opinions all over everyone, and others yet “just want everyone to settle down”, so as not to upset the children or cause Aunt Mary palpitations. Or, sometimes, just so they get to have the last word.
In the era of Trump and his MAGA acolytes, political discussion, on the ten-point scale of anxiety and tension-provocation, often rockets up to somewhere around an 8. Nine being for times such as the beginnings of the Civil War, and ten for contested talk around the Spanish Inquisition. Or something like that. The scale hasn’t been fully reviewed, calibrated, and the like, so let’s not get too persnickety. The point being, things can get heated when Trump supporters and opponents begin to talk politics.
Matt Labash, author of the Substack blog Slack Tide (to which I subscribe), recently had a verbal contest with a ‘stack subscriber named David Atkinson, about how one should (or, probably more to the point, should not) try to persuade a MAGA/Trump devotee of the error of their ways. Both get better-than-average marks for keeping their own discussion from becoming a prelude to pistols at ten paces. The exchange occurred in Substack’s Notes—Substack’s attempt to bring a social media flavor to their “community”. Labash brought the transcripted discussion together, “lightly edited” it, and presented it on his own ‘stack. One can read it, and a bit about it, here. I intend to give a light critique of their exchange and expand on a few points as the mood strikes. Full disclosure: I have exchanged comments with Labash here on Substack a few times, always in friendly tones, but we’ve never met. I do enjoy his writing, however. I do not know, and as far as I know, have never had any interactions with Mr. Atkinson. My impression of him, purely on the basis of his comments within the conversation of interest, is that he’s an intelligent, reasonable, and probably fairly charitable guy. Of course, if it turns out he’s a Raiders fan, that all gets tossed out. (As reasonable people note regarding Trump, some behaviors are, or at least should be, automatic disqualifiers.)
I think it’s a given that many Americans, of varying political inclination, are, as Labash puts it, “trying to figure out how to go forward with the people who disagree with us, but who[sic] we don’t actually hate, and sometimes even love.” Setting aside the “sometimes”, I think this frankly presents a common predicament. At least I can say I know it’s true for me, in the same general context confronting both Matt and David. (I henceforth take the liberty of using their first names; I find it more comfortable, and I apologize in advance for any unwanted familiarity.) I know some people and not infrequently meet others who say and seem genuinely, honestly to believe and espouse things and positions that strike me as crazy, stupid, nonsensical, inane, wrong, and, occasionally, downright evil. (Just one example: Declaring that hanging Mike Pence, had it come off, “might have been justifiable”, for me, clears that last hurdle, despite any protestations about the qualifier ‘might’.)
The things and positions relevant for us here emanate from the pro-Trump/MAGA crowd. This isn’t to say that if a Trump/MAGA devotee professes a fondness for vanilla ice cream or swallowtail butterflies, those things are crazy, stupid, etc. It’s not all things or just any position that are problematic, to use a word that’s gotten a bit too much exercise of late. No, we’re basically talking about things associated with the massive wave of insanity—even, yes, peppered with evil—that manifests as support for such things as the notion that the 2020 election was stolen; that Trump had good reason for his obvious mishandling (to put it mildly) of highly classified material; that the violent invasion of the Capitol by Trump supporters, some of whom did so equipped with gear and desire to harm elected leaders, was a simple peaceful protest; that conspiring to force government officials to illegally and fraudulently interfere in an election; that a second election of Trump to the presidency would be a good thing even if he is convicted of numerous felonies related to his political desires, and others.
Since some readers might still be wondering, I’ll be clear: I do not think it would be a good thing for Trump to be re-elected. I don’t think it would be a good thing for him to be re-nominated by the GOP. I don’t think he should be allowed to enjoy the liberties that might reasonably be associated with not being in prison. I don’t think any of those things would be anything other than bad for the country, probably in more ways than can be counted. And, please, spare us all the “What about the judges?” argument. If a Republican wins the White House, I think it’s a virtual certainty that the Federalist Society would be happy to consult again about judicial nominations, so if that’s important to you, fine, but don’t pretend, if you’re a Republican, that it’s gotta be Donald Trump making those nominations.
But back to the primary topic. Can we find, in the (admittedly brief) conversation twixt David and Matt, answers or aid in dealing with the question of just how to go about ‘changing the hearts and minds’ of MAGA voters? Let’s examine.
The conversation started off with David telling Matt that he’s going about it all wrong: “…disparaging the voters is a poor strategy to [sic] convincing them. You’re a farmer cursing the soil…instead of doing the work to improve it.”
One could argue that David was perhaps mildly disparaging of Matt’s efforts with the “You’re…cursing the soil”, but Matt, to his credit, didn’t seem to take it personally. He did point out that “the soil is rocky and barren”, but he switched gears slightly, too, saying that “…it’s hard to reason with cultists. And…that’s all MAGA now is.” More disparagement? Sure seems so, but it seems like it might be an apt metaphor, too. How else to explain the MAGA voters’ continued romance with Trump even after he “has been impeached twice, indicted four times, tried to overthrow his own government and the will of the people, and nearly got his own vice president hanged…?” Matt continues: “…they aren’t susceptible to reason. They’re not interested in it. So…we use…light ridicule.” While I share many of Matt’s sentiments, and have been known to employ some of the same tactics, I’m not sure that ‘light’ is an appropriate adjective here. I mean, let’s admit to ‘moderate’ ridicule, at least. Matt goes on to say that “the problem isn’t merely that Trump lies incessantly, it’s that they want to be lied to.” I think we’ve got enough here that it’s fair to say that Matt has been disparaging, and, using the metaphor of attracting more flies with honey than with vinegar, the tactic is probably not as productive as one might wish.
At this point in the conversation, things have moved to an ‘understanding the opponent/enemy/other’ phase. I’m willing to let ‘understand one’s enemy’ slide if we pause for a moment to recall that the most famous proponent of that, Sun Tzu, also told us that the greatest generals win the war, and impose their will, without ever firing a shot. I think both disputants here would agree.
Encouraging such understanding, David asks, indirectly, ‘Why are MAGA voters as they are?’, by positing, then answering, the rhetorical question, “…why is Trump believed? Distrust in the system is well-earned…. They…are going with a simple narrative because they feel under threat. Which they are…if…[they are] in academia, have kids at large in the culture, or dare to speak-out [sic] against PC nostrums.”
I think David is onto something, but I’m not sure he runs with it quite as maybe he should have. I see ‘distrust in the system’ as a ubiquitous trait amongst MAGA voters; I think it is largely what allowed for and prompted the initiation of the symbiotic relationship that developed between Trump and his supporters. Disaffection with ‘the system’ for any or all of a long laundry list of reasons, from pushing dramatic social change to empty promises about jobs to poor access to health care to stagnant wages (cue up Oliver Anthony again, even though he has distanced himself from the GOP—and those on the left distorting his message— saying they are the people “I wrote that song about”) and on and on, there are many things that one can quite easily see distressing many an already-stressed “deplorable” American.
Matt agrees that it’s reasonable not to trust or have faith in ‘the system’. (I take a moment here to deplore our reliance upon the phrase, ‘the system’, to denote whatever it is we think we’re referring to when we say it. It’s much too vague, and much too malleable a phrase. But I’ll put that aside for now.) Matt calls it ‘flawed’, which is a bit of a cliché, as well as being rather vague itself, but its use here isn’t worthy of much tut-tutting given what I just said about the phrase it’s modifying. Back to the point—I believe Matt would accept the idea that there can be a host of reasons why many MAGA voters might have gravitated to that camp because of their disappointment with and perhaps even hatred of a flawed system. But he does not, as I see it, accept that as the primary reason for Trumpsters to be and remain Trumpsters in spite of the accumulated reasons suggesting a change of allegiance; instead, Matt tells us “…most of the Trumpsters are ultimately motivated by spite, as evidenced by the fact that there’s really not a dime’s worth of policy difference between most of the people on that debate stage and [Trump].”
Here I have to disagree with Matt. I do think there’s more than a dime’s worth of policy difference between them. It might only be fifteen cents’ worth, or even less than a dime, perhaps, for Vivek Ramaswamy, for whom I find it hard to generate much love. But there are some differences. Ukraine, for instance. Tariffs, too, I think. And if we count Trump’s attitude toward elections as policy, I think there’s not as much space between them as we’d all like, but there’s more than a little, at least in some cases. But the larger thrust of Matt’s point stands. The versions of reality being displayed for sale on that stage don’t differ so much from Trump’s positions, at least to the extent he’s got intelligible positions, that MAGA voters can truthfully say that their interests would not be represented by, say, a President Haley, or even a (gasp!) President Hutchinson. They might not be quite as able to stir their supporters into a violent invasion of the Capitol whilst wearing camo gear, buffalo horns, and viking helmets, but, really, is that such a bad thing?
So, moving on, I find some agreement with Matt when he says that the MAGA attraction to Trump (and he acknowledges that “addiction” might be a better word here) “is that Trump hates their ideological enemies as much as they do, if not more. And he punches them in the face every time he opens his mouth. And they love that! It’s what they love most.” I think many Trump supporters believe that the use of “deplorables” to refer to them wasn’t a one-off from Hillary, but is actually a common sentiment on the left, and they also feel like ‘the system’ treats them as if they’re deplorable. And, well, if that’s what the libs and the rest of the jackasses in DC wanna say and do, well, then MAGA nation has a finger to show ‘em. To be honest, I get it. I just don’t agree regarding what’s to be done about it. Which brings us to Matt’s final comment on the matter: “At a certain point, we have to be more interested in saving the republic than someone’s feelings.” But is it an either/or? I don’t think so, not entirely, at any rate, though I’ll admit I’m about ready to write off at least one distant cousin.
I think David might agree, too, on the general point Matt makes about the disaffection of Trumpsters, though I’m pretty sure he, too, doesn’t accept the republic v. someone’s feelings choice as an either/or thing. David instead lets us know, even before Matt vented his spleen a bit with the above, that he thinks Matt “has got [understandable] frustration boiling over from watching the unprincipled profit. It's easy to get angry, but hard to get angry in the right way to make it effective.” Later, he says, “They are projecting on him [Trump] the strong leader they feel they need to protect themselves, their loved ones and a future for their values/vision.” So, David agrees that strong emotions and psychological responses play roles in the drama—“which is why,” he says, “we need to probe the elements of his counter-intuitive appeal.”
Encouraging the choice of a different tactic, David brings up a source Matt knows well and respects, Mary Katharine Ham, whom he quotes as saying, “you're not gonna convince these people while expressing how much you hate them.” (Good move, David!) And he makes an excellent point for someone like myself (and maybe Matt?) to ponder—it’s easy to get angry, and even to give voice to that anger. What’s hard is what’s necessary to change minds—to use the anger in “the right way to [be] effective”.
Before moving on, however, there’s another point to consider about the sort of sentiment common amongst Trump supporters regarding ‘the system’ and such—what I call “ill feelings, hate, and discontent”. David says these sentiments arise from feeling under threat. Matt says, look they’re just motivated by their spite, their hatred. They’re not even interested in reason. And no, Matt, they’re not. When sufficiently threatened, we, like most every other vertebrate, resort instead to the fight-or-flight response. In the face of chronic threat and stress, the amygdala—the brain center responsible for ramping up the fight-or-flight phenomenon—is perpetually cranking that knob, and that re-calibrates the system in various ways, virtually none of them good, and none devoted to the increased use of sober reason. None of this is to be taken as saying that all Trump supporters are walking around in 24/7 sympathetic nervous system overload, but I do think the principle applies in a significant proportion of cases. Unfortunately, for some of the others, the problem may run deeper, in that it’s not that they are impermeable to reason, but that they just don’t care about others, whether it be individuals or nations. And of course there are other possible explanations, too, I’m sure.
One of the other explanations might be, for some at least, that the perception of reality is warped or impaired in ways that lead to reality constructs which don’t prioritize things in ways that we non-Trumpers see as logical, or at least that we don’t agree with. For instance, I can imagine a Trumpian MAGA mainstay voter disagreeing vehemently with Matt’s further statement about spite being their motivation: “…pure, ugly spite is good enough for the lion’s share of Trump voters, even if none of the problems they pretend to want to fix never get addressed.” The response: “Oh, we’ve got some spite for the libs and their agenda, no doubt about that, but as for pretending to want things fixed, and those things never being addressed? Well, how about this: you ever hear of Dobbs? It took Trump to finally appoint some level-headed justices with enough grit in their gizzards to overturn Roe. Now, things regarding abortion aren’t all ‘fixed’, but it sure seems to us like it’s a big step in the right direction.”
For those opposed to abortion, Dobbs was and is a big deal, yes. It was for everyone else, too. And yes, the votes that carried the day seemed to come from Trump appointees. So I think Matt (and others who attribute all or too much of the MAGA crowd’s distemper to “pure spite”) need to be prepared for some arguments that aren’t onion-skin-thin. In this case, the counter is of course that just about any Republican occupying the White House from 2017 thru the first couple weeks of 2021 would almost certainly have appointed equally conservative justices, though that claim will always be impossible to test.
I think it’s telling, perhaps at a deeper level than Matt realizes, that he admits, “I don’t recall changing a single person’s mind on this subject since this entire ordeal started.” I can certainly relate; both to his mindset, I think, and his failure to persuade others to change their minds. I can also relate when Matt reminds David and us that he can’t “receive the truth” for others. “But I have an obligation to tell it…. Whether that truth comes in the form of earnest persuasion, or putting a rubber clown nose on the ridiculous.” I then have to remind myself, however, about the importance of the manner and circumstances in which one puts a rubber clown nose on the ridiculous. Is such an action going to be received the same way from a friend as from an enemy? The answer seems pretty obvious, of course.
Now, I’m not going to tell Matt that he needs to be friends with every MAGA voter in what I call the Trumpian rump of the GOP. That just ain’t in the cards. But I will remind him, and myself, that we do have friends in there. And that we both subscribe to the notion that we are to love even our enemies. I think maybe they need to see the love first. Then the rubber nose. No, not hose, Matt, nose. Like you said. I think we need to listen to David.
How do we get those with whom we disagree to see—or at least feel, in whatever necessary way—the love? Is it done by showing respect for their opinions? That’s not a great recipe. Very difficult to pull it off without the right ingredients. And remember, ridiculous opinions get a rubber nose. Maybe by finding one or two opinions on which there isn’t so much disagreement that respect isn’t going to have be faked? Or maybe—and I think I heard this on Oprah once—perhaps just listening to concerns, and taking those seriously, might be enough to open the door just a little?
One of the problems with all of the above, of course, is that there’s the equivalent of a whole Independence Day parade of politicians and others trying to sell counterfeit knock-offs of respect, concern, and a dozen other feel-good, reassuring virtues, and everyone knows it. Downright deplorable, but there it is. And of course, with a parade, there’s always clowns.
Perry,
You have given us a calm and thoughtful exploration
of the question they posed:
"What to do in the face of intractable MAGA-ness?"
But I object to the question itself.
The question already set the terms of discussion:
it is the other, not me, who is intractable.
Unless I agree a priori
that the problem we face is "intractable MAGA-ness"
I am not even being addressed by their question.
And neither are the "deplorables" being so described.
What they are asking is:
What shall we the enlightened
do in the face of them the unenlightened?
I refuse to take that superior position
(yes, it is taken by both sides)
and therefore cannot respond to theirr question.
I do not fit within any us versus them
conceptualization of our country.
I am an American
who loves and respects my fellow Americans.
Period.
We are one nation, under God, indivisible.
By proceeding from that position
we can find common ground.
We can build up the center of our democracy.
This is how we will save ourselves from ourselves.
https://thegoldengarage.com/questions-insights/contribution/shall-we-mingle-with-people-in-the-other-political-party/