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Liberal Entitlement, part 4

"Good People"

Last July, journalist George Saunders published a long essay in The New Yorker reporting on his experiences attending Trump rallies. The piece was titled, “Who Are All These Trump Supporters? At the candidate’s rallies, a new understanding of America Emerges.” What haunted me from that article was the segment in which the phrase "good people" recurred. Saunders wrote:

"Talking to a Trump supporter about Trump’s deportation policy, I’d sometimes bring up Noemi Romero, a sweet, soft-spoken young woman I met in Phoenix. Noemi was brought to the U.S. when she was three, by undocumented parents. A few years ago, she had the idea of applying for legal status through the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) program. But the application costs four hundred and sixty-five dollars, money her family didn’t have. Hearing that a local Vietnamese grocery was hiring, she borrowed her mother’s Social Security card and got the job. A few months later, the store was raided. Noemi was arrested, charged with aggravated identity theft and forgery, and taken to jail and held there, within the general prison population, for two months. She was given spoiled milk, and food that, she said, had tiny worms in it. Her lawyer arranged a plea bargain; the charges were reduced to criminal impersonation. This was a good deal, he told her, the best she could hope for. She accepted, not realizing that, as a convicted felon, she would be permanently ineligible for DACA.

"Puente, a local grassroots organization, intervened and saved her from deportation, but she is essentially doomed to a kind of frozen life: can’t work and can’t go to college, although she has lived virtually her whole life in the U.S. and has no reason to go back to Mexico and nowhere to live if she’s sent there.

"I’d ask the Trump supporter, 'What do we do about Noemi?'

"I always found the next moment in our exchange hopeful.

"Is she a good person? the Trump supporter might ask. I couldn’t feel more sorry for her, he might say. That kid is no better or worse than I am and deserves the best God can give her. Or he might say that deportation would have to be done on a case-by-case basis. Or propose some sort of registry—Noemi, having registered, would go back to Mexico and, if all checked out, come right back in. There had to be some kind of rule of law, didn’t there?

"Tellingly, the Trump supporter might confess that she didn’t think Trump really intended to do this mass-deportation thing anyway—it was all just campaign talk. The most extreme supporter might say that, yes, Noemi had to go—he didn’t like it, but ultimately the fault lay with her parents.

"Sometimes I’d mention a Central American family I met in Texas, while reporting another story. In that case, the father and son were documented but the mother and daughters weren’t. Would you, I’d ask, split that family up? Send those girls to a country in which they’d never spent a single day? Well, my Trump-supporting friend might answer, it was complicated, wasn’t it? Were they good people? Yes, I’d say. The father, in spare moments between his three jobs, built a four-bedroom house out of cinder blocks he acquired two or three at a time from Home Depot, working sometimes late into the night. The Trump supporter might, at this point, fall silent, and so might I." (New Yorker, 2016 Jul 11 & 18)

What do we do about Noemi? Is she a good person? the Trump supporter asks. Should the family with father and son documented and mother and daughter undocumented be split up? Were they good people? is the response. Not "is this cruel treatment of any human being?" Not "is this fair or just?" Not even "is this policy good for the US economy?" But "are they us?" For that, of course, is what “good people” means: it means "people who act in ways that make sense to me without any stretching of my sympathetic imagination." The division of the world into "good people" (us) and "bad people" (them) is a tell-tale indicator of the authoritarian attitude. People who are different are dangerous, and dangerous people deserve cruel treatment.

So if you’re needing a story to make sense of what happened, that’s what I got: Reactivity to a changing world has produced rising authoritarian and anti-politics sentiments, which started as ideological rigidity and morphed from ideology to raw identity, accentuating the racism that has always been a part of American culture.

What To Do About It

First, remember that this, too, is just a story. It helps me make sense of things, and it might help you. But no story is ever the whole story. There’s some stuff going on out there that this story will help you see, and other stuff that it could make you blind to. So keep your eyes and your heart open, and be ready to take in other stories. The antidote to identity wars, us versus them, is listening with care and empathy to every story you can.

Second, let’s get over being surprised. I admit, I was. Perhaps our greatest liberal entitlement was the luxury of being shocked. Sure, some people of color, LGBT people, and Muslims were also surprised, but overall, not so shocked as white liberals at the "discovery" that the US harbors a lot of racism, sexism, xenophobia, and bigotry.

Third, as the great labor organizer Joe Hill said on the eve of his execution in 1915: “Don’t mourn. Organize.” Join the rebel alliance. There’s a new Star Wars movie coming out, and, no, we don’t have any cool spaceships to zip around in, but we can take inspiration from the metaphor.

My friend and colleague minister at First Unitarian in Orlando, Florida, Rev. Kathy Schmitz, posted on Friday afternoon:

"Wait and see what he does post-election" they said.
OK, I gave it 48 hours.
So far, far worse than I thought.
"Keep your heart open," they said.
It is.
Wide open.
And fully committed to the rebel alliance.
Hashtag: MightAsWellGetOnTheEnemiesListEarly.

Courtney Parker West posted an open letter:

Dear liberal white people whom I often love:...
I get it. It’s awful. It’s terrifying. It’s devastating. But find yourself a white person and complain to them, then get past your feelings because if you really want to be an ally, we don’t need your posts or your shock or even your tearful apologies, but rather your organizing manpower. People of color have always resisted and you can follow us. You can’t be with her anymore, so be with us.”

You have been called to live into this period of darkness that has been with us for some time. You have been called to the fierce love of resistance, solidarity, and hope.

As we are also mourning the death of Leonard Cohen, I conclude with Cohen's reminder that this fierce

love is not a victory march.
It is a cold and it is a broken hallelujah....
Even though it all went wrong
We stand before the lord of song
With nothing on our tongue but hallelujah.
Hallelujah.
Hallelujah.

* * *
This is part 4 of 4 of "Liberal Entitlement"
See also
Part 1: Election Prayer
Part 2: Called Into Darkness
Part 3: The Problem with Anti-Politcs

The Problem with Anti-Politics

Liberal Entitlement, part 3

Another point that has stuck with me was made in a David Brooks column from last February.

"We live in a big, diverse society. There are essentially two ways to maintain order and get things done in such a society — politics or some form of dictatorship....Over the past generation we have seen the rise of a group of people who are against politics. These groups — best exemplified by the Tea Party but not exclusive to the right — want to elect people who have no political experience. They want 'outsiders.'” (NYTimes, 2016 Feb 26)

Politics recognizes that competing perspectives and interests are legitimate, and the messy, interminable process of hashing out compromise and making deals is necessary and, on-balance, is good. No one gets everything they want, but in the long run more people get more of what they most want, and the outcomes result from ongoing dialog among diverse viewpoints – dialog which is a good unto itself, helping us feel that we’re in this together across our differences.

From the anti-politics point of view, there is one right answer, and compromise and deal-making are forms of corruption – departures from ideological purity. Anti-politics says, “Dialog? We don’t need no stinkin’ dialog. The right way to do things is the right way to do things, and any form of compromise is corruption of righteousness. You don’t make deals with the devil – you stand strong for your principles."

The problem with that is that it doesn’t recognize other people. Calling other people the devil is called demonizing them.

We’ve been seeing anti-politics on the rise for 30 years. It’s true that politics is a little distasteful. Compromising and deal making – as in, "I’ll vote for your bill if you’ll vote for mine" – can easily seem like corruption. But those were the ways that for most of this country’s history legislators of different parties were in conversation and got things done. They recognized the legitimacy of competing perspectives and interests. It required the humility to understand that your side might not be in sole possession of all virtue and truth.

Now our legislators don’t talk across the aisle at all, and little gets done. If you are seen working with the other side, then you are weak, you are caving, and next election you are likely to lose in the primary to someone who promises even greater ideological purity. Our legislatures are now filled with legislators who live in fear of legislating.

The rise of Trump is a continuation of the anti-politics delusion in which standing up for your principles means not taking into consideration any opinion but the one you already have, not considering other viewpoints, not compromising and not making deals. No one else’s interests count.

Anti-politics is political narcissism, and US voters have been demanding more and more narcissism for some time now. Our liberal entitlement has allowed us not to attend as energetically as we could have to the startling trends.

Further, anti-politics brings a declining importance of policy. Standing on principle has devolved from standing on policy principle to just standing for the principle of “us” against “them.” What was once an ideological purity test is now turning into, “We don’t care about your ideology – we just want to know that you are with us against them.” Policy is almost but not quite entirely beside the point. Very little of it gets passed anyway. We are fighting cultural battles and identity wars through political means.

So standing in opposition to Obama was more important for many legislators than noticing that some of what he was proposing was Republican enough so that it could have been proposed by a Republican president – and then they would support it, but what matters is supporting “us,” not the content of the legislation.

The election of 2016 breaks along identity lines rather than ideology lines. As a column on Friday by Mark Schmitt said:

“Consider immigration, the concept that drove both the Tea Party and the Trump campaign. For most of the long campaign, the media thought that it was about immigration policy: comprehensive immigration reform versus border security and deportations. The Republican 'autopsy' from 2012 concluded that Republicans should support immigration reform. But it turns out it was always just about immigrants, as in, people who aren’t like us, not policy.” (NYTimes, 2016 Nov 11)

That’s why so many voters didn’t care that what Trump said was so often clearly and blatantly false. Whether he was lying or not wasn’t the point. What he was saying demonstrated that he was on our side against them.

The dominant middle-class white culture has felt under assault for some time as economic and cultural shifts have brought changes. People who feel under assault start finding authoritarianism more attractive. With authoritarianism comes anti-politics: the feeling that dialog, compromise, and deal-making is what got us into this mess, rather than understanding that political process mitigates the mess. With anti-politics comes the replacement of any policy concern with merely identity concern.

When Trump said, “I’m the least racist person you’ve ever met,” my guess is that he was imagining that racism was about skin color. But skin color is only a marker of a likely different culture. It’s the different culture that isn’t “us,” that Trump supporters don’t like. If black people would only act just like white people, there’d be no problem. For many Clinton-voters, that attitude is the epitome of racism. For many Trump-voters, that attitude is the epitome of not being racist: “If black people would only act just like white people, there’d be no problem. See? That proves we don’t mind that a person is black. We only mind that they don’t act white.”

Of course, African American culture is in part a response to the ongoing legacy of slavery, Jim Crow, housing discrimination and segregation that we are perpetuating to this day, the abandonment of school desegregation that is the current reality. And white culture is a response to the privilege that Africans Americans don't have.

Many Trump supporters don’t see that. They just see, “They’re different.” And from the authoritarian, anti-politics standpoint, different means wrong.

* * *
This is part 3 of 4 of 'Liberal Entitlement"
See also
Part 1: Election Prayer
Part 2: Called Into Darkness
Part 4: Join the Rebel Alliance

Called Into Darkness

Liberal Entitlement, part 2

You are called, dear reader. You, and everyone you know, have been called to live into this period of darkness, of danger, for our people, our society, our planet. Whether any of us will live through this period of darkness, I cannot say, but we have been called to be here now, to live into this time. It is for us to make what light we can against this darkness. This calling comes late in some of our lives, early in others, and in the middle of others. Wherever you are in the arc of your life, you are at this point now, facing this challenge.

On the plus side, you have resources. You are probably pretty smart, judging from what I know of the readership of this blog. And probably resilient. When you have to be, you can be very determined. And now you have to be.

None of us asked for this assignment – nor have we the option of refusing it. We’ve been training for it all our short, medium, or long lives.

Also on the plus side, you are not alone. Unitarian Universalists and others of good will are ready to stand with you. Are we enough? We are always enough to shine the light that we can shine.

Whether or not you think you’re ready, you’re ready. You stand now upon this stage, called to play the part that only you can play. The darkness has been with us for some time. That we haven’t known it constitutes our predicament.

One member of my congregation emailed me on the morning of Wed Nov 9 to say she

“woke sad and stunned by the election results. Why don't so many in our country think and feel like we do?”

Another added that he and his spouse

“went to sleep last night feeling worried and baffled, and woke up this morning in much the same state....We wondered whether our sense of liberal entitlement blinded us to who is really in need and hurting in this country. [Have we been] quick to dismiss concerns of people who don't think like we do (or who we don't think think like we do)? Is there a danger that in our insistence on inclusiveness we get blinded to those we don't realize we are excluding? And of course, we wonder where we go from here? How do we pick up the pieces and feel positive about the work we are all trying to see done? How do we pick ourselves up spiritually and reconcile what happened in the election -- not only in the results but the way we were all swept into the fervor and divisiveness?”

Those are questions a lot of us have.

Before I try to address any of that, I need to remind – well, myself – of something I’ve said before: Don’t believe what you think. Whatever story we have about what’s going on in the social and political world is just a story. You can take it provisionally and use it and temporarily let it guide you, but don’t believe it. No story can ever be complete. With that caveat, I offer you this story, in the hope that it offers a little bit of sense to what seems to make no sense.

From cognitive scientist George Lakoff, who I first read some 15 years ago, I learned that there’s an authoritarian paradigm and a nurturant paradigm.

The Authoritarian Paradigm

The authoritarian paradigm puts the emphasis on fighting evil. It sees life as difficult and the world as fundamentally dangerous. Survival requires strength and discipline to confront dangers and evils from competitors and within the human soul. It requires a clear and strict sense of right and wrong with a minimum acknowledgment of moral gray areas. Evil must be attacked and destroyed. Respect for authority is crucial in the fight against evil. Obedience to authority is part of maintaining the strict sense of right and wrong we need to navigate life’s difficulties, resist evil, and maintain the social and natural order. Systems of reward and punishment -- rewarding the self-disciplined, responsible pursuit of self-interest and punishing for those who undermine authority or lack self-discipline – are crucial to maintain authority and order. People come in two kinds: the mature, self-disciplined, self-reliant ones who should not be meddled with, and the whining, undisciplined, dependent ones who should never be coddled.

The Nurturant Paradigm

The nurturant paradigm puts the emphasis on nurturing good. It sees life as centered on loving interactions, caring and being cared for, deriving meaning from connection and care. A fulfilling life is a nurturant life, a life of empathy, of imaginative capacity to put ourselves in others shoes to more effectively caringly respond to their needs. Life is for self-development, realizing our unique potential, understanding our own self-development as intertwined with the development of others. The value of self-discipline and self-reliance lies in helping us contribute more to society, in realizing and developing self, and in finding joy – not merely as defenses against evil. And that self-discipline is fostered better through relationships of care and respect than through systems of reward and punishment. There is a legitimate role for authority, but authority arises less from a hierarchy for enforcing black-and-white morality with reward and punishment, and more from developed skill as a nurturer. The paradigm of authority is a kindly teacher, aimed at others’ development, rather than military dictator aimed at vanquishing threats. Legitimate authority emerges from relationships of accountability, for this facilitates dialog and individual critical thinking – as opposed to the authoritarian paradigm, in which authority comes from being strong and righteous, and accountability to morally weaker carping characters is unproductive and wearisome.

How the Paradigms Underlie Political and Child-Rearing Philosophies

Most of us have both paradigms, and we tend to go back and forth between them. Almost all of us can be authoritarian when decisive leadership is called for, and almost all of us have an ability to facilitate the growth and learning of others. It's a question of relative dominance. If the nurturant paradigm is relatively more dominant in your thinking, you'll tend to support political issues identified as "liberal." If the authoritarian paradigm is relatively more dominant, you'll tend to support political issues identified as "conservative."

Our attitudes about child-rearing parallel our political attitudes. The assumptions about how parents parent generally match our assumptions about how governments govern. Thus, researchers have found that the best way to tease out an authoritarian paradigm is by asking questions about child-rearing. Matthew MacWilliams has isolated just four questions that powerfully predict an authoritarian or nurturant outlook on child-rearing and on politics.

Is it more important for a child to be:

• respectful or independent?
• obedient or self-reliant?
• well-behaved or considerate?
• well-mannered or curious?

The former in each pair indicates an authoritarian orientation. Generally, we’d like our children to exemplify both qualities of each pair. The authoritarian paradigm sees independence and self-reliance as flowing from respect and obedience, so learning to be respectful and obedient is the priority. The nurturant paradigm sees being well-behaved as flowing from being considerate, so learning to be considerate is the priority.

For the last year, I’ve been somewhat obsessively reading lots of articles in newspapers, magazines, and online analyzing this campaign. Most of them weren’t very memorable, but one of the ones that stuck with me came out last January by Matthew MacWilliams.

What MacWilliams’ research was finding, he reported, was that these four questions predicted Trump support better than any other factor – better than age, gender, education, or income class. Trump himself isn’t respectful, obedient, well-behaved, or well-mannered, but he certainly wants to be shown orderly respect and obedience, so supporters saw in him a strong man who would enforce the needed qualities on an unruly populace. The felt need for an authoritarian approach – encouraged by every action movie and a lot of the news narratives – occurs in women as well as men, which perhaps helps us understand how 42 percent of women could have voted for Trump.

There are a lot of lenses available for looking at what happened on Tue Nov 8. This one might be worth keeping in mind: The authoritarian need has been on the rise, encouraged by frustrations and a changing world. Trump appealed to the authoritarian need.

* * *
This is part 2 of 4 of "Liberal Entitlement"
See also:
Part 1: Election Prayer
Part 3: The Problem with Anti-Politics
Part 4: Join the Rebel Alliance

Election Prayer

Liberal Entitlement, part 1

I went to pray on Tuesday morning.
I went to join the people, my neighbors, at the precinct to worship together.
The electoral priest gave me a paper ballot wafer.
This is my body politic.
And handed me a pen – a small container of ink.
This is my blood.
I offered up my prayer, expressed the yearning of my heart.
As prayer does, it connected me to -- made me a part of -- something much bigger than myself.
Within a day, the Goddess answered my prayer, and the answer was:

"No. You’re not ready yet for that. I know you thought you were -- but you have more work to do – you and your neighbors -- more lessons to learn, more bridges to build. More compassion to share. You must love more widely and more fiercely and organize more energetically and more effectively."

I come to pray on this Sunday morning.
I come to join my people at our congregation to worship together:
To share our prayer -- express the yearning of our hearts.

May we be made ready. May we find the strength and resolve to do the work, learn the lessons, and build the bridges. We ask for the courage to love more fiercely, brightly, and constantly than we ever have before -- and for the energy to organize the effective forms of public love, which is justice.

AMEN

* * *
This is part 1 of 4 of "Liberal Entitlement"
See also
Part 2: Called Into Darkness
Part 3: The Problem with Anti-Politics
Part 4: Join the Rebel Alliance