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Can We Please Have a "Tough Conversation" About the 72 Million?
Excuse me, but I've grown more than a little restless with the theory that the country's stark, polarized divide would heal if only us snotty, overbearing liberals would stop and see things from the point of view of the 72 million Trump voters.
This notion, that conservatives, mainly white rural conservatives are largely reacting to the constant disrespect they feel from, you know, big city, New York Times-reading, Stephen Colbert-watching, Volvo-driving elites is getting a fresh work out after this recent election.
TrumpNation came out in unexpected droves. Therefore, say musty Libertarian op-ed pieces and countless commenters, liberals (and apparently only liberals) need to have a "tough conversation" with each other and finally atone for their misbehavior.
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We heard this after 2016. There was, you'll remember, no end of journalistic self-flagellation at how poorly "the mainstream media" understood the travails of the white working class, and how little effort newsrooms devoted to seeking out such people and "understanding" them. (As though your average newsroom has the budget for buying rounds of drinks at some rural bar and taking stenography as the locals bellyache.)
All that is back again. And it again it lacks one critical factor, if "healing" is actually the prize we're focusing on.
Namely, where is any kind of "call" to, or "admonition" for TrumpNationalists to engage in a similar quality of self-criticism and behavior modification? Go ahead. Look around and get back to me when you find comparable demands aimed at that rather large and formidable crowd.
To put it bluntly, the over-weighted demands for "respect" and "understanding" from "liberals" toward "conservatives" screams "patronizing".
Is it too much to ask if pundits and our sage culture counselors see only one group as adult enough to actually engage in therapeutic self-examination, and see the other side as so functionally immature that there's no point in even posing the question to them?
There are a million theories for how 72 million people came to believe a reality TV performer and flagrant serial con man was a genuine self-made tycoon, and how they ignored a fantastic torrent of daily lies, blunders and scandals culminating in a demonstration of executive incompetence — his response to the COVID pandemic — that rivals when it doesn't exceed the worst failure of government management in the history of the United States. But you can boil all of them down to two.
The 72 million either don't know what is true, or they don't care. So take your pick. Which suggests a higher level of adult function?
Their ignorance and/or indifference has been hardened — like epoxy glue — by 30 years of talk radio, 25 years of FoxNews and a solid 10 now of reckless disinformation via social media. The underlying message via all platforms is that … they are not responsible. Not only are they the victims of snotty, scheming, disrespectful liberal elites, there's nothing they need to do to cool things down. In fact, the only thing required of them is to stay angry and resentful … and tune in again tomorrow for a booster shot.
I laugh every time I hear or read some Trumper yabber about "owning the libs." The obsession of that crowd with, well, people like me I guess, (but really AOC and Ilhan and Hillary and all those other harridan socialist babes), is just not reciprocated. It may be fundamental to their "disrespect" grievance, but I don't think I've ever considered "owning a Trumper". It's never crossed my mind long enough to register as a thought. Put another way, I (like other journalists) didn't give them a lot of thought … until four years ago. Yes, they were out there and I heard the noise. But it was all so factually challenged and steeped in common, age-old grievances there was nothing to "engage" with, or really even "understand." Certainly there was nothing to "agree" about.
One of the primary obstacles to "healing", if that truly is the point of criticisms of liberal behavior, is the critical factor of judgment in social relations.
We may engage people as friends because we share interests, because they make us laugh or because they mix a damned good Mojito. But where the rubber meets the road in true, deeply-bonded friendships is a trust based in judgment. Because they know what is factually right, good friends will do the right thing when the right thing needs to be done.
Point being: supporting and voting for someone (and his craven enablers) who has proven himself beyond all doubt to be an unquivocal fraud, a racist and sociopathically indifferent to the suffering of millions of fellow citizens is a stunning demonstration of appalling judgment. In other words, it is not the response of a trustworthy individual to an extraordinarily serious moment.
I'm all for "healing". Only fools aren't. But at some point social critics are going to have to invent "messaging" that requires modern conservatives/Trumpists to be as adult in their self-examinations as all the allegedly snotty, sneering liberals supposedly demeaning the 72 million via The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, MSNBC, NPR, TED talks … and on and on … at every point of the dial where, you know, facts get verified before they're sold.
Anything less than an equal admonition to TrumpNation is definitional enabling. It's treating Trumpists like children. The effect is equal to sanctioning the belief of 72 million that the only things that are truly real are the things they want to be real, and that everything wrong is someone else's fault.
When I was 10 I used to think that way.
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