Trump trades on fear. His message speaks to the darker human impulses and the anger and frustration of those who are lost and alienated. In Freudian terms, he speaks to the id.
To date, the counter to this onslaught has been an appeal to reason — speaking of policy, good sense and even invoking how contrary all of this xenophobia is to our history and our values. My guess is that this appeal to reason will not work largely because that is not the level at which Trump’s venom functions both in his supporters and those who oppose him. His message evokes fear in all who hear him — it drips and spreads fear on both the right and the left — and fear simply shuts down reason.
What just might work is to speak to the deeper aspirations of the people — what Lincoln called the better angels of our nature. If Trump speaks to the darker impulses, then perhaps the antidote is to speak to our higher aspirations.
A message from this place might sound something like this: “Fellow Americans, we are better than this. We have always believed in the goodness of human beings — in the fundamental decency of us as a people. And so we help our neighbors. We believe in justice and fairness. And so we work hard to make the world a better place for ourselves, our families and our communities. We believe not that we must make American great again, but that the best days of our nation are ahead of us, not behind us. We have never looked backward, we have looked forward to a brighter future. We believe that, if we work together, life will be better for ourselves and for our planet. As a people, we have always fought for what is right. Each of us strives to realize the best in ourselves and in the world. We believe — when we as a nation are faced with adversity — that we don’t retreat and hide; we act with courage and conviction — we meet adversity with strength, dedication, the power of our ideas and the quiet persistence of our labor. That is our history — and it is our destiny. It is wired into us. It is who we are. There are those who would tell you that you need to be afraid — afraid of foreigners or of banks, of forces they tell you are beyond your control. That has never been our way. We don’t back down from challenges by cowering in fear behind walls or acting from hate and anger. We are better than that. We have faced problems before and we will face problems again. But our way — the American Way — is get to work with optimism, compassion for our neighbor and a profound sense of what is right and good and true. There are those who tell you to lash out. That is not our way. We are better than that. You are better than that.”
This makes the people the heros of the journey and the leader the mirror who reflects their greatness back to them and inspires them to rise above.
This kind of deep — and profoundly moral — appeal has historically been the message of all of our iconic our political leaders — Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, FDR, Kennedy, MLK. They called upon the people not to enact policy (that was the mere means of something greater), but to imagine for themselves and their children a more moral future — one based on community, justice and courage.
My guess is that bare policy dies on the shoals of the id. But it seems that policy could thrive as ornaments on the branches of a tree reflecting the aspirations of the better angels of our nature.
