There is a rift that's appeared, and is growing, between me and some of my friends. It’s over politics in this election year, and while this is anecdotal, I fear it may be more widespread than we realize. So I want to talk about it with you.
It’s not what you might imagine. None of my friends support Trump, and very few of my relatives. It’s fair to say they mostly loathe him. The problem is that most of them loathe Hillary Clinton and the Democratic Party even more than they care about Trump. They will either vote third party or fiercely do what they consider the only moral thing and not vote at all.
I should give you some background. I don’t live in Middle or Upper America. Some ten years ago I pretty much voluntarily dropped off the American ladder of economic success and I live near a very counter-cultural town in North Carolina (yes we exist) and most of my friends fit the mold of very intelligent, creative, artistic personalities with a strong streak of anti-authoritarian in them. And I love them for this. They are honest, open-minded, highly empathetic and caring about people other than themselves. Their politics, so far as it has any consistency, ranges from left to far left and on into libertarian. They are a potential natural constituency for the Democratic Party.
Typical apolitical, they suddenly came alive with interest this year, due mostly to the powerful influence of Bernie Sanders. My social media feed filled with passion for the revolution, along with fierce denunciations of the DNC, Hillary, and anyone who was seen as defending the corrupt status quo. You could feel the love, but also the hate, which was surprising and unpleasant.
I am a curious person. It’s what gets me up in the morning. I’ve spent my life looking into things to understand them as best I can with my human limitations. I’m fascinated by human events, and I’ve followed the history of civilization up until the present time. My sources are non-fiction books from all over the spectrum. I’m not pushing any agenda. I just want to understand something close to truth.
Most of my friends, by contrast, know little about the actual history of this country or any other. They know little about current events. They don’t typically watch TV. It just frustrates them to hear all these loud opposing voices. They were the under-achievers in school, very smart but bored with it all, not listening to any of the teachers and barely getting by. They are devotees of science fiction and fantasy: entertaining fictional worlds with super heroes and super villains. They are pretty much disgusted with reality on the ground, which is why they don’t pay much attention to it and escape into a private mental universe where they might well construct a vision of reality that’s unconsciously driven by the metaphors of their fictional preferences.
So, the typical unconscious narrative might go, in an almost hopeless world a man appears out of nowhere who is honest and tells the truth. He’s a Senator, but has been consistently against the status quo for his whole career. He’s like a super hero, made all the more appealing by his age, odd voice and mannerisms and blazing sincerity.
I mean nothing of this to be insulting to Senator Sanders. I am a supporter of his too. But I’m also a realist. I know politics and history pretty well. I’m trying to understand the passion of some of his supporters and how it’s led to so many dangerous illusions, and maybe how we deal with that, if it’s possible at all.
When you have a metaphorical super hero, you must always have a metaphorical super villain. And because she stood in the hero’s path, that villain is Hillary Clinton. Because she is a villain, it’s not just a disagreement: it’s evil and corruption incarnate. That’s how it is in the most of the novels and stories and movies that form the unconscious mental landscape of so many of my beloved counter-cultural friends.
Now that the battle is over, Bernie has wisely advised his followers to accept reality and turn their attention to the larger, more important fight ahead of us: stopping the terrifying threat that is Trumpism.
But so many of my friends cannot let go.
Some have turned against Bernie himself as just another sellout, bought by the super villain. That’s not how the story is supposed to end. Actual tears have been shed over this. The majority feel that there’s no real difference between Trumpism and Hillary Clinton and the Democratic party. They are just slight variations on the same system, the corporatist oligarchy that controls the country and the world. (This is only possible, I fear, because of a lack of knowledge about actual history and how much worse things can actually be in this country.)
A substantial minority believe that the whole system in America is so thoroughly corrupt that Clinton and Trump are just puppet actors hired to perform in a play to distract the populace from reality. The Zappa quote “Politics is the entertainment division of the military industrial complex” is a favorite.
I strongly believe that these are illusions born from a toxic combination of naivete and cynicism. And that they are dangerous illusions that have the capacity to spread even further than they have into our political body.
I have tried to gently persuade some to see reason and reality, but I’m greeted with denunciations and anger for being such a dupe as to believe my vote matters at all. Arguing that Trumpism is a serious threat to our democracy and progressive ideas is met with “what democracy?” and “surely you don’t think Hillary cares about progressive ideas, she’s just a tool of the oligarchs” or even a “murderous neocon warhawk.”
Now I realize that in the grand scheme of things most of these people would never vote at all, and the loss of their support is probably not a huge numerical dent. But my social media feed is still filled with a steady drumbeat of angry anti-Hillary diatribes, much of it recycling stuff from mendacious right-wing sources, and all designed to discourage support for anyone except the third parties, or no party at all. I fear it has an effect on people still on the fence — not the fence of D or R, but the fence of “do I even care or not?”
Of course they all say “I don’t support Trump” but they will get angry if anyone points out that their campaign against his opponent inevitably helps him. I fear for the future of democracy in America.
I’m at a loss as to how to reach these angry true believers, and not at all sure it’s possible. It might be best if I just leave them alone and stop talking about it.