(this is the second in a series of essays which will carry the same title so that you can follow along easily if you should so choose.)
In the prologue to this series, I outlined the stunning impact on those around me in the first few days following the election of Donald J. Trump, and my attempts to support/console/guide the young people who surround me in my work life. This work, the listening and conversations, was pretty much limited to the students who work for me. Students generally ignore me as we pass in the halls, because I am part of the organization/management of the college. I am “the man,” as we use to say back in the sixties, so unless you are a student who works under my supervision or has need of my services, you probably don’t initiate social exchange with me. But in the days following the election, reports of acts of hatred perpetrated by now “unbound” supporters of that man were filling online and social media, so I donned the safety pin to let our minority students know that there was at least one older white male who was there for them, who would have their back. It was an interesting few days. Students who used to look through me as we passed, now looked at me. Students who had felt targeted all throughout the autumn now acknowledged me as I passed, flashing a quick smile, a tip of the head, a quick nod. Their body language seemed to change over the following days, seeming somehow more open, less defensive. How much of that is projection on my part? I haven’t a clue. But it did strike me just how damaging the whole campaign had been and how deep the sense of peril was as the nation as a whole faced the unknown. And so I decided to just listen. Gather the data. Try to discard previous framings. Let people and conversations and news broadcasts and all that I read just flow over and around me while I stood still lest I cloud the waters by stirring up the stream bed.
Patterns began emerging in people’s responses to what had happened, was happening, and what they felt would happen. There was much sound and fury, lots of heat, very little light. One thing that was common was the incessant analysis of statistics in order to find out what demographic was to blame for the outcome. In the first case, what was often the case for outrage in commentary was the employment of the broad brush to paint an entire demographic as the scapegoat for outcome. The criteria that determines placement in a particular demographic group can be simple (baby boomers) or complex (baby boomers/ first in family college attendance/ military veteran/ Hispanic/ female/ underemployed/ without health insurance/ late model car). Simplistic criteria often leaves you with large incredibly diverse groups that defy analysis by which causal assumptions might be made. Some cases were made wherein complex criteria were assumed to be held by every member of the group even if only some subset of that criteria were required for placement in the group. In those cases, a backwards assumption was made that every member of that group had every attribute in equal degree, which even a moment’s reflection would have revealed the fallacy. Another problem in many of these discussions, especially when talking state level races, comes from Simpson’s paradox, in which statistical differences between populations disappear when you look each population by subgroup.
"I’ll give an example which, if I recall correctly, originally came from the late science popularizer Martin Gardner. Suppose I told you that the on-time flight arrival record for Southwest Airlines is better than that of Alaska Airlines. That’d make you prefer Southwest, right? But what if I told you that when given a choice between Southwest and Alaska on any given route, your chances of arriving on time is better with Alaska?
"It turns out both can be true at the same time if, for example, Southwest flies relatively more often to cities like Phoenix with relatively few weather related delays, and Alaska flies into cities like Anchorage."
--(my apologies, I forgot to note the source when I found this a few weeks ago… please note in comments if you recognize this)
These discussions are where I saw arguments and responses based upon every possible prejudice. Ageism. Sexism. Educational level. Wealth. Race. Religion. After all, someone had to be responsible for this fiasco, and it wasn’t me and not my cohort. And not my family, not my tribe. And yet people who would in any other circumstance claim to be free of prejudice felt righteous in their anger toward their scapegoat of choice. All the while ignoring the fact that every demographic other than the “deciding demographic” had the same potential in their vote, and all of them had to vote in the way that they did in order for your choice of the “deciding demographic” to tip the scale. In an election this close, every voting bloc had the potential to be the grain of sand that tipped the scale. You don’t like how one group voted? How was your group’s turnout? Very few demographics had the turnout that one would hope to see in a democratic country during a race where the choice was this clear, so non-participation was a greater issue than any two to five percent swings within a particular demographic would have been.
Another pattern that I often witnessed is related to that old idea in eastern philosophies that warn that “the description is not the actuality” and one of the corollaries to that idea, “understand the difference between the superficial and the intrinsic.” There seemed to be so much discussion around strategies. Big data vs. little data. Fifty State Strategy vs. Electoral College Strategies. Play to the base vs. play to the undecided. Canvassing vs. Social Media. Policy vs. Philosophy. All of which lead me to ask, “Do you run for office to win? Or do you run for office to serve?” From the selection of candidates for way down ticket open offices to the top of the ticket, how a candidate’s attributes or positions would “play with the electorate” was more important than how well a candidate might serve once in office. The cynicism of “electability is more important than ability” is what got us into the mess we are in, as this election’s winner is singularly unqualified for the position.
All the while, there seemed to be a common thread that ran through all. People where afraid of change, before, during and after election day. People wanted change, before, during and after election day. Things were changing too fast. Nothing was changing. Change wasn’t happening fast enough. In many cases, I had the feeling that I was witnessing someone who must be standing at the North Pole, for the surety they had in which direction progress lay would only befit a person for whom a step in any direction would be due South. In many cases, people were talking about issues without first having learned the history of that issue, raising the question, “If you don’t know where you have been, how do you know which way is forward?”
After many days and nights letting this wash over me, the common thread that rose to tie all the images, voices and words together was a growing feeling that there was something essential, something intrinsic, that was not understood in the same way by all participants in the discussions. Whose essential nature was being obscured by superficial distinctions. It was as simple as a complex thing can sometimes be. It is Change.
What is the essential nature of change? Is it a reflection of or a product of our existence? Is it manageable? Can it be managed? Could understanding the essential nature of change give us clues of how to go about regaining control of the changes in our life, even in our political life, as we move forward into the future?
The next installment is titled, “Where to From Here: Reflections on the Nature of Change (Everything Changes)”
(please feel free to suggest tags in the comments, I am not sure how many interrelationships with ongoing discussions there might be as I go forward.)