Reaching Across the Empathy Wall
Why They Voted for Trump
By Julie Freestone
It’s four months post-election and I still hear people say things like, “I don’t know how this happened.” Maybe we wouldn’t still be in this state of near-disbelief if something outrageous didn’t happen each day. And now that the regime is starting to take root, there are ever more people who can contribute kindling to the fire. (Think Sean Spicer trying to explain that DJT didn’t really mean wiretapping when he accused President Barack Obama of bugging Trump Tower)
Anyway, like many other people, I’ve been trying to make some sense of the where we are right now and wondering how to make it better. At the end of January, I wrote about hearing commentator Van Jones talk about building a “Love Army” and a “bridge of respect” to Trump supporters.
I got that message and I did sign up for hifromtheotherside.com, a web site that was supposed to hook me up with Red Staters so we could start a dialogue and better understand each other. I haven’t yet been paired with anyone and I’m still trying to work through it all but I have a glimmer of empathy as a result of a talk I heard a few days ago.
Five years with the Tea Party
Arlie Russell Hochschild, sociologist and author of Strangers in Their Own Land: Anger and Mourning on the American Right, described her extraordinary five year effort to get out of her “enclave” (she lives and works in Berkeley, California). To find a community as far right as Berkeley is left, she immersed herself in St. Charles, Louisiana. “I wanted to shut my own political and moral alarm system off and allow myself curiosity.” Her goal was to cross the “empathy bridge” and truly understand the deep story of the Tea Party members she now calls friends.
She said she went there to solve the “Red State Paradox”: how could it be that the poorest states with the worst education, health etc, the states that get more money from the federal government than they pay out, be evermore suspicious of the government? She carried around this question like a “backpack” for her time in Louisiana. The communities she grew to know were shockingly impacted by the petrochemical industry. Poisoned in many ways. And yet, the people who lived there- some driven from their homes by contamination- were hostile to government regulation.
In her book, she tells a number of poignant stories about the Louisianans she met — hard working, church going people. And her compelling metaphor about their deep story — how they feel — is worth repeating because I believe it is helping me move closer to a dialogue across the divide.
Trying to reach the American Dream
This is the Tea Party deep story she came to understand: You’re headed up a hill as if on a pilgrimage. At the top is the American dream. You’ve worked hard and followed the rules. You’ve been waiting your turn. Your feet are tired and the line isn’t moving any more.
Then someone is cutting in line ahead of you. It’s blacks because of the government’s Affirmative Action policy. Then it’s women because of federally mandated Affirmative Action. It’s immigrants. It’s refugees. It’s someone more educated, more professional, more “coastal.” It’s even the brown pelican, declared endangered because of oil spills. “They put animals ahead of people,” say the Tea Partyers.
Then Barack Obama comes along. He waves to the line cutters. Maybe he’s a line cutter himself. “How did he get to Harvard when he had a single mother? Something is fishy.”
And then, to add insult to injury, the people ahead of you in line turn around and insult you. They call you racists and rednecks. “We are dishonored,” Russell Hochschild says about how they feel, adding that this attitude goes back years to when the South was hated for slavery. Fox News feeds the feeling and the Democrats and Hillary further insulted them.
Russell Hochschild started her efforts before the Republicans won the White House but she says, “I had been studying the dry kindling and then I saw the match (Donald Trump’s promise to make America great again.)
It’s a Blue State Paradox
Now what she sees instead of the Red State Paradox is the Blue State Paradox: why didn’t the Democratic platform have something for the people she met? She doesn’t expect them to suddenly realize that Donald Trump isn’t going to solve their problems. “The Democratic party needs a new platform, a culture of respect. We have to stand for decency. We are in a struggle for the soul of our democracy.”
She made a quick reference for three pillars that would be the underpinning of a “loyal opposition,” including especially getting to know people outside your enclave. “Talk to each other, especially about sources of information. It would mitigate Donald Trump’s power. Reach back to soften the divide,” she urged.
Now what?
So what am I ready to do after hearing this? Russell Hochschild said going fishing with the other side is a great way to start talking. She did some of that during her five year odyssey. Not sure I’m ready for that. But I do get the point that I have to get over the empathy wall. I understand that people who didn’t vote for Donald Trump and are having trouble accepting him as the current president have to find a way to understand people who did vote for him. And for the sake of our democracy, we have to hope that the Democratic Party can do the same.
Julie Freestone is a reporter for the resistance and as a journalist strives to understand both sides of a story. She and Rudi Raab wrote Stumbling Stone, a novel based on their compelling true life stories about a Jewish reporter trying to resolve her prejudices about Germans and understand how the family of her German-born lover was involved in the Nazi regime.
