Forget Trump for a Day: But is it Past Time For Trump Loathers and Trump Voters to Talk?: Part 1

matt polsky
Jul 28, 2017 · 9 min read

“Sometimes you need to swallow hard and recognize your enemy as a fellow human being like who has the same rights as you and accept that you need to live in same space.”
Bangambiki Habyarimana

Do “we” — meant this first time as fellow Americans very deeply worried about the next 3 ½ years of this Administration — need to talk to those, who to our continued shock, put him there?

Why Would We Want to Talk With Them?

There are many reasons not to. If your “Friends” are anything like mine, check the first five posts on your Facebook wall today, or a sample of articles on the front page of today’s New York Times for some of the reasons. Look what Trump voters have given us to have to deal with! Withdrawal from the Paris Climate Agreement and Clean Power Program, insults about women journalists, a strange bromance with a country leader that hacked the election, no attempt made to connect to us… (The list doesn’t seem to want to end.)

But President Trump is not the focus here, though he provides the context. He is what he is. To some degree, while extremely unique, he is a function of the times. In this seven-part series, I focus on an aspect of the latter, the people who voted for him to see if we should try to establish a better relationship with them. And if we should, how to begin.

First, let’s discuss why people think we shouldn’t talk with Trump voters, and then work our way through that to why some of us need to make the attempt to do so.

I’ll try to stay on the polite side of the line, which actually will be an important meta-theme of this series. Almost everyone in my network has said “It isn’t worth it.” “They’ll never listen.” “We’re in different worlds,” with “realities” sometimes substituted. “Besides, they’re ….” (Insert the strongest expletive/negative language you’ve heard describing the Trump voter or that you used yourself). I had thought at the time that parts of what President Obama and Hillary Clinton said about those who were to become Trump voters was rather mild. The former said: “they get bitter, they cling to guns or religion…” The latter said: “to just be grossly generalistic, you can put half of Trump supporters into what I call the basket of deplorables,…” But, as we know, these backfired. (Yes, I know. They both were called far worse.) Here are a couple that make me cringe, and they’re not even among the worst: “trailer trash” and “plumber’s butt.”

It would be foolish not to take notice of and consider the viewpoint of Forsetti, the pen name of the author of the on-line journal, “Forsetti’s Journal,” who in “An Insider’s View: The Dark Rigidity of Fundamentalist Rural America,” disagrees that we have to understand the Trump voter better and that this discussion is worth having:

. “I spent most of the first 24 years of my life deeply embedded in this culture…I winced at their racist/bigoted jokes and epithets that were said more out of ignorance than animosity”

. “The real problem is that rural Americans don’t understand the causes of their own situations and fears and they have shown no interest in finding out. They don’t want to know why they feel the way they do or why there are struggling because they don’t want to admit it is in large part because of the choices they’ve made and the horrible things they’ve allowed themselves to believe”

. “…rural America will never listen to anyone outside of its bubble.”

Mary Turck, who also describes herself as “growing up in rural, white, Christian America,” responded directly to Forsetti’s points, disagreeing with his assessment, and urging talking to Trump voters:

• “Many people I knew while growing up and many people I still know in rural, white, Christian America hold diverse viewpoints. Many are, in varying degrees, thoughtful, flexible, and open to change. Some are neither…but that’s also true of…some progressives/activists/leftists with whom I identify politically”

• “Demonization of ‘rural, Christian, white America’ seems just as bigoted as denouncing Muslims…or Jews…”

• On talking, she quotes Ayan Omar, who has practiced it on panels: “Through conversation, the dynamic changes…Facial expressions change, a light of hope turns on…” Turck says: “Such conversations are difficult.” “(But) we need conversations beyond the circle of people who agree with us. We need to search for some sliver of common ground where we can begin to talk to people who voted for Trump…” Quoting, this time, Barbara Kingsolver: “We talk with…Trump supporters, about our common frustrations when we lose our safety nets, see friends deported, lose our clean air and water, and all the harm to follow…”

• Turck says: “…calling people racists (even when they are) doesn’t change hearts and minds,” whereas, “direct dialogue…can arouse individual consciences and change hearts and minds.” “Sometimes hearts and minds change after three or six or seventy encounters — and if your conversation was the second or fifth or sixty-ninth encounter, you may never see change.”

Kristian Wiese, of Cevea, a think tank in Denmark (see the forthcoming Part 4), says of a similar situation there, “There are bigots out there, but we believe the majority attracted to the populist right is disenchanted,” and “don’t feel the establishment is listening to them…”

Roger Cohen also said something similar in “Americans, Let’s Talk”: “There are hateful racists among Trump supporters; there are also many decent, thoughtful, anxious, patriotic Americans who felt they were losing some part of their country’s essence.”

My conclusion is that there’s no obvious reason to apply Forsetti’s observations and conclusions so generally, or to accept his opinion that the effort to talk to Trump voters will not be successful at all. Even if we’re not successful with all of them, that doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be tried. And without wishing difficult circumstances due to say climate change on anyone, but be prepared to take advantage of possibly new receptivity towards accepting it from, say, seemingly endless heat waves, to take the conversation further.

Forsetti does say that change within this group is possible if “change (comes) from within,” “when something becomes personal” and that “personal experience (comes) into direct conflict with what they believe,” if it is “catastrophic” and they “suffer enough.” So if a Trump voter isn’t willing to come around on climate change until it becomes deeply personal for fifteen years through something like the umpteenth flooded basement, I’ll take those carbon-emissions then, too.

Still, when faced with what some might see as “a war,” isn’t, as many are saying, resistance and fighting back — definitely not some wimpy talking — the traditional, dominant, and even hallowed solution?

Working Towards Why We Should Talk to Trump Voters

Even in a war, there are rules; things you don’t do, for which I propose in this case avoid insults, even those you think are the safe ones.

Also in a war there is a need for diplomats and peace-building efforts — unless you truly think you’re not just fighting someone with whom you disagree, but that they are inherently evil, which would make diplomacy foolish and naive. I haven’t heard many non-Trump voters describe Trump voters as inherently evil (with a few exceptions), so maybe we still have something to work with.

Change a few of our epithets, descriptions, and insults for them around, and I have no doubt that is what they are saying about us. I have been called “Academic,” I doubt in a well-intentioned way (more like “airy-fairy,” “live in an un-real world”), to which I responded by showing the numerous band-aides wrapped around my fingers, earned at my then-part time farming job. I think my Trump voter dinner partner accuser was impressed, and I didn’t hear “Academic” after that (not that that stopped him from various slaps at President Obama). I found out later that some of the other dinner guests around us were not comfortable, but the two of us I think enjoyed it, and developed a small connection. I was sad to hear of his passing last year, and won’t forget him or his self-depreciating sense of humor. He had claimed that he “could clear a room at a party (by talking politics) quicker than anyone,” which I observed when everyone else left. I told him: “You were right.” I also won’t forget that multiple band-aides can do more than protect cuts.

I was stunned to be called “Obama-voter” by a farmer at a farmers market I was managing, in a context totally unrelated to what we had been talking about, after which she stormed off. I guess she was mad at me for something market-related, and said what came to mind, guessing right along the way. Nevertheless, I can live with these insults. They were milder than the disgust from a fellow-Trump-loather responding to my view that I would take a hypothetical phone call from White House Senior Advisor Jared Kushner to talk about potential common ground around his innovation initiative. “How could you?”

Perhaps storming away might be a common element of failed attempts. I lost a Trump voter dinner guest, who had been invited in gratitude for helping us through our first power failure in our then-new rural area (who knew that toilet flushing when you have well water, after the first one, depends on electricity?). He bailed after a partial disagreement about cutting dead trees in forests (it turned out to be his occupation) and right after learning for whom we voted. The same also happened after a discussion at an open mike guitar session, ruining my then-budding theory that music facilitates the talk (see the upcoming Part 3).

(It is worth pointing out, though, in defense of the conservative area where I now live, these were very rare occurrences, not at all typical of those with the red baseball hats. But they did give me a reason to reflect on what, if anything, I could have done differently.)

While insults may feel good temporarily at some level, and those “Saturday Night Live” skits helped us cope at a very difficult time, is this all not embarrassing? Aren’t we, and I mean both sides this time, better than this? Snark, escapism, storming away are not going to help us address climate change, rebuild our democracy, or help us address the difficult issues to come.

The Major Reasons We Should Talk: The Stakes

How do other observers see the stakes, including the fundamental issue of “us,” as in the American people, at the current time?

David Niose, in “Beware America’s Shocking Loss of Empathy: The Symptoms of a Society Coming Unhinged,” in 2016 said of “the mood in America today,” “…almost all discourse is uncivil…and the utter lack of empathy becomes apparent. Nobody cares to calm down, to consider what it’s like to walk in the other person’s shoes, to entertain the notion that others may feel the way they do for reasons that are understandable and valid.” Whereas, in the 1930s, Niose writes, there was “a sense that, as a society, we are all in this together.”

Thomas Freidman, in “Where Did ‘We the People’ Go?” quotes Dov Seidman, the CEO of LRN, “…we don’t see the other…we can no longer see their humanity, let alone embrace them as fellow Americans with whom we share values.” He also quotes Seidman’s view that “…the source of legitimate authority to govern (in our democracy)…comes from ‘We the people.” However, “when there is no ‘we’ ‘anymore, because ‘we’ no longer share basic truths, then there is no legitimate authority and no unifying basis for our continued association.”

Friedman concludes: “In the long run, the only thing that will save us is if more people — no matter what age, color, gender or faith — build moral authority in their respective realms and then use it to do big, meaningful things…in so doing you can help put the ‘We’ back in ‘We the People.”

A connection between these two, empathy and democracy, is given by Peter MacLeod, of the consulting company Mass LBP: “The basis of democratic citizenship is putting yourself in someone else’s shoes. This is democracy as empathy. A dose of empathy is especially needed in the United States, where understanding between Trump and Clinton supporters…has broken down.”

Roger Cohen says “America needs the conversations it’s not having. They start, for both sides, with listening.” He adds, I think overstating it (but perhaps not): “The alternative is bloody confrontation.”

So it’s really our democracy that is at stake here; democracy in the real, thriving, meaningful sense. This is about as big an issue as, and interdependent with, addressing climate change.

Speaking of which, my other “Ace” (almost said “trump”) for why we need to talk to Trump voters is that their carbon emissions need to be drastically reduced, too — unless the rest of us are prepared to make up for theirs by doing much more than our own already challenging (if necessary) shares. According to Nate Silver, the Trump base is “perhaps 35% to 40% of the country.” I don’t want to give up on getting those.

Here in Part 1, we just “straw-manned” why we shouldn’t talk to Trump voters, and then began to peel away at the reasons, including explaining the stakes if we keep going the way we’re going. In Part 2, we’ll discuss other reasons why we should have these conversations.

In later parts, we’ll describe projects which are trying to bring both sides together, and provide some guidance (including what not to do) by others and myself about how to have the discussion with Trump voters. In Part 7, the final part of the series, I’ll discuss conclusions, make recommendations, and some list some areas where I’m still stumped and could use some help.

I’ll try to publish each succeeding part of this series every second day.

matt polsky

Written by

Long time sustainability change-agent. Ph.D. student Erasmus University’s Program in Sustainability. Columnist for Sustainable Brands.

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