Care Enough Not to Care
I don’t know who believes what and I don’t care anymore. This is my new mantra. It’s my stress-free way of acknowledging that I can’t change what people think. Dale Carnegie came to that conclusion back in the 1940s. It was sanguine advice then and it still applies today. All you accomplish when you try to change someone’s views, especially in politics, is alienating yourself. Subtle suggestions that they must be crazy to believe in what they believe, is toxic to a friendship and corrupting in the workplace. So, these days I simply surf along, observing more than engaging.
These times are ripe for the engaging, however, and I’ve seen many colleagues essentially call someone crazy simply for being a supporter of the wrong political party. Let’s be honest about Election 2020. It’s a referendum on Trump, not really Biden. Trump has the championship title, as they say in boxing, and it’s his to lose. He should be the favorite going in. So, this discussion is more about Trump than the other guy.
That said, I found it a little odd that a particular colleague who didn’t vote for Trump in 2016, is still undecided if he will in 2020. It would seem at this point, that you’re all in, or definitely out. My point here is that what makes a person lean one way or the other when it comes to politics is not really dependent on the politician’s persona. I know, it seems the persona is everything, and I have republican friends who didn’t vote for Trump because of his persona. That said, we all know there were many republicans who hated Trump in 2015 that somehow found a way to embrace him in the end. Persona non grata? I think not.
What democrats find insane is that anyone can still support Trump for president. Even journalists regurgitate story after story about Trump, in all his political incorrectness, seemingly with the belief that something will stick. Something never does. I have yet to read the article that explains why. So, I’m writing about my why, why it is that persona doesn’t matter, even though it kinda does.
I think what people found refreshing about Trump back in 2015 was his unwillingness to be boring. He didn’t play by the rules and that was easy for him; he never has. People projected an idea of what they thought he was based on the little they were witnessing in interviews or debates, and they said, “Yeah, I like that.” They were tired of all the other old guys and staid gals that were running. They all looked the same, trying too hard not to alienate or say what everyone was already thinking. Mind you, this talent, or quirk, as it likely is for Trump, is not necessarily leadership material. All it is, is refreshing. It’s really just a show. Did somebody say… Apprentice? For the last four years the media has been stubbornly stuck in a state of shock that Trump is not acting presidential, like he’s putting on a show, when that was how he ran for the office and that is who he is. Why bludgeon us with four years of gotcha articles when who he is, is pretty much known to everyone?
People who voted for Trump knew he liked women… a lot. They knew he touched women… a lot. They knew he bragged about himself… a lot—more than they would ever tolerate around their dinner table. Enough journalists scratched the surface of his illustrious business career before people voted for him and proved he wasn’t the business guru he claimed to be. I grew up in New York, so I knew him from years before and knew he was certifiably different, and not in a good way. None-the-less, he got many more votes than anyone expected. Did he legally win? Who knows? Who really cares? The point is, people will vote for a guy like him, despite all that we know and see of him. His pole numbers are not abysmal, his supporters haven’t wavered… enough anyway, and all this despite a classic severe narcissistic implosion unfolding in slow-motion.
The question is still, why? I believe the answer is not what you’d think. It’s not because he will appoint a Supreme Court Justice to overturn Roe v. Wade. I think most voters don’t know what the Supreme Court is or who is on it or what Roe v. Wade means or what will happen in states if it’s overturned. It’s not because he will lower your taxes. Most people needed to win can’t look back over the past forty years and see a difference in their income based on Carter-Reagan-Bush-Clinton-Bush-Obama-Trump. Even the wealthy among us did quite well during anyone one of the presidents just mentioned. In fact, the biggest selloffs on Wall Street happened during Reagan and Bush W. People did quite well during Clinton and Obama.
Militarily, republican presidents didn’t fare any better than democratic ones. Foreign policy, likewise. They might even have done worse. And what about the wall? How many of his voters actually live near immigrants or are displaced in the workplace by immigrants? None… rhetorically speaking. So, in my opinion, it seems there are not really tangible reasons someone can come up with to vote for Trump. You could say the same for Biden, except that occasionally you come across a peculiar election cycle when people vote against someone more than they vote for someone. Twenty-twenty happens to be one of those election cycles and Biden is the fortunate recipient.
It is commonly understood among campaign experts that voters will vote against their best interests. That means people will vote for someone that has shown no history or policy platform that directly improves their lot in life. Seemingly, a vote for one or the other merely leaves them with a good feeling, like they belong to a club. It’s more of a social alignment than a real-life improvement decision. Campaign advisors know this and take full advantage of it by presenting the illusion of a political party’s image. One side will say we are for our own people, for keeping our own money and running our businesses our own way. Somewhere in that is a sense that my determination in life is based on me-and-mine. Another side will say we are for all people, that my determination must exist in a greater whole and an element of communal sacrifice is a prerequisite. If you lean in that direction, then the me-and-mine philosophy becomes us-and-ours. Now I know that extremes are rare in life and me-and-mine often have a lot of us-and-ours, especially where family and friends are involved, or local clubs or our favorite hometown. I also know that a healthy amount of me-and-mine must exist in a devout us-and-ours, simply to survive or to succeed in life. The point here is that, for the most part, people have an emotional “reflex” that makes them lean one way or the other. In essence, you don’t really pick your political party, it picks you. Your choice in the matter is simply to find the party that already espouses the reflex that defines you. Parties have and will continue to massage what they stand for simply to align themselves with voters they’d like to trawl.
Is there a moral consequence? Well, since one’s “choice” is almost a part of one’s DNA, it’s a reflex immune to criticism. A healthy sense of self-preservation ensures that the way we see the world, is the right way. There are, none-the-less, reasons to morally vilify either side of the me-and-mine and the us-and-ours. And, much as we are a country founded on respect for divine origins and guidance, religion doesn’t really play a role here. This is truly a nonreligious realm, despite what people think. No one can really dispassionately prove the religious ambiguity of another political party. There’s enough hypocrisy on all sides. All one can do is define themselves, religiously or not, and live by that code of life. Incidentally, there’s no switching allegiances in the game of politics. This isn’t baseball where we change teams every few years. You’re either on one side or the other or somewhere in-between. Changing teams is more akin to a heterosexual deciding they’d prefer to be gay, or vise versa. I’m not saying it’s impossible, it’s just unlikely. Maybe bisexual⏤somewhere in the middle? That would be an Independent. I’ll give you that.
And so it is, that to try and change someone’s opinion is folly. As Dale Carnegie prophetically wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People, all one can hope for is to remain friends, and allow who you are to germinate a seed of thought that maybe another view is not so crazy after all. Maybe, just maybe, earning another’s respect is the first step towards changing their point of view.
© Eric Clark 10/08/2020
Photo: apa.org, 2019, Politics is Personal
