John Auerbach comments of 11-02

So this is what occurred to me in response to Damon’s initial post:

I think our country is in grave danger right now, far more danger than we were in 1968, when were coming apart over a pointless, needless, and even genocidal war and elected a semi authoritarian to “handle” things.  That dude, having been trained as a lawyer at Duke University and having a first-rate intellect and some capacity to tell right from wrong, also had at least had some respect for the rule of law, no matter how corrupt and authoritarian he was in other ways.  About his corruption, the reason he uttered the phrase  “I am not a crook” was that he was caught committing income tax fraud, an offense entirely separate from the Watergate break-in.  He released his tax returns, and in so doing, he initiated a Presidential practice that continued until it was abrogated by the current occupant of the White House, a man who, it can be reasonably said, has no integrity, no dignity, and no shame.  There are very paragons of virtue among our Presidents—Jimmy Carter comes to mind—but we are in deep trouble when, on every moral dimension I can think of, we have a President who compares unfavorably to someone who came to be known as Tricky Dick Nixon.

Still, that is not the reason we are in deep trouble.  We are in trouble because, under the current leadership, we are as close to fascism right now as we have ever come because we have a leadership that loves authority and authoritarianism, that deliberately rejects the rule of law, and that hates truth, defined here as a shared understanding of basic facts, such as that Louisiana is not in the path of an hurricane that is turning north up the Atlantic coast.  As of this writing, it is the unclear whether our institutions will survive the sustained assault they are undergoing.

But it must be understood that an authoritarian minority government came to power in our country, just as it did in Italy in the 1920s and Germany in the 1930s, because it speaks to a very real constituency. No, not everyone who supports the current government supports its willful cruelty.  The vast majority are what I would call collaborators, people who would never be rude or hostile to members of a minority group and who as good Christians, only respect meant here, would do all kinds of things to serve their communities, far more than I do, but who are along for the Trump ride because it serves their economic interests, just as was the case in 1920s Italy or 1930s Germany, or because, as Damon suggests, they genuinely think of their traditional way of life as under siege. 

And so it also must be understood that there is a deep social division in our society that more or less corresponds to the outcome of the 2000 election between Bush and Gore, the first time in the last 20 years that, by the metric of the popular vote, that we have been led by a minority government.  That division is most easily explained as a division between the country and the city. More analytically, this is a division between a nativist rump who think of our country as essentially a white, Christian, predominantly Protestant nation that carries the culture of its English-speaking settlers, letting outsiders to that culture only begrudgingly, and a statistical majority who think of us as a nation of immigrants, hence a potentially multicultural society, the citizens of which are Americans by virtue of adherence to our founding ideas, our civil religion, as instantiated in our Constitution and in the Declaration of Independence.  

When I put it this way, I realize I am showing deficient empathy for those in the former group, no doubt because I am in the latter group, but I, as a psychologist and a human being, am charged to have empathy with those who are different from me.  And indeed I have been an effective therapist in East Tennessee, a white Protestant monoculture, and also with veterans from traditional backgrounds in North Florida and South Georgia.  But to get me angry, just tell me that America is a Christian nation.  Then I will immediately feel that I do not belong, and it won’t help if someone also tells how much he or she supports Israel or reveres Jews as God’s chosen people because then I will think that said person is relating to me not as me but to that person’s image of what he or she thinks I am. Then I know that, no matter how successful I am, I am still an outsider.  As one of our country’s “rootless cosmopolitans,” I just wind up with little capacity for empathy for people whose source of fear results from their losing privilege when I am here, and profoundly grateful to be here, because of the waves of immigration that took place prior to 1924, when another nativist wave resulted in immigration quotas that doomed people to their deaths at the hands of the Nazis less than two decades later.

Also baffling to me is the role of anti-abortion politics in the other group. I mention this because abortion is the issue that started this string and because it is a central issue in the current cultural divide. I follow the Jewish position on abortion, which is that a fetus is not a life but a potential for life. This position therefore does not permit “convenience” abortions, whatever exactly “convenience” is, but always permits abortion to protect the life and health, including the mental health, of the mother; it is a religious position, just as much as the Catholic doctrinal opposition to abortion on the basis of a very different reading of the relevant passage in Exodus.  And I readily understand left-wing Catholics and Protestants who oppose abortion as part of their social justice orientation and their deep religious faith. But I do not understand people who oppose abortion because “whatever you do unto the least of these, you do unto Me” but who then oppose programs to support such children after they are born because those children are part of the “undeserving” poor, who think that Donald Trump was sent to us by God, and who go to Trump rallies to revel in the man’s shameless cruelty.  If someone can help me sort this out, I would be greatly appreciative because I would like to have a respectful understanding, not one that reduces differences with my views to what appears to be the authoritarianism of those with whom I disagree. So far this understanding seems elusive. I find myself constantly torn between my moral obligation to have empathy for people who uphold ideas I find unacceptable and my urge simply to turn away in terror, horror, and self-preservation. 

Any takers on a response to this dilemma? You are all psychologists, after all.

And yes, I find the current state of American political discourse terrifying most of the time.

John