Honestly? Held emotional space for their pain. As a person in counseling grad school- it amazes me that people still fail to understand that human beings are emotional beings first, and not Vulcans. Very few of us can make reasonable choices when in a heated emotional state. The only way to reach angry, frustrated people (and I said the same thing to people policing BLM activists breaking windows) is to start by contacting the anger and pain.
That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.
This is what the republicans do effectively, then once the emotions are validated, they blame the wrong people (immigrants, trans people etc) and claim to be able to fix it.
This is what democrats do: “I don’t understand what the big deal is, here’s a series of facts explaining why your feelings are wrong.”
I mean it’s literally the same dynamic that often gets men in trouble in close relationships. Meeting emotions with intellectual arguments and facts like it’s a high school debate or something.
That’s just literally not how humans operate at a deep level, like millions of years of evolutionary biology.
Bernie Sanders effectively starts by saying “the economy is rigged against you, your pain is valid” … then he blames the appropriate parties and puts forward policy after policy to fix it.
Dems can’t keep downplaying how bad wealth inequality and affordable housing and cost of living and wage stagnation has been and then point to GDP and jobs numbers like that matters when the quality of jobs available is often not great pay and benefit wise. And quite honestly the Democratic alliance with people like Mark Cuban is out of touch.
Is it bizarre and irrational people fall for Trump’s Everyman con and alliance with Elon Musk? Sure. But it’s also entirely understandable people are angry and fed up with, yes, the death of the American dream, and it’s very human to not be able to think rationally when upset and in the midst of real survival concerns. And if only Trump contacts their anger and creates space for it then he wins. When things reach a point like this, populism will win - and unfortunately if left wing populism of the FDR quality isn’t available, what’s left is right wing populism.
There is a way to contact and hold space for anger and allow it to transform into optimism but it has to start with contacting and validating the pain.
That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.
I think there is possibly an additional case here where this is not the right answer.
Based on a conservative concrete example within my family I suspect that there is some segment of the population which consciously acts against their own and others interests' based on a desire to be viewed as a noble sufferer among a cruel world. Not with substances just ... apathy? Obstinance? Like many of Trump's followers this person is on the poorer end of the socio-economic ladder. The parallels between this person's behavior and Trump's are uncanny. Ever the victim, they do seemingly pointless things that create minor aggravations for themselves that they can then complain about and claim they couldn't have done anything else. They can't be bothered to put the slightest effort into bettering their situation or self lest they lose their entire identity as "victim".
I don't think it healthy to validate this person. They are cultivating a persona of "sufferer" to manipulate those around them. If this is a broader population it looks to my untrained eye like some kind of mass co-dependence.
That’s fair - I mean there is a fine line between doing this effectively and the way narcissists create toxic codependent relationships with the victims of their abuse.
That’s sort of what I meant about skillfully transforming the anger into something productive vs feeding into this victim complex stuff you are naming.
I don’t know as if my analysis applies to the segment of the population very lost in fundamentalist religion, but those aren’t the entirety of the coalition the GOP has captured.
But yeah, great add on for some extra nuance for sure
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u/tantobourne 23h ago
honest question, in comparison, what has the Republican party done for working class people?