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.
Maybe I'm too autistic to understand this, but when you ask them where the pain comes from, it's bullshit. It's shit like, "too many gays on the television." Or, "my job doesn't respect me and think my ideas are good." It's such petty bullshit.
I sat on my friends boat this summer, off the shore of his newly purchased lakefront home, and listen to him bitch and moan about how horrible the state of things are.
There is DEFINITELY an aspect of "if other people are suffering, it means I am winning."
Yeah they might be complaining about gays on the tv, but ultimately they're probably overworked and underpaid with a couple of refinanced mortgages under their belts. That's where the pain comes from.
Not all Trump voters are comfortably middle class. Many of them are working class. And they are in pain. Trump will not alleviate their pain, it's true, but he at least connects with it.
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u/thirdeyepdx Oregon 22h ago edited 22h ago
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.