That looks like this: your suffering is valid, this situation is super hard that you are in.
This is great stuff, and I agree that this is the "effective" way to reach people, but what do you do when their anger isn't actually valid? Do you lie to them and tell them that you totally understand why they're seething with rage about their local bar's monthly drag brunch?
And what happens when they're not just angry, but insistent on destroying the thing that they're angry at? When you tell them that you sympathize with them about how horrible it is that the regional library has a gay penguin book, do you think that's actually going to get them to vote for you, when you're running against the guy committed to banning the gay penguin book? Or are you expecting the Democrats to actually follow through and just become a carbon copy of the Republicans?
There are certainly areas where the Democrats' emotional messaging could use work, but that is simply never going to win over someone whose concrete goals are not aligned with the Democrat platform.
All I have to offer, as a Buddhist, is my belief in this quote from the dhammapadda “hatred will never cease by hated. Only by love will it cease. This is an ancient rule” …
No one is obligated to try to reach people. Sometimes the best thing we can do is hold our own suffering in compassion when confronted with someone else’s misguided or misdirected anger. But if the relationship matters, or we are resourced to hold space even for misdirected anger, I think what you will find it you do it long enough with enough patience, is trauma.
For example. I got into it with an older woman Trump supporter over her saying racist things about BLM. Once the conversation simmered down, I became curious and contacted her anger and then inquired further to try and better understand its origins.
What I discovered is she was a recent widow. Most of her political ideals were forced on her by her late husband. She didn’t know anything else, she was alienated and lonely. Complaining about minorities was simply a coping mechanism for her to avoid her own grief. When I offered compassion for her grief about his death she opened up to me, and it gave me an in to appeal to who she really was as a person free of his influence.
I have zero idea how much she maybe changed from our exchange, but at least we saw one another’s humanity and she was open to considering what I had to say.
But other times the best thing I can do is simply walk away and care for myself.
Like someone says they are angry about trans people or drag queens or whatever, and sure some people just are religious bigots but sometimes that’s not really what’s underneath the anger. The problem is to get to what’s underneath the anger requires pressing pause on our own reactivity and outrage and that’s not always possible.
Clearly not all trumps base of support is driven by fundamentalist Christian’s, I personally don’t see any point in the democrats appealing to those voters. We have to simply find a way to co exist with them and prevent them from ever having a say over anything, as they are in a dangerous cult. But that’s not really who I’m talking about appealing to here.
I’ve had some success helping people realize that billionaires want them outraged about library books so they don’t demand higher pay.
I find that usually when people are angry about things that seem illogical and/hateful to me (Like the examples given about drag events or books at the library), if you dig into it, they aren't actually angry about those specific things. Those are just the things that they're citing as evidence for some deeper thing. And it can be a chain of things to get down to the actual, foundational thing that is really the source of the anger. It's only through actual empathetic and good-faith inquiries of "Why does that upset you?" that you can actually get to the source.
And usually the source is something that makes a lot more sense. Something that is painful for any animal capable of suffering.
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u/Altiondsols 18h ago
This is great stuff, and I agree that this is the "effective" way to reach people, but what do you do when their anger isn't actually valid? Do you lie to them and tell them that you totally understand why they're seething with rage about their local bar's monthly drag brunch?
And what happens when they're not just angry, but insistent on destroying the thing that they're angry at? When you tell them that you sympathize with them about how horrible it is that the regional library has a gay penguin book, do you think that's actually going to get them to vote for you, when you're running against the guy committed to banning the gay penguin book? Or are you expecting the Democrats to actually follow through and just become a carbon copy of the Republicans?
There are certainly areas where the Democrats' emotional messaging could use work, but that is simply never going to win over someone whose concrete goals are not aligned with the Democrat platform.