Older Self and Younger Self have another chat about politics

Now that Bernie Sanders' presidential bid has ended, Older Self and Younger Self are able to sit down  for a real conversation about the coming election. Coming of age in the late Sixties, Younger Self has decided to stay in this century for awhile to see if she can make herself useful. I conjure her sitting next to me, wondering how she might have turned out differently had she been a Millennial instead of a Boomer: a tattoo perhaps or a shock of blue hair.... I digress. Actually, when she first visited the 21st Century,  it took her awhile to get over her shock of seeing how things turned out, nearly 50 years after she first volunteered for Eugene McCarthy in 1968. Surely Power would have returned to the People by now, and the People, now United, would never have been Defeated. Putting aside her huge disappointment in the state of political affairs in 2016, she immediately plunged into working for Bernie's campaign. She still is working for Bernie, having signed up for Our Revolution, which is working to elect candidates committed to Sanders' progressive values.

Younger Self might vote for Hillary ("Another Hubert Humphrey!) Older Self will definitely vote for Hillary. Our enthusiasm levels are considerably different, and Older Self has yet to convince her that Hillary will be a far better president than she expects--provided the electorate really gets behind progressive candidates running for Congress. However, today our conversation is not about Hillary, but rather about Trump. We both agree on the threat Trump's campaign poses to the US and the world, but our emphasis differs.

Younger Self's political science courses have convinced her it's all a matter of strategy and getting out the vote. Trump is just another George Wallace, the segregationist Alabama governor who carried 5 Southern states in 1968. She dismisses my preoccupation with trying to understand how we got to this place or just what motivates Trump supporters. "They're either idiots or people who have never even heard the phrase 'unexamined racism'", she insists. "They're marginal. We're creating a new future. Let's just get down to work--get out the vote, show that the people can act!"

Older Self remembers that she too once thought of herself as a person whose actions--combined with those of others, of course--made a Significant Difference. Older Self seems less sure of anything these days, haunted by memories of unintended consequences of yesterday's decisive actions and victories. Still, Older Self agrees, we must act, always with insufficient information or insight, hopeful we're making the right choice. Understanding why others feel differently seems key, however.

Today, Older Self read what she considers a brilliant and incisive article in The Guardian. The author is Dave Eggers, a writer and reporter who covered a Trump rally in Sacramento, California, in June. You can read it here. Eggers, posing as a participant, found the supporters he met to a be a diverse and courteous bunch attending an event as "as peaceful and patriotic as a Fourth of July picnic". Still, he was left with a number of questions, including: (W)hy is it that the song Trump’s campaign uses to mark his arrival and departure is Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer?” Is it more troubling, or less troubling, knowing that no one in the audience really cares what he says? And could it be that because Trump’s supporters are not all drawn from the lunatic fringe, but in fact represent a broad cross-section of regular people, and far more women than would seem possible or rational, that he could actually win?"

Older Self shows the article to Younger Self, and the result is impatience: "Who cares about the song?  Instead of worrying about whether or not he can win, let's get on with a counter-offensive!" Older Self decides this is the time to tell her of some of the changes in getting out the vote since she went to Wisconsin in '68 to make calls for McCarthy: "No one answers their phone anymore; calls are screened, and for that matter, no one comes to the door during campaign season. Too many door-knockers. Some say it's all about social media these days." Older Self takes a deep breath and starts to explain social media. Unnecessary, it turns out, as Younger Self has already opened a Facebook account and joined Twitter. All she needs now are friends who think differently from how she does.

Older Self pulls out another article--another one of the three articles that have helped her understand the Trump phenomenon. Trump Days: Up Close with the candidate and his crowds, by George Saunders, appeared in the July 11 New Yorker. Read it here. Lots of insights in this one, including Saunders' analysis of what he calls RightLand and LeftLand. Essentially, people on the political Right and Left have no common ground, and that's what makes communication challenging at best. "In the old days," Saunders writes, "a liberal ad a conservative (a "dove" and a "hawk", say) got their data from one of three nightly news programs, a local paper and a handful of national magazines, and were thus starting with the same basic facts (even if those facts were questionable, limited, or erroneous). Now each of us constructs a custom informational universe, wittingly (we choose to go to the sources that uphold our existing beliefs and thus flatter us) or unwittingly (our app algorithms do the driving for us). The data we get this way, pre-imprinted with spin and mythos, are intensely one-dimensional." Younger Self stares at Older Self: "I have no idea what you're talking about."

Older Self  decides not to mention the concept of "frames", the concept that all of us filter "reality" through a set of experiences/beliefs/biases. (UPDATE: For an excellent discussion of this, see this article by the linguist who introduced the concept of frames in his widely-read book Don't Think of an Elephant.) We see the same things, yet come up with radically different interpretations. Older Self bites her tongue, hesitating to remind Younger Self of all the debates/arguments she had with Dad, a youthful socialist turned Wallace supporter, debates full of sound and fury, yet ultimately changing neither of our beliefs or votes.

There's one more article I'd like you to see, Older Self says. It's called How American Politics Went Insane, and it appeared in the July/August issue of The Atlantic. Here's the link. Among other things, it argues that political parties played an important role in vetting candidates and that the trend to diminishing their power, in favor of direct democracy, has resulted in renegade candidates like Trump. Younger Self looks aghast. "Are you saying that Daley's Machine (that is, the late Chicago Mayor Richard Daley) was a positive force in the politics of 1968? The guy whose cops bashed the heads of protesters in Grant Park?!" "Well, not exactly," Older Self tries to explain. "It's just that parties played a role, and today without them, we have a different kind of contest...."

Younger Self gulps down the rest of her coffee and says she has to be off. Older Self gives her a hug and wishes her all the best, thinking that communication across generations is not all that easy, but important nonetheless.