Cynical interpretations of our adversaries' actions can amplify divides — and help our adversaries
Interpretations of Trump's "You won't have to vote anymore" statement
I got an op-ed published in The Fulcrum titled “How liberals' worst-case readings of Trump actually help Trump.”
I’ll include below a criticism I got about this piece and my response to it. First, a few meta notes on this op-ed:
These are the kinds of pieces I think are unlikely to get published in major outlets. There are a couple factors there:
Democrat-leaning outlets see these ideas as defending Trump/Republicans; these outlets publish many pieces that do exactly what I’m describing in this op-ed. It’s understandable why
Republican-leaning outlets are already covering such things but from their own aggressive standpoint. For example, the piece I wrote about Biden failing to bring us together was rejected by a major conservative outlet with a message basically like, “We’ve got that kind of criticism covered.” But, in my opinion, they don’t; they criticize Biden in polarizing, worst-case interpretation ways but not from a conflict resolution perspective.
If interesting for other writers in this space, a few things I try to work in all these pieces I do that I see as important to include:
An attempt to get people across the political spectrum to see these points as important (in this case, this was just a parenthetical towards the end). It’s important that these ideas be scalable; that people see them as being able to be applied no matter one’s political views. If you don’t include something like that, you run the risk of Republican-leaning people thinking “Oh, these ideas require liberal views” or similar.
Making sure that you acknowledge that people can have valid concerns and fears. Talking about overstated fears is difficult because you run the risk of being seen as saying “there’s nothing to worry about” and downplaying concerns (one of the more common responses I get to things I write). This can be a tough needle to thread but even just saying something explicitly about that will help.
Another update
I later saw this Dr. Phil interview of Trump about this moment. I actually thought his explanation made sense: he thought that Christians don’t vote much, and he was trying to communicate, “This is an important election; please vote in this election, and if you vote in this one, you can go back to not voting.” You can sense his frustration at people taking the worst-case interpretation of his words, which is understandable.
Criticism
Here’s an email I got from someone about this op-ed:
I read your column on The Fulcrum about how when we take the "worst case" about Trump's word salads, we increase the toxicity in our political discourse. I take your point, but would argue that the threat to our democracy is so real (I will be a dictator on Day One..." ) that complacency on our part is not helping protect us. Trump loves to claim he was just joking or that he was misunderstood (notice that he never apologizes for anything) but those who heard him on January 5th and January 6th 2021 knew exactly what he was proposing (hang Mike Pence...). We cannot sit back and pretend like all of the nonsense that comes out of Trump's mouth is just normal. It's not and we need to be vigilant in protecting the rights we have, because as with abortion and with LGBTQ rights, it's clear that the right aims to strip those away. Keep writing and sharing your perspective, but you need to be tougher on the threats today's GOP poses to us all.
My response to him:
To that I'd say that there plenty of objectively true things to focus on that are bad about Trump that we could be talking about. E.g., obviously denying the election, amongst many other things. My main point is that when we reach for more subjective and harder to prove things, we aren't even helping ourselves. We are making our concerns look silly to the unpersuaded; and if we care about persuading the unpersuaded (which I think everyone should, no matter their beliefs) we should care about making the best versions of our arguments.
I'm reminded of the "blood bath" comments: I think that was actually much more banal than the "you'll never have to vote again" thing (there were much more concerning things even within a minute of the "blood bath" language), and yet you had people (including academics and well known people) acting as if it was clear that Trump meant violence. I just think this isn't helpful; these things amplify our divides and don't even help one's own cause.
Hopefully that makes it make more sense where I'm coming from.
Here’s that op-ed again: https://thefulcrum.us/election-2024/worse-case-view-of-donald-trump
