Crossing the Great Political Divide into A World That Works for Everyone
In an article in The New York Times this morning on how a career Navy SEAL ended up in the insurrection at The Capitol, there were some astonishing phrases that leapt out at me.
People are “captivated by flimsy conspiracy theories.”
People are caught in “the storm of political paranoia.”
People are loath to admit that any of their information is “misinformation.”
The author observes, “Key to sustaining their beliefs is the expectation that the other shoe is always about to drop.”
Implicit in that notion, of course, is that the first shoe has already dropped.
Enter Q. Who, FWIW, has been largely AWOL since January 6th.
“The Q delusion requires fitting unexpected events into a bigger narrative.”
This makes QAnon folx into sleuths, detectives, and enforcers.
Opinion writer and editor Stuart A. Thompson spent three weeks listening in on a QAnon chat room. Here is some of what he learned.
“If the Q movement had a slogan, it would be ‘Do your research.’ The conspiracy is designed like a game. Discovering clues that clarify Q’s cryptic missives produces a eureka effect, which offers a hit of dopamine and improves memory retention. It’s the same satisfaction that comes from solving a puzzle or finding the answer to a riddle.
“Believers apply the same approach to everyday news: Find information that confirms any existing beliefs, then use it to augment their understanding of the conspiracy. Reject facts or information that counter the existing beliefs. It’s one of the reasons they struggle to recruit their family members, unless they’re persuaded to do research themselves.”
Confirms any existing beliefs. You know what that’s called, right? An agenda.
An agenda whose outcomes the conspiracists are constantly anticipating. Carole King is singing, “Anticipation, Anticipa-a-tion, is making me wait, is keepin’ me wa-a-a-a-a-ting.”
Agendas don’t exist, because they can’t, without attachment. People who are agenda-driven are attached to the outcomes they want. No exceptions.
The OED definition of agenda three down from the top is: The underlying intentions or motives of a particular person or group. It comes from Latin roots meaning things to get done and prior to that from the verb to do.
Agendas, by their very nature, mandate action. And QAnon, instead, has been in a fevered waiting mode for a long, long time. It’s no wonder that much of their doing is preparation, getting supplies ready, getting themselves ready. Ready for what?
Well, for what happened in The Capitol on January 6th.
Mr. Thompson again. “As I listened over these three weeks, I saw that they’re drawn to Q and Mr. Trump for many reasons. The political status quo wasn’t working for them. Mr. Trump was an antidote to Washington and was beholden to neither party. And Q offered not just a political orientation but also a way to place themselves in a bigger narrative that explains life’s shortcomings.”
A bigger narrative, Beloved, is code for a mythic narrative, the hero’s journey, the one we all see everywhere—from thirty-second television commercials to the greatest of our literary works. We are taught to see ourselves as heroes. And heroes do big, bigger, biggest things. They don’t run to the store for a box of diapers.
More Mr. Thompson; his insights are key. “[F]ollowers have become more isolated, stuck inside an echo chamber from which they may never escape.” We’ve all had conversations with those in echo chambers. We know how impossible it is to interject logic, reason, science, facts, or bald-faced evidence.
But, hark, what light from yonder window breaks? Look again, Beloved. At the humans involved. Persons. Individuals. Mr. Thompson did. “Beneath the anger in their voices is often pain or confusion. When the chat dies down to just a few members, they’ll share stories about their struggles with affording health insurance or the shame of going on government assistance. Hearing them talk with one another, I could start understanding the pull of conspiracy communities—how they exploit the vulnerable and create a worldview out of shared enemies. Then you can watch those views harden.
“And while none of it excuses participation in a dangerous collective delusion, it takes the complex process of radicalization and gives it a human dimension. What seemed like a preposterous descent into a kind of madness made slightly more sense.”
Mr. Thompson opened, at the very least, his mind to observe an online community for three weeks. When he did, his heart opened as well.
“Listening in, I came to realize what extremism researchers and cult experts have long known to be true: You cannot just destroy a community and expect it to disappear when it is load bearing. If we are to deradicalize Q believers in a Biden era, how will we do it? What can we offer them in its place?”
And make no mistake, Beloved, that last question must not only be answered, but it must be answered with something as compelling as what is keeping people in their echo chambers. What can we offer in its place—that is equally powerful, compelling, commanding, and personally beneficial? That’s the whole question.
“One woman had an idea for how to solve some of these problems. They could try hearing from their opponents directly. Maybe they could understand their point of view, learn what motivates them. But then she paused. ‘I’d love to get into their heads, but it scares the [expletive] out of me,’ she said. ‘So I keep my distance and stay with you patriots.’”
Until that divide is bridged, we will all be stuck in agendas, at an impasse, divided and in pain because of it.
Opinion writer Jennifer Senior writes this morning of her recovery program from Trumpism which she, strangely, or perhaps not, has constructed of two television series and a podcast. It sounded to me at first like the set-up of a joke. Two television series and a podcast walk into a bar ….”
But no. Tis the East, and Juliet is the sun. The three programs are Ted Lasso, Sex Education, and Heavyweight. Sos you knows. I’m going to skip the plotlines for the themes they develop.
“Part of the appeal of these series is that goodness and decency win, each and every time.” They have so far in America, too. Till now. Goodness and decency have a chance again now because of regime change.
“They also involve story lines in which the central characters slowly gain control over key aspects of their lives—subduing the ungovernable, making sense of the illegible, closing open loops.” This is what QAnon folx propose that they too are doing.
“But what moved me more than anything else? They’re about repairing the world bond by bond, one broken relationship at a time. For this particular moment, they’re the perfect entertainment Rx.”
Entertainment prescription medicine. Even television, even podcasts, all art is prescriptive. Entertainment is much more than whiling away an hour, Beloved. All things, but especially artistic ones, can be a healing presence if we’ll let them.
“What’s so emboldening and life-affirming about these three series, I think, is that they offer a vision of making a difference that’s actually achievable in scale. Small kindnesses. Mending rifts. Rebuilding communities, even if that community is just a bunch of demoralized soccer hooligans.”
Or QAnonsensers. Or your own neighbors. Or the bagger at the grocery store. What the mob that perpetrated the insurrection has lost, Beloved, is the idea that on their own, each one of those people can make a difference. As can each one of us.
Ms. Senior enumerates the benefit in each prong of her recovery. “Lasso is so largehearted that even the most brittle creatures soften in his presence, and his solution to coaching a sport whose rules elude him is simple: Unknot the psychological difficulties of individual players, one at a time, until they all play well with one another.”
We must ask one another: what do you need, Beloved?
“Moving on: “Sex Education”! It has all the delights of the best shows about adolescents: operatic crushes, intense friendships, complicated families, high school Babylon, vexed sex. But what got me hooked wasn’t really any of those things. It was, again, the notion of healing the world person by person, even if that person is the school thug.”
We must ask person by person: what do you need, Beloved?
“[Jonathan] Goldstein is a time-traveler, part shrink and part detective, helping to rewrite the self-punishing, misconceived stories people tell themselves—or to give them a story in the first place, where once there was none. And stories are crucial to being able to make sense of old traumas.”
We must ask: what stories are you telling, Beloved? Do you need a new one?
Ms. Senior once more. “For many Americans, the Trump years were a pretty traumatic experience. If one of the hallmarks of trauma is powerlessness—this I learned from the psychotherapist and author Daphne de Marneffe, who memorably described life under Trump as an endless joy ride with a drunk at the wheel—here are shows with protagonists who show others how to take custody of their troubles.”
What we can do, Beloved, is what we must do. We must approach, one at a time, those who feel the world is at an impasse, that we cannot go forward or backward. Even Mitch McConnell has let go his demand about the filibuster so that the Senate can move forward.
We must begin to ask questions that untangle the knots of the past and its stories. We must enter those echo chambers that abut our world, and invite dialogue with open hearts. Listening is an extraordinarily effective tool in human relating. So is apology. Also, forgiveness. And more listening.
Anthropologist Margaret Mead had it right. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world: indeed, it's the only thing that ever has.” You can be one of them. And so can I. We need to start, Beloved, straightaway. Here’s an agenda: a world that works for everyone. No exceptions. Now open your heart, and go.
Dr. Susan Corso is a spiritual teacher, the founder of iAmpersand, and the author of The Mex Mysteries, the Boots & Boas Books, and spiritual nonfiction. Her essays address the intersection between spirituality and culture. Find out more at www.susancorso.com