The Power Of Imagined Marginalization

Since January 20th, I’ve laid in bed, tossing and turning, my mind racing, with mounting anxiety knowing I need to rest for nights on end. It comes in spells, but just when I think I have moved past the politically-induced insomnia, I am, once again, mindlessly scrolling through Instagram at 2am, with full knowledge that I am exacerbating the problem. My emotions have oscillated from complete and utter despair to electrifying surges of hopeful energy that makes the hair on my arms stand on end.

Regardless of where I start, I always seem to land in the same place: how do we make progress as a country if facts have no relevance? Facts! To clarify -- so we are all on the same page -- as the social media-wielding, shade-throwing, Trump-trolling, Merriam Webster, defines: “a fact is a piece of information presented as having objective reality.”

I am quick to acknowledge my previous misconception that far-right conservative viewpoints encouraging bigotry, racism, and misogyny were isolated thought patterns belonging only to a small deplorable subsect of our nation. Yet today, and throughout the campaign, but even more so since the election, I am faced with the staggering reality that those people make up a far greater portion of the population than I ever thought possible (even if I have the bittersweet knowledge that the majority of Americans did not vote to support our current president).

As I struggle to navigate the new political landscape, searching for glimmers of hope and beacons of strength and perseverance in the face of great adversity, a strange realization is beginning to come into focus: perhaps, a lack of political morality is less of a duality and more of a sliding scale. People in this category can range from pure evil to someone who generally stands for progressive principles but fails or refuses to acknowledge their privilege and the myriad of systems of oppression still at work in our society, and of course, there is everything in between.

I find myself unable to forgive those in my life that were able to support Trump and his equally horrifying, yet outwardly more digestible -- only if you don’t know what he is capable of -- accomplice, Pence, who lays waiting in the shadows for his turn at the presidency. I audibly laughed at the news article reporting on the woman who divorced her husband when she found out he voted for Trump. I did so while simultaneously glaring at my husband sitting across from me on the couch, re-evaluating my confidence in his commitment to our cause. As I sat there contemplating the possibility, I understood her plight; I most certainly could never have sex with him again if he betrayed me, betrayed our country, in such a way.

People I have known for many years, people I believed to be good, kind, and thoughtful, surprised me in the worst possible way over the past few months. I have always expected a certain amount of hatred to exist, but I never thought the plight would infect so many of my relationships with family, friends, neighbors, and professional peers. I’ve spent a great deal of time thinking about these developments, often in silent mourning for an ignorance that, while dangerously misguided, provided a false sense of security that I long for in my moments of dejection.

Sitting amongst friends or scrolling through my newsfeed, I’ve seen and heard with increasing frequency the casual passings of homophobic stereotypes, skepticism of foreigners, concerns of reverse racism, and confused criticisms of activists. These are the same people I’ve known in the past to be genuinely dedicated to service, deeply compassionate towards others suffering, and generally not susceptible to incendiary tactics. In the past, our debates were intelligible and often came down to where government dollars should be spent.

But this time is different.

Now, I find myself going round in circles, engaging in fodder over imagined marginalization of so many white men, in particular, but women as well. These perceived victims consume the fear-mongering hate speech flowing from the spring of our White House at a rate so astounding, I am in shock their bodies haven’t swelled to resemble a well-fed Christmas ham. Inside them, the vile rhetoric swirls, fueling their insecurities and anxieties about being left behind, left out, or worst yet, rendered completely insignificant. In appropriating feelings of oppression traditionally experienced by groups of significantly marginalized people to themselves, they conflate efforts for equality with demands for their own subjugation. The table they are so used to sitting at has grown crowded, their voices less prominent. Yet, rather than extending the table and waiting their turn to speak, they are spinning wildly out of control like a toddler, demanding that things go back to the way they were. Back to when women and people of color were denied seats and their talents suppressed from the pool of competition. They plead, “Please, make America great again.” The power this marginalization has over them is as great as it is imagined. No amount of reason, no verifiable facts to the contrary, seem to get through to them.

Rick Shenkman, author of Political Animals: How Our Stone-Age Brain Gets in the Way of Smart Politics, explains how our brains developed a certain set of responses during the Ice Age that still hold great power over us today. He refers to this as our “Stone Age Brain” and explains how this brain operates on a “False Alarm Bias”. False Alarm Bias is our brain basically saying it is better to be safe than sorry. Whenever we detect danger, we are conditioned to respond in a manner to protect ourselves, even if, in the end, it is not warranted. Our Stone Age Brain is incredibly sensitive to feelings of fear and anger. When those emotions activate our False Alarm Bias, our ability to think critically is overwhelmed by our primitive responses to minimize risk. This, Shenkman argues, and I agree, is the part of people that politicians, like President Trump, appeal to. They seek to trigger feelings of fear and anger, rather than to encourage thinking critically about the issues our country faces. This could help to explain why facts seem so irrelevant; our brain is telling us we don’t need a fact to verify a feeling we know deep in our gut.

I find some hope in what Shenkman has to say. It is not impossible to overcome this primitive part of ourselves. Many of us do it, many times a day. We can acknowledge and bypass the tripwire of inflammatory oration and instead rely on our higher order cognitive functions to see us through. This does not apply to all of the Trump supporters, and it certainly does not abdicate anyone of personal responsibility for despicable actions. But, I find promise in Shenkman’s theory, because it means there may still be a chance for some of those I once knew to be good people. There is hope that they may overcome their stone-age brain and once again see value in truth and inclusivity.