Politics is the primary application of the main ideas in Bad Stories. Through this lens – and especially in the context of the 2016 election and its aftermath – Steve Almond carefully weighs his thoughts and considers their application in both wide and narrow contexts.
One comment I thought a lot about was Almond’s point that Putin sees America as a country defined by greed rather than our stated virtues. I see this idea play out in the way many voters weigh candidates strictly by how a vote will lead to direct personal benefit. This thinking on a mass scale means democracy loses its power to bring wrongdoers to account and instead shifts its emphasis to a contest where the suffering battle for the limited pain relief on offer. It’s no wonder that many use political identity as a fair reason to hate others. The voluntary nature of party affiliation means anyone voting against you is someone choosing to take away access to what you value.
Tribalism grows out of a society that can easily divide the world into good and bad. Almond points out that the competitive mindset works in the same way – the world becomes a series of transactions and in such an environment everything becomes zero-sum. In such a world, a winning immigrant means a losing native, an ascending China means a descending America, and so on. I imagine someone who feels this way lives under tremendous pressure, real or imagined, and it suggests to me that votes from such people will reflect this pressure.
I suspect one possible response invokes voters to demonstrate what Almond describes as ‘the totalitarian mindset’. This refers to seeking leaders with strong, simple solutions to threats or problems. Illegal immigrants? Build a wall. Jobs going to Brussels? Leave the EU. The government can’t pay debts? Send refugees to Germany. Almonds notes that this mental model of leadership was the best predictor of Trump support – it fared far better than income or economics, even more reliable than racial resentment. What's really interesting to me is how although most people I interact with regularly do not support Trump, many respect leadership styles that align with the way Almond describes the totalitarian mindset.
One way I think about overcoming this problem is rejecting what I’ve referred to in the past as the scarcity mentality. The people who feel they have enough seem to be a different breed of human. They grow to believe that others can and should have what they always have – enough. They sow stitches where others see battle lines and couldn’t tell you where the scoreboard is or how the points are tallied. I have different conversations with these people than I do with those who are drowning in scarcity. My hope for the future is that we find politicians who reflect this thinking. Rather than playing on shared fears and stoking concerns about governmental weakness, corruption, or failure, our aspiring leaders will reject the extreme manifestations of their philosophies and instead find a middle ground where empathy, understanding, and shared effort can start the process of moving our most pressing problems toward permanent solutions.
