11/13/18

Fear

There's a lot of talk on my message boards between liberals and conservatives on the aftermath of the 2016 election.  The liberals are stunned and devastated and afraid. 

Here's the best summary I've seen, from Brightstar:

Those who did not vote for Trump are sad, discouraged, sometimes fearful, and definitely appalled at what seems to be coming in our near future. We are sad because our candidate lost, a very normal response, but we are appalled at the winner's lack of morality, lack of knowledge, and reported lack of interest in listening to others and reading and learning things necessary to be the leader of the free world. We are horrified at his divisive remarks and his refusal to criticize those followers who display ugly behavior and horrible words. We are concerned about his seeming willingness to break our laws  and to disregard international principles and agreements. We are worried that all our gains in civil rights, LGBT rights,women's rights etc. may be lost. We see the people he surrounds himself with, and we are rightly concerned. We see no evidence that he has ever, ever cared about people who are out of his wealthy circle, or ever wanted anything more than money and power and fame. We see him wishing to lessen the freedom of the press, and we know that can be the first step in the decline of our democracy. This was not a normal election, and our reactions should not be expected to be "normal" post-election reactions.

The acting out we're seeing in nationwide protests is a result of those feelings. 

The conservatives are saying, welcome to the party. That's exactly how we felt in 2012.  Are they right?  Yes, mostly.

The vertical line on this graph represents the fear event and the resulting changes in happiness. The Republicans were more unhappy after Romney's loss than the folks in Boston after the Marathon bombings!

No one likes to have their candidate lose an election.  In 2012, the conservatives were concerned that a liberal agenda was in the works.  They were right about that, too.  Liberals over the last eight years have worked on expanding rights to all kinds of folks, tried to keep open access to reproductive rights, those "abstinence only" requirements in sex ed classes have diminished (along with unwanted pregnancies...), and so on.  However, conservatives' biggest fears seemed to have been that an Obama administration would institute Sharia Law (Muslim version) and take away everyone's guns.  That didn't happen.

I will contend, however, that it's worse for liberals this time. For liberals, our general fears are of the conservative agenda, things like:

• Putting belief ahead of science, thus ignoring things like climate change and evolution
• Believing that government is the problem
• Reducing taxes on the upper class.
• Instituting Sharia Law (Christian version)*

That's all going to happen and much more besides.  It's the way elections and democracy work.  However, we're also afraid of these things:

• The erratic behavior of a misogynist president with a serious psychiatric disorder
• Registration of citizens based on their religion
• Deportation squads
• Censorship of the press through changes in the libel laws

I sincerely hope that our fears of those latter four items turn out to be as groundless as the conservatives' fear of Second Amendment repeal and Muslim law, but nothing this week has been in any way encouraging.  

I've lost three pounds since Tuesday.  I'm calling it the Trump Diet.

*Sharia Law (Christian version).  

From the Republican platform:

We support the public display of the Ten Commandments as a reflection of our history and our country’s Judeo-Christian heritage and further affirm the rights of religious students to engage in voluntary prayer at public school events and to have equal access to school facilities.

Hey, don't bring us Jews into this.  Besides, which version of the Ten Commandments? There are three versions alone in the Hebrew Bible.  Jesus only mentioned a few of the commandments  so maybe Five Commandments or Six? There are also differences in the Roman Catholic, Protestant and Jewish versions.  So any time you go for this, you're picking a particular religion.  That's opposed by the First Amendment. 

Students can already pray any time they want, in school or anywhere else.  If they're thinking about organized prayer, then that needs to be off the table. As a social psychologist, I know enough about obedience, influence and persuasion to know that organized prayer is going to start affecting kids of different religions. It doesn't belong in public schools that our children have to attend. Unless they have to include the Church of Satan. Then I'm all in.  J/K