The 1st Anniversary of the January 6th Insurrection

1 Year ago today, I was sitting at my computer at work trying to stay focused, but was unable to because I was horrified and angered at what was happening on live news. A mob of Trump supporters, minutes after an incendiary speech by the defeated former president Trump, went on a violent and destructive rampage in the capitol because they believed that the 2020 election had been stolen.

I could make a post about my emotional reactions, but much of that has already been said much better than I could say it by others who feel similarly to me. I could talk about why it was so horrible, but much of that has already been said by others who could describe it much more powerfully than I could. I want to talk about how to heal - how to mend our nation to a state where we can (mostly) agree on what the facts are, where our political enemies aren't our personal enemies or the nation's enemies, and where we have no worry, valid or invalid, that the existence of our republic is threatened from within. My proposal: good persuasion. I believe that truly effective persuasion is one of the key components that we can't move forward without. 

There's a type of persuasion ethos that's native to early American history where our leaders were enchanted with Greek philosophical ideals reilluminated in the enlightenment. That ethos is part of our nation's identity at its founding, without a doubt. But it requires a type of optimism that I think is lost, unrealistic, and frankly, unrecoverable. This optimism believes that if I just provide convincing enough reasoning and evidence, then anyone can change their mind because the human being is at her core a rational soul housed by a body. (There was also the ancient Greek value and discipline of rhetoric, but this still doesn't negate the effects of the belief that the human is fundamentally a rational soul contained by flesh of lesser value.) This doesn't accord with our experience though, does it? How many presidential debates have you watched where beforehand you were all in on one candidate, but were all in on the other candidate after? Does that even happen? Does anyone think that will actually happen? People are rarely, if ever, convinced by argumentation and logic alone. 

Good persuasion certainly does require good reasoning, evidence, data, and the like. I truly believe these are the only way to stand on good epistemological ground. However, our ability to be appropriately persuaded by these elements is limited not by exposure to them, but by our psychology. 

Jonathan Haidt has done great work in this area. He's developed a metaphor that has grown in popularity about how our minds are made of two parts - the elephant and the rider. Haidt explains the details of the metaphor is this 1-minute video. You should watch it because I'm not going to explain it here. I just want to make one clarification that he makes in his book The Righteous Mind. The elephant isn't just emotions, and it's not stupid. It's very intelligent and is responsible for making intuitive snap judgements and snap decisions, which Haidt demonstrates in his book are the great majority of our assessments and choices. 

Thus, good persuasion goes beyond an enlightenment notion of a sole appeal to evidence, reliable data, and good reason; truly effective persuasion requires these, plus intentionally addressing the elephant. The elephant is all about social dynamics like reputation, interpersonal dynamics like how a person is being treated, and instilled values. If a proposition runs afoul of any of these factors, regardless of how well reasoned and evidenced it is, it won't be persuasive. I previously shared this video which explains some profoundly effective strategies for how to be truly persuasive in the realm of moral disagreement, which the majority of our political issues involve. The original article can be found here if you're more of a visual learner than an auditory learner (I'm super auditory). I want to apply it to our current national predicament.

This so far has all basically been the prelude to the post so let me lay out my cards. The election wasn't stolen, and large swathes of American conservatism are going down the drain and are being corrupted into something that is distinctly not conservative. Donald Trump is both a symptom and a cause. He immensely exacerbated the problem of which he is a symptom and I think the problem is something like this. 

American conservatism has felt like a dog backed into a corner starting with Obama (one could argue earlier) and has felt this increasingly since then. Think back to the clinging to their god and their guns comment that went viral on the 2008 Obama campaign trail. That wasn't the exact quote, but it was an obvious symbol of what conservatives perceived that liberals felt about them. That perception has only increased, from being called bigots for holding to traditional views on marriage, to being called racist for saying racially insensitive things that 5 years ago wouldn't have been thought twice about (just go back and watch some of the jokes told on The Office), to being called racist for not consenting to a new commonly understood definition of the actual term "racist", to vaccines nowadays, and much more. Culture has quickly gotten much more progressive, but conservatism has not gotten correspondingly that much smaller (not that I think vaccines are progressive as a concept. It’s an example of where conservatives are being demeaned and condescended). Culture is being taken away from conservatives and whether that's right or wrong, it's not representative of actual conservative vs. progressive demographic shift. Conservatives feel overpowered. If the perception is that "winning" in the culture war is determined by who is more powerful, and not who is more right, persuasion and truth take a back seat. This is why generous-hearted engaged persuasion, in other words good persuasion, which is always effective would be much more effective in this cultural moment.  

To be clear, I'm not defending conservative animosity to the culture. There's a perturbing persecution complex that I sometimes notice, and there are many social changes that conservatives, partly by nature of not being progressive in temperament, haven't gotten on board with that I think are actually really good. For instance, coming to see racial injustice as an institutional issue rather than merely an individual issue is, in my mind, a fuller and more accurate understanding of what causes the racial disparities that exist. But that's another post. Regardless of who's at fault, it seems to be a matter of fact that this backed-into-a-corner dynamic is a huge part of why we got Trump and why Trumpism has become so appealing to so many. 

So, what do we do to heal? The problems of January 6th and the “big steal” have two layers, sociology and truth. One might say they have an elephant and a rider problem.

The sociological layer is what I described above - the backed-into-a-corner phenomenon. So, to begin to fix the issue it seems obvious to me that our culture must stop doing the same thing that backed people into a corner in the first place. Conservatives need to stop being treated like backwards, bigoted, stupid, selfish, uncaring, and ignorant idiots because they don't ascribe to a progressive package. There are less obvious tactics than these that are employed as well, but whatever the form of denigration, it's not persuasive to conservatives. If it's truly good that the country go in a more progressive direction in certain areas, then conservatives need to be persuaded, not overpowered. Condescension and name calling is terrible persuasion strategy, and anyone who thinks about it for a second can see that. 

The truth layer is also most effectively addressed by good persuasion. We must persuade those in our lives that the election wasn't stolen, and January 6th didn't get so bad because of BLM or antifa provocateurs. It is bad and dangerous that people believe these things, and it's rightfully exasperating and more than frustrating. But treating people with anger and condescension will only make the problem worse because all humans, you, me, and anyone who believes the election was stolen, operate according to the elephant. We will not hear truth, reason, or evidence from a group of people who treat us like crap. It's just not how our psychology works. In fact, our elephant will begin to lean in the opposite direction. If we seek to persuade anyone of anything, then the first step, the first priority, is to address them as a person with inherent dignity made in the image of God who is well-intentioned but listens to different sources than we do, and is subject to different sociological influences than we are. The power of both of these factors should never be underestimated for how all of us form our beliefs. There are certainly also calloused and bitter people doing and believing things out of spite who are not well intentioned. But these people, like it or not, are also people with inherent dignity made in the image of God who also will not respond well to anger or condescension. Good persuasion is still the best strategy. 

To be truly persuasive when addressing the truth layer of the problem we will need to go to what we may consider the dark corners of the internet to find out who John Sullivan really is, what numbers cause many to believe that there's an obvious conspiracy, why people truly believe that antifa and BLM instigators are to blame for how bad the 6th got, the widely circulated anecdotes about votes appearing overnight when votes weren't supposed to be counted, cameras being turned off, and many other things. It will mean engaging with the reasons that cause people to believe what they do. Saying "those are all lies; how could you believe that?" or merely asserting "That's disinformation" just won't do. In order to persuade someone that what they're believing is wrong, you have to get behind their eyes and truly understand their belief, non-cynically imagine how what they're hearing forms their beliefs (or just ask them), appeal to their own values, then kindly and calmly direct this person to why it might have been that these examples were universally either thrown out as not even being worthy of a court case, or defeated in court, except for one court-win where Trump's "campaign challenged a state-ordered deadline extension inPennsylvania for the submission of personal identification for mailed ballots,affecting a small number of votes." If you are a typically liberal leaning person, or someone who otherwise tends to read mainstream media, a good technique that I stumbled upon for finding the type of sites that the google algorithms wouldn't normally give you is to use the duck duck go search engine in your research. You could even ask the person(s) that you're engaging with if they could provide you with a list of sources responsible for their beliefs about the election. 

I'm not defending any of what happened on the 6th, nor am I sympathetic to any of the beliefs or arguments that caused it to happen. But to a group of people who have been demeaned and condescended by the larger culture for so many years, generous-hearted engaged persuasion would do much to provide relief and healing to our country.

In the appeal to be kind and seek to persuade those who sympathize with or support the mob that threatened the peaceful transfer of power at the citadel of democracy, one may feel, as I sometimes do, dissatisfied by a perceived deficiency of punitive justice. One might feel something like "sympathy is not the right attitude towards criminals and their sympathizers; they need to be punished for harming our country." The instinct is understandable, but let's consider two points. 

The first is practical. Will social punishment of such large percentages of the US population really lead to any good result? Will it lead to the disappearance of belief in the "big steal"? Will it lead to a reduction in polarization? Will it lead to more sane politics or politicians? Will it lead to a healthier political culture? No. It certainly hasn't in this past year. Sympathy for January 6th seems to have actually increased in the last year among republican politicians, cable news and talk radio, and conservative citizens. That can largely be blamed on these politicians and media personalities, but it nonetheless demonstrates that what we've tried hasn't worked. Social accountability is good and necessary, but I would like to suggest that it should serve, not sabotage, the goal of healing.

The second is straightforwardly based in a Christian ethic of cultural engagement. How will history look back on Christian engagement with this national catastrophe, as we now look back on many previous examples of Christian engagement in culture (or lack thereof) over the centuries? Will we demonstrate the self sacrificial love, generosity, and graciousness of Jesus, or will we be part of just another manifestation of the zeitgeist of the day? The church has an opportunity to lean into its spirit-empowered prophetic witness to the world around it by speaking truth in love. We can't do that if we in the church find ourselves divided down predictable partisan lines. We must unify around the values of the kingdom of God, and enact these values in this moment. 

I have posed these as two separate points - the pragmatic and the spiritual - but I realize that this configuration is inaccurate. The pragmatic and the spiritual are not disconnected from each other. It strikes me that part of the issue is that we try to do the right thing according to our religious ethics until the rubber meets the road when we feel threatened, and we abandon them for what we actually think will work. Isn't this the same type of duplicity that leads to so many evangelicals voting in the republican primary for a man that so obviously flouts the values and teachings of the Jesus that we claim to put above all else? If we truly believe that Jesus is Lord, and that His way is the right way because He's the wise King who knows best, then we will lean into his teachings on humility, love, and truth even more when we feel threatened. (But also, if you don't believe in Jesus at least I've provided practical reasons for you to buy my persuasion argument).

As our nation continues to lick our self-inflicted wounds, it would befit us to leave behind the partisan narratives that hold us captive. We would benefit from taking a step back from the outrage and reevaluating how we got here, and take a bite of some humble pie to ask the question "have I or people like me contributed to the problem?" There are loads of blame that aptly fall on the political right, but failing to acknowledge the entirety of the picture of how our culture has acted over the last 15 or so years won't result in growth. If we really care about the health and well-being of our republic, shouldn't a ubiquitous ethos of generous-hearted persuasion be our priority? Hopefully this post has been persuasive enough to convince you that the answer is yes. 

 

 

Title photo (AP Photo/Evan Vucci, File)