Amazingly, I picked up an important insight reading a professional continuing education lesson, which may somewhat apply to our dilemma as persons of conscience and character in addressing those who seem to lack both as well as other positive attributes which causes them to become as fervent of supporters of the right-wing as we are of progressive values and candidates.
Those who hold professional licenses are generally required to complete X hours of professional Continuing education — be it conferences, seminars, single classes, or some variation of online or print lessons in current topics. I'm a Social Worker with Texas and Arkansas licenses. The names and contact information of licensees are public, and various firms which market to us buy the lists and send us unsolicited offers. Among these are providers of C.E. hours. Elite CE of Ormand Beach, Florida, is one such entity. I usually take theirs because, why not, I get it right in my mailbox and it’s relatively inexpensive. You read the articles, answer a few multiple choice questions, the answers for which are within the articles, send the answer sheet in with your payment, and voila, you are current on your CE requirement. Works for me.
This lesson was “Cultural Competence in Mental Health Practice: Part 1: Principles, Preparation, and Priorities for Practice” by Deborah Converse, MA, NBCT; Kathryn Brohl, MA, LMFT; and Rene Ledford, LCSW, BCBA. It is from Elite’s 2017 Texas booklet.
Often we wonder what separates us from Trump voters, and Republican voters in general. Like religion, people tend to adopt the political views of their families, unless exposed to some alternative which appeals to them, for whatever reason. Many people, you, the reader, and I, mostly not included, do not devote much effort thinking about politics, policy, and ideology. I’m not taking about them. I know some mostly apolitical types, who voted for Trump despite misgivings due to either abortion or tax policy, and, no doubt, other reasons. Let’s not be distracted by them, for now. I’m talking about those who attend Trump’s Nuremberg-style rallies. In summer of 2016, I was struck by the lack of Trump billboards and such, but intrigued by the handful of homemade signs supporting him in rural environs, mostly posted at properties in which the structures thereon would be charitably described by real estate sales people as "fixer-uppers." I often wondered, just who are these people, who feel a need to create their own homespun ads for The Orange Orator?
I got a closer look in September (2016 still) when I noticed one on a broken down pickup truck’s bed in the Army town where we lived then. She (yes, she was female) was a rather loudmouthed veteran in her fifties apparently with more than one disability, noticed first talking to acquaintances in a supermarket, punctuated by raucous laughter, about which I paid no attention, but later wished I had so I could know more about the individual who displayed that homespun billboard on her vehicle.
One could conclude little from that brief encounter. That observation, and those of the homemade billboards adorning rural homesteads, led me to believe, as I had previously, that Trump’s appeal to the dispossessed is one thing which led him to overcome his sixteen rival for the Republican nomination. Political commentary from Spring, 2016- seems longer ago than it was - suggested people like Religious Right partisans who were active in primary season preferred Ted Cruz because he was one of their own. But, led by such Religious Right apparatchiks as Jerry Falwell Jr, they had no trouble embracing Big Orange once he was the presumptive nominee.
We know The Religious Right, and what they stand for, and the pragmatism by which they embraced Trump. But what about those who backed Trump in the primaries?
What was the appeal, to those of this demographic, who backed the most elitist and Richie Rich bully and fool, over the other GOP contenders?
One hears various things.
Immigration for one- those who dislike undocumented immigrants the loudest emphasize they broke the law in coming here. As such, they reveal in part their authoritarian mindset.
We hear a lot about racism, economic anxiety, one over the other. Diagnostically one could test people for racism and many who don’t think of themselves as racist would be shown to be racist. But they love African-Americans who share their views, like Alan West, Ben Carson, etc.
Authoritarianism again — at various times people who believe “people in government are too corrupt and inefficient — we need to put a businessman in charge!” Names like Ross Perot come up. Never mind that Perot was a big government insider who got rich on government contracts, just like Trump greased palms in New York City. Both have always been as crooked as the tailpipe of a Cadillac. But to the ambitious but thwarted they represent success. Someone said, “Most rich people aren’t like Trump. But Trump is what a lot of people who don’t know very many rich people thinks they're all like.
In rural America normally the richest man in town is held in high esteem. The Revolutionary Patriot John Dickinson — he opposed American independence and has been called “The Founder of American Conservatism,” though he’d be appalled at how that term is used today — famously said, “A poor man will always depend on the dream of being rich rather than accept the reality of being poor.”
The 19th Century historian Frederick Jackson Turner was known for his theory “America made the West, and the West made America.” What he meant was the seemingly endless frontier — never mind it was already populated with Native Americans — provided a sort of safety valve on society in that ambitious, risk-taking people could always move further west. This meant such persons were not back east getting involved with imbroglios there. This in part explains Americans’ fanatical pro-capitalism, individualism, and plutocracy, items lacking in other cultures.
Trump voters, and members of the right-wing in general, complain we don’t understand them. I think the facts remain that we understand them all too well.
Some minor “reaching out” will not change hard hearts. Just like how they like Allen West because as they see if he’s not like most African Americans, they may begin to reflect if they like you. No reason to pick a (rhetorical) fight.
So this is where the lesson from the continuing ed comes in: when therapists want to change attitudes and behaviors that are culturally ingrained, it does us no good to come in with two guns blazing.
The article gives an example of a case study of a (race not revealed, but the implication is they are African-American or Hispanic) Mother and 6-year-old daughter in therapy following the parents’ breakup predicated by the domestic violence perpetrated by the father upon the mother, and witnessed by the daughter. The therapist noted the daughter “had become more anxious” and more argumentative and fighting with her teacher and her other first graders. The therapist “struggled to communicate to the mother that the child was reenacting her trauma. The Mother however “felt the child had become “blatantly disobedient” and this behavior “could be overcome with corporal punishment and reprimands.”
The therapist loses her effectiveness by “becoming affectively charged:” — due to her passion against corporal punishment of children the therapist loses communication with the Mother. The authors comment: “becoming affectively charged, causes therapists to stick to a message that, at the moment, cannot be heard. The message is more solution focused than strength-based.”
Further analysis revealed the impetus to use corporal punishment was inculcated by the maternal grandmother, who, though the mother was a functioning adult, had a hold over the mother in that the mother had been taught to not question her mother’s views. The therapist may have been more effective had she questioned the mother more fully about her culture and learned what cultural assumptions, even wrong ones, had been passed along.
This is the therapist’s dilemma, and as described, she lost the client’s engagement by articulating her objections to corporal punishment blatantly in the case study. My take away from this is this is what we do when we directly challenge the culture of the Trumpers.
It’s easy to see how we get there. We can’t change hearts and minds with our affective charging. What is required is more subtlety, more obliqueness. Sometimes planting seeds is enough. Sometimes nothing is enough.
It’s easy enough to challenge assumptions subtly. A colleague gave me one example: the Trump supporters tend to assume poverty is self-created by the poor and the reason people are poor is just “they don’t want to work.” My colleague tells them, “You try living on $750 a month.” That’s the amount, more or less, that people on Arkansas Disability get. Is it enough to say something like this, or too much? I don’t know. I’m willing to try. It seems better than “You’re a racist bigot,” or somesuch.
I don’t have the answers, but I’m willing to give it a shot. I’ll report any results in a future diary.
This diary was also partially inspired by the following, from one of DK’s best writers: