The "I Told You So" Impulse

 A friend sent me a video yesterday that, I admit, captures a recurrent theme in my thoughts about the awfulness:

 

 It's from the Lincoln Project's co-founder Rick Wilson. The title says it all: "If You Voted for Trump, You're Not Allowed to Act SURPRISED!" As the thumbnail says: "Welcome to the FIND OUT phase."

It's an angry cri du coeur directed at Trump voters. Like me, Wilson has already started to detect elements of backfire in Trump's wrecking-ball attack on federal institutions and norms. People are dying due to USAID monies being frozen. People are shocked and scared at their jobs being ripped away from them for no reason other than a group of early twentysomethings (and Elon Musk) decided (how? using what criteria?) that their job was not important. (Take, for example, the hastily retracted firings of nuclear weapons experts.) And people are livid upon finding out that Trump's long-stated brilliant plan of "tariffs on everything" is leading to--as everyone else predicted--higher prices.  

Fuck Around and Find Out currently wins out for "phrase of the year." Or, in its G-rated version: Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. We're all finding out, winning stupid prizes.

And some I frickin' TOLD YOU SO is understandable. I certainly feel it. I've created many a mental monologue just like Wilson's here. 

Lefty-libs like me enjoy such righteous reversals. It's the stuff of The West Wing--people being put in their place with a well-crafted, well-delivered speech. Such speeches fueled that show, gave us a romanticized view of how disagreements resolve: someone is forcefully and irrefutably corrected. And oh my stars do I ever want some folk in this country to be forcefully and irrefutably corrected (for the record: corrected with words/results, not with, you know, actual force or violence).

But West Wing style putdowns. . . aren't how things work in real life. That TV show is a fiction. As I tell my students, even the most slice-of-life, naturalistic play is edited reality, life distilled into entertaining chunks. 

In real life, interpersonal arguments seldom resolve cleanly before a commercial break. They rarely conclude with one person getting a pristine last word and the other person simply surrendering. Usually there's hot words and high volumes, and both parties stalk away feeling like they're in the right.

Few people who voted for Trump are going to respond well to a rant like Wilson's. I mean, would you? It takes a special kind of person to be able to absorb an acid-soaked jeremiad like this with equanimity, let alone contrition. I am not that special kind of person, especially when the acid is coming from my political opponents. I don't trust their view of reality most of the time. Why would I trust their evaluation of who's to blame when the economy crashes, our global reputation tanks, and more people start suffering and dying?

I'm hardly the first to say it: we on the left would rather denounce a heretic than win a convert. Our recruitment sucks. We make it worse when we assume that "reality itself" or "the obviously bad results of Trump's policies" will do our recruiting for us. We also make it worse when we expect contrition, silence, or loud repentance from apostates of from the Church of Trump. People are attracted to Trump--just like people are attracted to the left--because he gives them a story that makes them feel seen, important, and cared about. I think Trump's story is a con, a promise offered in bad faith. But just because people might come to recognize Trump's story as repellent doesn't mean they'll find the left's story appealing. 

Dare I say, we need to be better evangelists--winsome witnesses to a better way. And part of that evangelism must involve suppressing or moderating our frustration with the bad results of the majority's choices. 

Make no mistake: I'm often furious at those who voted for Trump. I'm incensed at those who chose not to vote at all or who decided that both sides were equally bad. There's part of me that cheers along with Wilson. But not everything we feel is a good guide to how we should act. 

 Right now, we need more people who feel like we do about Trump's policies. We need them to make common cause with those of us who have been fed up for a long time. For that to happen, we long-term-anti-Trumpers have to swallow the urge to chide or lecture newcomers about why it's taken them as long as it has to come to our conclusions.

Satisfying as Wilson's rant is, then, I'm hopeful that we can generate some better evangelists--and soon. Because when the "find out" phase really hits, Trump et al. are going to spin some wicked lies about who's to blame (spoilers: it'll be the usual suspects: immigrants, people of color, queer/trans folk, university folk, women, etc.). We need a better--not just truer but more appealing--counter-narrative.