WINNERS, LOSERS, ENEMIES, OTHERS: Boylan doesn't understand!

WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 11, 2020

Johnson believes he does: In her column in today's New York Times, Jennifer Finney Boylan makes a familiar type of confession.

"For the life of me I have never been able to understand [Republican voters]," she somewhat oddly says. 

Tomorrow, we'll show you the fuller statement we're quoting. For the moment, suffice to say this:

Boylan says she doesn't understand. Professor Johnson seems to believe that he does.

Last Wednesday, November 4, Professor Johnson appeared as a guest on MSNBC's Deadline: White House. Already, it seemed that Candidate Biden was on his way to the White House—but Professor Johnson was disturbed by the election returns.

He seemed to think he understood. Once again, here's the bulk of what he said:

JOHNSON (11/4/20): America, by the slightest of disturbing margins, decided they wanted to pick [Biden].

I am disturbed by the fact that not enough Americans made that decision.

I am disturbed by the fact that you have large numbers of people who are like, "Yeah, a guy who leaves people out in the cold, and a quarter of a million people die of Covid, and harasses women and everything else like that, I want a little bit more of that, and I don't really know if I wanted the other guy." 

So this election really shows me a lot of really disturbing things about this country racially, very disturbing things about this country from a gender standpoint, and I have to say this:

Because if Joe Biden becomes president of the United States—and I hope that he does, because he is not a dictator in the making; he seems to be a decent guy—I will immediately turn around my hat and be excruciatingly critical of him. Because you cannot come into this White House with the idea that these people aren't the enemy. They are.

The people chasing the Biden-Harris truck out of Texas, they are the enemies of democracy.

The people right now attacking vote counters in Detroit, they are the enemy.

Kyle Rittenhouse is the enemy. Mitch McConnell is the enemy. And if there's one thing that Democrats should have finally figured out in this campaign, you can't treat the Republican Party with kid gloves, because they won't treat you that way.

I hope Joe Biden just gave this speech to sound nice because everything isn't locked down yet. Maybe Senator Harris will have this idea should she become vice president.

But they have to go into this realizing they're in a war. The war for the soul of America will not end once he's inaugurated and I hope he remembers that.

Earlier that day, Biden had said, "We have to stop treating our opponents as enemies. We are not enemies." 

Johnson said he hoped that Biden was lying when he said that. Regarding the kid gloves he rejected, he seemed to say that when the others misbehave, we have to misbehave too.

At any rate, the professor had, quite literally, started an enemies list! Were all Trump voters on that list,  70 million strong?

The professor didn't say, nor did anyone ask. The cable program on which he appeared is scripted for complete agreement. Pundit participants are branded as "friends." No statements are challenged or questioned.

On this day, the professor was speaking the language of "enemies" and "war." Should all Trump voters be regarded as enemies? Are we at war with them?

The professor didn't quite say. That said,  major top scholars are telling us that the professor's oration helps us see some basic parts of the prehistoric, all-too-human process of otherization, the prelude to total war.

How do humans, even today, come to believe that they're part of a tribal war in which all the good is within one tribe while the other tribe is all evil?

Consider the examples the professor cited, these credentialed top scholars suggest.

With whom did the professor start when he began defining "these people?" In fact, these ranking scholars note, the professor started like this:

You cannot come into this White House with the idea that these people aren't the enemy. They are.

The people chasing the Biden-Harris truck out of Texas, they are the enemies of democracy.

"These people" are the enemy, the angry professor said.  For his first example, he cited a small group of Trump supporters who came close to forcing a bus off a highway in a recent, dangerous incident.

Those people "are the enemies of democracy," the professor angrily said. For what it's worth, he now had maybe fifty people on his enemies list!

From there, the professor moved to a slightly more imprecise charge as he kept building his list:

The people right now attacking vote counters in Detroit, they are the enemy.

Were vote counters being attacked in Detroit? We'll admit that we still don't know who or what the professor was talking about.

But this is the way the process starts, credentialed experts insist. In the prelude to tribal war, we cite the very worst members of some group. Then we start imagining that all the others are like that.

At this point, the professor named two enemies by name. 

One of these enemies is 17. (In real time, another pundit on this same show had branded him an "assassin." No one had questioned that fiery claim either.)

The professor paired the 17-year-old with one of the country's most powerful political figures. When human groups prepare for war, conjunctions like this will seem to make sense, leading top scholars now say.

Earlier, the professor had offered a more general description of the people with whom he was at war. He seemed to throw everyone into this stew. The people in question had said this:

 "Yeah, Trump leaves people out in the cold, and a quarter of a million people die of Covid, and he harasses women and everything else like that, I want a little bit more of that." 

That's what the others had said.

We think that Trump's approach to the pandemic has been astonishing too. That said, we've read assessments by Trump voters that don't seem completely crazy to us—and it's possible that we understand something the angry professor does not.

Meanwhile, no! We don't think a Trump voter should necessarily have flipped his vote because of that incident with the buses at the Omaha rally. But when we humans start girding for war, everything's all of a piece, we're told. A quarter million people dead equal six buses hung up in traffic.

We liberals have often found it hard to believe that Donald J. Trump has retained so much support. We're inclined to be surprised by that state of affairs too.

Luckily, major scholars have stepped in to offer a wider perspective. Carlotta Valdes has also been present, dreamily recalling the tribal wars of our species' endless past.

It always starts this way, Carlotta has gloomily told us. At one point, she recited from memory the silly talk by the silly Southern boys at the start of Gone With the Wind:

BRENT (1861): What do we care if we were expelled from college, Scarlett? The war is going to start any day now, so we would have left college anyhow.

STEW: Oh, isn't it exciting, Scarlett? You know those poor Yankees actually want a war?

BRENT: We'll show 'em!

SCARLETT: Fiddle-dee-dee. "War, war, war." This war talk is spoiling all the fun at every party this spring...

Amazingly, those Southern boys were even dumber than Scarlett! Brent and Stew were eager for war with the others. A few years later, the cameras pull back to show us Atlanta in ruins.

Should Biden see himself at war? Should he form a list?

Most significantly, should Trump's voters be on that list? Did they all try to drive that bus off the road? Are they all as problematic as McConnell is?

The scholars had one basic point they wanted us to grasp. It's this:

When we start to align ourselves for tribal war, we humans are inclined to do what Professor Johnson did. We're inclined to picture the very worst of those we oppose, then let them stand in for the rest.

In this way, we construct "those people," The Others, some 70 million strong. And in fact, it's even worse than that! As Kate Cohn notes in the Washington Post, another 80 million people didn't even bother to vote! Should they be the enemy too?

Should all Trump voters be otherized? Are they all deplorables?

Tomorrow, we'll return to Nebraska with the New York Times in search of provisional answers. We'll examine the way the world appears to some of the others. We may even briefly consider their silly complaints about us!

(Concerning the work of the Times itself, we'll also offer a different perspective on that (alleged) Nebraska arson fire. Did our brilliant tribe's most brilliant newspaper maybe get hoaxed again?)

Last Wednesday afternoon, the professor was creating an enemies list. As we humans have done since the dawn of time, he was assembling the others.

 Yesterday, Margaret Renkl seemed to do something similar. The 71 million who voted for Trump "aren't going anywhere," she said. "And it’s not remotely clear what the rest of us can do about any of that."

Tomorrow, we'll start with Boylan's fuller statement—and we'll have a suggestion for Renkl. In fairness, though, we ought to say this:

For at least a decade, we've been noting the possibility that it's already too late!

Tomorrow: We're back in Nebraska again