The Secret to Dealing with Political Uncertainty
(Photo by Jonathan Sebastiao on Unsplash)
(This story was originally published on Medium).
I remember exactly where I was when I heard the news that Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia had died. I was sitting inside the AMC movie theater in Georgetown. I had just finished watching the 2016 meta superhero comedy Deadpool, and everyone in the audience was turning on their phones.
From behind me, several students gleefully announced that “Scalia was dead.” I remember walking slightly behind them as we exited the theater. They were speculating how much this was going to change society. Obama would pick this seat now, and then when Hillary Clinton became president, she would replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg with someone forty years younger. These turn of events, they cheered, would secure the Court for progressives for almost a generation.
Four long, painful years later, we know that the exact opposite has happened. Mitch McConnell refused to nominate Merrick Garland to the Supreme Court, and now a president Trump has been allowed to nominate three Justices. He has consequently pushed the court so far right that even moderate Senators are talking about removing the Filibuster and stacking the Court.
I can guarantee you that the political reality you are so certain of at this moment will not come to pass — at least not exactly as you imagine it. The secret to surviving to that hazy, indeterminate future involves learning to separate fear from legitimate worry, to freak out when necessary, and to plan accordingly.
Yes, Freak Out
The first mistake people often make with drastic events is to assume everything will continue as normal. It’s a cliche at this point to talk about the Holocaust-inspired passage First they came by pastor Martin Niemöller. The poetic passage discusses how people’s indifference to the Nazi Party’s targeting of various groups allowed them to divide and conquer. By the time they went after the author, there was no one left to speak out for him:
“First they came for the Communists and I did not speak out because I was not a Communist
Then they came for the Socialists and I did not speak out because I was not a Socialist
Then they came for the trade unionists and I did not speak out because I was not a trade unionist
Then they came for the Jews and I did not speak out because I was not a Jew
Then they came for me and there was no one left to speak out for me.”
The poem is semi-autobiographical as Niemöller was a fervent anti-Communist pastor who was initially supportive of Adolf Hitler’s rise to power but eventually ended up in a concentration camp himself.
This desire to minimize threats and assume everything will be okay is often referred to in psychology as “normalcy bias.” It is a prevalent feature during looming moments of crisis. As war reporter Janine Di Giovanni wrote in her article America Shows Troubling Warning Signs of a Slide Into Civil War:
“I always ask people caught in conflicts the same question: “Why did it take you so long to leave?” Or “Why didn’t you leave when you had the chance?” The answer is nearly always the same: because we never thought it would happen.”
Bad things occur when people assume everything will go back to normal. So overreacting politically to disruption is not actually an unwise strategy— it is better for your fears of fascism to retrospectively be proven silly than correct.
There is a compelling body of evidence that the U.S. public’s early reaction to Trump’s Muslim ban delayed its implementation. Outrage to the Republican Party trying to dismantle the Affordable Care Act likewise slowed its destruction — though efforts are still underway. The same can be said of the public toppling dictatorial leaders such as Park Geun-hye in South Korea and Mohammad Reza Pahlavi in Iran. Effective political mobilization does curb and sometimes even reverses unwelcome changes.
The problem comes, not from volunteering too much, organizing in the streets too vehemently, or donating too many dollars to progressive causes you believe in (continue to do those things), but when we over-inflate the initial response. You see, normalcy bias can work in the other direction too. When there is a political upset (and we have been livening in one for the past four years), many tend to initially succumb to “catastrophic thinking,” where we imagine that a bad scenario will rollout immediately, but then go back to our baseline went that doesn’t happen.
This scenario played out following the election of Donald Trump, where there was an understandable fear that the country would devolve into outright fascism. Since this didn't happen immediately, many started to downplay his administration’s more terrible aspects because the reality they were experiencing didn’t meet the apocalyptic scenario they’d built up in their head. In the middle of his first term, the common talking point came to be that he was more or less a traditional Republican.
‘Once a populist, Trump governs like a conservative Republican,’ starts an article by John Wagner and Juliet Eilperin in the Washington Post.
‘Trump isn’t changing the Republican Party. The Republican Party is changing Trump,’ is the title of another charged, WaPo editorial. This time by Matt Grossmann and David A. Hopkins.
Yet, as his response to the coronavirus has shown, there are many areas where his leadership was catastrophic. It just took us longer than 100 days to reach that point. The assumption that politics would go forward more or less as usual allowed the administration to advance some truly terrible policies that did not receive a whole lot of attention, such as the dismantling of an EPA regulation that protects the nation’s rivers from coal waste, the dissolution of a committee meant to safeguard America’s voting systems, and the dismantling of the White House’s pandemic response team.
Again, it is less dangerous to overestimate a political problem than to underestimate it, but “freaking out” cannot be done indefinitely without proper management. To avoid burnout and thought distortions such as catastrophic thinking, you have to go further than merely worry about an impending problem. You have to assess where you stand in this equation as well.
Understand Your Privilege
Not everyone is affected by a bad scenario equally. When the Coronavirus first swept the world, it was a common talking point that we were all in this together. Yet as the pandemic worsened already existing inequalities, people quickly began to sour on the idea that celebrities and wealthy business people were experiencing this problem at the same capacity as everyone else. Some people were out of work and without healthcare, while celebrities sang John Lennon’s Imagine in their mansions, and Kim Kardashian planned an island vacation for her birthday.
This is what liberals refer to as a privilege, which essentially means that when the “shit hit the fan,” on average, you are not as impacted as other groups of people. For some people, these last four years under Trump have been a hellish nightmare. They have involved the deportation of their loved ones, the uprooting of their homes, and the loss of their rights. For others, it has only been an affront to their sense of decency. Trump's actions have hurt their conception of what America is, but not really impacted them financially or physically.
In the context of America in 2020, where do you stand in this equation?
Have you been materially affected these last four years, or has your financial standing increased?
Are you imminently at risk of getting deported or imprisoned?
Do you currently work for a company that will back your health insurance, regardless of changes in national legislation?
Do you rely on a political right that has only been awarded to you very recently (i.e., within the last ten years)? And if so, are there political rights you currently lack?
Do you belong to a minority group that receives ongoing acts of harassment and brutality within your community?
I ask these questions because if you are not materially affected, this doesn’t make the political moment any less bad, but it does mean that this probably isn’t about you directly. If you are a rich white woman worried about the prospect of losing your right to an abortion, I agree that that is rightfully terrifying, but the people who will be denied the most access are women of color. If you are a wealthy gay man consumed by the dread that the state may nullify your marriage, I agree that that is unjust, but you probably will be able to afford healthcare regardless.
As we have briefly mentioned, there is a type of thought distortion known as “catastrophizing.” This is when you assume the worse will come to pass or that you falsely believe that you are in a worse situation than you really are. I see very privileged people do this when they talk about the future, especially when it comes to social media. The phrase “dooms-scrolling,” or the habit of obsessively researching bad news on your feed, has become popular to describe a type of catastrophizing that leads to self-harm. You aren’t researching the news to help yourself in the political battle against fascism. You are doing it to increase your sense of dread. As psychologist Dr. Amelia Aldao told NPR:
“Our minds are wired to look out for threats. The more time we spend scrolling, the more we find those dangers, the more we get sucked into them, the more anxious we get.”
Your anxiety over the future might be drowning out the concerns of people whose lives are impacted in the here and now. Please dial back the calls to move to Canada or to buy a bunker and realize that you are in the monetary position to help a lot of people. The act of reducing your anxiety will give you the space to share your resources with those who really need them.
In the end, you need to develop a plan for action that is not linked to your fear of what will happen to you specifically, because as a privileged person, by the time that happens, it will already be too late. In this situation, you are Niemöller, not the trade unionist fearing the Nazis will knock down their door.
Reducing Anxiety Is a Must
If the risks I mentioned are real to you (see the bullet list above), then I think trying to reduce your anxiety and fear is still a must. There are many tools out there that can assist with mitigating anxiety, though they admittedly are constrained significantly by cost. Selfcare applications such as Headspace and Betterhelp can get into the range of hundreds of dollars a month, though there are some slightly cheaper alternatives such as Wysa.
These tools, however, are not a substitute for success in the realm of politics. As you are well aware, meditation and self-care cannot replace healthcare and rent. It would be the height of arrogance to assert that one person’s actions can ever be enough to mitigate unforeseen events — that is, the delusion of the privileged. People cannot change their circumstances like you would a piece of clothing.
For example, it has become a common question in the cultural zeitgeist to monolithically ask why “the Jews” did not simply leave Nazi Germany before the Holocaust ramped up? Many paint the Jewish people during this time as susceptible to normalcy bias. Numerous Jews attempted to wait out the Nazi Regime, as they had done for oppressive regimes throughout European history, and this time things did not go their way.
Obviously, this framing is an oversimplification of the social, monetary, and political barriers that existed. While some Jews did leave the country, especially after a pogrom known as Kristallnacht (or the Night of Broken Glass), the majority were trapped because they possessed neither the money nor the documentation to go to another country. It is not so easy to pack up your life and leave, especially when “civilized” countries such as the United States and Great Britain neglected to process the paperwork for thousands of Jewish immigrants and limited the number of refugees overall.
The same can be said of the current situation when rich people talk about moving to Canada or New Zealand in response to climate change or increased political instability. They are ultimately engaging in a very privileged form of catastrophizing, as they hoard resources to prepare for the worst possible scenario playing out inside their minds. Most people cannot afford to do that, especially right now, when the world has closed many of its borders in response to the coronavirus.
The majority of people cannot individually plan to protect themselves from all of the world's problems.
Yet it would be best if you still planned, and there is plenty of research saying the act of making a plan has huge benefits, but we need to recognize the inequity present in uncertainty. Some people's presents are uncertain, not just their futures. And while very privileged people may be able to bemoan every bad thing coming in the future, that is only because they have an inordinate amount of time and resources to do so. For everyone else, that amount of fear and anxiety is dysfunctional. How could anyone have the capacity to worry about a problem ten years down the line when they struggle to pay their bills now?
While a rich person reducing their anxiety allows them to maximize their gains (and in some rare cases, their philanthropy), I maintain that it is an act of defiance for everyone else. It is perfectly rational to be consumed with dread in an age where so much is going wrong. We live in a collapsing country on top of a dying world, and yet to continuing going on with your life is an implicit commitment to solving those problems.
Yet the solution will not come by building a bunker in your backyard or stockpiling mountains of toilet paper — again; only the privileged can maintain the fantasy that an individual can prepare against the future’s onslaught alone. The solution comes when we strengthen our bonds with one another. Through community, not by building a wall or boarding up our doors, we will solve this dire predicament.
I could point to the countless articles and studies indicating that we feel better when involved in a community, but I don’t think that is necessary. You know that the world feels less dark when you are not alone.
The truth is that we will never have enough information to face the future. We are not only swamped by too much information, but we are on the precipice of so many scary and exciting changes. I briefly mentioned climate change, but there is also automation, genetic-engineering, artificial intelligence, and the half a dozen other shifts in society that neither I nor anyone else, can fully anticipate how they will alter our world until after the good (or bad) has been done.
I talked about how giddy those Georgetown students were when they first heard that Scalia had died, but I was giddy too. I could also visualize the world they imagined. I was excited about this vision of a future where we moved towards genuine progress. The Court would turn leftward for a generation, and everything would be better.
Then everything changed, and now we are here.
To live is to be certain about the present only in retrospect.
It is good to be anxious — that means you care. It signals that you are paying attention to the problems around us, and a problem cannot be solved if it is not first seen. When I give into my anxiety fully, however, it pushes me away from the people I care about. I become more withdrawn, and I stop being able to participate in the world.
The good we will experience in the future will come from collaborating with others and building communities that empower us to act. We need to focus less on how we as individuals can fight the most pressing problems of our time — we can’t alone — and instead focus on how we can do so as a community, people, and perhaps even a nation.
The future is only scary when you are fighting it alone.