Politics and Personality

Every now and then I back off far enough from the fray, with Us yelling at Them, and Them setting fire to Our Toes, and a certain truth comes into focus.

It is that we come to our political beliefs primarily through emotion, not reason. And that this emotion is fueled by our personalities and life experiences, not by syllogistic logic.

You know, Al Gore made a crack some years ago about some arch-conservatives having an extra chromosome. It was a cute remark (for which he was taken to task by suddenly politically correct right wingers, aghast that he had mocked people with Down's syndrome -- a tale which itself bears some examination).

Why is it, when we liberals go to the mattresses against conservative issues, we tend to do so using one of their leaders as a rallying point? John Ashcroft is the perfect example. We just truly do not like him. His eyes, maybe. I dunno.

Other people we could not have liked, regardless of their politics (yet their brand of conservatism strikes us as the only politics they were capable of having): Clarence Thomas, Phyllis Schlafly, Rush Limbaugh, Pat Robertson. They do seem different from us, in an almost biochemical way.

So what governs that? Could in fact, Schlafly or Robertson have had different lives, in which they had been fighters for the poor and downtrodden instead of flacks for the comfortable?

I don't know. But it interests me that, to a high degree, we separate philosophical groups by personality types. You might describe them (grossly) as:

Anally retentive: those whose fascination in life is holding onto power, clamping down on difference, tightening the grip on authority; and

Anally excitative: those who like to indulge in flights of expression, who confuse work with play, and who delight in hearing themselves talk

So much for aggregate political personalities: how large groups differ psychologically from one another. This division necessarily involves huge generalizations: retentive vs. excitative.

But what about us personally?

Some years ago, when I was 25, I made a stunning discovery: that I was most angry or passionate when a situation before me forced me to "play a tape" of some earlier life trauma.

It was the case of a man I knew and absolutely despised. He was a well-known regional publisher, and I sized him up early as an awful bully. And I was right. He was a pig.

But I threw myself at him with tremendous passion, and did some pretty self-destructive things in the name of that passion.

About a year into this death-struggle, I had a revelation: that this guy was a stand-in for a deeper hatred in me, against all bullies. And why? Because I had a sister who died when she was 15 (and I was 11), who suffered all her short life at the hands of schoolyard bullies.

A serious heart condition made her different from other kids. Her skin was actually a bluish color. She was like a blue angel to me, sweet and vry funny, but to a few kids at school she was just a freak. So they added to her torment and subtracted from an already short life by taunting her.

I loved my sister so much -- she was like me, if you know what I mean. We were the same stuff. God, how I raged against those cruel kids.

But then, as I got older, I transferred that hatred to anyone I saw being cruel, particularly to people I saw as vulnerable. This was what I did to this publisher -- who, by the way, never did me any particular harm (until I started abusing him in print, that is.)

And I transferred my passion to politics as well. I came to absolutely loathe bullies in the political realm, people from both sides of the aisle who made themselves more powerful by picking on the weak: Joe McCarthy, Rush Limbaugh, J. Edgar Hoover, Tom DeLay, Lyndon Johnson, Robert Dornan, Richard Daley.

And I transferred my allegiances to those who struck me as benefiting from support: minorities, kids, the sick and old, those without voices in public life.

Get it? My hatred of schoolyard bullies made me into the liberal I am. I know this is true, because I have no particular strong feelings about "the liberal agenda." I am just not much of an issues guy, sorry. Light rail, duh.

My politics, deep down, is reactive.

And that -- well, it ain't all good, is what I'm trying to say.

Sometimes, as in the case with LBJ, the politics itself was relatively insignificant. I hated them because of their "stance" in public life, which was to brutalize others into compliance.

I didn't hate Nixon, and I didn't hate Reagan. Nixon seemed messed up, but not a bully exactly. I hated Agnew. Reagan seemed hadly to be there, but likable enough when he was. 

Bush strikes me as an especially novel sort of bully. A bully who's also a baby. Not the stereotype tough kid who pass on beatings from his parents to smaller rich kids. Instead, he's a rich bully who has to win everything he attempts. Constitutionally (I know, the word may not be quite apt in his case) unable to apologize.

The pundits were right -- a lot of anti-Bush sentiment is purely negative. He reminds a lot of people of some rich prick early in their experiences who was both mean and exuded an air of entitlement. "Who cares what you think?"

Pause to let blood pressure subside.

Be all that as it may, I am now going to suggest that the key to our political passion is often buried in our pasts. And I invite you to identify the moment when you became "imprinted."

It may not be true for you. You may be a 100% logical person, who considers cases on their merits, period. Good for you, if true.

But if you should find that your passion arises from some trauma or imprinting event, you may owe it to yourself to realize that about yourself.

Why? Because passion is not always good strategy. Look at the Wellstone funeral. Being passionate killed us that night, because we were too full of feeling to anticipate the uses our distress could be put to. While we wailed and pumped our fists, the opposition saw an opening, and took brilliant advantage.

I see lawn signs going up everywhere: Say NO to the Iraq War. That appears to be the mandatory liberal position. No dalylght allowed! But it is reactive, too. If our opponents are quick to see us as fellow travelers (see Limbaugh), perhaps there is a more considered reaction than expressing a polarized point of view from our lawns.

I would like to see a sign, or hear a conversation, that engages the opposition on THEIR emotional grounds. They, too, hate bullies, love justice, and despise Mickey Mouse. Come on, not all of them, but the vast majority.

Why do we not engage with the opposition on the tropes and memes that move them -- love of country, veneration of heroes, appreciation of valor, dislike of flimflam.

But because different trigger emotions drive us, we disrespect one another.

We need to clean out one another's garages, get at the hide-a-beds and old china that no one dares to throw away, and get a good look at it. We need to earn one another's respect as human beings again. We need to explain where all this feeling comes from.

If you agree with this thesis, even partially, and have a story to tell about your political imprinting, send it in, and I'll compile them.

And we need to understand ourselves better. Unless we do that, it doesn't matter who "wins," because whover wins is still an idiot.

Astonishingly, I think we will discover that they (regular people, not manipulative politicians, who disappoint on both sides) are good, too, but in slightly different ways than we are.

If we can bridge THAT gap, there might yet be hope for this arresting proposition.