Although Biden’s election calmed the daily political chaos of Trump’s reign, I’m not sure the deep chasm separating us has narrowed. Polls show that about 40 million voters still believe the election was stolen from Trump. At the same time, the Republican-packed Supreme Court recently validated Republican moves to restrict the sacred right to vote.
In the early 1970s, in my first attempt at college, I stood on one side of a political divide that centered on the Vietnam War and the draft. But it also included broader cultural divisions, symbolized by opposing slogans: “Don’t trust anyone over 30” vs. “America: Love It or Leave It.” The divide was theoretical, but the hate was strong. Student protesters were gunned down at Kent State and Jackson State, “hard hats” attacked protesters, and it wasn’t uncommon in our Iowa college town for “hippies” to be physically beaten as symbols of a perceived threat to American values.
As a young man, it was a painful and disconcerting time. I felt that protesting against the war (not the warriors) was patriotic and showed a deep love for our country, yet we were branded “Un-American.” I engaged in public and private political debates that changed as few opinions as our current debates about Trump’s actions.
I turned from math to sociology to better understand the society around me, and happened upon a concept that has stuck with me ever since. Vilfredo Pareto was a multi-talented Italian thinker who influenced economics and sociology before his death in 1923. He left lots of holes and vague definitions in his theories — Hey, it’s not easy to create a complete system from scratch that explains everything! — but I’ve seen personal evidence of one premise over and over through the years.
Pareto proposed that people’s actions and attitudes are not based on rationality or logic, but instead use “residues” which lead to “derivations.” Essentially, residues are basic attitudes (possibly innate) in six areas, including a desire or resistance to change, the importance of the individual vs. the group, and spirituality. These are the true motivators for our actions. We then try to explain and justify our actions with “derivations” that use logic, reason, or morality.
It’s comforting to think that our attitudes and actions are based on logic, but Pareto suggests the process works the other way around: We search for rational reasons to explain what we already believe.
In college, I thought I could prove a political point beyond any doubt. But if I truly listened to opponents, I realized their positions contained at least a shred of truth or a defensible theory (excluding those based on bigotry and hatred). As I sought more facts to prove my view, I realized that I quickly disregarded inconvenient examples and plausible explanations.
Regardless of my passion, I found that I couldn’t change someone’s mind if they didn’t want it to be changed. This even more true today. The recent election is a perfect example: Were there some irregularities in voting across the country? Of course, like there always have been. Were they statistically significant? No. Even the right-wing Heritage Foundation found that in five chosen states, the rate of voter fraud over differing periods equaled about 1 case for every 10 million votes. Do facts like this help persuade people that voter fraud did not steal the election from Donald Trump or require extensive restrictions to prevent it? No again.
Pareto would suggest that these people have an innate or well-developed distrust (nurtured and exploited by the Trump wing of the Republican Party) of social and political processes (one residue) coupled with a strong resistance to cultural change (another residue). Their view is supported by a few facts (derivations) eagerly supplied by the GOP and is impervious to contradictions.
The hate and violence inspired by our current divisions are just as strong as that of the 1960s and ’70s, as seen in attacks on the Capitol, Jews and Muslims, protesters, and police. Will the current generation of old, angry white men slowly die off or be replaced by a new wave of angry, younger white men, better schooled in the use of violence and legislative power to maintain a dictatorship of the minority?
I’m not sure these wounds can heal during my lifetime. Some irrational belief, a “residue” within me, supports MLK’s faith that “the arc of the moral universe bends toward justice.” I can’t prove it using any of Pareto’s derivations, but it’s something I wholeheartedly want to believe.
Allen Woods is a freelance writer, author of the Revolutionary-era historical fiction novel “The Sword and Scabbard,” and Greenfield resident. His column will appear monthly on a Saturday. Comments are welcome here or at awoods2846@gmail.com.