An Addendum to the Extraordinary Stresses of Our Time

My cursory survey about the stresses created by the 2016 election (and their precursors) omitted a significant question. If the election of a man known to accost, bully, cheat and lie to others is so stressful, why aren’t his supporters similarly stressed? Certainly, many of them have been abused, too.

There are some well-known psychological dynamics that may have come into play here. One is that of “identification with the aggressor.” Some people, as a reaction to their helplessness in the face of aggression, make an identification with the aggressor as a way of handling their powerlessness. This allows them to deny their vulnerability, to feel powerful and to avoid needing to confront the abuser’s behavior.

Another mechanism is the fact that some people with anxiety (over encroaching minorities, their own lack of resources, economic instability or what have you) seek an authoritarian leader they hope will save them from their real or imagined peril.

It would also appear that some supporters are not much concerned with the content of the man’s character or the nature of his policies, but are caught in admiration of his attitude. An identification with his attitude promises a freedom from constraints of “polite” society (or should we say “politically correct” society?). This again refers to people who feel they have not had a voice, and here is a powerful man who can say the most ignorant, offensive, abusive, patently false things and still flaunt his power. So, it’s not just the content of the statements, but the fact that he will say them outright and get away with it – with tacit approval from most of his political party. He will not be cowed by social convention or pressure. The fact that some portion of the content parallels what they would like to say is enough to validate him as a representative of the attitude they want to show the world.

Constraints of polite society and the judgments that come to them for their violation is clearly distressing to them and, of course, adds to the general stress wave – including the backlash of judgments being made about them by most of society. These people have been (in their own eyes) outcasts, and he gives them voice.

“Conservatives” have embraced him because of his advocacy of unbridled individual freedom, free from responsibility for one’s fellow citizens, for the centrality of wealth in their value system, and for the love of unregulated corporate power. He appeals to their negative inclinations toward personal greed and neglect of social responsibilities. These “conservatives” have experienced considerable distress under the evolutionary pressures of universal healthcare, inclusion of other races, ethnicities and non-conforming sexuality. (It’s remarkable how they seem to desire powers for corporations where there is no accountability that they find abhorrent in government where there is.)

Traditional “family values” groups have easily set aside their social and moral standards because this man is doing what they would like to be able to do with impunity: judge, criticize, persecute and dominate – and he implies that he will support their attempts at domination in a theocracy.

These supporters may well be playing a part in the dynamics of the rest of us – as our own negative shadow, making them people the rest of society can look down on and not have to examine the ways in which they have, themselves, allowed the problems of our modern world to fester unresolved.

Regardless of whether we see these mechanism of rationalization and support as cynical manipulation, gullibility, insanity, stupidity or sincerely-held positions, they all reveal unresolved concerns about modern civil society and have created a festering pool of distress that has been neglected by those pleased or advantaged by “liberal” society.