The Choice
Issue #2.07 ~ May 10th, 2023
Biden vs. Trump, again?
While it is, of course, much too early for anyone to reliably predict that next year’s presidential election will be a re-run of the 2020 contest, it is undoubtedly the case that, at this moment, that certainly appears to be the most likely scenario. Keeping in mind the Buddhist wisdom that nothing is permanent, that everything changes in time, let’s assume nothing changes in this particular scenario for the next eighteen months, and that on Tuesday, November 5th, 2024, Americans will be going to the polls to vote for either President Biden or Donald Trump.
For those of us who were appalled by the four years of Trump’s occupancy of the White House, and then astonished by his nearly successful undermining of the peaceful transfer of power on January 6th, the very idea that Mr. Trump is currently the leading contender among the announced (and unannounced) candidates for the Republican nomination is proof positive of the toxic strain of MAGA that continues to course through the veins of our body politic.
Contemplating the stark electoral choice that we are likely to confront, I see the Biden vs. Trump face-off in terms of democracy vs. autocracy, reason vs. irrationality, experience vs. extremism, and competence vs. chaos.
Robert B. Hubbell, in a recent issue of his excellent Substack newletter, framed it in even stronger terms …
No voter is going to walk into a voting booth in 2024 believing the choice is “Biden” versus “Trump.” It is democracy versus autocracy, liberty versus tyranny, safety versus violence, tolerance versus fascism, and secularism versus theocracy.
We’ll be returning to the topic the upcoming presidential election frequently in the months ahead, not least of all because, in spite of current appearances, the situation may yet evolve into something quite different than what it appears to be today. Again, nothing is permanent, everything changes in time.
What I don’t expect to change over the next eighteen months, however, is how utterly crucial the outcome of this election will be for the future of America, and the world.
Aversion to Loss …
Shortly after writing about Kathryn Schulz’ recent memoir “Lost & Found” in the previous issue of TLBR, I found myself contrasting Schulz’s observations on the very human experiences of finding and losing with Buddhism’s teachings about the very dehumanizing effects of craving (the desire to attain, and then to hold on to, things that we are attracted to) and aversion (the desire to avoid, or else to get rid of, things that we are repulsed by).
What strikes me most about this comparison is that, while finding and losing typically cause the vastly opposite feelings of happiness (finding) or sadness (losing), craving and aversion, opposites though they are, typically evoke the exact same feelings of unhappiness and dissatisfaction. It’s no wonder, then, that Buddhism points to these unskillful emotions as primary causes of suffering.
Here I want to hone in on one particular variation of aversion, one that is subtly intertwined with its opposite, craving - aversion to loss. Whenever we already have something that we value and want to keep, whether or not we had previously craved for it before actually having it, we begin to crave keeping it after we have it. Our desire to hang on to what we have gives rise to concern that we could lose it. This concern is a form of aversion, and like all forms of craving and aversion, this aversion to loss produces suffering, most commonly the form of suffering we know as anxiety.
And while the anxiety that we might lose something through our own carelessness or inattentiveness is unpleasant enough, worse still is the fear that it could be taken away from us, through no fault of our own. For example, our home and all its contents, by a fire or some weather-related disaster; our job, by an unforeseen economic downturn, or an unexpected pandemic; a loved one’s ability to exercise their transgender preferences, or to obtain a medically safe abortion, by the arbitrary rulings of a politically appointed Supreme Court majority; the nation’s constitutional freedoms, by an authoritarian government, perhaps brought into power by a second, and this time successful, insurrection staged on Capitol Hill.
Progressives, of course, are vitally concerned over the third and fourth of the above scenarios of loss - one already unfolding with new incidents practically every day, and the other looming ever closer in the distance as 2024 draws near. There is clear, and justified, aversion to loss underlying the organized forms of political resistance that are emerging in response to these situations.
The nascent Biden reelection campaign seems well aware of it, and appears to be tailoring their early messaging accordingly. That may indeed be the most effective strategy for energizing the financial support and voter turnout that will be needed to ward off a return to power of the man and the lethally armed, outrageously costumed cosplayers who brought us the January 6th coup attempt.
But I hope that, as we collectively work toward this all-important objective, we can also keep in mind the inherently dehumanizing effects of any form of aversion, especially aversion to loss.
Interesting reading from the past few weeks:
New Yorker staff writer Elizabeth Kolbert marked the occasion of Earth Day 2023 with this sobering report on the rapidly accelerating ice sheet melting in both the Greenland and Antarctica … “A team of scientists has released the results of what might be thought of as the ice sheet’s latest checkup. The patient is not well. Over the past three decades, the rate of ice loss from Greenland has increased sevenfold. In one particularly warm year—2019—Greenland shed four hundred and forty-four billion tons of ice; these tons contained enough water to flood the entire state of California to a depth of three feet. Melt from the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, too, the researchers found, has been accelerating; since the early nineteen-nineties, the rate of ice loss from West Antarctica has more than doubled. Global sea-surface temperatures recently hit a record high; sea levels along the southeast coast of the United States have been rising at the astonishing rate of half an inch a year. The world is on track for disasters on a scale that humans have never before experienced. Scientists keep warning us to get off this track, and yet we seem unable—or, at least, unwilling—to do so.”
Investigative journalist Julia Angwin made this distinction between fear speech and hate speech on social media, and described the frightening danger of the former, in this guest essay in the New York Times … “Understanding the distinction between fear-inducing and hateful speech is crucial as we collectively grapple with how to govern global internet platforms. Most tech platforms do not shut down false fear-inciting claims such as “Antifa is coming to invade your town” and “Your political enemies are pedophiles coming for your children.” But by allowing lies like these to spread, the platforms are allowing the most perilous types of speech to permeate our society. Susan Benesch, the executive director of the Dangerous Speech Project, said that genocidal leaders often use fear of a looming threat to prod groups into pre-emptive violence. Those who commit the violence do not need to hate the people they are attacking. They just need to be afraid of the consequences of not attacking. For instance, before the Rwandan genocide in 1994, Hutu politicians told the Hutus that they were about to be exterminated by Tutsis. During the Holocaust, Nazi propagandists declared that Jews were planning to annihilate the German people. Before the Bosnian genocide, Serbs were warned to protect themselves from a fundamentalist Muslim threat that was planning a genocide against them. ‘I was stunned at how similar this rhetoric is from case to case,’ Ms. Benesch [said].The key feature of dangerous speech, she argued, is that it persuades ‘people to perceive other members of a group as a terrible threat. That makes violence seem acceptable, necessary or even virtuous.’”
Thanks for reading this issue of TLBR. Look for the next one in three weeks, posting on Tuesday, May 30th.
Please note our new regular publication day - Tuesdays - beginning with the next issue!