I bet that you’re extrapolating your perceptions all the time. Let me give you a few examples and tell whether I’m wrong.
“House prices will probably keep increasing.”
“That person will never change.”
“My business will keep growing.”
“I will never learn from my mistakes.”
“He doesn’t like me.”
We often have these type of thoughts multiple times a day. The root of this problem is our quick judgment.
Humans are very fast thinkers. But how fast do we even think?
Scientists have quantified the speed of light and sound, but when it comes to thoughts, it’s not that easily measured.
Researchers that did experiments with measuring the speed of thought, found the following: Thoughts can be generated and acted upon within 150 milliseconds.
If that’s really true, we’re faster than the load time of Google. The median load time for Google.com on mobile is currently 600 ms.
We’re Fast Thinkers
But that doesn’t mean we should follow through on every single thought that pops into our mind.
Have you ever tried measuring how many random thoughts that pop up in your mind? Just do a simple experiment. For the rest of the day, be aware of your thoughts.
Don’t follow through. Every time you start thinking about future events or start making mental movies, keep count on a post-it note or small piece of paper.
I did it one day at the office. It looked like this:
23 random thoughts that came out of nowhere. And I wouldn’t be surprised if I have 2300 more thoughts in my subconscious.
But here’s the trick: Don’t follow through on those thoughts. Because if you do, your mind will turn into total chaos.
Instead of making all kinds of mental movies, always stick to first impressions. Only look at impressions and don’t think about what everything “means.”
That’s a simple stoic exercise that I picked up from Meditations by Marcus Aurelius:
“Stick with first impressions. Don’t extrapolate. And nothing can happen to you.”
That’s how you always stay calm. But sticking with first impressions is very difficult because we’re all impatient. We’re so eager that we immediately make judgments after our first impressions. Can you believe that?
“She didn’t respond to my text. She doesn’t like me anymore.”
Let’s say you make a quick judgment like that—or something similar. Admit it, we all do it! But let’s look at what that means.
So someone doesn’t respond to you right away. Okay. That’s the whole impression—nothing more, nothing less.
You see? The first impression is that you didn’t get a reply. It’s not this: “Why didn’t I hear anything back? She probably doesn’t care about me. Other things are more important to her.”
Two hours later, you get a reply. And what did you do during those two hours?
Correct, eat yourself up from inside. It’s not worth it.
Do Your Own Thing—Always
If you want to stop extrapolating, you need to be more stoic. Looking at things for what they are is not that easy. Ryan Holiday, someone who has studied stoicism, and wrote The Obstacle Is The Way, said it best:
“It takes skill and discipline to bat away the pests of bad perceptions, to separate reliable signals from deceptive ones, to filter out prejudice, expectation, and fear.”
A conflict at work. A dip in your sales. A disagreement with your spouse.
Look at things for what they are. What’s within your control? Is there something you can do right now? Can you make the situation better? Then do it. And do the job well.
If you can’t—do something else.
Have different things in your life that you can give your attention to. For example:
Always learn a new skill
Get some exercise every day
Work on your goals
The point is that you want to be very clear on what you’re doing in your life, at any moment. If I’m asking you, “what are you doing?” You should have a clear answer.
“I’m relaxing,” you might say.
Perfect. You’re doing your own thing. You’re not a slave to your thoughts or other people’s actions.
This is your life. As long as you’re not harming yourself or others, you can do whatever you like!
Just stop thinking about what everything means and start looking at things for what they are.
New Song Parody by Roy Zimmerman and The ReZisters, featuring Sandy Riccardi!. Parody lyrics by Ede Morris, Roy and Melanie. “The Lion Sleeps Tonight” words and music by Solomon Linda.
The Olmecs (/ˈɒlmɛks, ˈoʊl-/) were the earliest known major Mesoamericancivilization. Following a progressive development in Soconusco, they occupied the tropical lowlands of the modern-day Mexican states of Veracruz and Tabasco. It has been speculated that the Olmecs derived in part from the neighboring Mokaya or Mixe–Zoque cultures.
The Olmecs flourished during Mesoamerica‘s formative period, dating roughly from as early as 1500 BCE to about 400 BCE. Pre-Olmec cultures had flourished since about 2500 BCE, but by 1600–1500 BCE, early Olmec culture had emerged, centered on the San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán site near the coast in southeast Veracruz.[1] They were the first Mesoamerican civilization, and laid many of the foundations for the civilizations that followed.[2] Among other “firsts”, the Olmec appeared to practice ritual bloodletting and played the Mesoamerican ballgame, hallmarks of nearly all subsequent Mesoamerican societies. The aspect of the Olmecs most familiar now is their artwork, particularly the aptly named “colossal heads“.[3] The Olmec civilization was first defined through artifacts which collectors purchased on the pre-Columbian art market in the late 19th century and early 20th century. Olmec artworks are considered among ancient America’s most striking.[4]
Etymology
The name ‘Olmec’ comes from the Nahuatl word for the Olmecs: Ōlmēcatl[oːlˈmeːkat͡ɬ] (singular) or Ōlmēcah[oːlˈmeːkaʔ] (plural). This word is composed of the two words ōlli[ˈoːlːi], meaning “rubber”, and mēcatl[ˈmeːkat͡ɬ], meaning “people”, so the word means “rubber people”.[5][6]Rubber was an important part of the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame.
Overview
The Olmec heartland, where the Olmec reigned from 1400 to 400 BCE
The Olmec heartland is the area in the Gulf lowlands where it expanded after early development in Soconusco, Veracruz. This area is characterized by swampy lowlands punctuated by low hills, ridges, and volcanoes. The Tuxtlas Mountains rise sharply in the north, along the Gulf of Mexico’s Bay of Campeche. Here, the Olmec constructed permanent city-temple complexes at San Lorenzo Tenochtitlán, La Venta, Tres Zapotes, and Laguna de los Cerros. In this region, the first Mesoamerican civilization emerged and reigned from c. 1400–400 BCE.[7]
Researchers explain why withdrawal from our usual environments—due to social distancing—has left dreamers with a dearth of “inspiration.”
Deirdre Barrett, a professor of psychology at Harvard University who studies dreams, made this photo illustration of a recent COVID-19 dream she had.
BY REBECCA RENNER
PUBLISHED APRIL 15, 2020 (nationalgeographic.com)
Ronald Reagan pulled up to the curb in a sleek black town car, rolled down his tinted window, and beckoned for Lance Weller, author of the novel Wilderness, to join him. The long-dead president escorted Weller to a comic book shop stocked with every title Weller had ever wanted, but before he could make a purchase, Reagan swiped his wallet and skipped out the door.
Of course, Weller was dreaming. He is one of many people around the world—including more than 600 featured in just one study—who say they are experiencing a new phenomenon: coronavirus pandemic dreams.
Science has long suggested that dream content and emotions are connected to wellbeing while we’re awake. Bizarre dreams laden with symbolism allow some dreamers to overcome intense memories or everyday psychological stressors within the safety of their subconscious. Nightmares, on the other hand, can be warning signs of anxieties that we might not otherwise perceive in our waking lives.
With hundreds of millions of people sheltering at home during the coronavirus pandemic, some dream experts believe that withdrawal from our usual environments and daily stimuli has left dreamers with a dearth of “inspiration,” forcing our subconscious minds to draw more heavily on themes from our past. In Weller’s case, his long-time obsession with comics came together with his constant scrolling through political posts on Twitter to concoct a surreal scene that he interpreted as a commentary on the world’s economic anxieties.
The virus is invisible, and I think that’s why it’s transformed into so many different things.
DEIRDRE BARRETT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY
At least five research teams at institutions across multiple countries are collecting examples such as Weller’s, and one of their findings so far is that pandemic dreams are being colored by stress, isolation, and changes in sleep patterns—a swirl of negative emotions that set them apart from typical dreaming.
Epicenter tripping
During our dream states, stress sends the brain on a trip. The neurobiological signals and reactions that produce dreams are similar to those triggered by psychedelic drugs, according to McNamara. Psychedelics activate nerve receptors called serotonin 5-HT2A, which then turn off a part of the brain called the dorsal prefrontal cortex. The result is known as “emotional disinhibition,” a state in which emotions flood the consciousness, especially during the rapid eye movement (REM) stage of sleep, when we typically dream.
Though these processes happen nightly, most people don’t typically remember their dreams. Living through the coronavirus pandemic might be changing that due to heightened isolation and stress, influencing the content of dreams and allowing some dreamers to remember more of them. For one, anxiety and lack of activity decrease sleep quality. Frequent awakenings, also called parasomnias, are associated with increased dream recall. Latent emotions and memories from the previous day can also influence the content of dreams and one’s emotional response within the dream itself.
People closer to the pandemic threat—health-care workers, those living in epicenters, and those with affected family members—are more likely to experience outbreak-influenced dreams.
According to an ongoing study the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center in France initiated in March, the coronavirus pandemic has caused a 35 percent increase in dream recall among participants, with respondents reporting 15 percent more negative dreams than usual. A different study promoted by Associazione Italiana di Medicina del Sonno (the Italian Association of Sleep Medicine) is analyzing the dreams of Italians confined during the outbreak. Many of the subjects are experiencing nightmares and parasomnias in line with symptoms of post-traumatic stress disorder.
Results from De Gennaro’s ongoing research and other work such as the Lyon study suggest that people closer to the pandemic threat—health-care workers, those living in epicenters, and those with affected family members—are more likely to experience outbreak-influenced dreams.
Overcoming the nightmares
Multiple studies have shown that our waking activities create a slide reel of memories that influence the content of our dreams. Emotions carried over from the day can influence what we dream about and how we feel about it within the dream itself. Reducing or restricting sources of everyday memories—by being stuck alone in quarantine—may limit the content of dreams or cause the subconscious to reach for deeper memories.
It may seem obvious, but Finnish researchers have scientifically backed up the notion that peace of mind leads to a “positive dream affect,” wherein dreamers feel good about what is happening in their dreams. Anxiety, by contrast, is related to “negative dream affect,” the data show, which results in dreams that are frightening or otherwise upsetting.
Deirdre Barrett, assistant professor of psychology at Harvard University and author of The Committee of Sleep, has collected and analyzed dreams from the survivors of traumatic events, including the September 11 World Trade Center Attacks. Barrett has found that dreams in which people process traumas tend to follow two patterns: They either directly reference or re-enact a version of the traumatic event, or the dreams are fantastical, with symbolic elements standing in for the trauma.
For those seeking to wrest some control over bad dreams, focusing on the “bizarre” may help.
In Barrett’s latest sample of coronavirus dreams, which she began collecting in March with this survey, some participants reported dreaming they caught the virus or were dying of it. In another set of dreams Barrett collected, participants replaced fear of the virus with a metaphoric element, such as bugs, zombies, natural disasters, shadowy figures, monsters, or mass shooters.
“Except for the [dreams of] health-care workers, we don’t see vivid visual imagery of people struggling to breathe on the ventilator,” Barrett says. “The virus is invisible, and I think that’s why it’s transformed into so many different things.”
For all their variety, the one thing many pandemic dreams have in common is how weird they seem to participants in the studies. “It may be one of the mechanisms used by the sleeping brain to induce emotional regulation,” says Perrine Ruby, a researcher at the Lyon Neuroscience Research Center.
For those experiencing coronavirus nightmares, there is growing evidence that so-called “dream mastery techniques” can alleviate their suffering.
When Barrett works with patients on “scripting” their own dreams, she often asks how they want the nightmare to be different. After a patient figures out their dream’s new direction, they can write it down and rehearse it before bed. These scripts range from more mundane solutions, like fighting off attackers, to more “dreamlike” scenarios, such as shrinking the attacker down to the size of an ant.
For those seeking to wrest some control over bad dreams, focusing on the “bizarre” may help, says Ruby, the researcher from Lyon. “Changing the context—the laws of physics and so on—may change the perspective [and] propose another angle, a shift in the understanding which may help to change or play down emotion.”
No, “humble narcissism” is not an oxymoron; it’s a combination of qualities that the best leaders and companies have. Organizational psychologist Adam Grant explains why.
Who would you rather work for: a narcissistic leader or a humble leader?
The answer is more complicated than you think.
In a Fortune 100 company, researchers studied whether customer service employees were more productive under narcissistic or humble leaders. The least effective bosses were narcissists — their employees were more likely to spend time surfing the Internet and taking long breaks. Employees with humble bosses were a bit more productive: they fielded more customer service calls and took fewer breaks. But the best leaders weren’t humble or narcissistic.
They were humble narcissists.
How can you be narcissistic and humble at the same time? The two qualities sound like opposites, but they can go hand in hand. Narcissists believe they’re special and superior; humble leaders know they’re fallible and flawed. Humble narcissists bring the best of both worlds: they have bold visions, but they’re also willing to acknowledge their weaknesses and learn from their mistakes.
Humble narcissists have grand ambitions, but they don’t feel entitled to them. They don’t deny their weaknesses; they work to overcome them.
Humble narcissists don’t just have more productive employees — they’re rated as more effective too. It’s not just true in the US: new research also shows that humble narcissists make the best leaders in China. They’re more charismatic, and their companies are more likely to innovate.
Narcissism gives you the confidence to believe you can achieve great things. It’s hard to imagine someone other than Steve Jobs having the grandiose vision of creating Apple. And we’re all drawn to that confidence — it’s why narcissists are more likely to rise up the ranks of the corporate elite and get elected to political office. But alone, narcissism is dangerous. Studies show that tech companies with narcissistic CEOs have more fluctuating, volatile performance. Narcissists tend to be overconfident. They’re prone to dismissing criticism and falling victim to flattery. They surround themselves with yes-men and take unnecessary risks. Also, narcissistic presidents are more likely to engage in unethical behavior and get impeached (hello, Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton).
Adding humility prevents capriciousness and complacency. It helps you remember that you’re human. Humble narcissists have grand ambitions, but they don’t feel entitled to them. They don’t deny their weaknesses; they work to overcome them.
As an organizational psychologist, I study leaders and teams, and I’ve been struck that there are three kinds of humility that matter.
We’ll actually seem more credible and trustworthy — and other people will see more potential in our ideas — if we have the humility to acknowledge the limitations.
The first kind of humility is humility about your ideas. Take Rufus Griscom (TED Talk, given with Alisa Volkman: Let’s talk parenting taboos). When he founded the parenting blog Babble, he did something I’ve never seen an entrepreneur do. He said, “Here are the three reasons you should not invest in my company” — and he walked away with $3.1 million in funding that year. Two years later, he went to pitch Babble to Disney, and he included a slide in his pitch deck that read, “Here are the five reasons you should not buy Babble.” Disney acquired it for $40 million.
By speaking candidly about the downsides of his idea, Rufus made his comments about the upsides more credible. Admitting the flaws outright also made it tougher for investors to come up with their own objections. The harder they had to work to identify what was wrong with the company, the more they thought was right with the company. The conversation changed: his investors proposed solutions to the problems.
If you ever took a debate class, you were taught to identify the weaknesses in your argument and address them out loud. But we forget to do this when we pitch our ideas: we worry that they’re fragile and we don’t want to shoot ourselves in the foot. We overlook the fact that we’ll actually seem more credible and trustworthy — and other people will see more potential in our ideas — if we have the humility to acknowledge their limitations.
Of course, it seems like there are times when this won’t work, like at a job interview. But actually, people are about 30 percent more interested in hiring candidates who answer the question about their greatest weakness honestly, instead of pulling a Michael Scott: “I have weaknesses. I work too hard, and I care too much.” But you might not want to go as far as George Costanza: “I’m unemployed and I live with my parents.”
Employees who seek negative feedback get better performance reviews. They signal that want to learn, and they put themselves in a stronger position to learn.
The second kind of humility is performance humility. It means admitting that we fall short of our goals, we make mistakes, sometimes we even fall flat on our faces. Scientist Melanie Stefan has pointed out that our bios and résumés only highlight only our accomplishments — we scrub out all the stumbles and struggles along the way. In response, a Princeton professor made a failure résumé: a list of all the degree programs that rejected him, all the journals that turned him down, and all the fellowships and awards that he didn’t win. (He has since lamented that it’s gotten more attention than all his academic work combined.)
You might not want to put your failures out there that openly. But every leader can take steps toward showing performance humility. At Facebook, marketing VP Carolyn Everson decided to take her own performance review from her boss and post it in an internal Facebook group for her team — 2,400 people — to read.
Carolyn wanted to signal to them that she isn’t perfect; she’s a work in progress. She figured that if she let people know where she was working to improve, they’d give her better feedback. What she didn’t expect is that her humility would be contagious: other managers started doing it, too, recognizing that it would help to strengthen a culture of learning and development.
That can be true across the hierarchy — not just in leadership, but at the entry level. The evidence is clear: employees who seek negative feedback get better performance reviews. They signal that want to learn, and they put themselves in a stronger position to learn.
The moment you get excited about a new background, skill set or base of experience is the moment you have to diversify again, and this requires real humility.
The third kind of humility is cultural humility. In many workplaces, there’s a strong focus on hiring people who fit the culture. In Silicon Valley, startups that prize culture fit are significantly less likely to fail and significantly more likely to go public. But post-IPO, they grow at slower rates than firms that hire on skills or potential.
Hiring on culture fit reflects a lack of humility. It suggests that culture is already perfect — all we need to do is bring in people who will perpetuate it. Sociologists find that when we prize culture fit, we end up hiring people who are similar to us. That weeds out diversity of thought and background, and it’s a surefire recipe for groupthink.
Cultural humility is about recognizing that your culture always has room for growth, just like we do. When Larry Page returned as the CEO of Google, he told me that he didn’t want it to become a cultural museum. Great cultures don’t stand still; they evolve.
At the innovative design firm IDEO, instead of cultural fit, they emphasize cultural contribution, a term coined by Diego Rodriguez. The goal isn’t to find and promote people who clone the culture; it’s having the humility to bring in people who will stretch and enrich the culture by adding elements that are absent. That’s something every organization needs to revisit every year, because what’s missing from the culture changes over time.
After IDEO designed the mouse for Apple, they started working on a wider range of projects — from bringing Sesame Street into the digital age to reimagining shopping carts for grocery stores. They realized that while they had great designers, they were short on people who were skilled at going into foreign environments and making sense of them. That’s what anthropologists do for a living, so they created a new job title: anthropologist.
As they saw the contributions from people in that role, it was tempting for them to just keep hiring anthropologists. But that would be the culture fit trap again. Cultural humility forces you to ask what else is missing. In IDEO’s case, they realized it was storytellers: people gifted in translating new insights back to designers and clients. So they started hiring screenwriters and journalists. The moment you get excited about a new background, a new skill set or a new base of experience is the moment you have to diversify again, and this requires real humility.
If you work with a narcissist, don’t try to lower their confidence. Just temper it with humility.
Even if you don’t start your career as a narcissist, success can go to your head. Maintaining humility requires you to surround yourself with people who keep you honest, who tell you the truth you may not want to hear but need to hear, and who hold you accountable if you don’t listen to them.
I think that’s what happened to Steve Jobs at Apple. He had the grand ambition to build a great company. But after the launch of the Mac was a flop in 1985, he refused to listen to his critics about what needed to change, and he was forced out of his own company.
I’ve heard from his close collaborators that the Steve Jobs who came back to Apple in 1997 was more humble. Reflecting on the revitalization of the company, he once said, “I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful-tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it.”
That’s what a humble narcissist sounds like:. “I believe I can do extraordinary things, but I always have something to learn.”
So if you work with a narcissist, don’t try to lower their confidence. Just temper it with humility. Don’t tell them they’re not great. Instead, remind them that they’re human, they haven’t succeeded alone, and what sets the best apart is that they’re always striving to get better.
Find out more about humility by listening to Episode 3 of WorkLife with AdamGrant, a TED podcast. It explores whether humility is a hidden ingredient in success, and it features author Michael Lewis, a “no-stats all-star,” and the great coach of an unusually humble college basketball team that keeps beating the odds.
Adam Grant is an expert on how we can find motivation and meaning, and lead more generous and creative lives. As a popular TED speaker and the New York Times bestselling author of three books that have sold over a million copies, he has helped Google, the NBA, and the U.S. Army improve life at work. Grant has been Wharton’s top-rated professor for six straight years, and he has been recognized as one of Fortune’s 40 under 40 and the world’s 10 most influential management thinkers. He’s a former magician and junior Olympic springboard diver.
This post originally appeared on TED Ideas and was published March 14, 2018. This article is republished here with permission.
DONALD TRUMP ran for president in 2016 on an often ad-libbed and reactionary campaign of hate, greed, xenophobia, misogyny, and racism. He clearly viewed the fact that a black man had ascended to the presidency as an abomination and rightly assessed that there were a lot of racists in this country who saw the eight years the Obamas spent living in the White House as a crime against the real, white America. Trump already had a brand, realized early on the power of being an outsider in U.S. presidential elections, and focused on some key economic issues, including trade, that would play well with people dissatisfied with the two party system’s regular offerings. And he focused on hate.
To directly call Trump fascistic is not incorrect, but it also may give him too much credit. He has largely been an incompetent authoritarian, albeit one whose key policies have caused massive suffering and death. What we have seen throughout his career and his three and a half years in power is that Trump is primarily concerned with making money for himself, his family, and his cronies. Literally everything this man does is a racket.
His foreign policy has been hawkish and reckless, but aside from his often insane rhetoric and public threats to annihilate various countries, it has not represented a radical departure from that of his predecessors. He acts like an unstable buffoon on the international stage, and he burns bridges with traditional U.S. allies, governments, and international bodies across the globe. Trump openly embraces vile authoritarians and mocks democratic leaders and institutions. All of this is certainly dangerous and unsettling, though some of it is disproportionately offensive to establishment foreign policy elites. Trump’s predecessor started his own share of wars, did some regime change, ratcheted up an existing war, downsized another, and greatly expanded the use of weaponized drones and so-called targeted killings. But Barack Obama delivered these policies with an intelligently crafted, though at times absurd, justification wrapped in the notion of inventing a “smarter” way to wage war. Liberals ate it up. Obama’s policies killed a lot of innocent people.Join Our NewsletterOriginal reporting. Fearless journalism. Delivered to you.I’m in
The few times Trump has signaled his openness to pursue a less militaristic approach to long-existing crises, such as the war in Afghanistan or the conflict with North Korea, he has been ridiculed by leading Democrats and liberal pundits. In terms of Trump’s military pursuits, he has proven less murderous than George W. Bush and more of a war criminal than Jimmy Carter. So far. That can certainly change with a second term.
Perhaps the gravest threat posed by the unstable narcissist in the White House is that of the use of a first strike nuclear weapon. It has never been beyond the pale to imagine an apocalyptic nuclear scenario that begins with a tweet from a foreign leader Trump hates. The fact that we can even imagine this is nothing to wag a stick at.
Trump’s monumentally incompetent handling of the coronavirus pandemic hammers home some of the greatest dangers posed by his presidency. It has highlighted the extent to which he is motivated not by any sense of duty or concern for his fellow citizens, but by money and his popularity among a fairly small circle of corporations, television hosts, and special interests. That Trump uses the daily platform of what are supposed to be public health briefings by professionals to pontificate ignorantly, babble incoherently, or to score points politically underscores how little he actually cares about the U.S. public and our lives. Instead, he is obsessed with the stock market as an imagined extension of his own ego. It is the sign of a deeply sick individual that he would effectively make aid conditional on how nice governors are to him. Trump encourages group protests against Democratic governors during a pandemic with scores of people refusing to wear protective gear, while his administration has insisted on testing visitors for coronavirus before meeting with the president or vice president. All of this costs lives, as sure as any military operation.
Demonstrators gather in front of the Colorado State Capitol building to protest coronavirus stay-at-home orders during a “ReOpen Colorado” rally in Denver, Colorado, on April 19, 2020.
Photo: Jason Connolly/AFP via Getty Images
PERHAPS THE MOST devastating dimension of Trump’s time in office, on a policy level, is how the Republican establishment brilliantly exploited Trump as a Trojan horse for its extreme agenda. It is unlikely that any of the GOP’s preferred candidates could have beaten Hillary Clinton in 2016. Trump dragged the Republican Party kicking and screaming back into executive power. For them, he was a messiah they chided and scorned when he first appeared, but now they prostrate themselves before him every minute of every day.The real terror of the past three and a half years boils down to this: the consolidation of power by some of the most vile figures and interests in the Republican party.
The public still does not know the full story of how Mike Pence ended up on the ticket as Trump’s running mate, but when it was announced, it was clear that the professional Republicans and the extremist evangelical lobby had their inside man. With Mitch McConnell running the Senate and Pence babysitting the president, Trump could focus on barking for the crowds in between golf outings and Twitter rants while the political hitmen in Washington dust off every extreme right-wing initiative they’ve cooked up for decades and which they work day and night to methodically ram through. Trump has had his signature moments, but much of his policy has been outsourced to craftier and more sophisticated policymakers.
Trump is famously not a fan of reading detailed briefings, but give him a few nuggets of oversimplified policy talking points to pepper throughout his rants, and he’s going to be your gaudy QVC host pitching the crappy product to his base. The bonus is that none of it actually has to be true, it just needs to be acceptable to the right people and truthfully exposed or documented by journalists whom he can then dismiss as the fake news media.
More broadly, the real terror of the past three and a half years boils down to this: The consolidation of power by some of the most vile figures and interests in the Republican party. This includes the scores of federal judges named to the bench, the shaping of the Supreme Court, the radical drive toward deregulation, and the canceling of even the most minimal commitments the U.S. has made to try to confront climate change. What the Republicans have managed to accomplish on a policy level in Trump’s time in office is profound and terrifying.
Out in full view, Trump has presided over the separation of families and the locking up of immigrant children in cages, empowering ICE agents to act as storm troopers. He has intervened to protect war criminals from accountability, threatened to kill the families of suspected terrorists, sought to ban — and in some ways has succeeded in banning — Muslims from entering the country. His threat to fill Guantanamo prison back up still looms, especially in the era of the coronavirus pandemic. Is it so hard to imagine it becoming a disease-ridden black hole for migrants seeking refuge?
Trump’s economic policies have enriched corporations and special interest groups beyond their imaginations, while sawing off the already inadequate social programs in this country. We still have no idea of the extent to which Trump and his family are financially benefiting from his presidency. He talks about women in disgusting ways, including attempting to publicly humiliate the women he is accused of raping and assaulting. And the sick reality is that a significant number of people in the U.S. clearly like these things even if they won’t openly admit it, though a disturbing number of them do feel emboldened to admire it. Trump has offered up an IPO on ignorance and hatred as a source of pride, and a lot of people enthusiastically bought in.Trump’s rise to power is, in many ways, the logical product of the U.S. as a failed state. Trump says the quiet parts about the system out loud.
Donald Trump’s presidency is not an aberration of U.S. history in substance. His rise to power and the policies he has implemented are, in many ways, the logical product of the U.S. as a failed state, politically and functionally. Trump says the quiet parts about the system out loud, but his agenda is firmly rooted in the bloody history of this republic. And his rise was made possible by the failed two-party system and the corporate dominance of electoral politics in the U.S. Also, let’s not pretend that congressional Democrats have not enabled Trump by regularly voting for his obscene military budgets and sweeping surveillance powers while simultaneously calling him the most dangerous president in history.
What would happen if Trump wins the election in November? In practical terms, it would be a nightmare. Trump would emerge emboldened beyond imagination. What minuscule restraints that currently exist would be wiped out entirely. He would almost certainly be in a position to replace Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg with yet another atrocious extremist. An ability to further stack the court will have a multigenerational impact on a legion of issues; among them are voting rights, civil liberties, corporate power, workers’ rights, civil rights, women’s reproductive rights, LGBTQ rights, executive power, and the climate. No one should minimize the dangers of Trump remaining in office. And his reign will hit the most vulnerable the hardest, much like the coronavirus, and the terrors will ricochet for many years to come. Trump encourages and emboldens racists and bigots and embraces far-right ideology and action. Four more years of this will be deadly.
IT IS IN contemplating all of the above that the emergence of Joe Biden as the Democratic Party’s presumptive choice to take on Trump is a deeply disturbing and risky response to the threats we face. It is easy to underestimate Biden’s chance of winning in November. Biden is a terrible candidate in many ways, but it is possible that “I’m not Trump” combined with Biden having been Obama’s vice president will appeal to enough of the population to win not only the popular vote (a virtual certainty) but the Electoral College — especially if the party keeps him under wraps until the final stretch, as appears to be the strategy. Still, that seems to be a dangerous gamble given what is at stake.
There is also another factor that must not be ignored: Republicans are masters of voter suppression and disenfranchisement. That, combined with Trump’s core belief that corruption isn’t corrupt if he does it places an ominous cloud over the election’s integrity before it even occurs. And we know that the pandemic will cast a long enough shadow over normal life that there will be plenty of opportunities for irregularities.
Biden has an abominable public policy record on a wide range of issues. He has a penchant for lying — about his role in the civil rights movement and about being arrested in apartheid South Africa. He continues to lie and mislead about his support for the war in Iraq, the most consequential foreign policy decision of the post-Vietnam era. He has been accused by eight women of misconduct, including one allegation of very serious sexual assault by his former Senate staffer Tara Reade. Biden’s cognitive health and mental acuity is, to say the least, questionable, particularly when you compare his current performance with videos from just a few years ago. He frequently rambles without a clear point, forgets what office he is running for, and has to rely on teleprompters and notes to make it through interviews and speeches without saying something embarrassing. In numerous interactions with voters, Biden has poked their chests in an aggressive manner; told an immigrant rights activist to “vote for Trump”; called voters childish names; and threatened a union worker in Detroit, telling the man to stop objecting to Biden pointing his finger in his face unless the worker “want[s] to go outside with me.” Let’s not even discuss the tale of his showdown with a rusty razor-wielding “Corn Pop” at the pool. Trump’s temperament is frightening, but Biden isn’t exactly a cool head who exudes competence or confidence.
Liberals may poo poo the whole Hunter Biden-Burisma-Ukraine-China attacks from Trump, but this is going to be a problem in the general election. On many of the key issues where Democrats could attack Trump, Biden is going to be virtually incapacitated by his own skeletons. What Sen. Elizabeth Warren did to Mike Bloomberg at a February debate would be impossible for Biden to do to Trump. “You have more allegations of sexual assault than I do, Donald,” is not a good line. “Your sons have profited off the presidency more than my son did off my vice presidency” — also not a winning zinger. And don’t think for a moment that Trump won’t hammer away on Biden’s Iraq War vote and his trade policies. The Democratic primary is not the general election.It’s always worth remembering that Biden was picked in 2008 to make Obama less threatening to moderates — so we can’t even bank on a return to Obama’s brand of neoliberalism.
There is no point to going through and listing all of the terrible aspects of Biden’s career, his policy record, his mental stamina, or his substantial failures to make himself visible or consistently cogent since securing the presumptive nomination. All of this is going to be put on display for the next six months. The Democratic Party and the voters in the roughly 50 percent of primaries that were held have committed our fate to Biden’s candidacy. Obama and other senior party leaders, major news organizations, and a lot of money deployed to attack Sen. Bernie Sanders also played a role in manufacturing this reality. Sanders ending his campaign and vowing to support Biden leaves people with two viable candidates on the ballot. Barring a health crisis or death of one of these older men, the only two candidates with enough public support to win the presidency will be Donald Trump and Joe Biden.
What we get with Trump is as clear as it is terrifying. What we get with Biden, in his current form, is less apparent. Biden will have a team of competent (for better and worse) technocrats and, in all likelihood, an incredibly influential vice president and an unelected chief of staff running the show. Biden’s administration will also include appointments aimed at throwing some bones to progressives and likely other Cabinet appointments that recognize the growing influence of progressive ideas. It will, without a doubt, also be riddled with a disproportionate number of hawkish, corporatist Democratic apparatchiks. It will be an administration that does the bidding of Wall Street, believes in bloated war budgets, and will put a friendlier face on the worst excesses of empire. It’s always worth remembering that Biden was picked in 2008 to make Obama less threatening to moderates — so we can’t even bank on a return to Obama’s brand of neoliberalism. But there will be policy areas where some victories may be possible for a well-organized and militant left willing to take Biden on. Such a dynamic wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world and would be better for more people than a second Trump term in virtually every tangible way.
Biden isn’t great on many issues that motivate young voters. His health care plan keeps the profit-driven system intact, and it will result in millions of Americans remaining uninsured. His policy to confront massive student and consumer debt is anemic. Biden’s climate plan is uninspiring and generally milquetoast when weighed against the severity of the crisis the planet faces, though this is an area in which he might be susceptible to pressure from activists. Some of his foreign policy positions are downright disturbing, if not explicitly right-wing. The latest Biden campaign ad is a fearmongering attack on China and an effort to outbid Trump’s xenophobic rhetoric. Biden’s long record indicates that he could prove more inclined to authorize military interventions than Trump, who has been quite belligerent himself, without following through on most of his threats. Biden is almost certainly going to start and continue wars, impose deadly economic sanctions, and support or enact regime change efforts.
There is an abundance of justification to oppose a Biden presidency. And principled people are right to ring loud alarms over Biden’s record, policies, and some of his personal conduct. At the same time, it is not honest to imply there would be no difference between a Biden and Trump administration.
The Obama-Biden administration’s immigration policy has now been dwarfed in awfulness by Trump, but in its own right it operated as a cruel, mass deportation machine that also separated families. During the campaign, Biden has responded to extraordinary activist pressure and eventually began to carefully distance himself from the record of the “deporter in chief,” as Obama was labeled by immigrant rights activists. When pressed on the mass deportations under Obama, Biden acknowledged that deporting people without criminal records was a “big mistake.” At a Democratic debate, Biden was asked whether he would resume Obama’s torrid pace of deportations. “Absolutely not,” he said, adding that he was vice president, not president, drawing a rebuke from Julián Castro, who observed accurately that Biden was content to bathe in the glow of his former Obama boss while looking to sidestep responsibility for his more unpopular policies. At the same time, Biden’s campaign has made a sweeping series of pledges that he could implement as president that would potentially protect millions of vulnerable people. On immigration, the alternative to that is four more years of Trump adviser Stephen Miller, an extremist nut who shouldn’t be allowed within 100 feet of a consequential decision-making process.We are not actually being asked to vote for Biden as the candidate, because the Biden we see is a shell of his former self. We are being asked to vote for a spin-off of the Obama show.
Biden has pledged to immediately lift the Muslim travel ban, as well as other racist immigration and asylum policies Trump has put in place. It is also worth noting that toward the end of the Obama administration, under pressure from Black Lives Matter activists, Obama placed a dozen city police forces under Department of Justice consent decrees in response to police killings and other abuses. Trump cannot be pressured by BLM, but Biden can.
Biden has a troubling record on Iran, including his support for deadly sanctions, but he has emphatically said he would reenter the Iran nuclear agreement, which is also no small matter. Similarly, Biden has been politically forced to denounce the genocidal Saudi war against Yemen, despite the fact that it was initiated under the Obama-Biden administration. He has also had to publicly accept that viewing Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman as an unsavory murderer is now widely held by many Democrats, including centrist figures. Remarkably, Biden has vowed to turn Saudi Arabia into “a pariah.” That’s an incredible statement given the long bipartisan love affair with the kingdom’s despots and raises all sorts of questions about what that would mean if Biden is elected.
Former US Vice President and Democratic presidential hopeful Joe Biden arrives to speak about COVID-19, known as the Coronavirus, during a press event in Wilmington, Delaware on March 12, 2020.
Photo: Saul Loeb/AFP via Getty Images
Among the wild cards of a Biden administration will be the issue of whether he has the actual mental stamina to govern, or if he is going to be frequently disoriented and infrequently seen or heard. Setting aside the protestations of people who pretend they don’t see exactly what everyone else does when Biden speaks in public, we are not actually being asked to vote for Biden as the candidate, because the Biden we see is a shell of his former self. We are being asked to vote for a spin-off of the Obama show, a cast of familiar characters and a few exciting new additions who would take charge of the executive branch, without the popular star of the original show among the visible cast. The fact that the Democrats have forced through a candidate that many people don’t believe is fully functional and will rely on the strength of “the team” assembled around him is a pretty grim statement about the state of democracy in the U.S. If Biden is the best the Democrats have to offer in the face of Trump, the system is rotten.
So what should people who want Trump gone but cannot stand Biden do? First of all, no one should be shamed for letting their conscience dictate their vote or decision not to vote. (Full disclosure: I always vote.) Our system is dominated by corporate influence, big money, and the skewed rules of a default duopoly, and it actively fights to prevent third parties from receiving federal matching funds, joining debates, or gaining ballot access. There is no mandatory voting in the U.S., roughly 40 percent of Americans do not belong to either major political party, and people have a right to register their dissatisfaction with the entire system by not voting. In an atmosphere where tens of millions of U.S. citizens choose not to vote, shaming the minuscule number of people who vote for the Green Party is a disgrace. There are hundreds of thousands of voters whose principled belief is that breaking the two-party stranglehold on U.S. democracy is the only path to meaningful systemic change. Votes for Jill Stein or Howie Hawkins are not being taken away from corporate Democrats. Those votes belong to the people who cast them and they have a right to vote however they choose, and the candidates they support have a right to run for office.
It is also an understandable and morally principled decision to say, “I believe Tara Reade was sexually assaulted by Joe Biden, and I will not vote for a rapist.” It is an understandable and morally principled position to say, “I will not vote for anyone who supported the war against Iraq.” None of these people’s votes belong to Biden or Hillary Clinton or the Democratic Party or Twitter mobs — and they are not votes for Trump.In an atmosphere where tens of millions of U.S. citizens choose not to vote, shaming the minuscule number of people who vote for the Green Party is a disgrace.
Ultimately, however, given the abomination of our two-party system, progressive voters are forced to make not just a moral but a strategic choice with their votes. Recognizing that Biden is a terrible candidate and being honest about that but voting for him in an effort to prevent Trump from further consolidating his agenda is a strategically sound position. This is ultimately what the majority of Sanders supporters will do, just as they did in 2016. It certainly has a better chance of improving the country and the world than enthusiastically pledging to vote for Biden while closing your ears to everything that is wrong about him and his record. Voters in swing states, where voting for a candidate other than Biden or not voting at all may help tip the balance to Trump, face a more consequential moral and strategic choice than people in New York or California. In 2004, the Green Party candidate told his supporters to vote their conscience in swing states, including if they believed they needed to hold their nose and vote for John Kerry to defeat Bush.
If you believe that progressives or leftists should be “bending the knee” for Biden by promising right this second that they will vote for him in six months and that they will never utter an inconvenient fact about him or express their anger with their meager Election Day options, please show them all of your work fighting for Medicare for All, for ending the carceral state, for serious radical action on climate change, your work opposing the most dangerous aspects of the Obama-Biden administration, including on issues of war, immigration, and, yes, health care.
Many of the social and political movements that backed Sanders were populated by people in the crosshairs of the Trump administration. It was an incredibly diverse coalition of supporters and drew millions of primary voters in 2016 and 2020. Its backbone was young voters, including young African Americans, Latinos, students, immigrants, and independents. These groups and many of Sanders’s supporters have spent nearly four years fighting Trump nonstop. Many of them organized against Obama’s troubling policies before that. That should be commended not scorned. You want to label these people Trump supporters because they are intensely disturbed by the corporatist candidate you have chosen to take on Trump? Show them your work on the issues they care about, explain what Biden’s policies are on those issues and make the most convincing case you can for why they should vote for him. Better yet, explain to them how you are fighting to make Biden’s platform one that even minimally pretends to want their votes.
In the bigger picture, Sanders organized the most significant challenge to the Democratic Party’s centrist and center-right establishment since Jesse Jackson ran twice for president in the 1980s. Unlike Ralph Nader’s independent runs for president, Sanders attempted to deliver sweeping change within the Democratic Party’s own framework. He fought against an extremely hostile corporate media environment and some pretty vile smear campaigns, where he was compared to the coronavirus, his supporters were called brown shirts, and his primary victories described as akin to the Nazi invasion of France on liberal TV networks. Despite the powerful chorus of red-baiting and lies, Sanders still came extremely close to pulling off a victory.
Biden was usually the frontrunner and always the favorite, even though he came close to being defeated by Sanders early on. The establishment fiercely defended its territory in an effort capped off by the last-minute secret diplomacy from Obama ahead of Super Tuesday to pressure other candidates and the party to coalesce around Biden. Ultimately, the party’s primary voters, at the crucial moment, threw their weight behind a name they know and who served as vice president of an administration they trusted. These voters should not be collectively shamed either. Most of them are not party cogs, but people genuinely scared of what four more years of Trump will mean for their survival, particularly older African American voters.
The traditional, moderate, and right-wing forces within the Democratic Party united and won the primary battle. Sanders may have surrendered too early, but there is little value to debating that right now or wasting energy attacking Sanders.Most people on the left who oppose Biden but also view Trump as the gravest danger are going to vote against Trump by voting for Biden. But those who disagree with that strategy do not support Trump.
The war for the future of the Democratic Party is intensifying. There is a possibility of a fracture or at least more clearly defined factions within the party. There will be serious discussions around forming a new party that isn’t the Green Party, but rather an outgrowth of the “Not Me, Us” framework of the Sanders campaign and the growing popularity of groups like the Justice Democrats, the Sunrise Movement, prison abolitionists, immigrant rights groups, and Democratic Socialists of America. It would be a great thing for this country to have a democratic socialist party grow, one that runs serious political campaigns. We have already seen early stage efforts at this with mixed results. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez understands the need to engage in strategic partnerships with establishment Democrats to achieve meaningful policy change and strengthen the areas of common ground. But there will need to be a lot more like-minded politicians elected for the strategy to succeed. This primary has shaken the Democratic establishment to its core, and that is a good thing and should be built on.
But none of that is going to happen before November.
Some Sanders supporters who are deeply concerned by the candidacy of Biden have said he can have their vote but not their soul. For many people that will be their strategic rationale. For others, it will be a question of individual or collective morality in the face of Trump’s horrors. Leftist voters in swing states shoulder a greater moral burden than the rest of us, and many will decide to vote against Trump by pulling the lever for Biden.
There are also very vocal opponents of Biden who are fed up and are flat out going to refuse to vote for him. They recognize that the opposite of Trump is not Biden. They want a society where free health care is a right and wars are ended, where everyone has housing and work that pays livable wages, where you don’t amass a mountain of debt to get an education, and one that treats immigrants and workers with dignity and defends a woman’s absolute right to choose. They want the racist justice system dismantled and ICE to be abolished. They believe we are in a climate emergency and that Biden is a part of the problem. Mainstream Democrats tell them they want much of that too and electing Biden is a strategic step in that direction or that President Biden will be more susceptible to progressive pressure. They reject that. They don’t believe that forcing a choice between two bad candidates is right, even if one is admittedly worse. Electing Biden might solve some problems, but it also could result in a strengthening of the far right in the U.S. and could produce a worse threat than Trump in 2024. A Biden administration, they believe, will undoubtedly be a massive corporate-friendly juggernaut that wages military and economic wars and, for them, voting in the affirmative for that is a bridge too far. And many of these people hold the Democratic Party responsible for Trump because of the terrible campaign it ran in 2016, so trying to convince them to buy into the same strategy twice is a losing battle. They are tired of being Democrats’ cheap dates — treated with contempt, offered few and paltry concessions, and expected to go along. As a strategic matter, at this juncture, they regard supporting Biden as tantamount to telling Democrats to continue to take them for granted.
If Democrats want to try to win them over, they should use the next six months to show them you take their concerns about 2016 seriously and map out the ways this campaign is different. Most people on the left who oppose Biden but also view Trump as the gravest danger are going to vote against Trump by voting for Biden. But those who disagree with that strategy do not support Trump. For them, “He’s not Trump” is not a gamble worth taking. The onus is on the Biden campaign and its supporters to make their case to every eligible voter in this country and earn their votes. No one should be taken for granted.
