I never thought I’d use the words “President Donald Trump” in a sentence. But I am less worried about his election than many, and I hold out hope that we can all learn some valuable lessons. Here are a few.
1. It is wrong to think of democratic elections as producing policies or people that “we” choose. There is no “we.” As Professor Mike Munger has written, “Democracy is a check on tyranny, not a conjuring of the will of the people.” Citizens vote for very different reasons, many of which are idiosyncratic. Some Trump supporters are racists, but many are protectionists who want their jobs back, and others are just sick of political correctness and of being told that they need to check their privilege before they speak.
In general, voters choose candidates that symbolically express their identities rather than combing through the details of policy and voting in a way that maximizes social welfare. This makes perfect sense, given the extraordinary unlikelihood of affecting an electoral outcome by casting a vote. In market settings, we carefully weigh up the costs and benefits of goods, and choose within our budget constraints.
But politics is not a trip to the store, where we bring a check list of items, along with an understanding of how much we’re willing to spend, and what we’ll have to forgo to get what we want. It is more like a trip to Cameron Indoor, where we get drunk, show the world what colors we wear, sing songs, chant slogans, repeat rituals and bond with each other by demonizing the other team. As Joseph Schumpeter argued, “The pyrotechnics of party management and party advertising, slogans and marching tunes, are not accessories. They are of the essence of politics.”
In politics, because our vote doesn’t cause the election to go one way or another, we are free to vote for a candidate who stands for “winning” and brings back “Ameritude” even if it’s unclear exactly what that entails.
2. We can all do a better job of learning from people we disagree with. It is always tempting to see our opponents as representing all that is wrong with the world—evil, intolerant, stupid. And sometimes these things are true. But often they are not, and it is worth understanding the psychological mechanisms that lead us to see the world this way.
Our moral psychology is an evolved mental module that worked reasonably well for our ancestors who lived in small groups, but is not especially good at sorting out large scale political disagreement. If anything, it seems to be leading to more polarization and intolerance, especially with the emergence of social media – a tool that more often provokes political warfare than healthy deliberation.
One solution to the problem of polarization and intolerance is to make a deliberate effort to find people you disagree with and talk to them. Try to see what makes them tick. Read some of the books and articles they send you. You may disagree, but usually you’ll find that they, too, are motivated by a desire to navigate a complicated world and promote the good, as they see it.
Some of Trump’s supporters are contemptible—a “basket of deplorables”—but most are a collection of good people who feel disaffected for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons are discussed by Charles Murray in his book Coming Apart, which documents the increasing cultural disconnect between the urban educated and the rural uneducated. Murray tried to discuss these views a few years ago at Duke, but was protested by students who staged a “walk out.” Turns out we all have something to learn from people we are inclined to disagree with.
3. Power is dangerous, especially government power. Political power is different than the social power that comes from being beautiful, rich, athletic, or smart. When an individual has these qualities, she has some degree of power over other people, but she can’t force them to do things. Governments can. They can force us to do things by passing laws, and that can be good or bad.
When the “right” people are in power—those who agree with us—we tend to accept it when they pass laws that impose our particular worldview on others, rather than laws that are neutral between different creeds. We also tend to look the other way when they bend the rules in our favor. For example, during the last two administrations, Presidents Bush and Obama have increasingly issued executive orders to accomplish legislative goals when Congress failed to agree with them. But this is a dangerous precedent.
Those who despise Trump and those who support him should remember that eventually the “wrong” people will gain power, and they will use it to do things we deeply disagree with. This demonstrates the dangers of giving the federal government too much authority to determine how we live our lives or spend our money. Monopolists tend to abuse their power, and that is as true of government agencies as it is of private firms. The government has guns, and those guns can be pointed at its “customers,” even when we don’t want the legislative products it forces us to buy.
John Stuart Mill warned that “the very principle of constitutional government requires it to be assumed that political power will be abused to promote the particular purposes of the holder; not because it always is so, but because such is the natural tendency of things, to guard against which is the special use of free institutions.”
So, whatever your political views, let’s take the opportunity to learn from last week’s election—by recognizing that large groups of voters are motivated by very different ends, by listening to people we disagree with, and by reminding ourselves why it’s important not to cede large swaths of our liberties to a government in the hopes that it will effectively promote our parochial goals.
Professor Jonathan Anomaly is a lecturer at Duke and research assistant professor at UNC.
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