Thread by @1JoshGreenberg

THREAD

HOW WE GOT HERE: PART VII—A POLITICAL PERSPECTIVE

This thread contains excerpts from Part VII of “How We Got Here.” This part focuses on the failure of the Democrats to speak to Trump's base, along with the empathy shortage in our politics.

1/18

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“Instead of speaking to the grievances of Trump's base of supporters—many of which overlap with the grievances of other vulnerable groups—the Democrats have fallen for every ploy laid by Trump over the past four years.”

2/18

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“In playing into his traps, they have effectively pitted themselves against his supporters, allowing members of this group to be further manipulated by a demagogue.”

3/18

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“Ironically, the failure of the Democrats to earnestly pursue national economic justice has been rooted in a lack of empathy—what members of the anti-Trump resistance movement so often highlight as one of Trump's deficiencies.”

4/18

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“As people cheered on Biden's Democratic National Convention speech as the best speech of his career, the denialism and empathy shortfall could not have been more glaring.”

5/18

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“Lost in groupthink and proclaiming Biden's speech as spectacularly compelling and powerful, Democrats continued to ignore the fact that about forty percent of the country held the polar opposite views.”

6/18

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“How would members of this group interpret Biden's statements about lightness and darkness?"

7/18

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"Personally, when I engage in the basic task of standing in the other side's shoes, I feel Biden casting me as being on the side of darkness; therefore, I perceive his statements as an attack, not as an inspiration.”

8/18

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“Especially when two large segments of the population have been driven to entirely different conceptions of what constitutes lightness and what constitutes darkness, such empathic thinking is critical.”

9/18

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“Critics, of course, may note that Biden could never hope to convert the political beliefs of diehard Trump followers. But this perspective misses the point.”

10/18

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“The goal should have been to at least reach out to the other side—to extend an olive branch—in an effort to defuse tensions, thereby helping to mitigate the serious possibility of violence that now exists in our country and is playing out.”

11/18

medium.com/@1JoshGreenber…

“Unfortunately, the Democratic Party is built only to focus on outnumbering its opponents through votes, which means that the party essentially writes off the diehard Trump followers as too extreme to be cared about.”

12/18

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“This myopic perspective is to our peril, for the failure to constructively address the extremism in our society—along with the risk of violence—places not only the outcome of the upcoming election but the survival of our republic at grave risk.”

13/18

medium.com/@1JoshGreenber…

“The lack of empathy in our society, on all political sides, is a profound problem. All told, our country is beholden by an elite that is severely disconnected from the main populace.”

14/18

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“The disconnect between the elite and the populace speaks to a total system breakdown and serves as a common thread between the extremism that has arisen on both sides of the political spectrum. Total system breakdowns are what make revolutions.”

15/18

medium.com/@1JoshGreenber…

“These observations may be difficult to swallow. It is always easy to point fingers at Trump for lack of empathy and other character deficiencies. While that finger-pointing may be accurate, it has blinded progressives to their own deficiencies.”

16/18

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“It is always more difficult to point the finger back at oneself and to exercise the humility needed to identify problems in one's own character. But such humility is precisely what we need.”

17/18

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18/18

https://twitter.com/1JoshGreenberg/status/1313296081489260544