A lot of people want change. That is true for the Left and also applies to the Right. If you think about it, the two are really on opposing trajectories – the Left fights, among other things, for structurally disadvantaged people’s rights to access, for them to be able to rise to a place of equal opportunity in society, to ascend to equality from their place at the bottom of the heap. They want a future filled with justice.

The Right is, to large parts, constituted of people who fear a descent, a decline in their status, a loss of privileges, a replacement by others they deem non-legitimate. They want a return to a past they perceive to be their birthright. Opposing trajectories, as I said, both with regard to the experienced direction of change, up or down, and the respective times, future or past, under consideration.

What both movements share, though, is some kind of resentment (no clue why they call it the fancier ressentiment, but they often do.) It’s not about an individual’s desire simply to have what others have (that would be envy. ) It is about generally and collectively questioning the legitimacy of the principles of distribution of goods and rights: who is justified to own/have access/call the shots and who is not. And, in the case of the Right, it’s often about seeing one’s own displacement or descent as directly caused by the ascent of specific others – women who work, migrants who come into the country, etc.

Resentment grows when there is a discrepancy between what you consider your right and what your actual life provides. And it becomes particularly strong if you feel you’ve played by the rules, and those are changed mid-game, or the other team is cheating.

.https://divinity.uchicago.edu/sightings/whats-ressentiment-got-do-it.

Unfortunately, these emotions are often stirred by easily manipulated beliefs rather than facts: if your job is gone, it is easier to blame the women who you see working all around you for displacing you, than questioning an economic system that relies on automation and outsourcing to continue to reap profits. If you believe that South American migrants will deprive you of your share of limited resources you don’t even look at the facts that show this to be untrue. And those emotions mobilize: You see yourself attacked as a class, no longer as a failing individual, and that unites you with the many who share your view. Rather than apportioning blame to yourself as not being competitive, you can blame a shared out-group enemy – making for these dangerous movements that are now sprouting across the US, movements that are willing to consider even violence to defend what they believe is ripped from them.

I’m musing on this because I promised to report on my readings and because I think it is essential that we understand the psychological underpinnings of what leads to populist movements. If we want to have a chance to reach these people we must convey, among other things, that we are not playing a zero-sum game, where you either win or lose.

Source, alas, in German (and I only reported on a smidgen of the entire argument….https://www.freitag.de/autoren/der-freitag/der-blick-nach-unten

Photographs today from NYC’s streets in honor of our new congressional members who will hopefully shake things up and seem to have a sense of humor.

Music is self explanatory…https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e7qQ6_RV4VQ