Listen To This Story

Last Saturday, millions of Americans took to the streets to protest the atrocity this country’s government has become. 

Besides attending a “No Kings” rally, I’ve been thinking about other actions we might take to turn things around.

This past week I gave a public talk where the topic was “What Can You Do;”  dealt largely with our options, opportunities, and — as is becoming increasingly apparent — obligations as citizens. A key aspect was the need to individually foster agreement and dialogue where possible with those who may not share our beliefs — or share only some beliefs. 

Given the current state of affairs in the United States, I can scarcely think of anything more important.

Creating a national conversation based on millions of individual conversations entails a commitment to seriousness, to facts, and to fairness. 

That’s a tall order when the ruling clique are adherents of the Roy Cohn school of life: Do anything to win. And say anything to win.

Some would argue that successfully countering such a hardball attitude requires adopting the bad guys’ tactics. While there’s  truth in the advice that you don’t come to a knife fight unarmed, I believe we need to do better. 

Besides, with all our technological “progress” in making diabolically convincing fakery ever easier and media sources less trusted, real direct contact between humans becomes paramount. 

We may get to the point where we believe only what we are told by select “trusted” sources — or by individuals directly interacting with us and sharing their personal experience and knowledge. 

Considering that we wouldn’t even have the present government if just a tiny fraction of the electorate had voted differently, or bothered to vote, the numbers are on the side of action.

And while we may think mass communication is the only practical solution, experience shows otherwise. Human beings have repeatedly managed to turn the tide by communicating directly with other humans, person to person.

The potential impact of this face-to-face strategy becomes apparent when we consider studies showing that when just 3.5 percent of a population takes some kind of IRL (in real life)  action, that can lead to profound change. 

And, according to the authors of one such study, the following kinds of action that work are: strikes that affect the larger economy, boycotts, sit-ins, walkouts, or shutdowns that put pressure on political leaders to listen to their constituents. 

Related: Stopping Trump: It’s the Economy, Stupid!

Considering that we wouldn’t even have the present government if just a tiny fraction of the electorate had voted differently, or bothered to vote, the numbers are on the side of action.

What if a tiny percentage of the public — thoughtful people, good talkers and good listeners, armed with knowledge and powerful personal anecdotes — were able to reach out to even a modest percentage of the persuadable electorate? 

Not the hardcore irrational, but those folks who haven’t been paying attention, who only vote occasionally, or who had trouble deciding which way to vote last time. Plus those whose lives will greatly suffer from the “Big Beautiful Bill” — but who don’t know it yet. What might happen then? 

The goal is to listen and be truly interested in hearing what other people say. Then addressing their concerns, less by hauling out eye-glazing statistics than by relating your own personal experience. 

One Example

I’ve tested this out a bit, here and there. The first thing is, people love to be asked what they think — and then be listened to.

In one recent conversation, I found that a fellow who had previously supported Donald Trump was rapidly losing confidence in him. He didn’t much like anything the president was doing — and grasped the crazy at the core.  

He did, however, underline his support for cracking down on crime, and said that he felt much less safe since what he remembered as the good old days under New York City mayors Rudy Giuliani and Mike Bloomberg. 

He equated Trump with toughness on crime. I thought it best to keep my private thoughts to myself — that Trump is a criminal himself, who lets violent offenders and pathological fraudsters out of prison. 

Instead, I acknowledged that public safety is paramount, which I do believe. That kept the dialogue going. We moved on to other points of agreement. We both knew that achieving them would not be simple. 

But reaching agreement on some important points. and on Trump’s increasingly wayward actions. left both of us, I am sure, feeling better about the chances of building a coalition to turn things around.

One of the most important issues of the day is also one of the hardest to discuss: immigration. I’ve run into many people who equate immigrants with crime, thanks in part to the way the Trump administration relentlessly characterizes them as mostly rapists, murderers, and other undesirables who need to be kicked out of the country . 

In fact, Trump’s masked ICE agents have been picking up a large number of people who seem guilty of nothing more than being brown. But MAGAs imply that nearly all immigrants, legal or illegal, are undesirable. 

What can you say to such people?  You could share with them your own personal experiences and observations of the many decent immigrants in our lives.  

But if arming yourself with critical facts would make you feel more confident to discuss this issue, check out the following:

From the libertarian Cato Institute, I was able to find more perspective (though fewer details) on incarceration rates for the year 2023:

Native-born Americans: 1,221 per 100,000

Illegal immigrants: 613 per 100,000

Legal immigrants: 319 per 100,000

From the Brennan Center of Justice::

Numerous studies show that immigration is not linked to higher levels of crime, but rather the opposite. 

Studies have also examined the impact of the concentration of immigrants in a community on crime patterns, finding that immigration is associated with lower crime rates and an increase in structural factors — such as social connection and economic opportunity — that are linked to neighborhood safety. (Emphasis added.)

(And if you want even more facts, check out this report, The Mythical Tie Between Immigration and Crime from the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.)

I wish we could convey this kind of positive information on immigrants to those who think Trump is doing the right thing by “cleansing” the country of them.

Farmers in particular are badly affected by the anti-immigrant campaign because they are extremely dependent on undocumented laborers, many of whom are being brutally dragged away. And this loss of a reliable labor force is expected to lead to higher prices for groceries, so we are all affected.

And there’s another effect to consider — the damage, possibly irreversible, to impressionable children, who witness human beings slammed onto dirty sidewalks, face down, and hauled off like trash to some distant hell hole. It is a blowtorch to one’s sensibilities, and soul-crushing.

***

When you combine the people who are strongly opposed to what Trump is doing with those who are discomfited to some degree, it adds up to a solid majority. And in this convergence of opinion are signs of the tables finally turning on Trump. 

Living in a democracy isn’t guaranteed to be easy. For us, in what was long the world’s foremost democracy, it always seemed to be — it’s understandable that we got lulled. Now, all of us need to suit up and start speaking, individually, at least with one or two people who can be reached. I bet there are plenty.

Educating others about these pressing concerns can lead to motivating them. The ultimate goal, as mentioned before, is to move people to action: organized strikes that affect the economy, boycotts, sit-ins, walkouts, or shutdowns — all of which can put pressure on political leaders and so bring about change. 

Flying Above Reality 

Speaking of kings, and people who live like kings (and queens), Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem will be getting not one, but two private Gulfstream jets, costing a total of $172 million (although she has to share them with a few other bigwigs). These jets will provide “secure, reliable, on-demand communication” — and each will have the “most spacious cabin in the industry.” Enough room, presumably, for her hairdresser, extra eyelashes, wardrobe, gun collection, and photographer. And maybe one of her horses.

Getting Next to Jared

Amid Trump’s shaky Gaza triumph, one thing keeps bugging me: Were Trump and his team truly, as he claims, so superior as negotiators compared to those who went before them? 

Or were there other factors that enabled this agreement? 

The view being promoted by the MAGA crowd is that some sort of extraordinary talent or personal characteristic or unique approach made this possible. In fact, Trump claimed it was largely due to his lead negotiator, fellow real estate mogul Steve Witkoff, being an incredibly nice guy whom everyone just loves and wants to please. 

I haven’t heard this sort of claim since the television show Get Smart had a villain named “Simon the Likable,” who would just flash a smile and get whatever he wanted. Trump himself admitted — actually it sounded more like boasting — that Witkoff had no prior experience with diplomacy. 

A big part of negotiation is the carrot-and-stick ability to promise sufficient benefits to each party — or to warn of painful consequences for not settling. 

For Hamas, one of their main concerns is continued financial and other backing from Arab countries. If that were to vanish, they’d be unable to continue. 

For the Arab countries, more and more, success in the global economy is based on an increasingly close business relationship with American interests — and none more than with the president’s son-in-law, who also happened to be one of the key negotiators in the ceasefire talks. 

How important might it be, therefore, for the Gulf petrostates to maintain  lucrative business dealings with Kushner and Trump? Indeed, they’ve never had the kind of unfettered access and influence in the White House as now. 

Do these gilded regimes really care all that much about the suffering and aspirations of the Gazans, or of the West Bank Palestinians for that matter? Whatever their private feelings, they certainly had strong financial incentives to ensure that Trump’s peace initiative worked – and that the famously “transactional” US president and his close family and friends got full credit for the “breakthrough.”

Even if that meant playing hardball with their co-religionists in Hamas.