The only way out is through

An essay for the Left of center

One of my deepest-held beliefs is that our individual choices matter. This comes, primarily, from lived experience and the sense of agency and autonomy in having influenced the trajectory of my own life. It also comes from hope—the hope that our choices must matter, if only because they so strongly feel as if they matter.

I don’t necessarily equate this to free will, for my thinking has evolved and accepted the ubiquitous presence social construction plays in the development of a life. We are undeniably the product of our daily environment, genetics, social class—the amalgamation of our five closest friends. And so while our choices hold importance and meaning, they are also constrained by outer bounds of subjectively differing degrees. Yet when taken to the extreme, this constructionist philosophy, in my view, brings into question our agentic identity. What does it mean to be a person without conscious choice?

A recurring analogy makes me quiver, that we may be more akin to something like a colony of ants, acting out our lives according to the rules of some hidden, organizing force. But is there not also a profound enlightenment in such a force, the acceptance that we are all connected, our lives significantly constructed by the same underlying energy, yet our individual meaning and purpose self-made?

Donald Trump handily won the Presidential Election. This came as a surprise (and disappointment) to me and most people around me. To others, any other result would have been a farce. Opposite ends of a perceptual spectrum.

I have a hard time calling myself a Democrat, a party entirely complicit in the two-party stagnation. Labeling oneself a Democrat constrains your social and political philosophy within an agreed upon arena of issues, a list of aspirational goals which happen to exist diametrically opposed to Republican goals. In the more radical political spaces there exists far superior language for self-definition.

Alas, as I do align myself with the more progressive of the two parties I’m offered, I can see how being a Democrat over the last year felt like being toyed with. Biden could have stepped down months and months earlier than July and ushered forth a Democratic convention, sharpening and honing the lesser-known political talent among the Left, and exhibiting the signs of evolutionary change indicative of a healthy party. Instead, dropping approval rates and increased questioning of his age and ability to serve as president that inspires confidence in the American people—questions that I believe were rightfully asked—were brushed aside, leaving those on the Left feeling stupid or ignored. And then he went ahead and dropped out anyway, leaving Kamala and her team just months to prepare. For whatever election polls and forecasting is worth anymore, I believe Biden would have fared much worse against Trump.

Donald Trump in 2024, with a MAGA coalition entrenched throughout Washington, is a dangerously powerful person. A system of checks and balances, now greatly diminished, severely tampered his 1st-term desires. This time around he will attempt, and in some cases succeed, to pass legislation which further erode human rights and privileges that I believe are fundamental. We’ve already begun to observe some of his outlandish picks for his cabinet and administration, hinting toward the severity of his intentions.

In the worst moments of this last week, I have contemplated and feared what the origins of a fascist country might look and feel like in the present. This discourse has taken place going back to 2016, but today seems far more palpable. But what worries me the most, and what I cannot understand through historical comparisons, is my very lack of comprehension not of Trump, but of those who support and voted for him.

As I’ve spoken of social constructionism, I can attempt to rationalize how someone might be formed and molded into possessing any ideology—conservative, progressive, or anarcho-syndicalist—but I cannot phenomenologically experience the mental and emotional states of such an ideology. Yet if I were to absorb certain media, interact with certain people, read certain books—in essence, live a certain life—I am certain I could become that person. Our personal developments are the most slippery, malleable mediums. And therein lies the most bewildering question: with such outside shaping forces, how is it that we are able to individually and consciously guide our belief systems at all?

I believe in—and continually choose to engage in the practice of believing in—progressive social and economic politics because it feels like the morally and humanely correct path forward. But are 75+ million Americans wrong, along with the life experiences which led them to vote a certain way? Are we so morally certain?

I believe we’ve reached a place in (social and political) history where we must loosen the reigns on the righteousness of an individual amidst the pull of perennial social forces and the attention economy. Powerless individuals fighting against powerless individuals, all of whom may or may not possess an accurate representation of reality. We talk about misinformation as if a world devoid of its presence would be The One, clean and true. Instead, reality is and always will be a kaleidoscopic distortion of completely unique perceptual interpretations—eerily similar, but not the same.

Our subjective realities are further frenzied by media bias, corruption, and human error & judgement. We are not designed to and should not be expected to withstand the influence of these forces. The marvel of humans lies not in our ability to muster discipline and determination in the moment, but to build greater capacity through routine, habit, and collaboration, and to alter our environment for the betterment of our future.

Our polarization plays to the advantages of the elite, Democrat and Republican alike. If we, everyday folk, could only somehow figure out a way to truly talk with one another—to show that you are also human and that they are understood—we would be on the gradual path to working together and creating a future we all desire. Put another way: I don’t believe any of us care about issues to the extent we claim to care about them, as much as we’re coerced into caring about them through biased media coverage and top-down political funding streams. (More on this topic in the future.) At the core, we all want to be healthy, loved, and understood, but the elite don’t allow those on the ballot.

The longer we hold our proletariat peers accountable and in contempt, the longer we feed the cycle of disdain and othering that keeps the ineffective two-party system alive. But we must first truly feel and believe there is third, or fourth, or fifth option, before we’ll break away from the traditional two. Yes, I do believe that people should be held accountable for the consequences of their actions—I don’t mean to skirt around this fact. But this is an idyllic essay, and in my ideal vision of the future we would perceive others with a humane recognition that should we have been put in their same shoes, at the same point in history, we would undoubtedly have made the same choice.

I want to be curious; I want to cross the expansive empathic gap, as Ezra Klein calls it, between myself, my own externally constructed distortion of reality, and those I struggle to understand. This path feels both less platitudinous than in the past and far more imperative. There is something within the world people are experiencing, an increasingly Trumpian world, that is necessary to look into, to seriously question, to engage with and respond. The only way out is through and to deny it any longer is to consciously take part in the furthered distortion of our fractured society.

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In an email exchange with my close friend Hunter Levy, writer of Ammuddo on Substack, I broached the question of the importance of our social and political beliefs. His perceptive response follows:

Here is where we reach a crux point that I've been circling around for years—I think that, regardless of what your political or social views are, if you are engaging in the media and information system as it currently exists, you aren't really opposing it. This could all be a kind of rationalization that values my own approach more highly than others, but I do believe that disengaging from the systems that be and instead engaging in more intentional forms of community building and communication are potentially radical and counter cultural.

So, to answer your question more directly: yes, our political and social beliefs do matter, but it is in the form of their expression that we make our stand rather than in the content of the beliefs themselves. Posting “Free Palestine” on X is as valuable (read: worthless) as posting “Illegal immigrants are stealing American jobs!” Neither substantively opposes the system which is structured around fear mongering and maintaining the status quo. Neither puts any pressure on politicians to change their actions.

And then he threw the question back on me:

How do we construct environments in which humanity and empathy can be offered and encouraged among people who’ve been indoctrinated to believe that any opinion or viewpoint other than their own his hateful and destructive?

The answer to this question feels like one (of many) necessary steps forward. I will continue thinking this over and get back to you. But right now, or maybe tomorrow, start with this:

Get off social media and skip the mainstream news for the day; go for a walk and talk to a stranger; ask a thoughtful question and give an honest response; take in the world while living in the world itself.

We will still disagree, clumsily and impatiently at first. Decades of forgetting how to live within conflict, while still holding love and respect for another human in our heart, takes time to return.

But then, slowly but surely, disagreement will begin to look more like progress than regress. Inside our disagreement, where once we could only see disgust and contempt, we’ll find understanding and empathy.

There will be a turning point, a critical mass, in which the movement becomes the norm and the momentum can no longer be stopped.

We’ll again define ourselves by our community and family roles; our favorite music and foods; what we like to do on the weekends; how we prefer to give and receive love. And the political issues, while still important, will hold less power over our lives.

Our Egos will be free and we’ll cherish the well-earned awareness that everything, and everyone, is truly connected.