Feeling the Political Divide

This week Stephanie and Michael welcome the renowned sociologist, Arlie Hochschild. They have a rich conversation exploring the stories we tell about ourselves and others that work to sever communities, communities which in fact hold much in common. Having written two books on America’s move towards the right, Arlie has real clarity about the ways in which our stories stop us from engaging respectfully with those whom we disagree with, breeding shame, eroding understanding and shutting down opportunities for connection. 

There is a need therefore for story revision, and this comes first from recognizing the humanity of everyone, no matter what their political views. Identifying those core values that connect us all as human beings reveals moments of overlap even among groups who see themselves as wholly at odds. This ‘cross-over’ becomes the basis for building what Arlie calls “empathy bridges.” We must not, she insists, “confuse empathy with weakness” – indeed, it is that quality which has characterized some of the world’s greatest leaders and which may be the path out of polarization today.

Transcript

Stephanie: Greetings, everybody, and welcome to another episode of Nonviolence Radio. I'm your host, Stephanie Van Hook, and I'm here with my co-host and news anchor of the Nonviolence Report, Michael Nagler. And we're from the Metta Center for Nonviolence in Petaluma, California.

On today's episode, we're joined by Arlie Hochschild. She's a renowned sociologist and author of ten books. Her last two, Strangers in Their Own Land and Stolen Pride, explore this shift to red in the United States. Her research otherwise is groundbreaking and delves into the emotional landscapes of our political and social lives, and she offers really deep insights into empathy, division, as well as forces shaping human connection.

So, in this conversation, we sought out her perspective on the current political climate in the US and explored how emotions shape political identity, how they deepen polarization. As well as to offer some potential pathways for bridge-building in these challenging times. So stay with us.

Arlie: I am passionate about understanding how we come to see the world and feel about the world the way we do.

And when different people in different regions of the US, or different races, different creeds, come to see the world differently, I want to trace it back to emotions and how those emotions get shaped socially. I call myself a social psychologist. I've written ten books. The last – UC Berkeley, retired professor.

And the last two have been focused on the rise of the right. One of those two, called Strangers in Their Own Land, was based on over some seven years getting to know people around Lake Charles, Louisiana, which is one of the most contaminated regions in the country. People didn't believe in regulating polluters, they believed in private enterprise, and eventually, it came to be Trump supporters. So, very poor, and second-poorest state in the country, but for Donald Trump. 

And ideas in that I have developed further in my recent book, Stolen Pride, which is based on Eastern Kentucky. Again, it's a red state, and again it's poor. This is the whitest and second-poorest congressional district in the country. And it used to be people voted for FDR in the day and Bill Clinton in the 90s. But it's now 80% gone for Donald Trump.

So, my journey has been to understand what led that to happen. And secondly, to build bridges between that journey and my own, what I call empathy bridges. So, that's kind of what I'm passionate about doing.

Stephanie: A lot of what you write about in these two works, in particular, really felt helpful as somebody who could articulate why that's so important, why those bridges are so important. And also, that the right isn't a monolith. It's not just, you know, people who are making stupid choices because they're not intelligent enough to see what's good for them. This is something that I hear a lot from the blue side, you know: “How can they vote for Trump?” And I hear Trump supporters saying, “Do you understand the level of corruption and hypocrisy and overregulation that's happening? Do you understand that you're being manipulated into going out and being activists because that's what gets the base for the Democrats to vote for Democrats?” 

But I'm not hearing a lot of conversations really weaving together, like, who are we? And what are these deep narratives that we live by?

Arlie: After hanging out a lot with people that lived in the bayous around Lake Charles, Louisiana, and thinking about politics, I began to think that our convictions, our political convictions are not based just on a matter of attitudes, or judgments, or moral precepts even, but on feeling and so, deep story. We all have a deep story. The left has a deep story, and the right has a deep story. And I think we get to it graphically. 

So, in the right deep story, as I came to understand it – and I checked it with them later, okay? – but the deep story is that you are standing in line, a long line. At the end of the line, just over the hill, is the American dream. And this line has not moved, and your feet are tired, and you don't feel that you're prejudiced. You don't feel like you have malice in your heart. And you're not looking at how long a line is behind you. You're just looking at the distance between you and that American dream. The line hasn't moved your feet or tired – in the right wing, deep story.

And then, the next moment, you see line-cutters, cutting in line ahead of you, pushing you back. And who are they? They are blacks, they're women – half the population are women. And so, women are cutting ahead. Blacks are cutting ahead. Immigrants are cutting ahead. Refugees are cutting ahead. Endangered species being protected by the Democrats – you know, this is oil-soaked Louisiana pelican, it's cutting ahead. And you are pushed back.

In another moment, in this right-wing deep story, there's Barack Obama waving to the line-cutters. Oh, he's sponsored them and he's ignoring me. And then in another moment of – a final moment, the right-wing, deep story, over the head of the line-cutters, there is a guy closer to the American dream than you, that turns around and says, “You ignorant, homophobic, racist, sexist, redneck.” And then you think, I am out. That is so insulting. First, I'm waiting, being nice, then I'm being cut in line. Now I'm insulted. That's it.” And that is, I think, the right-wing deep story.

I tried this out on people that I had really gotten to know. I said, “What do you think?” And one guy said, “You read my mind. I live that narrative.” And then others said, “Oh, no, you left out the fact that the people waiting in line are paying for the line-cutters, and it's insult to injury.”

Another said, “You just get out of line. You secede from the union. You are so pissed.” That's the deep story. I think the left has a deep story too. But I think this is the right’s deep story. 

And when in my latest book, I asked people, “Does this fit you?” These were, again, a region, very poor that went 80% for Donald Trump – and they said, “Yes, but you're missing something.” So, they added to the deep story. What did they add? They added the idea of two bullies. One bully is in the line, and he's just helping the line cutters along. He’s on their side. And the other bully is our bully. That is, the right-wing person feels we've got a “good bully.” We know he's not a nice person. We know he is a bully, but he's our bully.” And that's Donald Trump. 

Michael: Just to start with your very last comment, I'm reminded of something President Johnson said about some head of state in the Far East who was proven to be a really, really bad person. And Johnson said, “Well, he may be an SOB, but he's our SOB.” That is polarization with a capital P.

Arlie: Right? Yes, yes, it is. And it gets closer to violence.

Michael: Oh, very close to violence. Yeah, you demonstrate which side you're on in the last analysis by how you are going to aim your violence.

Arlie: If you look at Gandhi and you also, I think, look at South Africa and Nelson Mandela, you see leaders who are very strong. Here's where the misconception comes – and who are faced with potential cataclysmic violence, especially, I think, in the case of South Africa. All of us reading the news thought, “Uh-oh, there is a bloodbath about to come.”

And here you had Nelson Mandela negotiating, being he wasn't vilifying anybody. He was going to correct a huge mistake, a tragedy. And he spoke Afrikaans. People think, “Oh, you're just a wuss to be talking about empathy and interest in getting to know the enemy.” I say, well, look at the greatest among us. They have gone a big, long stretch to get to know the people they most disagree with.

And that's what makes them great. And we should take them as models and not confuse empathy with weakness. It's just the opposite. It's a strong and the effectively strong who have the capacity to, not only have the empathy but to express it, use it, and build bridges of all kinds upon it. So, I look to Mandela and, of course, to Gandhi. These are our big heroes.

Michael: And Gandhi went and lived in a little hut in a little village. And he was unique, I think, among people who’ve exhibited leadership in our experience.

Arlie: And Mandela, of course, spent 23 years in prison. So, that was in his village.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. That gave him his authority.

Stephanie: I was just remembering when Gandhi came back from South Africa, he spent a year going all the way around India as well, living with people, just keeping his –

Michael: And hearing from them.

Stephanie: “his big mouth shut and his big ears open” to see.

Michael: Yeah, yeah. That's the one characteristic I share with Gandhi – big ears.

Arlie: Well, better to hear with.

Michael: Hear the opposition. But Arlie, I do want to get to those bridges. Nothing could be more important for all of us, in whatever kind of situation and position we find ourselves, than to be able to do this reaching out. And it's a challenge for me. I feel so comfortable in my own circle, you know, living in Greenwich Village, hanging out with folk singers, having nothing but – I won't say contempt but not having respect for “the squares.” That was my background.

Stephanie: I want to hear from you, though, about that kind of contempt that Michael is articulating, very honestly, that people have from the Democrats for people in the red states. Contempt seems like a good word for me. I don't know what you've found in your research. What kind of attitudes do more blue states or blue-leaning people have toward red states?

Arlie: Yeah. There's some sad findings about crossover behavior that compared to conservative Republicans, liberal Democrats are more likely to break off a conversation if someone says something they don't agree with. And whites are more likely to do it than blacks. Okay, that's one side of the sad finding.

The other side of it is that on the conservatives side, when you look at the conversations that lower the temperature with which a difference of opinion is infused, what really makes the difference for conservative Republicans is that they're sitting down across from you, and you're getting to know them.

You're having a cup of tea together. You're laughing and there's a human connection. That's perhaps because they're more – like the folks in Lake Charles and like the folks in Turner, Maine. They’re more rural, and semi-rural, that's where a lot of Trump support is. And people you really want to get to know.

Michael: I've seen various accounts of the disastrous outcome of the 2024 election. And the ones that make sense to me are all on the emotional level, how Trump is able to identify where people are feeling abused and reinforcing it. And that is very dangerous, of how the right-wing comes to power.

You may recall, I was a classicist in my early career. There's a play by Aristophanes which is very sophisticated politically. It's called “The Birds,” and in this play, two sophisticated Athenians who are exiled from the city go to some rural community – in fact, it's allegorized as a flock of birds. It’s kind of dehumanizing. When they get up to establish their superiority and begin to exert control over this community of birds, the first thing they say is, “Oh, unhappy birds,” you know, “how you have been put upon.”

Arlie: I love that. Yeah, yeah.

Michael: So, even then, the demagoguery was the same.

Arlie: Yeah. Look at how they're putting you down, hurting your wings. They're taking your food away. Yeah.

Michael: Breaking up your nest that you work so hard –

Arlie: Breaking up your nest. Yeah. “You were fine before they got there.” Yeah. That's –

Michael: That’s the paradigm.

Arlie: And if I were to condense that finding, I would put it this way – and we can detect if we become bilingual. I think my last two books are trying to do that, to say, Look, we can speak rationality, but you got to speak and listen to emotionality because that's the main story here.

And if we can hear the emotional narratives, the logic of those emotional narratives, we’ll hear that there is a kind of four moment anti-shaming ritual that Donald Trump offers to us. The instances change, but the four moments of it that are consistent through time.

Moment one, Donald Trump says something transgressive. He says that an airplane fell from the sky and killed people because of DEI. Okay, he can say that. Or Haitian immigrants are eating your pet dogs and cats. Moment two, the punditry shames Donald Trump for his transgressive state. “You can't say that it's not true. It's a lie. Don't repeat lies.” 

Moment three, Donald Trump becomes the victim. “Oh, look how they're beating up on me. They're saying that I'm a liar. And it's not just them A, B, and C, all these networks, the nefarious press. I mean, look, they're all beating up on me.” And then he turns to his followers. “Isn't that familiar? Like they’re beating up on you, too. Doesn’t it feel terrible to be shamed like that and put down and victimized? And I am taking the shame from you, off of your shoulders, and taking it upon myself. I'm the victim here. I'm the fall guy on your behalf.” 

And moment four, is the roar back. “Look at what they've done. Now it's time to get revenge. The treasonous press, the bloated deep state, these haughty liberals, my enemy list.” That's the roar back.

And I think that the Democratic half of America has been listening to moment one and two. He says something outrageous. Moment one and he is shamed by the punditry, number two. And the Republican side of America, that half is listening to moments three and four. Donald Trump as the victim of shaming and his retribution against it. 

And the whole thing turns loss to shame, shame to blame, blame to retribution. And there is an elation in getting rid of that shame. And the tragedy involved in all this is that for an unemployed coal miner, for example, or a blue-collar worker whose factory is offshored or automated out, that's structurally imposed shame. It's not a personal fault. It's structural. It's done to you.

And Donald Trump – because I think he is probably, as a child, a very shamed kind of a boy and so, he has an x-ray kind of vision for that. And he's now as a grown man, prospecting that shame and using the steam of it, the emotional unhappiness of it, as his to wield. I think that's what we're up against. We have to see it like that.

Once we see it like that, you don't blame the people that are being used in this way. It's not that your judgments go away, but when you have that perspective, I would call it the sociology of emotions. That's a stupid label, but it's kind of what's happening.

You have to understand the structures, and you have to understand the feelings that get affected by them, especially in this moment. Maybe it goes back to Aristophanes, and it's always been true, but I think the moment is one in which an important sector: I would say 42% of all Americans who are white and don't have a BA degree, that's the cut-off.

Raj Chetty, an economist at Harvard, who's recently come up with that proportion. I didn't know this when I wrote this last book. It's been a downward story for them. A loss story, and loss is different from deprivation. They had some good jobs, and they lost them. They also lost a feeling of appreciation. They felt depreciated, what they knew and how they felt depreciated relative to other groups that were losing.

It's a sectoral imbalance that I think dates from the 70s on – globalization creates the haves and the have-nots. And it’s the have-nots, the “losers” who became discontent, who came to feel shamed. And that shame has been deployed as almost an emotional fuel by Donald Trump and among people who have given up on regular politics.

Max Weber makes this distinction between bureaucratic rational leaders, and that would be Joe Biden who says, “Oh, don't look at me. Look what I've done. Look at this, there’s the Build Back Better Bill. There's the Inflation Reduction Bill. Look at what we've done. Blank face as a person. But his leadership is based on what he has done. Whereas a charismatic leader bases his power on relationships. Look at who I am. I have magical powers, and I will rescue you from your distress. Different kinds of leader.

And in these depressed regions, what I think has happened is they've given up on bureaucratic rational leadership and have turned to the magic man. And that's why tuning to emotional messaging, I think, has become especially important. Always important – Aristophanes on –  but especially important now.

Michael: When I was in Europe as a graduate student, I stayed in the apartment of a couple of teachers and got to read their literature that they'd collected. It was stuff I hadn't seen. Probably somewhere in the main live somewhere, but I had never seen it. And a lot of the stuff that I read was German magazines and newspapers from the 1930s. So, you know where we were going.

It had an emotional tone which took me completely by surprise. I was expecting arrogance and the tone was all, “We have been victimized. Look what they've done to us. Look what they’ve done to us,” all through. And that's where I came to see how dangerous of a position that is.

And, you know, even in my personal life, I try not to entertain that feeling anymore because I know the flip side of being angry and violent.

Stephanie: I really like your four-part model. As we're trying to be more strategic – as we have to be more strategic – we're called to be more strategic in combating, countering what's taking place, to look beyond those first two steps that you've identified, seems quite important.

And I was thinking about how in his campaign, Trump told crowds that “I'll be your retribution. I will be your retribution.” And so that really speaks to that idea.

Arlie: Which implies that you need your retribution. That there is that part to play. Yeah.

Stephanie: I want to talk to you about DOGE too and what we're seeing that this kind of take over, and how all of these government workers are losing jobs rather violently, being stripped away. And for unemployment, that's not good, right? So, he's not fixing problems of unemployment, but they're taking away jobs from people in retributive ways. “You don't deserve this. You don't deserve to be here.” And I want to tie that into your research. What are you seeing as we're watching DOGE move, like a tornado, through our government?

Arlie: Yeah. I just re-interviewed a man that appears in “Stolen Pride,” and who was the leader of a pro-Trump vehicle parade in 2024, with whoops and hollers and flags and red hats.  He is a small businessperson and I recently asked him, “What do you think about DOGE?” I’ve been talking to them. I'm in touch with everybody I talked about. And in fact, they're going to get together. This is the plan, all the chapter profiles.

But he said, “I don't care about the people being fired.” So we came to the edge of his empathy. Okay? And on the left, one finds edges to empathy, empathy edges boundaries also. But he had two feelings about DOGE’s findings. One, he was finding waste. So, his tax dollars – and he's a modest small businessperson – he felt were “being taken.” He didn't use the word stolen, but it’s a little bit of that feeling.

He focused on USAID and that some of that money had supported the “New York Times” – I haven't checked this out – but also the “Wall Street Journal,” the “BBC” and so these then became suspect as a source of reliable news for him. You know, he reads “The Epoch Times” and he’s a knowledgeable man. And he also checks a whole variety of center, left, right magazines. So, he considers himself balanced in his diet of news.

But there was this, “Oh, they were wrongly employed and I don't care about them.” So, yeah, we have different sympathy maps, empathy maps, you know? We have ours, and he has his. And the fired people are not the people he identifies with.

Stephanie: And then what about rule of law and the erosion of democracy? Does he feel that that – or would that look more like these people having jobs are eroding our democracy more than – or, not listening to judges and working with checks and balances?

Arlie: He doesn't. Here's what happened. It's interesting. For our purpose, the whole story is interesting.

I asked him just that question. “Well, what about Trump's statement that, ‘He who defends America does not break the law?’ What do you think about that statement?” And he became impatient and angry at me for asking that question. And because he is a rule of law guy – in the book, “I'm a law-and-order guy. I’m a ‘defend the blue’ guy. And there should be a balance – checks and balances.” But in this moment, I interrupted his own narrative to himself, and he was incensed at that.

And he said, “You people on the left!” suddenly. I'd never heard this talk before, and I've known him now for what, four, five years back and forth? “You people on the left are always trying to paint us as fascist.”

So, I let this statement kind of sit in the air, let it dry out a little bit, you know. And he went on, fulminated a little bit more. And I said, “Well, do you think I've written anything unfair?” “I don’t know.” Still mad. And then I asked some other questions, and the interview ended.

And this is what you might call an empathic rupture, if we were looking at empathy. And the next morning, in my email, I got a message saying, “I'm sorry I got cross with you. I ask your forgiveness. It's been a hard time. Lots of things going on.”

So, I wrote right back, as you can imagine. “Thank you for your message. It has been an anxious time for a lot of us. And I do accept your apology.” We went back and forth. 

And one of the backs and forths, I said, “You know, in Norway they have a word we don't have here, of “a community of difference.” And, you know, maybe we have a small example of a big idea right here in East Kentucky of that. And he wrote right back, “Yes.” You know, “Yes.” 

And it was he – this is what I'm proudest of – he who has the idea of getting all the profiles in the book, some of whom are very pro-Trump and some of whom, as you know, are not at all, together for dinner sometime in the fall.

So, we're in the middle of a little saga here, but what we learn is that he was very afraid that I was digging for his moving over the line into fascism. And in truth, I'm very anxious about just that thing. And that was the line of my questioning. I understood why it upset him. Because that's what's making me very anxious.

So, that's an example of an encounter and the answers that I got to those questions. It boils down to whether you trust Donald Trump. “Oh, he can make mistakes. None of us are perfect.” You know, a trust thing, or a distrust. And in eastern Kentucky that went – of the people who voted, 80% voted for Donald Trump.

But something like 40% didn't vote, and the rest of them voted for Harris. So, when you look at everybody who is eligible to vote, only – most didn't vote for Trump. Slightly more did not. Now, I'm not saying that all of those who didn't vote were Democrats. No, no.  I would say most of them were people who were politically homeless – and conservative, probably.

So, feelings are hot, and crossover is tricky. But I'm thrilled that we have some kind of a little opportunity as my post-book story continues. Because people in the book have gotten to know each other because one of them is a wonderful photographer. This was Shea Maynard, who had a job and lost it.

So, I thought, well, wait a minute, if she's a good photographer – and I contacted The Press, and “Don't you need some pictures for the paperback edition?” So, she got paid by The Press to go and do photographs of other people in the book and loved meeting them. So, they've actually met each other. The mayor of Coal Run has met with her and her unemployed husband, David.

And Roger Ford, this extreme Trump supporter has met with a 12-year heroin addict, now recovered, an extraordinary healer of others who were addicted. So, there's a lot of crossover right there in that region. It isn't just between, you know, us and them. It's between them and them. And that makes it even more important that we get good at this thing called bridging.

Michael: Yeah. Get good at it and take it to scale. That's the real challenge.

Stephanie: The social media from the White House is a nightmare. I don't know if you follow it. But every other day, it seems, there is a new extreme level of dehumanization of immigrants in the country – of like, actively watching people be deported with handcuffs, guards around them and, you know, saying goodbye. It's frightening, the level of dehumanization that people are happy to watch people suffer live and celebrate it.

Arlie: Yes, yes. And there were – it was photographed in the New York Times where Venezuelans were in El Salvador with shaven heads. What did that remind you of?

Michael: Oh, boy. Yeah. It brought up images right away of Jews being run out of towns in Poland and Czechoslovakia. And that's when you're tempted to start using the word fascist, but – you know, my whole pitch for quite a while now, Arlie, is to try to discover the roots of some of these misapprehensions and very dangerous paradigms in the culture itself. And what I keep coming around to is how advertising is, in a subtle way, preparing the infrastructure for all of this dehumanization. 

There's a billboard that I passed this morning on the way into town. It was an advertisement for hamburgers. And of course, as a vegetarian, I will be predisposed not to like this. But it said, “Munch more than the next guy.” In other words, you're not eating for nutrition. You're eating to be better than other people.

Arlie: Wow.

Michael: And – yeah.

Arlie: Wow. Incredible.

Michael: Yep, yep.

Arlie: And you know, that's got – that's so interesting. First, it's gendered. You're a guy.

Michael: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Arlie: Right? So, it's helping you feel like a guy. And then it's competitive. Yeah. So, that actually consuming more makes you more of a guy. It makes you a successful guy.

Michael: Yeah, that's a good point. I had three things that were wrong with that message. Thank you for the fourth, the gender part. And you know, we’re exposed to these things in vast numbers every day. And it's hard to see how we would interrupt that process.

Arlie: What are some other ads? You're attuning me to it in a way I have not been, so this is great.

Michael: Yeah. Well, one that I really liked – matter of fact, it was the same billboard last year. It was selling real estate, and it said, “Our pain is your gain.” In other words, the same thing. You should be happy that you're hurting me because it shows that you're winning. And that just feeds directly into the political paradigm. You know, politics is not a decision-making process, it's a fight, and so on.

Arlie: Right. Right. You know, along these lines, one of my recent re-interviews was with a pastor in the area of eastern Kentucky, who said that he noticed a tone change.

And he said, “You know, around here, we're neighborly, you know? Recently, there had been terrible floods, and neighbor helped neighbor without thinking twice, you know. That's what we're like here.” He said, “But I heard a man who was talking about Canada. And Canada has been our peaceful neighbor to the north for as long as anyone remembers.” And he said, “I heard a man say, “Well, what's Canada done for us?”

Michael: In fact, someone who was running for office recently – and I'm sorry, I forget, but I'm not particularly enamored with all these people – used that very rhetoric, you know, “What have Democrats done for you? Focus on your own well-being.” Period. End of quote. 

So, the tragedy of these advertisements is that they degrade you as a human being while they try to sell you a cigarette or a burger or something. 

Arlie: Yeah, yeah. So, the larger question for us is what to do, I think? And it's, I think, got a lot of different answers. For me, perhaps the first is to reach out to your friends, form a group. Recently, we've just done that. My old colleague, Troy Duster, and a group of others of us meet in our living room now. We hadn't before, but now we are. And we’re trying to divide up what work we can do into subgroups. So that would be one thing. 

It's a relief to be in a group. I am reminded of Rebecca Solnit’s statement. She said, “Well, one person working on climate change said, ‘What can one person do to stop the climate heating?’” And Rebecca Solnit’s answer was, don’t be one person. Join a group. Green Peace, you know. So, I think that's like the first one, de-isolate yourself and then bridge-building on a number of different fronts.

I just have learned about a new film about Adam Kinzinger, the Republican who was part of the January 6th commission to investigate the January 6th break-in – and who very bravely indicted those who broke in. He was considered enemy number one by the Republicans. So, it's a film about him.

He's had death threats, you know. He lost his seat. He was very brave. He appeared at the Democratic convention. This is a Reagan guy and he had a back and forth with the filmmaker, who is liberal. We should all watch this. I think now is the time to. That's one bridge I would certainly cross.

These are brave people who are taking the big heat and they should feel that the Democrats and academics – people who could be written off as in their bubble and isolated – have come forward to support people on the other side in some way. So that would be, I think, a very important thing to do.

And then join as much as we can with the right to defend who they came for first, which would be these undocumented immigrants. Really, do not let this dehumanization go off into remote places like Guantánamo or some prison in Louisiana. We know there is deep violence in these places, and it's legitimated. And people with destroyed souls are running them. And we need to keep up the vigil just on them as a sort of conscience.

But that takes a lot of organizing. And it takes bravery because they're making it more and more difficult and more and more frightening for us to stand up. So, now's a good time before they make it too frightening.

Michael: Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is no time to lose, that's for sure.

Arlie: I think the best organization, I'm not a member of it, should be, is Indivisible.

Michael: Yeah. They’re impressive. Yeah.

Arlie: Yeah. There are now 100 branches of it across the country and they're holding meetings and connecting people.

Michael: You know, as an anti-war and anti-violence person, I always kind of resented the amount of attention that went to the environment versus the amount that went to anti-war or disarmament or something like that. But it's encouraging to see that people are being more intersectional. They're more and more recognizing that these are connected issues.

And I think the next step is to look for what is the underlying principle here that accounts for all these different types of violence. We think it's dehumanization, it's failure to recognize that life is sacred in all of us.

Arlie: Yeah. That's true. Yeah.

Stephanie: I want to bring us back to, again, the deeper narrative, the deep story. How do we shift that story, to see ourselves together, taking both the liberal Democrat and conservative stories and create a new one? Do you have any insights on that?

Michael: The key question.

Arlie: First of all, I guess we’ll have to say there are many different levels of crossover and story revision that happen in crossover occasions – story revisions, story corrections. And so, we very much need to get out of our bubble. We live in a troubled bubble, actually. You know, something is wrong on our side. Why be so defended and reclusive and superior? We're frightened on our side, I think, and disorganized. So, I think, get people unafraid to reach out.

And as for story revision, as for changing, as for the narrative, I mean, that's kind of an abstract goal. But how are the practical ways we do it? I'll give you an example. We need to know who are the cross-over people and support them. So, part of our job is to support the people that are doing the crossover.

One guy I think of has worked with undocumented workers who go around after the many storms that have hit the South and Midwest and clean up the debris and patch the roofs. His name is Saket Soni, he’s done a book on this. And what he discovered is that many of the undocumented workers who were doing that, had families that put all the money together to pay for their passage.

And then some of them had – there was a criminal gang that took their passport, took the money, and didn't pay them for their work. And they have legal rights, even if they're undocumented. And this Saket Soni, himself an Indian by origin, asked – you know, talked to them in parking lots, at Walmart parking lots – “What’s going on?” And they said, “Well, we can't – we're not paid, you know? And we're having to get food at food banks, and we don't have our passports.”

So, he got a team of lawyers in to defend them. And then he discovered that they were really good at cleanup and knew their business. And so, he got them little tags that they were professional reconstruction people. Then they got to meet with the conservative homeowners whose homes they were restoring. And that was a crossover. It was these grateful people who had their home back, the roof was back. It was a nice job.

And he even got some community leaders in an airplane to oversee the restored roofs in another region that his group had done. So, this is an example of the kind of high creativity. It isn't just, you know – that's really amazing, I think. And it needs to be held up as a model.

So, finding the good people and supporting them, I guess. First we’re in groups, and then find who to support, that's both doing the good work or that is a victim of bad work. So, present in those two ways.

Stephanie: You know, I see that another insight that I had in listening to this – I was thinking of Martin Luther King, and when he talked about the American Dream, saying it was, you know, it was bankrupt. And that he'd talk instead about the beloved community. And it's like, if we can get rid of this idea of an American Dream, which is based on scarcity, that some people are going to get it, and some people aren't going to get there. Some people don't deserve it – into a narrative of, again, a beloved community, of contact, of we all belong here.

Michael: Crossovers.

Stephanie: Everybody has rights. Yeah. The crossovers. How do you feel about that?

Arlie: Sure. Well, in the last chapter of “Stolen Pride,” I do talk about two things – redistributing the chances to get to the American Dream, and redefining that dream. Is more always better? More, more, more? No, it's not. And how about saving the Earth so that we can all enjoy it together? And pride, as in the original English usage of it, is to be of service. That you’re proud of being of service, being of use. Produce use. And to alter, in other words, what we're proud of.

Michael: Yeah. Yeah. 

Arlie: Cultural change. 

Michael: Yeah. And I think there's something innate in human beings that no matter what the rhetoric is and how much they're yelling at you, they will respond to the idea that they are of use. That their life has meaning, and that there's a great gratification in serving their fellow human beings.

We see this, for example, in the peace movement, where people undertake terrific risks in areas of intense conflict in which they have no personal stake. They don't need to be there, but they go there. And about 14 of them have, in fact, died over the years doing this.

But the reinforcement that they feel of their human value is such a contrast to moral injury, you know, that that afflicts the armed services. And that's telling us something about human nature, and we're not listening.

Arlie: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Stephanie: That's it today for Nonviolence Radio. I'm Stephanie Van Hook, Michael Nagler is my co-host, and we've been speaking with Arlie Hochschild. Thanks to everybody who helps make this show possible. If you want to learn more about nonviolence, visit us at MettaCenter.org or NonviolenceRadio.org. And until the next time, everybody, please take care of one another.