The People in the Valley
Seeing my MAGA prejudice and pushing back against it
It was opening day for the local Norfolk minor league baseball team. The stage was set for a great experience. The stadium had undergone renovations. The seats were a little nicer, and the PA system a little clearer. The weather had that warmly cool or coolly warm feel that comes with the change of seasons. Minor league baseball games are never sold out, and I can always find a nice patch of open seats high up on the visitor’s side to stretch out in. This day was no exception, and so there I was, sprawled out in an empty section with shoes off, drink in hand, and a growing pile of peanut shells on the floor beneath me.
The elements were in place for a wonderful time at the park.
And then a quartet of people - three men and a woman - found their way over to my area and sat several rows down below me. I noticed things. They were beefy. Yeah that sounds weird, but it’s that slightly bulky, slightly muscular build that a relatively healthy man and woman gets because they work hard but don’t shy away from beer and bacon. A couple of them wore wrap-around sunglasses. What is it about those anyway? There were American flags on shirts and Christian imagery on tattoos. They seemed to be overly happy and unusually in-sync when they nodded their heads to a country song playing over the loudspeaker. Had they just listened to it in their massive pickup truck they drove here? I didn’t see their vehicle, but I don’t think they were driving Subarus or Kias.
When I noticed these things, I caught feelings. Had I not been in a “feelings care about the facts” frame of mind, maybe I would not have noticed them. But they were there - small, low grade feelings of disdain, resentfulness, wariness.
I could still enjoy the game, but the beefy ones were now occupying a tiny bit of space rent-free in my mind. For the rest of the game, I did that "looking-not looking" thing, where you try to appear as if you are not paying attention to someone, but of course, to pull off this performance, you have to pay attention to them. I noticed when one left and came back bringing everyone beer. I noticed when they moved to get out of the sun.
Why did I have these negative feelings? They weren’t grounded in my lived experiences. Where did they come from?
What I am narrating here is the emotional underpinnings of negative prejudice, stereotyping, and eventual discrimination. We all have these emotions to varying degrees directed at different groups of people. We often think of race or ethnicity in this context. But it can be anyway group one imagines. These feelings I have within me are directed towards the cultural group we call “MAGA.” I’m not proud of this, especially given how often I have commented on the bigotry in others so much in the past.
Why am I catching feelings?
I used negative prejudice above because prejudging a person and a situation is not always, or even usually wrong or immoral.
A phrase I’ve heard said in these contexts goes something like, “I don’t care if he’s black, white, blue, or green; I treat everyone the same.” I understand the sentiment behind it and generally agree. But it can be wise to prejudge someone in the proper context. Suppose I’m on a flight wedged between a middle-aged black man on my right and an elderly Asian woman on my left. If I wanted to know the results of last night’s playoff game, I’m probably going to turn to the black man and ask if he caught the score.
I’ve prejudged both the man and the woman, leveraged some stereotypes about what they likely do in their leisure time, and then acted in a discriminatory fashion. If I were to be completely fair and impartial, I would have said to both together: “Excuse me, do either of you know who won that playoff game last night?” But who does that?
So, the idea of acting on what we think we know about the world is not in itself bad, even if the words prejudice, stereotyping, and discrimination have understandably bad connotations. It’s not only not bad, but perfectly rational when grounded in real experiences. Almost all the black men I know have at least a passing interest in major sporting events. The few Asian ladies I know do not. My discrimination at that moment has some evidentiary grounding.
This gets me back to Opening Day and the people I was looking-not looking at: Where am I getting the information to generate these negative feelings toward the beefy people?
It is a question we should all ask ourselves. How do we come to know the groups we have opinions about if we do not have any direct experience interacting with those groups?
In other words, I put the folks at that baseball game in the category of “MAGA Supporter.” I feel some type of way about that category, and therefore, I feel some type of way about them. Mind you, I’ve never once sat down with anyone who would identify into that category and chatted with them.
Not once.
The People Down There in the Valley
Imagine two men standing on a hill looking down into a valley. They start commenting on the people in the valley. Neither has any real experience with the people down there in the valley. But the first man has met some of those people in passing, and he tries to use this knowledge to gain power and influence. He begins telling the second man about his experiences with the people down there in the valley. He describes their ideas and ways of living as immoral and dangerous. The second man, never having ventured into the valley himself, believes the first. In time, because the second man’s understanding of the people down there in the valley is based entirely on a distorted narrative, his animosity toward the people down there in the valley is stronger than the first man’s.
The moment we find ourselves catching feelings about this or that group, and we have no actual interactions with members of said group, we are in the position of that second man.
I am in the position of that second man. The “others” I am told are causing problems in this country—the beefy MAGAs with wrap-around sunglasses—are the people down there in the valley. The first man in this allegory is embodied in the many left-leaning content creators I get my information from. While they all have their own individual motives—to sell advertisements, gain subscribers, increase their impact and influence—as a group they construct a binary good-and-evil world where all the bad comes from those people down in the valley. If you are unsure of what I mean, when the next big news story comes down the pike, see how it is narrated by the other side. You will inevitably find that their side did the right and good thing, and the other side did the wrong and bad thing. No matter what. FOX News has perfected this.
I get it—they’re selling a product. That product is information: commentary, journalism, opinion pieces, and analysis. Because they are a for-profit business, this information ultimately has to be monetized. If their audience is liberal, they must deliver a daily dopamine hit by highlighting how terrible this or that Republican is and how right and good “we” liberals are. Once they have satisfied their audience, they can run an advertisement or ask for subscribers. By contrast, nonprofit outlets such as NPR, PBS, and C-SPAN are generally more inclined to present a wider range of political perspectives; for this reason, they are also less interesting to some viewers because they do not inflame passions.
What then, does all this mean? It means I need to always keep in mind that I am being manipulated and sold a distorted view of reality.
Even if I like that dopamine hit I get from hearing about the latest bad thing a conservative has done, I have to remain cognizant that I am being manipulated. I never hear about the Trump supporters who do great things for their communities and this country.
Even if I agree with those content creators that the current Republican Party is, on balance, doing more harm than good, I have to remain cognizant that I am being manipulated. I mean really, sometimes Republican policies work and are good for society. I never hear about that from them.
I don’t think I’m unique in my experiences. In fact, I’m sure I’m not. So many of us are mad at those people down in the valley, but not because we know them. We have feelings of hostility towards this or that group because we have been told the group is bad. We need to recognize how we are being manipulated and push back against it however we can.