Last year, of course, we had this horrible Nashville shooting incident where six people die — three children, three adults. We instantly get into our various ideological camps:
This is about how we treat trans youth and adults.
This is about hatred of Christians.
This is about guns.
This is about confused sexuality.
This is about lack of law enforcement response time.
This is about ___________, based on where you fall in the whole ecosystem.
Weirdly, we almost never hear people go directly to “This is about the parents.” Hmmm. Anyway.
(Thought exercise: what if it’s about “bad parenting?”)
As I’m trying to parse out different takes, I come to this on YouTube, from Chris Cuomo’s new-ish show:
Now, if you actually watch that clip, it’s hysterical to watch because we had only recently learned that the shooter identified as transgender, and everyone on the clip is trying to the 17th-degree to not step in any viral clips whereby they insult trans people. It’s a high-wire act.
Central to that clip is the idea of “grievance,” which in many ways powers society these days. You can define almost the entire success of Trump on “grievance.” The dude was worth billions of dollars with gold-plated toilets and still wanted to embrace a narrative of “Everyone is screwing us, and it starts with me.”
As I’m watching this Cuomo clip, I keep thinking to myself that we live in a double-blind grievance, whereby each “side” thinks the “other” side is aggrieved, but they cannot admit their own grievances.
To wit:
If you’re on the far-right, you look at this shooter and say, “Well, the narrative must be something about trans as a mental illness. It cannot possibly be about anything else. She or he or whatever you call it is probably aggrieved about stuff that happened in middle school. She or he is crazy. That must be it.” You acknowledge and identify this grievance (of another), but you can’t identify your own grievance, as in you’re still discussing Brett Kavanaugh’s confirmation hearings, which were now five years ago.
If you’re on the far-left, you look at this and think, “People don’t understand LBGTQIA+, and all these 2A losers are clinging to their guns and aggrieved about the state of America changing. They just don’t get it, but we’ll show them somehow.” You can identify the grievance in “other,” but you can’t identify your own need to make most topics about trauma and victimhood.
Both sides speak past the other side. Then you bring money, political power, legislative gridlock, belief structures, and red vs. blue states into it — and of course nothing much really changes, even when kids are killed.
Also notice I just used “far-right” and “far-left” above. Most people I think do reside in the middle, and there in said middle (not economically, as that’s eroding — but ideologically), most people seem concerned about making ends meet, feeling relevant, feeling purposeful, and getting their kids to soccer on time with the right snacks, provided it’s their practice to provide snacks.
I sometimes think the real “dividing line” in America is about “those who consume media” vs. “those who don’t,” but I digress.
Remember when there was a whole cottage industry of “liberals trying to understand Trump” in 2016–2017, and J.D. Vance kinda won that game and rode it all the way to a U.S. Senate seat? Indeed. It’s almost like Trump is a complete mystery to liberals (and even still!), even though liberals are often as performative and two-faced as Trump can be.
We’re in a Grievance Double-Blind where each “side” feels aggrieved about something, and while they can (mostly) correctly identify the grievance of the other side, they’re blind to their own. So the conversations continue to go past the other side, which hurts the idea of any common ground. Plus, uh, debate is dead. It’s name-calling, blocking, cancellation, doxxing, etc.
What’s your take? Can we see our own grievances and where they fall short?