Get ready for one of my more original socio-political experiments . . .

We can choose so many responses when we are shocked, afraid, angry, or just plain perplexed.  The complexity of our emotional state is matched by the complexity of our choices in light of that state.

The presidential election, as my grandmother would say, “threw me for loop!”  I am still sorting through my feelings and continue to help clients (politicos and non-politicos alike) sort through their own.

Undoubtedly I have moments of despair and even extended periods I would describe as a foreboding sense of doom.  I hope we all realize that it is normal to want to hide out and escape during these times.  And our loved ones often bear the brunt of our uncertainties as our mood shifts like the wind.  My apologies to my husband!

However, I also have a deep desire to understand things, all things, which makes me engage, explore, and question the causes of both my own and my country’s angst.

So . . .

On my way to visit my family for Thanksgiving, instead of flying up, my usual mode of transportation to New England, this time I rented a car.  I carefully charted a route from DC that took me through specific counties in MD, PA, NY, CT and NH.  These are counties Trump won, and in many, by enormous margins.

Call it my Trump County Tour.

Here was my working hypothesis before I left:  The people who voted for Trump are not all rabid jingoistic racists/misogynists/homophobes hell-bent on turning the clock back to 1953 (gosh they just cannot all be!).  In fact, I imagined that a Trump voter’s motivation falls into one of four primary categories (with many subcategories).

More accurately, and contrary to the silly musings of many pundits who swarm cable news channels, many of these voters are multi-categorical, that is their reasons for Trump over Clinton (or the others) bridge two or more categories.

Here are the ones I came up with before my trip:

1. Charisma and Change Voter
   1. Love Trump the person (perceived brashness and authenticity is just what we need).
   2. Despise Clinton the person (perceived dishonesty, scandals, husband, gender).
   3. Enough of President Obama (his perceived elitism, his perceived smugness, his race).
   4. Want something (however amorphous) new in DC and new people in charge (drain the “swamp”).
2. Macroeconomic Voter
   1. Want my (or my family’s) old life back (real or imagined).
3. Party Voter
   1. My party affiliation demands I vote for Trump.
4. Issue Voter
   1. Immigration
   2. Terrorism
   3. Abortion (Supreme Court factor)
   4. Trade deals
   5. Taxes
   6. Jobs
   7. Deficit and Debt
   8. Roll back all this “social experimentation” (another Supreme Court factor)
   9. Other issues . . .

So along my route I stopped at gas stations, ate at diners, and just chatted with as many people as I could.  Heck I grew up in Jersey, and I love a diner to this day.  In 2016, I can be both an overseas educated elite and a man of the American people.

What did I discover as I chit-chatted? (Disclaimer: This was not a scientific study, clearly too regional in scope, not a random sample, etc.)

• The voters (and non-voters) I interacted with mostly talked about the lack of good jobs (a combination of the “Macroeconomic Voter” and the “Issue Voter”).
• I suspect however, that the voting motivations of these people criss-crossed all four categories listed above, even when unstated.  It is just easier to talk about the economy and jobs to strangers.
• “We want our jobs back,” I heard time and again. And Trump, they believe, will bring them “back”. (If you are wondering how I got people to open up, well I tried a variety of methods, one was pretending to be a reporter heading back up North after the election.  Yes I know that was manipulative, sorry!).

My unexpected discovery . . .

Trump voters express lots of fears when you meet with them one to one.  At the campaign rallies I watched it just seemed to me like a bunch of angry people with silly placards and red hats. I forgot that anger is a secondary emotion often rooted in a sense of humiliation or some other underlying emotional condition too painful to express.

So now, however unexpected, Trump voters have hope.  Remember hope in 2008?  Isn’t hope always a good thing?

We all deserve it.  In fact, hope is a powerful human strength, but incredibly dangerous if not rooted in the virtue of an inclusive sense of humanity and justice.

So let’s explore the two sides of hope . . .

Inclusive Hope: This variety appeals to the kind, patient, understanding, yet determined side of all of us, the hope the brings all people together in a common cause, purpose, or mission.

Exclusive Hope: This hope thrives as we cavort with the suspicious, simplistic, anti-empirical side of all of us; this is a hope that divides us, between those deserving and those less deserving of it.

Leaders have a special responsibility in this realm.

Let me elaborate on these two archetypes of hope by drawing on two famous historical examples that transpired within the same year  . . .

Appealing to our Inclusive Hope:

In March of 1933 FDR gave his first inaugural address.  In it he cautioned us to beware of the crippling power of fear.  “Nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror” does not enable people nor governments to make wise and thoughtful decisions to solve much of anything he argued.  The irony was that in 1933 we had so much to be fearful of!  But President Roosevelt was instructing, directing, and teaching us about an alternative to fear by appealing to our sense of inclusive hope for economic well-being.  He encouraged citizens to remain optimistic yet vigilant in the face of extreme adversity.  Our greatest presidents, without exception, have had the strength of inclusive hope in abundant supply.

Appealing to our Exclusive Hope:

In February of 1933 Germany’s “Capitol” building (the Reichstag) was burned to the ground in a deliberate act of arson.  Adolf Hitler used the event (whether he was complicit or not in the event is immaterial to this argument) in order to obtain emergency and draconian powers.  Hitler too promoted hope, but the exclusive kind, declaring that this desire for security and safety could only materialize after pitting one group against another.

Let me remind all of my readers that FDR himself had his own internal battles related to the two types of  hope, Eleanor often serving as his “inclusive hope accentuator”.  There are a few horrible examples on his record that cannot be excused away, however, not least of which is the internment of Japanese-Americans during WWII for the fear that they may “hurt us“.

Almost all of us have the capacity for both Inclusive and Exclusive Hope, you, me, Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, Clinton voters, and Trump voters.  I would argue, for most of us, our default setting is the exclusive variety.  Inclusive Hope requires an acute awareness and dogged determination, by each of us, and by our leaders, to tame our unhealthy predilections for pitting us versus them, in the false hope that we and not they always get the benefit(s).

This week increase your “us” by coming up with your own experiment to reach out to someone you think of as “them”.