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Fade to black: US President Donald Trump at the White House in early 2018. (Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Fade to black: US President Donald Trump at the White House in early 2018. (Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

PoliticsJanuary 10, 2020

Please consider paying WAY less attention to US politics this year

Fade to black: US President Donald Trump at the White House in early 2018. (Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)
Fade to black: US President Donald Trump at the White House in early 2018. (Photo: JIM WATSON/AFP via Getty Images)

I thought that by being super-informed about the US political process and arguing about it online I could influence the outcome, somehow. Which, obviously, I couldn’t, writes Danyl Mclauchlan.

I’ve been addicted to US politics for most of my life. It’s an easy drug for political nerds to get hooked on: American elections are very dramatic, and as of late very weird, and they can have world historical stakes, or at least they always feel like they do. And their media and culture industry is so vast – “hegemonic”, as the kids say – that it just swamps ours and we end up being deluged with whatever the Americans are preoccupied with, which, every four years, including this year, is their presidential election.

But maybe we shouldn’t really care about American politics? Late last year I was waiting for the bus, eavesdropping on a litter of undergrad students who were arguing about the Democratic Party nomination. Some of them supported Kamala Harris because she was a woman of colour, and some of them supported Bernie and hated Kamala because she was “a fucking cop”. And it suddenly struck me as weird that people were so informed about the nominees and internal processes of a political party they weren’t members of, in a country they didn’t live in and couldn’t vote in.

Back in 2004, in the very early days of political blogging, I got obsessed with the Democratic candidacy. I supported this guy called Howard Dean, who’d opposed the US invasion of Iraq, and I spent many hours reading about Dean and the nomination process and the delegates and superdelegates and Super Tuesday. I felt devastated when Dean lost to John Kerry, who then lost the general election to George W Bush, who now enjoys a post-presidential image as a sort of amiable doofus but was regarded as even more demonic than Trump at the time, at least in all the blogs and leftwing partisan media I compulsively consumed.

Our hobbies and interests don’t have to be productive. They probably shouldn’t be. Some people like fishing; some people play bridge; some people follow politics. And that’s all fine. But I didn’t see my US politics obsession as a hobby. I thought it was morally worthy to know everything about Dean’s campaign and to hate his rivals. I convinced myself that having strong opinions about American politics was, somehow, a form of activism. There’s this mistake which we make – and by “we” I mean “me”, but maybe you, too – in which we naively think that learning about something gives us control over it, and I thought that by being super-informed about the US political process and arguing about it online I could influence the outcome, somehow. Which, obviously, I couldn’t.

It’s stressful being emotionally invested in something you have no agency over. Really: this is almost the textbook definition of a stress trigger in the clinical psychology literature. And there’s this vicious cycle where you start following some jaw-dropping Washington drama – Russia-gate, the Kavanaugh hearing, impeachment – and get stressed, then dive in even deeper based on the fallacy that additional knowledge will give you agency, and you just get more invested and more stressed. A couple of weeks ago I talked to someone who was genuinely furious to the point of losing sleep about something Trump had tweeted about Greta Thunberg, and I think more people should consider not paying attention to what Trump tweets about Greta Thunberg.

US politics is very unlike New Zealand politics. The leaders, parties, political systems, issues and electorates are all utterly different. But I worry that we’re getting so saturated with US coverage that it’s easier and easier to conflate the two. The most extreme example of this is the accused Christchurch mosque mass murderer – I note with some pleasure that I legitimately do not remember his name – whose manifesto barely even mentioned New Zealand but who claimed that his atrocity was motivated by a desire to provoke gun reform in the US, based on the premise that this would provoke a violent response against the US government.

Less appallingly, we (allegedly) have a fake news crisis and a “free speech on campus-crisis”, both US manufactured phenomena, so now we have these crisis too. And there’s an increasingly apocalyptic tone to some of our domestic political conversation, a tone which is ubiquitous in the highly polarised, very dysfunctional environment of American political debate but which sounds bizarre given the comparatively low stakes and centrist dominated context of New Zealand. We’re the eighth happiest country in the entire world according to the UN’s 2019 World Happiness Report. That doesn’t mean everything is perfect, that things can’t get better, but when I hear academics and commentators announce that we’re trapped in a neoliberal hell or a socialist dystopia, or that the snake-like hordes of immigrants are ruining everything, I suspect they’re imitating the rhetoric they hear from whatever US pundits or thinkers or podcasters they admire. Our cadres of eager revolutionaries need to calm down; go for a walk and leave their phones at home.

There’s a great Borges story, Tlön, Uqbar, Orbis Tertius, about a conspiracy of intellectuals who decide to change the world, and they do this by (spoiler) writing an encyclopedia which describes a perfect fictional world: its history, languages, philosophy and art. And these are so fascinating that people study them instead of our own. By the end of the story our world is gradually becoming the fictional one. We obviously can’t “become” America, but we can become a worse place by confusing that country’s highly dramatic but fractured and unhappy state with our own.

I’ve found that Trump makes it easier to ignore US politics. He’s an attention monster; his style is about provocation; outrage; drowning everything else out. And you can either buy into this and react to everything he says, which is what he wants you to do, or disengage. Tune him out. You can’t completely mute him, of course, but I’ve spent the last year regarding US politics as white noise; traffic on a distant highway, and this is much nicer than existing in a perpetual state of outrage and terror. Trump can be outrageous and horrible and dominate the news cycle longer than you can stay sane. The only agency we have is the ability to ignore him.

Keep going!
Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern have responded markedly differently to disaster. Images: Screengrab; Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern have responded markedly differently to disaster. Images: Screengrab; Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

PoliticsJanuary 9, 2020

How should leaders respond to disasters? Be visible, offer comfort – and don’t force handshakes

Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern have responded markedly differently to disaster. Images: Screengrab; Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images
Scott Morrison and Jacinda Ardern have responded markedly differently to disaster. Images: Screengrab; Hagen Hopkins/Getty Images

Authenticity matters more than anything, writes Rosemary Williamson of the University of New England, an expert on leaders’ differing responses to catastrophic events.

Prime Minister Scott Morrison has been harshly criticised for being on holiday in Hawaii as the catastrophic bushfires were burning Australia.

Since his return, he has visited stricken communities – most recently, on Kangaroo Island. He has acknowledged the emotional toll on victims and promised practical support.

But the criticism continues. Every detail of the prime minister’s performance is being scrutinised via the 24/7 news cycle and social media. There is plenty of scope for perceived missteps, and little tolerance of them.

Disaster of any kind throws qualities of leadership – or the perceived lack thereof – under the spotlight. By what criteria, then, do we evaluate a leader’s performance at such times? What do we look for?

Criticised for being out of touch, Scott Morrison made a visit to Kangaroo Island to tour the fire damage and meet with locals. David Mariuz/AAP

How Jacinda Ardern got it right

These are questions that have guided my research on how prime ministers have historically connected with Australians during times of peril.

During crises, people expect two things, broadly speaking. One is practical information, advice and support to minimise the risk faced by those directly impacted. The other is “humanistic communication” – or, the ability to offer comfort.

Last March, New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern showed both of these qualities in her decisive response to the massacre of 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch.

She immediately provided detailed information and promised aid and tighter gun control measures. And she unambiguously aligned all New Zealanders with the Muslim community by what she said – “They are us” – and by standing with community leaders and comforting those in distress.

Importantly, Ardern also wore a headscarf when meeting the families of victims. This was seen as a strong and culturally sensitive statement of solidarity and support – a mark of good political leadership.

Women across New Zealand wore headscarves in solidarity with the victims of the attacks after Ardern’s gesture. SNPA Pool/EPA

Being on the ground to see themselves

Australian leaders have long shown strength in times of need, but the way they do so has changed over time. Today, there’s much more emphasis on being visible.

Following the Black Sunday bushfires in Victoria in 1926, for example, The Age printed a speech by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce in which he promised federal government aid and praised the heroism and altruism of Australians.

When the Black Friday fires devastated the state 13 years later, The Age quoted an “appalled” Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, who promised aid and expressed his “heartfelt sympathy” to victims.

But nothing was said in the newspapers back then about either prime minister interacting directly with victims.

A leader wouldn’t get away with that these days. Since televisions became ubiquitous in people’s homes, it’s become necessary for leaders to be on the ground following a disaster, surveying damage and consoling victims.

Prime Minister Harry Holt, a savvy user of the media in the early years of television, travelled to Tasmania in the aftermath of the Black Tuesday fires in 1967. Holt said he had to go to see for himself, to better understand people’s experience and needs. A detailed study of the 1967 bushfire response notes that Holt’s visit, while short, “caught the imagination” of journalists, who reported his reaction to the devastation in vivid detail.

This is what we now expect. Visits to disaster sites have become rituals vital to crisis management and a fixture of disaster reporting.

Listening to victims

For a prime minister, such visits are also a chance to express those inherent qualities of “Australianness” that guarantee a full recovery. Everything that is said and done matters, which is why small details are heavily scrutinised.

People do not expect to be held at arm’s length on these occasions. Expressions of empathy are often reinforced by physical contact, even hugs.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd demonstrated this following fires in Victoria in 2009, as did John Howard in the wake of the fires that swept through Canberra in 2003. They shook hands, patted backs and embraced survivors and emergency service workers.

John Howard comforting a fire victim in a Canberra suburb in 2003. Pool/AAP

Others have got it completely wrong. Among his many missteps in his response to Hurricane Katrina, President George W Bush delayed returning to Washington from his vacation by two whole days. An image of him surveying the damage from Air Force One then backfired – a decision Bush later called a “huge mistake”.

When Hurricane Harvey devastated Texas in 2017, President Donald Trump was likewise criticised for paying too little attention to victims when he toured the site. And after the Grenfell Tower fire in London, UK Prime Minister Theresa May admitted that not meeting residents on her first visit was a mistake.

Misjudging what type of response is welcome from a leader also risks being seen as symptomatic of poor leadership, of being out of touch with the people. As we saw recently with Morrison, not everybody appreciates a handshake.

Stilettos and camouflage jackets

Even what a leader wears may be important. First Lady Melania Trump, for instance, was widely mocked for wearing stiletto heels to tour the Harvey devastation.

And when Prime Minister Julia Gillard went to Queensland in early 2011 following extensive flooding and held a press conference with Premier Anna Bligh, some commentators focused on the differences in their attire. Gillard, with her tidy suit, was criticised for not striking the right note. Bligh’s more casual appearance, meanwhile, had the look of someone more in touch with the suffering of the people.

Earlier this year, Morrison was also faulted for wearing a military camouflage jacket when touring a north Queensland flood zone, with some saying he was “hamming it up” for the cameras.

Morrison visiting flood victims in Townsville last February. Dave Acree/AAP

Authenticity matters more than anything

The reactions to Morrison’s handling of the bushfires shows how important these qualities are in our presidents and prime ministers and how they will continue to influence perceptions of leadership in times of crisis.

Just as every leader is different, every disaster also requires a distinct approach. Each demands quick and sensitive judgements about what’s appropriate for the occasion. Reaction to any perceived errors of judgement will be swift and will spread quickly.

Above all, we look for authenticity in these moments, rather than obviously scripted photo opportunities. And in times of crisis, we’re more attuned to those out-of-touch moments when authenticity seems to be lacking.The Conversation

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

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