In a previous post published here in October, I wrote this essay, in which I began to piece together what I had hoped would be a useful perspective through which we liberal Buddhists might take a more compassionate view of our various friends, colleagues, and family members who have aligned themselves with the MAGA populist movement. I proposed that we make an effort to see them as being in the grip of what I termed “collective reactivity” brought on by their belonging to a larger socio-economic group that was bonding over a shared aversion to certain changing cultural mores.
I based my hypothesis on the secular Buddhist teacher Stephen Batchelor’s concept of “reactivity”, which he defined in his 2015 book After Buddhism: Rethinking the Dharma for a Secular Age as every human being’s natural reaction to the continuous stream of events that life presents—we all try to hold on to that which we find pleasant, and we all try to avoid that which we find unpleasant.
In expanding Batchelor’s concept of individual reactivity to my notion of “collective reactivity,” I proposed that every human being is subject not only to reactivity that arises internally with our private thoughts and feelings, but also to reactivity that arrives externally as an intangible emotional sense we share with others in the various social groupings to which we belong.
I concluded my essay on a hopeful note, as I considered whether or not having a better understanding of the collective reactivity shared by MAGA adherents could offer those of us who don’t share their views some insight into how they’ve come to embrace the MAGA ideology, and if so, could we then put such insight to use in learning how to communicate more effectively with them.
Now, this recent op-ed piece by New York Times opinion columnist David Brooks, “The Rise of Right-Wing Nihilism,” has prompted me to take a less optimistic look back at my earlier essay. What I’ve found most challenging, and even a bit troubling, is Brooks’ assertion that we progressives may bear some responsibility for creating the very conditions which are driving the MAGA world into the collective reactivity that I was attempting to illuminate in my essay.
Brooks is anything but optimistic in his assessment of the current situation vis-a-vis the progressive community and the MAGA community. He opens his essay by inviting his Democratic readers to participate in a little thought experiment:
“Imagine you woke up one morning and all your media sources were produced by Christian nationalists. You sent your kids off to school and the teachers were espousing some version of Christian nationalism. You turned on your sports network and your late-night comedy, and everyone was preaching Christian nationalism.
“That’s a bit how it feels to be conservative in [some regions of the United States] today — to feel drenched by a constant downpour of progressive sermonizing.”
I experienced quite the cringe at reading that phrase “progressive sermonizing”. Being a “sermonizer” is completely alien to how I wish to be seen by others, whether we’re talking about my fellow progressives or my MAGA-supporting relatives. Could Brooks be onto something here? Is this how progressives are seen by the MAGA world?
He then moves on from his thought experiment to a real-life occurrence. Reporting on a conference he had recently helped organize with the intention of fostering deeper connections among members of various local communities, he writes:
“We made sure that at least 30 percent of the participants were from red states. But during our discussions, the progressives in the room seemed to assume that everybody there thought like them. They dominated the conversation and left almost no space for other opinions. I watched the red-state folks just hunch over. For three days they barely spoke.”
Once again, I felt a cringe. I like to think of myself and my fellow progressives as people concerned with other people’s wellbeing and prosperity. And yet here, in Brooks’ report, we come across as self-righteous folks oblivious to anyone else’s point of view except our own.
It’s these two personal cringes that I want to focus on now, leaving aside the debatable points as to whether or not Brooks’ thought experiment is a valid exercise, and whether or not his report on the conference is a fair and unbiased assessment.
In both cases, what’s making me cringe is the visceral feeling that it could very possibly be the case that the progressive movement (to which I consider myself a lifelong enthusiastic subscriber) has unwittingly, and to the detriment of us all, failed to pay sufficient attention to the unintended consequences of our pursuit of the progressive causes we support. Even more to the point, have we failed to pay appropriate attention to the unintended consequences that have resulted in those cases where we’ve been successful?
Let’s consider a few of those successes from the past couple of decades—the establishment of DEI initiatives across a vast number of large corporations and higher education institutions, the legalization of same-sex marriage, and the growing interest in providing appropriate support and care for young transgender individuals.
Next, let’s take note of how all three of these past successes are currently suffering fierce attacks – and, in the case of DEI, a complete undoing – by the right-wing zealots of the Trump regime. And let’s note how the MAGA universe is cheering each of these setbacks, which some of them enthusiastically label “owning the libs”.
And finally, taking a page from David Brooks’ article above, let’s do a thought experiment. Let’s imagine that progressive candidates sweep the 2026 midterms and the 2028 presidential elections and successfully reverse all the above undoings from the Trump years.
Where would we all be then? More likely than not, I fear, we’d be right back where the cycle started – progressives cheering, MAGA jeering.
I’m not suggesting that I don’t want to restore all the progressive gains that have been, or are being, lost during this presidency. I absolutely do want to see all of them restored. As soon as possible.
But I also absolutely want to see all of us—my fellow liberal Buddhists and my MAGA-supporting friends—living in a world where disagreement over issues leads to dialogue with each other rather than demonization of each other. Or, to paraphrase Barack Obama’s exhortation from a few years ago, before our politics had polarized to today’s insane boiling point, “We can disagree without being disagreeable.”
How we get to such a world, and if getting there is even possible, are subjects for future posts. For now, let me conclude with the observation that one way we almost certainly won’t get to it is by failing to recognize that we all coexist in a complex interdependent world of causes and conditions.
A world in which one side’s success is always the other side’s setback.
A world in which David Brook’s factual conference report hits home, and in which his fictional thought experiment rings true.
In future posts, I hope to explore how secular Buddhism’s teachings on generosity, compassion, and wisdom might help us work toward transforming this world from a place where we settle for demonizing each other into a place where we strive for understanding each other.