Buyer’s Remorse

Buyer’s Remorse

by Marco M. Pardi

“I regret nothing, says arrogance; I will regret nothing, says inexperience.” Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach. Aphorisms

All comments are welcome and all previous posts are open for comment.

In the past few months I’ve read, seen, and personally heard a remarkable number of seemingly otherwise intelligent people expressing regret for having voted an utterly incompetent con man and fraud into the Presidency of the United States. I say seemingly otherwise intelligent because I’m mystified by why they would have bought into the lies and deception and voted that way in the first place. But then, many of these people were “single issue voters”, as in the “Right to Life” crowd – a vile misnomer which should read “Right to Birth” – who hoped this candidate would end abortion and even contraception. In essence, their magical belief in the full humanness of a fertilized egg helped elect an administration with social, military, environmental, anti-science, and foreign affairs policies that doom millions to an early death while destroying the lives of countless species on this planet. Of course, there were other agendas as well, such as those who hated Hillary Clinton but could not articulate a single coherent reason why.

There have been many articles and books published on why we vote the way we do, even strongly against our own best interests. Yet, distilling population data down to the individual with whom you are speaking still leaves a void. I perceive that void as the individual psyche, an amorphous cloud of emotions, biases, prejudices, and beliefs hopefully overseen by a governing body of rational thought. But what happens when the governing body loses its grip?

I’m not a psychologist, although one of the federal agencies for which I worked classified me as “psychological anthropologist” so I could travel widely and freely doing what I do best. But after seven decades of observing and listening I am still occasionally surprised when I hear someone I “know” say, “Well, I voted for Trump but I won’t again.” Is it the person of Trump they are disillusioned with, or have they realized the agenda of the people who ushered Trump into place? A few simple and non-threatening questions often bring out the answer, and usually it is the former: disillusionment with the man. Typically, they didn’t give much thought, if any, to the horde of flesh eating parasites hiding in Trump’s shadow, even after so many of them were dragged into the sunlight and dismissed and/or convicted.

That leaves me with the feeling that this now remorseful person remains vulnerable to the next demagogue that group of parasites loquaciously props in front of us. In sum, no great epiphany has occurred, the person with whom I’m speaking remains the same. So how do we reach the multitudes still out there?

In the early years of the Viet Nam misadventure we tried the “Hearts and Minds” approach, attempting to sway the South Vietnamese population to see us as allies and friends. The Tip of the Spear was the military group known as the Green Berets. Trained in the local language, field medicine, and the fundamentals of the culture, they quickly gained the sobriquet “Armed Anthropologists”. Well, we saw how well that worked out.

But it wasn’t an ill informed policy. Years earlier we saw how the failed Presidential campaign of Adlai Stevenson was brought down by common sentiment labeling him as “effete, an egghead”, and other aspersions directed at his intelligence. Clearly, an appeal to the collective intellect of the American voters was doomed at birth. An appeal to where the voters “lived”, that is, to their feelings, beliefs and emotions, may have worked far better. Facts and logic cannot gain traction in a vacuous mind. The Stevenson campaign failed to recognize that.

We saw repeatedly throughout Donald Trump’s campaign rallies that he aimed for the heart, not the head. As he strutted before his audiences the camera panned over seas of vapid, pre-orgasmic faces waiting suspensefully for his next inane, titillating claim. And the show went on.

Even now, though the rallies have dwindled in attendance for various reasons, the effects are manifest in the numbers of people refusing to wear masks during a nationwide, indeed worldwide pandemic. We so often hear the mythical refrain, “It’s about my personal freedom”, a core value in American life. But it’s not about personal freedom; it’s about one’s sense of responsibility to others. However, that calls for an exercise in logic, albeit simple, and those neural cells are just not active, if there at all.

About a year ago some in-laws and friends came for a visit. We had a mixture of three different languages represented and the accents were quite thick, sometimes making it easier to just drift into another language. One asked me why, after years of speaking English, she still spoke with an accent whereas I had none. I explained the large and universally flexible neural network associated with speech and how, in early speech development, our significant others reward some sounds and discourage others thus rewarding some neural pathways and allowing all the others to fall into disuse and become difficult to bring into use. Essentially, why children are more able to successfully become multi-lingual than are adults. I think the same applies, to some degree, in the development of other – directed logical thinking versus self – directed emotional feeling. If we do not stress thinking of others to children we must not be surprised when they grow into an adult who thinks only of his own wants and needs versus those of others. And I think this applies to “anti-vaxers” and anti-abortion/contraception people as well. In their mythical and magical little worlds they fail to see the damage they do to others, becoming reservoirs for disease, allowing their children to be at risk, and relegating women to the status of brood mares while at the same time voting to cut social and financial support to the resulting children.

Just as we take our time with children as they learn to form and properly employ words, we must do so with the development of logical thought and the calculation of consequences. In fact, this practice would be helpful in immediate ways as children enter school. For example, mathematics is logic expressed as numbers. Of course, the process of learning takes time but the earlier we start the easier it will be. I remember when high schools offered courses such as Home Economics. These should be reinstated nationally as required courses which include in depth learning about the environmental and social impacts and costs of products used in our everyday homes. Sex Education should be taught in every school with an emphasis on contraception and the long term costs of raising a child.

Admittedly, enrolling a formed adult in this process presents far greater challenges. Certainly, the easier course would be to claim these people are beyond repair and just hope the next generation corrects the problem. But the very existence of the next generation is mortally threatened by the actions of this one. There will be those we are tempted to give up on – “He’ll never change…” – and there will be those whose expressed logic is still heavily accented with personal biases, prejudices, and beliefs. But there are ways to start. One simple starting point is with the advertising industry. The messaging has to change from, Do you want this to Do you need this. Every item or consumable over a certain dollar amount must carry an equal time message stating its long term cost, the environmental cost of its production, transport and storage, and the social impact of these costs.

Churches that teach the “Prosperity Gospel”, that some God wants you to be rich and prosper, should be fully taxed in amounts commensurate with the damage to society and the environment their nonsensical myths are bringing. There are no socially redeeming qualities in the wanton destruction of the environment.

So, I recoil internally when I hear someone express remorse over having voted for the voracious locusts now holding most of the power in this country. Far more than what these late-comers feel, I want to know what they will do. I think two of the most overly used words in any language are, “I’m sorry”. Show me, don’t tell me. As the old Hollywood adage goes, Talk’s cheap.