Fight of the Century: Muhammad Ali vs. Joe Frazier

There are primarily two types of attacks currently being wielded against Donald Trump: the first is shame, the second is truth. Neither has proven to be very effective — but why?

Why Shame Fails

Trump opponents have expended enormous effort to try and shame him, his associates, and his supporters. None of it has been effective. Shame tactics include: emotional manipulation, moralistic finger-wagging, character assassinations, and ad hominem attacks. The weakness of shame as a political tactic is that it attempts to change behavior through psychological coercion, and it is always destructive even when it works. Trump sees shame for the manipulative tactic that it is, and he avoids it by either steadfast denial or by humanizing his flaws. He then immediately launches a strong counterattack by pointing out any hypocrisy in his opponents, making the accusation of shame itself shameful, which is pretty devastating.

Even when shame works, it is only temporary because it just buries the problem deeper. Shame relies on taboos that tend to shut down conversation without really solving them. It is an immensely regressive strategy that tends to obfuscate rather than clarify, allowing problems to quietly fester only to appear later in a more ferocious form. In order to create lasting change, we must honestly reveal and reckon with problems as openly as possible, and stop pretending shame is in any way constructive or progressive.

Why Truth Fails

Trump seemingly cannot be held accountable. Liberals believe the scientific method overrules human judgement, and thus reason and evidence-based truth is inherently attached to political thought and governance. Liberals have also wrongly assumed that facts cannot be challenged in a political environment. However, it is through debate that facts become politicized. A good analysis of the best data still requires a strong political argument, but unfortunately, there is no thesis offered by liberals against Trump other than character-based and moral-based accusations — simply data-driven shame tactics.

Trump easily rebukes these attacks by simply offering an opposing thesis and a different analysis of the same data, and by questioning the methods used. This counterattack works because he knows the liberal attack is weak and that science (even bad science) requires a period of serious review. Even if nobody ultimately buys what he is selling, it gives Trump plausible deniability, a way to deflect and stall, and affords him time to change position later. Trump knows how to use the benefit of the doubt to his advantage, even manufacturing doubt out of thin air if necessary.

Politics is about power

The fundamental mistake is that the left has forgotten what it means to be political. Instead of seeing politics as a struggle for social power, they attempt to dictate the rules and language of an imaginary political game. It is like a referee shouting out boxing rules during a knife fight and calling it progress. Nobody is listening.

Trump is reminding the world that politics is not about facts at all, but that it is a purely social construct. It is about power and how it is thrust upon others, whether they like it or not. Politics is only limited by our imagination about what is possible or not possible in a future society. Facts are irrelevant, because they represent the past.

Trump’s perspective on politics is accurate. The problem is liberals have completely forgotten that politics is a struggle for power, and are getting steamrolled by Trump because of it.

So where do we go from here?

First, we have to stop repeating the same mistakes and expecting a different outcome. The attitude many liberals have taken post-election is to continue shame tactics while simultaneously attempting to revive a broken Democratic Party. The denial and refusal to accept reality is not only futile, it has now become toxic, with reactionaries and conspiracy theorists proposing any number of explanations that cannot be concretely proven nor disproved. Meanwhile real people are suffering, real people are on the streets protesting, yet this powerful energy that could be harnessed for change is lacking any sort of unified leadership or direction.

To challenge Trump, a new political vanguard has to emerge that 1) inspires through imagination and critique 2) realizes politics is about gaining social power and 3) uses whatever tools (including but not limited to “facts”) available to lead an authentic people’s movement towards shared goals.

The challenge of any social transformation is to overcome the traumas of history and to avoid repeating past mistakes. Looking at history as a series of struggles, we see human beings continually transforming and liberating themselves from their own oppression: from tribalism to feudalism, and again from feudalism to capitalism. We remain simultaneously freed of a feudal past and yet oppressed in the present by capitalism, and we must resolve to continue struggling and imagining a better world beyond the present, a future where inequality and subjugation of one group by another does not exist.

To develop a strong left, we must realize that we are simply inheriting the unfinished mission our ancestors — emancipating ourselves from the circumstances that enslave us. We must cast a relentless critical eye towards the past and present, and use historical consciousness to clarify the concrete political tasks needed in the present. It is this ongoing cycle of studying history, developing a strong thesis, clarifying political tasks, and applying them in praxis that creates the momentum for social change — the true driving force of political change.