When Americans stop assuming half the country is racist and start listening to the other half of the country.
“I just learned more about why Kamala Harris didn’t win the election listening you talk than reading The New York Times for a month.”
Meet John.
John voted for Obama twice, left the top of the ticket blank in 2016, voted for Biden in 2020 and cast his vote for Robert F. Kennedy Jr in 2024.
John thinks Trump is “a New York City hustler narcissist who views the world in purely transactional terms”, but he saw a “zero percent chance of real change” under Harris.
I see stories like this a lot. They’re the stories of people on a learning curve.
Listen here. (partially transcribed below)
I’m well educated. I went to Harvard med school… I’m a physician, I have two young kids, and when I think about RFK I think about the status quo and the sense of… you know, my first week of high school was 9/11, my first week of college was (Hurricane) Katrina, the Iraq War 2008… I graduated in ‘09. I’ve kind of gotten used to my government not being sort of truthful with me, as someone who otherwise is hopeful about the role of government and trying to generally be a good person in society.
When I see what RFK is actually saying, that is the status quo I’m sort of talking about. A status quo that has brought us all those things I just mentioned, that has brought us increasing income inequality throughout every administration over the last 30 years… this sort of Alan Greenspan economy of rewarding bad behavior for people who truly just want to make money while every health metric has declined over the last 30 years. Our maternal mortality rate, our infant mortality rate, our overall mortality is declining. Our health metrics are going in the wrong direction pretty much across the board. Our education system has failed, going from 1 to mid-20s the last 30 years, 40 years…
Just sort of this general sense among people in my generation that… everything feels like it’s getting worse. Now I have a 2 and a 5 year old and I think about the future for them. I’m frustrated by the discourse leading up to the election that somehow the left - the left that I was a part of, frankly - somehow thought that people couldn’t see Trump clearly… Trump is a New York City hustler narcissist who views the world in purely transactional terms. Every relationship he has is transactional… It’s not hard to see that. I can see that pretty clearly…
I still had a hard time voting for Trump. I voted for RFK in Tennessee because it’s Tennessee and I was trying to get him over that 5% national threshold to make a third party viable because to me the two party system… is really what’s wrong with our country. That’s why I ended up voting for RFK.
But it’s not like like Trump isn’t known. We can see exactly who he is. I just thought that there was a 1% chance that if someone good could actually get to him, then maybe there’s a 1% chance of real change that could change the last 30 years of status quo. And I saw no chance, a zero percent chance of a Harris Administration changing that broader status quo. Not a 4 year cycle of a new president, but the broader 30-40 year status quo that is failing objectively. And Harris to me, her administration would have had truly zero percent chance of changing that. A Trump administration, if someone like RFK, or to me, Tulsi Gabbard, are these people that are authentic and principled if nothing else. They are seemingly saying what they actually think. And some of it seems good… then maybe there’s a 1% chance that they could convince him to do some good stuff vs. the zero percent chance of it happening with Harris…
I really appreciate this platform… I used to watch Fox News home page and then CNN home page until it drove me crazy. And then I would follow Trump War Room and Kamala’s Wins on Twitter until that drove be crazy. Because it’s just like people speaking to two different countries, and that doesn’t get us anywhere. So this is such a light in that darkness.
… Covid got things so wrong, and I say that as a physician who was pushing pro everything - vaccine, masking - and a lot of it not being right. There were really well intended people, but the data on the vaccine for young men, masking, lockdowns… We got stuff wrong and there was no admission from the main core of the Democratic party that anything was done wrong. And I think that drove a lot of people crazy. And it’s just like just admit it.
And so are we missing that this is more than just anti-media bias for "the Rogan types”… Rogan who was a Bernie Sanders supporter… We can not see that so many of the trusted institutions are openly willing to lie, even when they get stuff wrong.
And something has to change.
John was clearly not alone.
Maybe we can learn something from people, even if we don’t 100% agree with them?
Evan Barker, a former Democratic party fundraiser, came to a similar conclusion. In fact, based on her observations from inside the party, Barker calls the Democratic Party “the most racist organization in America.”
People like RFK Jr. and Tulsi Gabbard, who were actively working within the Democratic party to change the world for the better, realized they had to walk away, and even support the other side, to facilitate change.
And, who knows? We might have to make shifts like that again. As much as we’d like to settle down and get comfortable with the difficult choices we’ve already made, there’s no room for complacency on the learning curve. Real growth is full of identity crises and uncomfortable introspection.
Part of the trick, I think, is not to seek agreement, but instead resonance.
It’s easy to get stuck on the parts that don’t align, but that’s the pitfall. The resonance- that well of good vibrations and connectivity - is the fertile ground for growth and change. I think that, when we feel it, we’re tapping into something cosmic and spiritual. And I often feel it when people pause to consider someone else’s point of view. Curiosity, I think, can readily foster resonance. Listening is magical in this capacity.
I come back to Justine Bateman on this one.
For those of us who wish to grow, stagnation is unbearable. And ultimately destructive.
So there’s been a stagnation. Things haven’t been moving forward… in the arts, in philosophy, in politics, in medicine. In anything. And I don’t mean technical things, technological advances… I mean innovation with your thought, with what is coming into your spirit from God, magic, the universe, whatever you want to call it. That’s been stagnated for at least four years. And now that’s changed and that’s what I’m really excited about. I’ve been waiting for this moment for a long time.
I can’t quite shed the sticky political slime that has engulfed everything lately, but it’s a little less heavy and I feel a little less occluded. Sunshine helps. Good conversation helps. And resonance seems to vaporize it.
I’ll be seeking those things out as part of this experiment.
In the spirit of all of that, I’m sending you love.
Look at Trump’s family.
No Whoopi Goldberg types. No Blue Hairs. No Meth-Fentanyl Heads.
Either due to innate repulsive qualities of these people ..
Or becuz of White Privilege >> Racism & Hate.
Far easier to blame racism/hate. More political upside. More feel-good fun.