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In 2003, the American novelist Ursula Kroeber Le Guin was made a “Grand Master of Science Fiction” and then (in full recognition of the fact that her work greatly transcended that genre), at the 2014 National Book Awards, she mounted the stage to accept the Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters.

Ursula Le Guin passed away earlier this year at the age of 88. Her importance to literature will be measured not only by the fiction she wrote, with its many thematic concerns in areas such as social relations, the environment and even Taoism, but also in the way she influenced the work of others here and abroad, both in science fiction (well-known writers such as Michael Chabon the United States or Iain Banks and Neil Gaiman in the United Kingdom), and in other genres – Salman Rushdie counted among her admirers.

But in December 2017, toward the end of the first year of the current administration, in one of her last public reflections on the aftermath of human psychology, she wrote some of the most insightful comments of our time:

Le Guin was clearly speaking in the first instance about those who propelled Donald Trump to the White House, but it’s worth considering her remarks in a larger context, that of the current tribal divide in our nation’s political life.

Resist The Urge For Revenge

Those of us who remember the New Deal of FDR and the Democratic Party’s Fair Deal after World War II, as well as Hawaii’s “Democratic Revolution” of 1954, and see them as pinnacles of American government, as laying the groundwork for progress, equality and opportunity (and the better things to come such as the movements for civil rights and gender equity), are today in despair at the systematic destruction of those gains.

But our own anger, taking Le Guin’s formulations, may be misleading us, blinding us to prospects for contact and cooperation with people whom we now see as members of the “other side.”

In particular, we need to understand the attraction for many voters of the kind of populism that Trump retails, why it works and how it works and what we must do to understand those who initially supported and even those who still support him.

The racial resentment and urge for revenge that appear to be among the impulses of those such as members of the Tea Party cannot be part of any honest alliance.

But we may well find that many other motivating factors – declining income, deteriorating health, and problems of identity caused by the socio-economic upheavals in the relentless advance of neo-liberal capitalism at the expense of rural and small town America – can be convincingly addressed by the kinds of policies that we held in high regard under earlier Democratic administrations.

These include the best of Lyndon Johnson (not Vietnam, but the voting rights act, the war on poverty) or even, lest we forget, initiatives that the GOP once backed such as the Clean Water Act or Nixon’s proposal for a health plan that went beyond what today’s Affordable Care Act includes.

We need to understand the attraction for many voters of the kind of populism that Trump retails.

If we are to overcome the threats to our democracy, environment and economy posed by Trump and those among congressional Republicans who enable him, we need to include those who will ultimately suffer the consequences of what he is currently doing. We will not be able to do so if our anger at Trump and his ilk prevents us comprehending the realities of people who, however misguided, voted for him in the first place and how we can speak to the experiences of their daily lives.

It may be instructive that younger voters, millennials and students entering the electorate following the terrible gun violence of recent times, in the majority are naturally inclined toward social inclusion, environmental responsibility, gender equity and much of what earlier liberals and progressives espoused.

And, by the same token, they appear more ready to “reach across the aisle,” than those older among us whose current despondency makes us all too suspicious of our conservative fellow citizens.

Let us then look to these younger Americans and take a page from Ursula Le Guin on subduing anger and seeking comity. They may be the only realistic solution to our current plight. 

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