“No matter how politically successful either the left or the right becomes, our democracy will always have some version of the other side.” –Steve McIntosh

I’ve been reading a lot of lengthy, in-depth write-ups lately claiming to have diagnosed the Trump phenomenon. Two of the better ones I’ve read were written by Amanda Taub, at Vox, and Max Ehrenfreund, at the Washington Post. The gist of Taub’s article, in which she cites research from numerous political scientists, is that there is a certain subset of American’s who hold authoritarian tendencies/ideologies, and “prioritize social order and hierarchies, which bring a sense of control to a chaotic world. Challenges to that order — diversity, influx of outsiders, breakdown of the old order — are experienced as personally threatening because they risk upending the status quo order they equate with basic security.” This theory is similar to the one that my friend Tad Delay (coming from a critical theory and psychoanalytic background) has been kicking around.

Ehrenfreund’s article contains some other insights, from psychologists who supposedly analyzed Trump supporters, that are probably just as accurate in their own way. He claims that the people who like Trump like him mainly for three reasons (which are essentially fundamental, universal and uncomfortable facts about the human mind): 1) we like big talkers 2) we like people who tell us that our problems are simple and easy to solve, even when they aren’t, and 3) we don’t like people who don’t look like us.

What’s really interesting to me is that both of these articles, if they’re taken together, make up what integral theorists have been saying for quite a while with regard politics, values, and worldviews; namely, that distinct cultural worldview systems exist for people as well as groups of people (cultures and sub-cultures). According to the Institute for Cultural Evolution (ICE), “Here in America, the worldviews of traditionalism, modernism, and postmodernism each vie for allegiance of the population, with modernists comprising a majority of approximately fifty-percent, and the rest about evenly divided between traditionalism and postmodernism.” I am personally skeptical about traditionalism and postmodernism being evenly divided; my feeling is that traditionalism makes up a much larger percentage than postmodernism does here in the U.S. Anyway, regardless, the Integral insight that’s so important here, which Ehrenfreund’s article seems to also imply, is that if we take seriously this idea that distinct cultural worldviews/value systems exist, we should also seriously consider the notion that these are stages of psycho-social development which all people and all cultures go through in one form or another, therefore each stage is always with us in some fundamental way. This additional piece can add another level of explanatory power to the Trump phenomenon, I feel.

I’ve heard integral thinkers like Jeff Salzman describe Trump as speaking primarily from a red center of gravity. This “warrior” mentality comes through loud and clear in Trump. The way I hear people talk about Trump is similar to the way they might talk about someone like Rambo, the archetypal strong man who heroically emerges to save the day from our enemies. There is no guilt associated with saying exactly what you think or taking what you want for the red warrior mind-set. The world is their oyster. Power is exercised as domination and this stage of development is, for better or worse, ethnocentric and action oriented.

If we’re to believe that over fifty percent of the U.S. is at some form of Modernist development, then it shouldn’t be a surprise that Trump’s Red warrior rhetoric speaks stronger to Modernist and Traditionalist mentalities than it does to Postmodern or later stages of development. After all, the Orange Modernist stage is only twice removed from the Red Warrior stage, and only one step away from the Amber Traditionalist stage. The primal, fundamental fear driven topics of war, terrorism, immigration, and ordering the chaotic economy that Trump hits on over and over again easily speak to and, as Taub points out in her article, “activate” certain authoritarian tendencies, which is indeed a Red warrior characteristic that we probably all harbor to some degree or another (e.g. take away the civilized, industrial niceties provided by Modernity ((and the stages before it)) and we might see how fast progressive Postmoderns revert back to their tribal, Red warrior tendencies and demand strong leaders to keep them safe…((The Walking Dead does a great job exploring these sorts of themes, by the way))).

The two articles I cited above give great analyses of some dimensions of the Trump phenomenon, but they ultimately fail on providing any sort of perspective on how to overcome or deal with the situation. The WaPo article comes the closet to any kind of satisfying conclusion, indicating that what draws people to Trump are proclivities that are potentially in all humans. This would be the integral claim as well. Each stage of development contains within it the previous stage of development, both it’s dignities and disparities (and yes, each stage has pros and cons and it seems coherent to say that we couldn’t have “Postmodernism” without “Modernism”). Although I am by no means confident or certain that it is the best approach, integral philosophers like Steve McIntosh are putting forth proposals for ways to get past this perceived log jam in psycho-social development. Their solution is essentially that we should attempt to convince people that polarities are natural occurrences and that they don’t necessarily need to be positive-negative; we can, and maybe should, conceive of our current political polarization as a positive-positive type of polarity, a “form of permanently recurring opposition wherein the best of both sides are worthy of preservation.”

The solution McIntosh and ICE put forth is, admittedly, “unusually inclusive,” and I tend to agree that championing the growth of both sides can be warranted because, “the improvement of one is ultimately contingent on the improvement of the other.” McIntosh writes, “No matter how politically successful either the left or the right becomes, our democracy will always have some version of the other side. Therefore, instead of alienating or vilifying close to half of America, I think we stand a much greater chance of making things meaningfully better by actually helping both sides evolve into more mature and responsible versions of themselves.”

Again, I’m not overly convinced of the integral solution to this mess. They could be completely wrong about everything, but I do give them credit for at least attempting to put forth a constructive plan to help move things along. However, It’s easy to say that we all need to just help each other grow and mature and tease apart dignities from disparities, but this is really hard to put into action when white supremacists are congregating in large numbers at Trump rallies and spewing hatred. Maybe there are other solutions to this mess. If so, I’m all ears.