The Politics of Resentment

Sheesh – things are moving so rapidly in the world around us these days. I started this post on Tuesday but didn’t have time to finish and it already feels a little dated. But I’m posting it anyway.

Monday I felt a push/pull about posting something to mark MLK day. On the one hand, what could speak more to social justice? On the other hand, white people have appropriated MLK’s story, diluted it, made it for and about them when his focus and purpose was about the liberation of African Americans. I saw all the beautiful and powerful quotes posted on social media and I decided I didn’t need to add anything to them. The best way we white people can celebrate and appreciate MLK is to fight for his real ideals – not the sanitized, feel good version; the hard-hitting urgency for change version. And to keep making sure there is space for people of color to have access to his vision and the model of his leadership. It’s really not about us, except to the extent it helps us learn to look inward, take apart the power structures we helped build, and get out of the way.  

I’ve been thinking about resentment for the last week or so. I have been reading Katherine Cramer Walsh’s book, The Politics of Resentment, which chronicles the political worldviews of a specific slice of rural Wisconsin residents during the Obama years, and including the passage of Obamacare and the rise of Scott Walker. She spent years participating in small discussion groups with mostly white, rural, older/retired men. She characterizes their politics as informed by a rural consciousness – they disdain the cities, feel that government doesn’t speak to or serve their interests, and see public employees as the symbol of their alienation from power. They are derisive of the perspectives and compensation for the teachers that teach their own kids and people who work for the Department of Natural Resources, which they see as undermining rural ways of life. They see that rural economies are in decline and resent public employees’ having living wages and benefits. But they also believe that elites in government will never serve their interests, so they tend toward a particular kind of small-government ideology that has more to do with feeling unseen and unheard than with believing in small government per se.

It was hard reading, in part because I have lived through this political fight, and in part because I found her analysis so frustrating. What about working moms or teachers, or the public employees themselves (thousands of them) who live in rural areas? And what about rural people of color? I mean, yes, Wisconsin’s rural communities are mostly white. But more and more there are latinx farmworkers, native peoples, rural Hmong people. Their voices go mostly un-heard. Moreover, the undercurrent of racism in the conversations she heard is noted, but not analyzed in any real way. White people acknowledging racism and then saying “but it’s more than that” is a tired old trope we need to retire. We have to stop acting like we’re the arbiters of how racism informs our views. We’re so deep in it, we can’t really see it.

Nonetheless, there’s no question that in a lot of America, resentment is one of the primary political threads. The Trump phenomenon is based on it – on white people resenting anyone around them who has anything they want. Authenticity. Credibility. Economic or political power. Cultural significance. Even the ability to capture the attention of the media, to stand in the spotlight.

While I found myself arguing against the worldview she documents, I also started thinking about how we could use this information to build something that connects people across rural/urban divides. Like – where is the analysis of how the corporate-driven economy has created a crisis for rural America? Who is building that analysis and using it to drive a more transformational politics? I know that People’s Action is investing heavily in rural organizing. I am hopeful for something different that can arise from that work.

The video that surfaced this weekend of a group of young white men, catholic high school students, essentially taunting and baiting a Native elder while he sang near them – there’s an angle of resentment there too. Resentment, entitlement and white supremacy. [Miss me with all the arguments about how misunderstood they were; I’ve watched the videos and read enough analysis to make up my own mind.]

I started thinking about what the philosophy of yoga tells us about resentment, and it is actually remarkably resonant with MLK’s philosophy. Like parts of the Bible, the yoga sutras pre-date the Christian era, but they feel incredibly relevant to what we experience today. In yoga, five afflictions that prevent happiness are deeply rooted in the structure of the brain. These experiences and the imprints they create are intrinsic to who we are, they are part of being human: spiritual ignorance (mistaking the transient for the permanent), ego, attachment to pleasure, aversion to pain, and clinging to life. Attachment and aversion can create resentment. I want something better for myself that I don’t have; I don’t like that you might have it. The yoga practice, at its core, is to help us unlearn attachment and become indifferent to pleasure and pain, and not mistake the current situation for a permanent situation.

And over and over again, the sutras reinforce the importance of cultivating a specific mindset: friendliness, compassion, loving kindness and detachment. Those are the virtuous attitudes, not only because of what they do for other people and the world around us, but also because they are key to our own liberation.

On Monday I keep seeing the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. quote, “Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that.”

The thing about Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. was his ability to speak to the higher purpose of humanity, but not rely only on that. He wasn’t trying to persuade the haters, he built a powerful and strategic movement to defeat them.

And that’s what we have to do. Keep our own house in order – personally and spiritually. Confront violence and hatred with love and detachment. Not only love for the bad ones, but love for ourselves and our people who suffer with their actions. And then build a powerful strategic movement to defeat the haters.

With love, gratitude and solidarity forever.