"Well she turned me into a newt!....I got better."

This scene from Monty Python and the Holy Grail encapsulates the absurdity of a significant facet of our political dialog right now. Steve M. of No More Mister Nice Blog fame has more to say about an upcoming JD Vance campaign stop, involving a pastor who is claiming that Kamala Harris is a witch, and seems to be hell-bent on claiming that those of us not in the Trump camp are demon-possessed. Read through it all, and take a look at the embedded Twitter posts (I refuse to use whatever name a certain mad billionaire calls it now). It is truly theatre of the absurd. 

The premise of Steve M.'s post is spot on. The usual scolds on legacy media, including the nominally liberal scolds, keep on telling us that we have to meet Trump's true believers where they are in order to persuade them to at least hear you out. I'll get back to the merits of that in a moment. But first, we need to look at this specific political environment in which we find ourselves. If your goal is to change minds, and your first impulse is to meet the followers of this pastor JD Vance is appearing with who already are adamantly convinced that the standard bearer for your party is a witch and that you are demon-possessed as well, it's not going to go well. So yeah, if you are trying to meet those who are completely untethered to basic reality, you have just set yourself up for failure. Full stop.

Maybe another way of putting it is like this: social psychologists who study attitudes and persuasion found out ages ago that there are limits to how well received your persuasive message will be. Much depends on how much daylight there is between your position and that of the other person. If there is not a lot of daylight between your perspectives, you have a shot at persuading one another. Otherwise, good luck. I'm oversimplifying things considerably here, but that should be good enough for our purposes. People who believe that you, your party, and your candidates are witches or otherwise demon-possessed are lost. You will never reach them. Don't bother trying.

Having said that, I promised to come back to the concept of meeting people where they are, which under more sane circumstances is actually a reasonably sound concept. There are people who have been left behind after over four decades of neoliberal economics. Their communities have suffered. Hence they have legitimate grievances and concerns. As someone who lives in one of many so-called flyover states, and often in rural or near rural areas, I've seen first hand the damage done since the Reagan era. Engaging with those of us who have fallen behind is worth doing as long as it is apparent that we can agree on some facts on the ground and any supernatural gobbledygook is avoided. Talk about the kitchen table issues that affect those in communities that have been damaged by decades of neglect, and listen to concerns in the process. That might not win these potential voters in great numbers this election cycle, but maybe it cuts into some losses. More importantly, it's a way of rebuilding trust. To the credit of the Harris-Walz campaign, they are doing precisely that. 

Whatever it is that JD Vance is doing is nuts. We can call him out on that. We can call Trump out on his crap. We can make it clear that there is nothing even remotely American about the Christian Nationalists' agenda for us. And yet at the same time we can reach out to those who are rational (there are plenty who avoid all the weirdness) and maybe change a mind or two for this election. In a normal election cycle, maybe Kristof's scolding would seem worth considering. In this era, he can be safely ignored. And the weirdos Trump and Vance pal around with? They are a threat to our democracy, but they have no serious solutions that make sense in the 21st century. Let's admit that much, and move forward because the reality is that we don't have much choice.