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Authenticity
Trump, Sanders and the Longing for Authenticity
Our alienation from one another leads us to mistake rudeness for authenticity
Posted June 10, 2016
There is a saying that “In the land of the blind, the one eyed man is king.” In the political sphere, we are all so used to canned speeches, talking points, and staged-managed and inauthentic personalities that when someone like Donald Trump comes along, his offensive speech passes for authenticity. Similarly, Bernie Sanders’ down to earth rhetoric and wildly gesticulating arm gestures also suggest that he is being “real” and, as a result, breaks through the mind-numbing conformity of today’s political discourse. The messages of these candidates are radically different, of course, but the delivery and optics that communicate authenticity are similar and at least as vital to each candidate’s appeal.
Trump and Sanders fill auditoriums and create electricity in their fans. Hillary Clinton and former Trump rivals like Marco Rubio and Jeb Bush don’t generate such excitement because they mirror the robotic self-presentations of politicians and those talking heads in the media that cover them. By robotic presentations I’m referring to the way that politicians and their media interpreters appear to lack passion, repeating rehearsed lines with a smooth fluency that deadens the spirit of those listening.
This is why we like unscripted moments, remarks caught on a so-called “hot mike” when a public figure doesn’t know he or she can be heard. We are drawn to people who say things that they’re not supposed to say. Donald Trump attacks political correctness directly and continually in the form and content of his racist and provocative public remarks and demagoguery. He says things that are forbidden and he isn’t apologetic about it. He comes across as a complicated and flawed—but authentic—person. People forgive the content because they vicariously experience the seemingly unscripted spontaneity behind it.
Now, we all know that, in reality, this is a myth. Trump fashions his persona with the best of them—he is the ultimate “made for TV” character—and his provocativeness is deliberately strategic as well as temperamental. It doesn’t matter. Trump sells the persona of one who shoots from the hip without guile extremely well. The media and his fans can’t get enough of him. They are excited and energized, I think, by Trump’s sheer rudeness, because his ill-mannered style is experienced as a marker for authenticity. Politicians are supposed to “go down easy,” reciting talking points that have been tested in focus groups by experts. Trump breaks the mold.
Bernie Sanders also appears unscripted. For example, there was a moment at a Sanders rally in Portland late last March when a bird (a dove, perhaps?) was somehow flying loose in the auditorium and landed on the podium. The YouTube depiction of this event was titled “Bird lands on Bernie Sanders' Podium Crowd Goes Wild” and got over two million views. The people there—and their YouTube cohort—were startled by the sheer spontaneity of the bird and Sanders’ interaction with it. Startled and delighted. The crowd “went wild” in response to the wildness of the moment.
We are delighted by spontaneity because it breaks through the deadness that governs our public lives. Most of us live lives in which we need to make a good impression and shapeshift our selves to fit what is expected of us. We don’t expect to be really known or understood as unique or special. We’ve given that up in the interest of adaptation, of fitting in. And since everyone else is doing the same thing, we create a hollow social circle devoid of vitality. We do so at the price of isolation and loneliness, for sure, but it’s worth it to keep ourselves safe from the imagined critical judgment of others.
We become desperate for the oxygen of authenticity and experience it in a Trump or a Sanders who seem to not care what others think of them, even if the reality is otherwise. To the degree that they project a persona that doesn’t care, we respond vicariously to their irreverent independence. We wish we didn’t care what others thought as well, because such sensitivities lead us to abandon our real selves and feel empty. We’re so hungry for something authentic that we even see it in Donald Trump’s carnival barking.
The psychoanalyst DW Winnicott developed and wrote about the concepts of a “True” and “False” self. Winnicott used "True Self" to describe a sense of self based on spontaneous, authentic experience, and a feeling of being alive, of having a "real self.” For Winnicott, the "False Self" was a defensive façade that rendered a person without spontaneity, and feeling dead and empty, behind the appearance of being real. The False Self develops to retain a connection to parents who are unable to really see their child as a loveable, special, and precious being. The child adapts and “fits in” as best as he or she can, but such adaptation—especially given that everyone around the child is doing the same thing—leaves a residue of disconnectedness and a longing for spontaneous recognition of some kind. When a public figure seems spontaneous and “real,” this longing is activated and vicariously fulfilled.
One has only to watch cable news to see this dynamic re-enacted over and over again. The so-called “experts” filter reality through their cynical know-it-all lenses and derive a false authority by their apparent ability to decode the reality behind appearances. But rather than reflect authenticity, they layer on another level of alienation. They tell us how and when politicians are “pivoting” or “doubling-down”—a special type of “insider” language that keeps the broadcaster’s real feelings and authentic selves as hidden from view as the candidates they are covering. Political life is a horse race, a charade, a kabuki dance, and reality is further obscured from our view.
In his book, Another Way of Seeing, critical legal studies scholar Peter Gabel argues that our most fundamental need as human beings is the desire for authentic mutual recognition—a notion similar to Winnicott’s “True Self.” But, with Winnicott, Gabel explains that the child’s fear of being rejected or used by his or her caretakers—“misrecognized,” in other words—leads us all to withdraw behind false selves that protect us from other people at the cost of true fulfillment.
The fact that a right wing and racist demagogue like Donald Trump appeals to our longing for authenticity is a testament to the psychological alienation deeply embedded in our culture. This may be why he could potentially win the election. He is speaking to another, deeper, level of our experience that can’t be refuted by rational argument.
