The minority party is making little headway and in fact losing ground. How can this be? Perhaps their lesson here is almost anything is better for a human being than being patronized. “I feel your pain . . . etc.” as the old cartoon went. If you have the income and education you are in a class far less likely to be patronized and you probably don’t get it. Empathy is the counter to patronizing and empathetic relationship includes having something in common shared between you and the constituent in the experience of life. Empathy binding people together has to be grown and sustained intentionally. You may have had the gift and burden of empathy intuitively as a very young child, but adult America, and this includes liberal America, stores too many of empathy’s tools packed insulated in a dusty box in the attic of an overly cognitive brain. We have got to get over the idea that “we get it”. We apparently genuinely don’t. The minority party was defeated by the faux empathy being abused by the current administration, but they apparently got votes for at least pretending to understand their constituents. They will have banked the damage before the falseness of their understanding takes hold. Being patronized, it turns out is even a more adverse experience than being stereotyped. 

Data is the map but stories add the power of a transformation that shatters facades. A lot of people have died mistaking the map for the physical landscape. The Democratic party needs a new map and transformation because the maps they are using are guiding them into hostile human territory and won’t get them where they need to go. Yes, you may still need a map but the liberal needs to close the mouth and listen, listen, and listen to the human stories and then check the transformed understanding against that coveted map. As a former needs assessment provider to states, this writer insisted on a narrative/numbers approach. The narrative needs (so called ‘qualitative’) must make up the major share of the next strategy. Harvesting the narrative story authority of the people is an art form that builds the strong relationship of empathy through heart level listening. The open mouth without empathy is the definition of patronizing. Good is an open ear channel to the responsive heart and an activated empathetic strategy. There are excellent listening forms and tools out there. Use them .

The Facade