What the left is missing
Ok, my neurons fire funny. Stick with me. Something about bonding is coming.
The last several days, people of all ages from the community here have been building a playground not far from where I sit. Rather, rebuilding a playground:
After two years of fundraising and advocating for a park rebuild, ground was broken Sept. 28 for Candace Pickens Memorial Park, formerly Jones Park Playground, in North Asheville. One of the people holding a shovel was Keesha Martinez, whose daughter, Pickens, was the 22-year-old murdered at the park in May 2016.
[…]
Pickens was killed in 2016 on her then 3-year-old’s son birthday. She had taken him to the park to celebrate, according to previous Citizen Times reporting. Her son, Zachaeus, was also shot, losing his left eye and surviving.
The company that designed and furnished material relies on community volunteers to build out the site under direction from its superintendent and foremen. They supply most tools. Neighbors bring theirs too.
While we were hauling materials around the site last night, Martinez introduced herself as Candace’s mother. An idiot, I didn’t know what to say. But another crew member burst into tears and she and Martinez hugged and cried for several minutes.
Hundreds of people from the neighborhood, from across town, and from Asheville High have pitched in. (As a politico, the first question I ask is where people live — I think in precincts.) I’ve met neighbors whose houses I walk by every day but have never met. The work is somewhat chaotic, frantic even, but joyful. It’s a bonding experience.
Politico yesterday examined how fandom bonds together both Swifties and MAGA. It’s “a shortcut to community.”
Joanna Weiss writes:
Anyone who’s attended a stop on the Eras Tour, as a passionate Swiftie or a casual observer, knows the power of a collective fan experience. A Swift show is part concert, part costume party, part tent revival with sequins. Listening to the music is part of the goal, but so is singing along, word by word, with the strangers beside you. Lynn Zubernis, a clinical psychologist and professor at West Chester University and the author of several books about fan culture, talks about fandom in physical terms: the “collective effervescence” you feel at a joyful group event; the “vicarious achievement” that affects your brain chemistry. When your team scores a touchdown or your favorite celebrity gets an ovation, you get a boost of hormones, too.
That’s because the group identity that makes fandom tick developed as a biological imperative, she says. “Back in the day, speaking in an evolutionary sense, if you didn’t belong to a group you were going to die. So we are really highly motivated to find a group of like-minded people to belong to.”
Singing along to church hymns is a similar experience, although outside Black churches there is less “collective effervescence.”
When I spoke to Zubernis, she had just returned to Philadelphia from a convention for fans of the long-running TV show “Supernatural.” In a Marriott hotel outside of D.C., 1,500 people had gathered to rehash episodes and dissect the show’s fictional lore, their passion unfaded even though the show has been off the air for years. Whenever she watches coverage of Trump rallies on TV, Zubernis told me, she marvels at how Trump supporters behave like those conventioneers. The MAGA hats and Trump gear feel like a kind of political cosplay. The stylized posters that show Trump as a muscular G.I. Joe type, physically fighting for America, function a bit like fan fiction.
Perhaps that community experience found in evangelical churches has crossover reinforcement for the MAGA faithful. On the more secular left, it’s missing.
There’s much more on the psychology of fan communities. And on the downside: doxxing of the celebrity’s critics and even death threats.
When feeling endangered or embattled, Weiss writes, “a threat to group identity can feel like a matter of survival. And while not all fans become trolls, she suspects that fans’ anger toward perceived transgressors might be rising.” Feeling embattled “makes those fan connections even stronger.”
She concludes:
We’ve all seen what those powerful connections can deliver: an upset victory on Election Day, a concert tour that quite literally breathed new life into local economies, an unprecedented attack on the Capitol. When fandoms are at the height of their power, they’re capable of a lot.
This points to a weakness on the left. Perhaps we are not as much joiners, or our in-groups tend to have a narrower, niche focus like outdoor activities. We are activists for this or activists for that. Our communities are smaller. The Achilles heel for many Democratic groups is they are simply older and no fun. Plus, we seem to live more in our heads.
We don’t much sing together on the left.
Building a playground with hundreds of neighbors is a reminder (to me) not to think so much. Community is not built in your head. Or as Rooster says to Maverick, “Don’t think. Just do.”