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People Are Good, Antonia Scatton

The great battle of our time is between solidarity and nihilism, between belief in the fundamental decency of people and belief in zero-sum self-interest. Both Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X came to believe that solidarity was the future of the civil rights movement, that we must work together to overcome economic and political oppression. In standing up for each other, the people of Minnesota uphold the legacy of MLK Jr. Perhaps, in their support for Ukraine and protection of Greenland, the rest of the civilized world will find their capacity for solidarity reinvigorated as well. … people are fundamentally empathetic and that the world runs on interdependence, not competition. … We didn’t get to 8.3 billion people by having everyone look out for themselves. While there is a place for competition, human civilization runs on cooperation. Government is just a tool that we use to cooperate on a larger scale. Even laws depend on voluntary cooperation, on people’s willingness to engage in “pro-social behavior” (that which contributes to social cohesion) for the mutual benefit of all. … The truth is that might-makes-right never works. The “top dog” lives in constant fear of the man one step down, looking to slit his throat in the night. (That doesn’t sound like freedom to me!) Increasingly isolated, he looks out the window of his fortress, envying the peasants their camaraderie. Imagine Trump or Miller or Musk showing up at a pot-luck dinner and somebody actually being happy to see them at the door. Even dogs don’t like them.

The displays of violence and power by Trump (and the tragic rejects he manages to recruit for his cause) are meant to get us to give up hope in humanity, but we’re not going to do that. We will stand up for each other. Their cruelty only drives our solidarity, causing us to set aside our petty differences to realize how much we mean to each other. …. The only way to beat their message is to point out incessantly how so many people are good, in so many ways, in so many places. We need to talk about how human society is based, not on competition, but on the recognition of our interdependence and concern for our neighbors, whether those neighbors are from the other side of the world, like the Somalis and Hmong in Minnesota, or on the other side of the ocean, as the people of Greenland are to the people of Europe.