Life
There’s a reason why so many of the political commentators and activists who are pushing back against the Trump administration’s many executive orders and scandals are strenuously insisting that we "don't normalize Trump" and that we must not accept the administration's actions as “the new normal.” They’re not just shouting political catchphrases — they're fighting against humanity’s astonishing ability to acclimatize, a recognizable psychological phenomenon that is often the enemy of activist efforts.
Humans, as a species, are masters at adapting to our circumstances immediately and with imperceptible ease — and this applies to all arenas of life, including politics. A great recent example is former president George W. Bush, who had very low approval ratings while in office, but is now being lauded by many — including people who condemned him during his own presidency — for his criticism of the Trump administration. If you currently feel as if you’ve somehow always been watching news shows in which Putin’s face looms large, or that scrolling through endless editorials about problematic intelligence is not as shocking as it was even a few weeks ago, it's not because you're weird or not fighting back hard enough. You’re simply encountering a psychological fact of human existence — one that has serious political consequences.
We Know How Our Brains Adapt To Political Change
What we're talking about in the current political situation, of course, is political adaptation — and we actually know the brain processes through which that happens. A 2010 study from Brown University showed that the brain's frontal lobe, and a complex series of interactions within it, are responsible for the abstract thinking that goes into absorbing new information and translating it into new actions and interpretations. When we're up against something new, we run it against multiple abstract models at once involving our own past experience and what we've just learned. It's what allows us to change our behavior to fit.
Why Adaptability Can Be Politically Dangerous
Adaptability has its own psychological vogue, and it's easy to understand why; being able to acclimatize fast to new situations is a valuable trait, professionally and socially. But it becomes a more intriguing question when it comes to our reactions to potentially dangerous new environments (like, for instance, a president who suggests, in the excellent words of Margaret Carlson for the Daily Beast, that "Obama is Nixon and up is down"). Human capacity to adapt to new challenges in everyday life can sometimes lead us to accept circumstances that should not, in any way, be accepted.
Dr Martina Klicperova-Baker, an expert on the psychology of democracy and governance, wrote in 1999 about psychological adaptation to life under totalitarian governments: "Totalitarian societies produce totalitarian minds.... a specific pattern of cognitions, attitudes and behaviors developed in order to adapt to life under totalitarian circumstances". The pressure of intensely dangerous and transformative political situations can lead us to adapt in ways that fundamentally challenge who we really are.
Since it's inevitable that humans will adapt, because it's in our nature, it is perhaps worth keeping the difference between adapting and accepting at the forefront of our minds. We may well adapt to a scenario in which the New York Times isn't allowed into White House briefings and the administration is full of people with hidden ties to Russia. Adaptation, in this sense, means finding new strategies to deal with this unprecedented weirdness, in ways that correspond to our long-held values about the function of political power. But it does not mean that our only option is accepting things and giving up on pushing back on them. Adjusting to the "new normal" until it's our regular normal may be our tendency — but that doesn't mean that it's our destiny.