The Power of "NO"

America, happiness is coming.

You can’t say yes to what you want until you say no to what you don’t want.

Do you remember where were you three and a half weeks ago? I was stuck in Atlanta airport on my way back from Costa Rica, trying to get (yet another) canceled flight rebooked after the worldwide computer outage that left thousands of people, including me, stranded. It had been a hell of a week to leave the country: Some right-wing kookpot tried to assassinate Donald Trump at a rally the day I landed in Costa Rica. A few days later, Trump announced his running mate would be the creeptastic J.D. Vance. It looked like we were doomed in November. I’m not going to lie, I spent a lot of my time in Costa Rica wondering how easy it might be to relocate there (it actually has a huge American expatriate community)…I mean, I speak Spanish fluently so it wouldn’t be a bad deal.

And then, the day I was flying home, President Biden stepped aside. Initially, this filled me with even more dread — in my gut I had felt like this would be the best thing but knew that practically, it had the potential to throw our political scene into chaos, chaos we didn’t need and that I knew would be exploited by Trump. Flashbacks to the DNC hack in 2016: I imagined breathless coverage of Democratic infighting, backstabbing by aspiring nominees, Vice President Harris thrown under the bus while a bunch of white dudes elbowed their way to the nomination.

And then: A miracle happened, quickly and organically. All I know is that by the time I made it back home by Tuesday night, the groundswell of support had coalesced around Harris — no drama, no backstabbiness, no buses or white dudes elbowing people. And suddenly, things felt…hopeful. And the Trump campaign, instead of feeling dreadful and scary, seemed silly and dumb and…WEIRD.

This transformation of Trump’s candidacy, from a campaign that felt ominous, threatening, and intimidating — into one that feels weak, ridiculous, and…well, flaccid — has been extraordinary to experience. Certainly Harris’ (and now Walz’s) energy, especially juxtaposed against Trump and Vance’s, contributes to this. But it’s also because the very emergence of Harris made a powerful statement: NO. Enough with the fascist crap. We deserve better.

In short, Harris’ nomination tapped into a deeper, unconscious emotion, the Kryptonite of fascists everywhere: Hope.

I think the best way to illustrate the power of hope (which is what “Asha” means in Sanskrit, by the way), is to do a Throwback Thrursday to the Chilean plebiscite of 1988. A quick recap: After almost 17 years of disappearing people, shooting them in soccer stadiums, and throwing them from helicopters, August Pinochet’s dictatorship was under international scrutiny. The 1980 Chilean constitution (which had been ratified under questionable circumstances) mandated that in 1988, fifteen years after the military coup that established the dictatorship, Chile would hold a constitutional referendum to decide whether Pinochet would continue in power for another eight years: “Yes” would mean Pinochet stayed, “No” meant that his opposition, Patricio Aylwin, would replace him as Chile’s president.

Even with the world watching, Pinochet’s victory seemed like a fait accompli; although “both sides” had the same amount of airtime to advertise for their candidates (15 minutes a day, for a month), Pinochet controlled much more than the airwaves. As Ruth Ben Ghiat details in her book, Strongmen: Mussolini to the Present:

During the 1988 plebiscite campaign…, Pinochet toured the country, giving out deeds to new homes to win over the poor. Yet this was no democratic election. The offices of the opposition campaign were firebombed, volunteers beaten, rallies forcibly dissolved, and thousands arrested. His television ads relied on the old scare tactics. They showed a man drowning in rising water, a mother and child fleeing an armed mob, and even Allende [the former president whom the military overthrew in 1973], resurrected from the grave and clutching a rifle. Pinochet played on fears of leftist anarchy as he sent Chileans a chilling message: vote for me or else.

Sound familiar?

Well, perhaps another familiar theme is that initially, the opposition couldn’t really get their messaging together. At all. The anti-Pinochet forces spanned different points on the political spectrum, from the center to the far left, and though they were united in their resistance to Pinochet, they weren’t completely on the same page on how to present their own campaign. Their initial attempt at messaging focused on the worst of the Pinochet years: the disappearances, the torture, the loss of freedom. But, a marketing executive brought into consult the resistance suggested another path. Here’s a trailer from the movie “NO,” based on the true story of how the opposition’s countermessage was created:

Brilliant, right? The mimes make me laugh every time I watch that clip.

Ben-Ghiat writes how the unexpected message of the NO’s campaign resonated with ordinary Chileans:

The opposition’s carefully conceived positive campaign acknowledged the ‘desire for care and solidarity’ that came out of earlier mass demonstrations. The NO+ slogan of the CADA collective returned as a March for Joy held in September 1988 drew thousands. Television spots that featured ordinary people daring to feel hope for Chile struck a chord.

The NO campaign ended up receiving 55% of the vote, and in 1990 Aylwin took office as the first democratically elected president since the 1973 military coup.¹

As I’ll be exploring in the coming lessons on disinformation and social media, the emotion that travels almost the fastest on the internet is rage. And rage is driven by fear. But there’s one emotion that beats rage in going viral: Awe. (There’s a reason that Simone Biles’ floor exercise goes viral.) It’s sort of an emotional version of rock-paper-scissors. Awe — the “feelings of wonder and excitement that come from encountering great beauty or knowledge” as Smithsonian Magazine puts it — is, in my opinion, a close sibling to hope. The Chilean example is the blueprint: If hope can beat fear to remove a dictator after 17 years, it can certainly prevent one from coming to power in the first place.

1. Full disclosure: Pinochet did not give up without a fight; he attempted an autogolpe, or self-coup (an attempt by someone already in power to stay in power through illegal means). However, he did not have the backing of the military so was unsuccessful — but he still managed to have the Chilean constitution revised to give himself and his accomplices amnesty from prosecution and was appointed Senator for Life. In 1998, Pinochet was arrested under an international arrest warrant issued by a Spanish judge, and died in 2006 still facing 300 criminal charges for human rights abuses, tax evasion, and embezzlement.