Martin Luther King Jr. is my model for how to think about public anger. His issues as a custodian were quite different; they were about how to shape emotions within his own movement, as well as the general public. What he said is that anger has a protest part, where you say that terrible wrong has been done and we must not have that happen again. But it also has a retributive part, where the intention is to inflict pain on the people who gave us pain. He found that path useless because it’s not forward-looking or radical—it is just an easy way of acting out.
马丁·路德·金是我思考公众愤怒的榜样。他作为管理者遇到的问题是完全不同的；这些问题是是关于如何在他自己的运动中塑造情感，以及如何在公众中塑造情感。他说愤怒是抗议的一部分，而你们说已经犯下了可怕的错误且决不能让这种事情再次发生。但它也有报应的部分，意图是将痛苦强加给带给我们痛苦的人。他发现这条路毫无用处，因为它既不具有前瞻性，也不激进——这只是一种简单的行动方式。
He then said, “What do we do when we have these people who come with anger into the movement?” He said their anger has to be purified and channelized and linked with different emotions, such as hope, faith in the possibility of justice and, above all, love. You don’t even have to like these people, but you do have to have a basic goodwill toward their humanity and for their capacity for good action. You have to have the sense that it is always possible for people to listen and to change. Turning outward to the white body, he would say, “Well, you left us with a bad check that’s come back marked ‘insufficient funds,’ but you can always pay your debt.”
他还说，“当我们让这些带着愤怒的人加入这个运动时，我们该怎么办?”他表示他们的愤怒必须得到净化和渠道化，并与不同的情绪联系起来，如希望、相信正义，最重要的是，爱。你甚至不需要喜欢这些人，但你必须对他们的人性和他们的善行能力有基本的善意。你必须意识到，人们总是有可能倾听并作出改变的。他会转向白人，说:“好吧，你给我们留下了一张空头支票，上面写着‘资金不足’，但你总能偿还债务。”
That was a wonderful way of shaping public emotion in the most dangerous and difficult of American political situations. If he had not had that soaring and poetic rhetorical power, the whole country could well have burned down. It’s so important that he lived.
在美国最危险、最困难的政治形势下，这是塑造公众情绪的一种绝妙方式。如果他没有那种气势磅礴、充满诗意的修辞力量，整个国家很可能会被烧毁。重要的是他还活着。
You write about the importance of trust to a functioning democracy. Can you elaborate?
你写到了信任对一个正常运转的民主国家的重要性。你能详细讲讲吗?
If you are in an absolute monarchy, and the monarch is just extracting subservience and obedience, you may be able to rely on what the monarch will do. But reliance is different from trust.
如果你是在一个绝对的君主政体中，君主只是在榨取臣服和服从，那么你就可以依赖君主会做什么。但是信赖和信任是不同的。
Trust means something more; it means a willingness to be exposed and to allow your project and your future to lie in the hands of someone else. Think about a bad marriage. If somebody is ruling by fear, you might be able to rely on that person’s brutal behavior, but you wouldn’t trust that person.
信任意味着更多方面；意味着愿意被曝光，愿意让你的项目和你的未来掌握在别人手中。想想一段糟糕的婚姻。如果一个人被恐惧统治，你可能会信赖那个人的野蛮行为，但你不会信任那个人。
A democracy depends on the idea that your hopes and future lie in the hands of people you don’t know. Bad decisions will be made, and your opinion won’t always win, but there is trust that the outcome—more often than not—will be one we can live with. And that requires a respect for the people on the other side, even when we think they are doing something wrong.
民主取决于这样一种观念:你的希望和未来掌握在你不认识的人手中。我们会做出错误的决定，而你的意见并不总是能赢得胜利，但我们相信，结果往往是我们可以接受的。这需要尊重另一边的人，即使我们认为他们做错了什么。
But it’s more than respect; trust involves allowing yourself to be vulnerable—to not sealing off the outcome and letting it sit there in the ballot box. It’s a big demand that requires a certain attitude towards the political process. I am very distressed at President Trump’s attacks on that process. We have lots of evidence that voter fraud is not an issue, but the constant harping on it is a very bad thing. The same goes for Trump’s attacks on the media. We need to believe that the news—at least a lot of it—is true, and we need to rely on that for the political process to work.
但这不仅仅是尊重;信任包括让你自己变得脆弱——不封闭结果，让它留在投票箱里。这个要求很大，需要对政治进程有一定的态度。我对特朗普总统对这一进程的攻击感到非常痛心。我们有很多证据表明，选举舞弊不是一个问题，但是不断地重复这个问题是一件非常糟糕的事情。特朗普对媒体的攻击也是如此。我们需要相信这些新闻——至少很多是真的——我们需要依靠这些新闻来推动政治进程。
译文由可可原创，仅供学习交流使用，未经许可请勿转载。
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