Image: Ursula K. Le Guin – William Anthony
Ursula K. Le Guin’s November 2016 Blog Post: “The Election, Lao Tzu, a Cup of Water”
(For the full text of Le Guin’s post, readers may consult the Le Guin blog.)
Introduction: The Absurdity of the Opening Claim
Ursula K. Le Guin begins her blog entry with the shocking assertion that “Americans have voted for a politics of fear, anger, and hatred,” framing the 2016 election as a popular endorsement of negativity and thus collective moral failure rather than a legitimate political contest. This claim is absurd on multiple levels.
Le Guin reduces the motivations of over 62 million Trump voters to a monolithic emotional outburst, ignoring the many and varied reasons people cited for their choices—economic anxiety, desire for policy change on trade and immigration, distrust of establishment politics, or even optimism about shaking up the status quo.
Exit polls from the 2016 presidential election year revealed that, as the driving force, voters prioritized issues like the economy (52% said it was the most important issue) and terrorism (18%)—not the abstract qualities of “fear, anger, and hatred.”
By accusing half the electorate of being emotionally deranged, Le Guin engages in the very division she later decries, creating a false binary where one side is enlightened and the other is barbaric.
Instead of offering a balanced, informed opinion, this diatribe creates a caricature that exempts the losing side of any introspection about why its message failed to resonate. If anything, such rhetoric fuels the “fear, anger, and hatred” that it claims to oppose, by demonizing fellow citizens rather than seeking understanding.
Further Analysis of the Absurdity of the Opening Claim
Le Guin’s opening assertion—”Americans have voted for a politics of fear, anger, and hatred”—is a masterclass in the very thing she claims to oppose: divisive, enemy-making rhetoric that poisons democratic discourse.
The Logical Contradiction
Notice the immediate self-contradiction: Le Guin writes that she is “looking for a place to stand… where the behavior of those I oppose will not control my behavior,” yet her opening sentence does precisely the opposite. By characterizing roughly half the American electorate as motivated by “fear, anger, and hatred,” she has allowed her opponents’ victory to control her into making sweeping, uncharitable judgments about millions of people she has never met.
She wants to rise above and avoid “fixed enmity” while at the same time she asserts that tens of millions of her fellow citizens have voted for hatred itself. Such dishonest rhetoric does not seek amicable understanding; instead, it creates the very enemy she claims she wants to transcend and avoid.
The Mind-Reading Fallacy
How does Le Guin know what motivated Trump voters? Did she conduct psychological surveys? Interview thousands across different states and demographics? No—she simply assumes the worst possible motives for people who reached a different political conclusion than she did.
This act embodies the fundamental attribution error writ large: when some individuals agree with an action, they attribute their agreement to principle, reason, and good intentions. When they disagree, they attribute it to character flaws, base emotions, and moral deficiency.
Many Trump voters would describe their choice in terms of economic anxiety, distrust of establishment politicians, desire for change, concern about immigration policy, or opposition to Clinton specifically. Were all of these just masks for hatred? Or might people have complex, varied motivations that do not fit Le Guin’s narrative?
The Irony of Fear and Anger
Le Guin’s post itself radiates fear and anger—fear of what Trump’s presidency might bring, anger at the election outcome. Her entire piece is written in response to these emotions. Yet she has no trouble recognizing her own fear and anger as legitimate responses to perceived threats, while denying Trump voters the same interpretive charity.
Perhaps Trump voters also felt fear—of economic displacement, cultural change, or being dismissed by coastal elites. Perhaps they felt anger—at politicians who seemed not to care about their communities, at being called “deplorables,” at seeing their concerns ignored. Why are Le Guin’s fears valid while theirs are evidence of moral rot?
The Dehumanizing Assumption
To claim that millions of Americans voted “for” hatred is to deny them moral agency and complexity. It suggests they woke up on Election Day thinking, “I want to spread hate today.” Such a suggestion is absurd. People generally vote for what they perceive as good, even when they are wrong about what that good is or how to achieve it.
Le Guin has done exactly what she accuses Americans of doing: she has named an enemy (Trump voters), attributed evil motives to them (fear, anger, hatred), and declared herself on the side of righteousness. She has simplified a complex political coalition into a moral monolith worthy only of opposition, not understanding.
The Historical Amnesia
Political campaigns have always involved fear, anger, and appeals to group identity—on all sides. Obama’s 2008 campaign ran on anger at the Iraq War and the financial crisis, fear about healthcare and climate change. Bush’s 2004 campaign exploited fear of terrorism. Clinton’s 2016 campaign emphasized fear of Trump himself (remember “Love Trumps Hate”?).
Every losing side in every election could claim their opponents voted for “fear, anger, and hatred” if they wanted to be uncharitable. Such nonsense is not analysis; it is rationalization disguised as moral clarity.
The Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Most destructively, when you tell people they voted for hatred, you make reconciliation impossible. If Trump voters are motivated by pure malice, there is no conversation to be had, no common ground to find, no way forward except total victory over irredeemable opponents.
Le Guin claims to seek a better way than war, yet her opening salvo ensures continued conflict. By attributing the worst possible motives to her political opponents, she guarantees they will never listen to her, never consider her perspective, never be persuaded by her arguments. She has preemptively ended any possibility of the bridge-building her post supposedly values.
How She Could Have Opened Her Post
An honest assessment might have been: “Americans have elected someone I deeply oppose, and I’m trying to understand why. Many Trump voters cite concerns about the economy, immigration, and political corruption. While I disagree with their analysis and fear the consequences of their choice, I must find a way to oppose these policies without demonizing my fellow citizens.”
But that would require the very humility and openness Le Guin demands from others while exempting herself. It is far easier for her to dress up contempt in the language of disappointed idealism and blame her opponents for making her angry than to actually practice the patient, water-like understanding she preaches.
Thus, the opening claim is even beyond absurd; it is the original sin that corrupts everything that follows. A contender cannot begin with “my opponents are motivated by hatred” and end with “let’s transcend division.” The post fails before it begins because Le Guin has already done precisely what she condemns: she has declared war while calling it peace.
Fundamental Weaknesses of the Post: False Dichotomies and Oversimplification
The post’s fundamental weakness lies in its rigid binary between “the way of the warrior” and “the way of water.” Le Guin suggests these are the only two paths available, ignoring the vast middle ground where most effective social change actually occurs.
Successful movements combine elements she artificially separates: the Civil Rights Movement, which she invokes favorably, involved both nonviolent resistance and strategic legal battles—literal fights in courtrooms, aggressive lobbying, and forceful rhetoric. To claim these were not forms of “fighting” requires tortured redefinition of ordinary English words.
Contradictory Treatment of Action and Reaction
Le Guin condemns “reaction” as victim mentality while praising “action,” yet her own framework collapses under scrutiny. She writes that “defending a cause without fighting… is not a reaction. It is an action.” But Standing Rock, her own example, was explicitly reactive—a reaction against pipeline construction.
There is no coherent principle here distinguishing reactive movements she approves of from reactive politics she condemns. The difference appears to be purely which side she agrees with politically.
Similarly, she claims “refusing to meet violence with violence is a powerful, positive act,” yet simultaneously insists we must “unlearn the vocabulary of war” because even metaphorical combat language shapes destructive thinking. If nonviolent resistance is truly powerful and positive action, why does it require such linguistic gymnastics to avoid appearing reactive or combative?
Historical Myopia
The post romanticizes nonviolence while ignoring inconvenient historical realities. Le Guin invokes Selma but omits that the Civil Rights Movement’s success depended partly on the implicit threat of more violent alternatives (the Black Power movement), federal enforcement power, and yes, warriors—the National Guard troops who protected the marchers. Nonviolent protest works best when backed by institutional force, a point her framework cannot accommodate.
Her dismissal of all “warrior” virtues except courage is historically illiterate. Many of history’s most effective peacemakers—from George Marshall to Dwight Eisenhower—were literal warriors who brought military discipline, strategic thinking, and organizational prowess to peace-building. The Marshall Plan was not passive water-like yielding; it was aggressive, strategic investment requiring warrior-like determination.
The Fatal Flaw in the Water Metaphor
Le Guin’s extended water metaphor ultimately fails because it proves too much. She writes that water “accepts whatever comes to it, lets itself be used and divided and defiled, yet continues to be itself.”
This situation precisely identifies the problem: water has no agency, no moral compass, no capacity for judgment. Water flows equally into irrigation ditches and sewers. It nourishes crops and spreads cholera. It carves canyons and drowns children.
The “way of water” cannot distinguish between accommodation and collaboration, between strategic retreat and cowardice, between patience and passivity. Water in a cup does not simply “give itself to thirst” through compassion—it sits there until someone drinks it.
Water does not choose to go to low places out of humility; it obeys gravity mindlessly. Attributing moral qualities to physical processes is poetic but philosophically empty—and it also smacks of the pathetic fallacy.
Despite the fact that the human body is composed of about 70% water, human beings are not water. They possess consciousness, moral reasoning, and the ability to make choices that may violate their immediate self-interest for principle.
Human beings who “accept[] contamination, accept[] foulness” while waiting to somehow remain pure are not practicing virtue—they are enabling evil through passivity. The Jews who boarded trains hoping water-like endurance would see them through were not weak for choosing that path, but they were tragically wrong about its efficacy.
The Unexamined Privilege
Le Guin’s ability to prefer the “way of water” reflects a position of significant privilege. When your house is flooded, you do not admire water’s patient persistence—you fight to save your family. When armed men threaten violence, water-like yielding means death.
The luxury of choosing nonviolent response requires either that the stakes are manageable or that others (warriors, police, soldiers) will ultimately enforce the social order protecting your protest.
A More Honest Framework
The real lesson of successful nonviolent movements is not that fighting is wrong, but that different situations require different tools. Sometimes negotiation works; sometimes litigation; sometimes protest; sometimes, yes, violence is the only response to imminent violence. Pretending otherwise is not wisdom—it is self-deception dressed in Taoist robes.
Le Guin wants courage, compassion, patience, and peace. So do most people—even the Trump supporters she disparages. But achieving these goods in a world with genuine conflicts, limited resources, and bad actors requires more than poetic metaphors and pathetic fallacies about water. It requires the very thing Le Guin rejects: strategic, sometimes aggressive, always purposeful struggle toward defined goals. Water cannot struggle. Human beings must.
The way of water is the way of erosion, not transformation. If scenario of the way of water were our model, we would accept that change comes only over geological time, grinding away opposition through mindless persistence.
But human dignity, justice, and freedom cannot wait for the river to wear down the mountain. These positive qualities require conscious, directed, forceful action—yes, at times even fighting—by people who refuse to be passive before injustice, no matter how poetically one describes their refusal.
Poem: “A Meditation”
To her rant against the November 2016 presidential election, Le Guin has appended a poem, “A Meditation,” which distills the post’s governing metaphor into lyrical form.
The verse reiterates her faith in erosion rather than confrontation, in “breath” and “tears” rather than struggle, as the means by which “the hardness of hate” is worn away. As poetry, the piece is spare and affecting; it achieves in image what the prose attempts through argument.
Yet the poem also magnifies the central weakness of the post itself. The river does not choose its course, nor does erosion discriminate between justice and injustice. By ending with a vision of moral change as a slow, impersonal process, the poem reinforces the post’s preference for endurance over agency.
In doing so, it offers consolation rather than strategy—an image of patience that is emotionally resonant but ethically incomplete when applied to human conflict, which demands not only compassion and courage, but judgment, decision, and action.
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