Skin in the Game

How to Unmake the Irrational Politics of Today

First, the fun stuff: I wrote an article on food waste and how to stop it, for Bon Appétit. It’s a serious problem with delicious solutions. So click here. 

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/the-food-waste-

Now the even-more-serious part.

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How far have we strayed from democracy?

The world of conspiracy thinking is round. Lansing, Michigan.

In the recent past—let’s say the five decades I have been here on earth—we were told, and probably felt as true, that American democracy was expanding and deepening. Voting rights were spreading, particularly after the 1970 turning point in which Black voters began to have a real impact on elections. In the 1980s and 1990s more states adopted “motor voter” and other initiatives like mail voting that expanded access to the ballot. My home state, Oregon, demonstrates how successful this has been: Mail-only voting, trialed in 1981 and fully adopted 21 years ago, produced higher turnout, near-zero fraud, more representative government, and (arguably) moderate parties that championed a populism rooted in the interests of the average Oregonian. That’s a simplification, but it was largely true here and around the country: the more voters, the more compromise, and compromise is the definition of democracy. 

Now, not so much. The efforts to restrict and narrow voting have been well documented across the country. A smaller franchise is one contributor to polarization and extremism, particularly in the primary process. 

So how bad is it? Answer: very bad.   

A new poll  released by the Public Religion Research Institute and the Interfaith Youth Core shows how far some Americans have strayed from democratic beliefs. I’ve written before about “majoritarian” democracy, the winner-takes-all strategy, in which dominant groups capture government for themselves. They seek to prevent others from sharing power or winning elections. Majoritarianism is, today, about pretending that traditional ruling groups should continue to dominate, even when others (or coalitions of others) have the numerical advantage. 

Like white male evangelical Christians. You won’t be surprised to hear that some Christians on the right, with a full sweep of supernatural beliefs about angels, demons, and persecution, are increasingly convinced by Qanon, with its central premise that secretive cabals and elites control the world, and Satanic cults feed on children’s blood while sexually abusing them. That’s old hat. Indeed, the same polling shows that Qanon now has as many followers as mainline Christianity itself. And of course, these beliefs are all strongly associated with the Republican Party and the consumption of ultra-right media. Now one in four Republicans thinks, yes, child-eating Satanic cults are hidden all around us. About 20% or respondents believe a Biblical “storm” is coming. This is a traditional apocalyptic belief rooted in the Book of Revelations (which Thomas Jefferson called "merely the ravings of a maniac”) and now framed in Q language. 

Far more disturbing to me is this: 

Fifteen percent of Americans agree that “Because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country,” 

The pollsters helpfully go on to note that 85% of Americans don’t believe this. Gee, thanks!

It’s absolutely critical to understand and accept that 15% of us now believe a violent war against fellow Americans is justified. In fact the percentage is much higher: the same polling indicates that 23% believe in some justification for violence, and the conservative American Enterprise Institute found that 39% of GOP voters agreed with the statement: "If elected leaders will not protect America, the people must do it themselves, even if it requires violent actions."

I’ve seen this in person, in the armed occupation of Michigan’s Capitol, a northern Idaho militia rally, and the violent Proud Boys marches that have ripped up Portland for years. My whole career has been focussed on cycles of political violence rooted in hatred of the “other.” 

When there is an “other,” there is no larger sense of “us.” Violence is justified for these people, because they have left the democratic process and the secular American faith in equality behind. They are, in their view, the real Americans (“true American patriots,” as the poll put it) and everyone else is the outsiders, the enemies and traitors. If you are in the 85%, you are dead to them. This is the radical polarization I learned to dread (at gunpoint) in Venezuela and Columbia and Brazil, Cambodia and Nepal. Believing your opponents are traitors and enemies to be destroyed is the root of civil conflict, and civil war. 

Of course, one of the realities of this confused, incoherent right-wing movement in America is that people will say whatever to pollsters. Sometimes they are trolling us, deliberately saying what will cause outrage. (It feels good.) There is a lot of posturing, confusion, and self-contradiction. Note how many on the right now believe two directly contradictory ideas about Jan. 6: that it was a bunch of ordinary American patriots taking a tour of the Capitol, but also a violent, false-flag operation staged by antifa to discredit the right. 56% of Republicans believe both ideas may be true.

Until you reconcile those two unrealities, you can’t live in truth. No wonder a terrifying 15% of conservatives believe that it’s time to shoot American democracy to death. 

The dilemma itself contains the solution. We have to think harder, and win the fight for factual truth by giving up fantasies. For a nation currently built on lazy thinking, convenient myths, and epistemological closure, that’s hard. But it’s not impossible. It will only happen when people are forced to think harder, to pay consequences for their impossible beliefs that defy reality. There are financial and legal ways to do that, but there is also a tool, passed down for centuries, that really works. 

It’s called losing elections. When people threaten democracy, the answer is to kick them to the curb, using the very elections they don’t believe in. It’s complicated—we need campaign finance reforms, gerrymandering reforms, filibuster reforms, lobbying limits, criminal prosecution of the corrupt, and transparency in government. Demonstrations in the streets are important, and so is boycotting hat stores that sell yellow Stars of David to imply that vaccination equals Nazi genocide. 

But that change starts with losing elections. People don’t focus on facts, and consequences, until they have skin in the game. (The “survival definition of rationality,” pace Nicholas Taleb.) It’s notable that religious groups that historically faced persecution (Jews, and to a lesser extent Mormons) reject the Qanon theory. They remember how dangerous this is. 

What’s the answer? Win the state house, elect the judges, pass the ballot initiatives, boycott the deceivers, and own the streets. Force people to pay a price for believing in these lies. 

Take away the power of those who don’t believe in democracy, using democracy.