Newsletter #270 — Sept. 5, 2024
by Heidi Burgess
August 22, 2024
After we talked about David's background (described above), we took up a question that David had raised in an email: did we see a contradiction (as he does) between the left's call to avoid political violence, and their emphasizing the notion that Trump and Republicans, more generally, will destroy American democracy if they win (suggesting, he implied, that the left might find violence justified to prevent a Trump win).
I thought we ought to divide that question into several parts. First, what ARE the threats to democracy that both sides are seeing (because, I observed, I have read that the right thinks the left is a threat to democracy as well, although I didn't quite understand how or why). Guy observed that we needed to clarify what we meant by "democracy," because he suggested that each side seems to define "democracy" as "doing what my side wants." He also observed that both sides are using fear mongering (about the other side) to get out the vote for themselves. And the third topic I was interested in exploring related to a comment David made as a follow on to hisfirst question, in which he said that he thought "violence may actually be warranted if it's necessary to save democracy." So my question to David was "what kind of violence, by whom, and in what context?"
David responded that it was the fear mongering that he was the most focused on.
When I was talking about the contradiction, there's something that's being said on both sides, but I feel it's more forceful on the left. It's that "if the other side wins, this country, as we know it, will somehow fail or cease to exist." And I think that's just such a horrible exaggeration. For me, the way of understanding that it's a horrible exaggeration is this idea that we really want to curtail violence. If something was happening that caused the United States to fail, or that resulted in the United States no longer being a democratic, pluralistic republic, it seems to me that's the essence of why we have troops defending the country.
... I don't believe that there's any basis for believing that that kind of failure or that need for violence is there. So I believe we need to be significantly driving down the impulse for violence. And I believe that we're failing to do that when we're simultaneously saying that the stakes in this election are existential.
Heidi agreed with David's assertion that there is fear mongering going on on both sides, but she said she understood where the left was coming from,
But I'm somewhat more sympathetic with the left's view when Trump is out making statements saying, "After four years, you won't need to vote." That's worrisome. His "dictator for a day" statement is worrisome. Now, my hope is that the system is strong enough that it will be able to resist any such impulses that he has. But I think he probably has impulse to get rid of elections. Now, his chances of being healthy enough to be president in five years strike me as pretty low ... But I think there are real legitimate reasons for alarm. And if you don't think that our system is strong enough to hold Trump's authoritarian impulses back, then I think the left is somewhat justified in its grave worries.
Guy added that
One of the definitions of democracy is it's a set of violence-limiting institutions. It's basically an agreement that we will use democratic processes to resolve our disputes, and we will forsake violence as an option. And once one talks about losing confidence in those institutions, then you're off to anarchy, basically.
I used to work for a professor named Kenneth Boulding. I often cite what he called "Boulding's First Law:" "if it exists, it must be possible." There are certainly a lot of states run by Republican administrations that really aren't too bad. So the notion that a Republican victory means the end of democracy ignores Boulding's first law. There's only so much that one person can do. You have to consider the whole population of Republicans that work in government during Republican administrations. And there's a long history showing, arguably, that in some ways, Republicans do even a better job of governing. So I agree, this kind of existential language that gets awfully close to justifying violence is very, very worrisome.
David asserted, that no matter who wins, we're likely to test the resilience and the capacity of our infrastructure.
We're testing how much executive power and executive privilege can be healthy and sustained. We're testing our country's ability to be resilient in the face of divisive remarks and policies that are culturally and identity-based anathema. We're testing whether we have the resilience to deal with that or not. I think that those are very true. ... But both sides saying that the other candidate is an immediate abrogation of the country is just an invitation for people to take extraordinary means. It's a signal that the compact that citizens have with the government might become null. And once that compact becomes null, then we really have a hard time articulating why violence isn't an option.
Heidi asked David to explain what it is that Republicans think the left is doing that is a threat to democracy. David replied that
The idea that some Republicans articulate is that the amount that the system is rigged to prevent Republican ideas to be expressed, is anti-democratic. Certain identity groups, in Republicans' minds, are being over-prioritized. They feel that their [Republican] votes don't matter, and that there's sort of this conspiracy between the elites, the media, the universities that are all driving America in the same direction. I think that they then generalize that, not to mention the border stuff and other policy-related stuff, but they generalize that to believe that this is going to destroy the country and that there needs to be a really big interruption and a level of destabilization that has to happen in order for this to be corrected.
And so they are also creating this wedge that we need to vote Republican in order to prevent the Democrats from destroying the country. My sense is that, in general, that view feels less existential objectively than the language used by the left, in terms of the kind of destruction that will happen to the country. But I don't think it has a different impact. I think the impact on the right is we need to fight to protect our rights as Americans. That's the core message — and the difference between "we need to fight" and "let's resort to violence," is pretty darn thin.
We talked about the notion of "resilience" and "belonging," and Guy observed that:
It seems that the key concept is whether people are being left behind, out of your system of belonging. I think one of the real problems is that when we focus on belonging, we're very good at building consensus within our coalition. And then we go to war with the other coalition. I was struck in some of the community work that I've done around Boulder, that people are really, really good at conflict resolution skills within the coalition. But then it all breaks down when they talk about "the enemy."
The other thing that I think is central to a lot of this, at least in terms of a goal, is that it would be great to figure out how to do is something I call "the great reframing." Right now we frame politics in terms of "us versus them." It's a battle against "them." And we gather up all the horror stories that we can and we use those to mobilize support for our side. But if we could reframe things in terms of the real enemy is the hyperpolarized conflict that's tearing us all apart and making it impossible for us to find mutually beneficial solutions to common problems, then we're all on the same side. We all have an advantage in diffusing this and making a democracy that really lives up to its ideals.
David agreed:
I think that's right. I think that a great reframing can be thought of in a lot of ways. One of the ways that I'm most focused on right now is how to help reframe what success in the election is, so that we think less about whether the folks that supported us gave us a mandate, and more about whether we're positioned to actually help the whole country. And I'm anticipating a lot of mandate discussion, regardless of who wins. And I actually think that we really are going to need to figure out what does it look like to include whoever loses. That's one kind of refrain that I think gets to what the success of the election looks like.
Heidi observed that it has been a long time since presidents have tried to meet the interests of "the whole country." They say they are going to do that, she said, but then when you look at what they really do, they try to get as many of their policies enacted as possible, even if they are opposed by and significantly hurt the other side. The grassroots, on the other hand, say in opinion polls that they really do want their politicians to act on behalf of the whole country (although they still vote for the people who are highly partisan). David replied:
I still think that we need to change the leader's behavior, but the only way to change the leader's behavior is changing the incentives. And the number one incentive is the marketplace. To use Amanda Ripley's phrase, we've got "conflict entrepreneurs" coming mostly in the space of politics and media. In politics, they're using the divisiveness in order to pursue power. And in media, they're using divisiveness in order to pursue profits. Both of those are assuming that citizens are buying what they're selling. So, while it's true that citizens are saying that they want their politicians and media to behave differently, they're not behaving in a way that corresponds to what they say they want.
Heidi asked whether they are given the opportunity to (thinking that, due to our primary structure, our only options are to vote for highly extreme candidates). David answered:
We do need to give them the opportunity to. And this is where I think our whole set of civil society areas of work need to really focus. Finding pathways for citizens to feel, first of all, a sense of hope that if they engage toward the outcomes that they want, that they can actually achieve those. I think right now, even though those citizens that have as their highest priority finding ways to come together as a country, don't feel any sense of hope that they could accomplish it, which is a terrible disincentive to actually do it.
We went on to talk about whether citizens can feel more success at the local level than the national level. David shared an observation that we've heard him share several times before:
Top-down doesn't work and bottom-up doesn't scale. And any effort at reform that's actually meaningful and valuable has to have the two operating in gear-like tandem. My own sense is that the idea that we need to be supporting local or state initiatives is not quite right, except for policy issues. Policy issues are better pursued at the state and local level right now because you can't get anything done in Congress.
But a lot of this other work is different than just pursuing policies. And what we should be thinking of is getting as close to citizens as we can. Because ultimately, all of this changes through citizens. There are ways to work with both local and national initiatives that make touching down with citizens more successful. So for example, Ohio State University has done some really powerful work on town hall meetings that enable members of Congress to have discussions with their citizens where the loudest voices don't overpower and where it's integrated into their ability to do the mail. It's integrated in their ability to do town hall meetings. And it's integrated into their ability to talk about issues with their constituents. From my perspective, that is a really powerful initiative that supports citizen engagement. And just because it's a national initiative doesn't mean that we should be de-emphasizing it. So I would say that we really need to not think in a binary way, saying, "We're only going to support local or state and not national activities." The real question should be, is this going to move and mobilize and inspire and engage citizens?
Heidi asked David how it is possible to mobilize, inspire, and engage citizens constructively when it appears that most mobilization is based on fear? How do we effectively counteract that fear factor? David responded:
My sense is that we need to help members, legislators in general, and politicians, feel like they have a choice other than to feed the most powerful red meat to their base and vilify the folks on the other side. And I think that if we can if we can see more citizens that are not the most bellicose advocates for particular causes be more engaged with those politicians, we'll start seeing a de-escalation of some of that rhetoric. But right now, we've locked ourselves into the system where no matter where the politicians go, they're hearing the loudest voices.
Heidi wondered whether such change was possible now, before the November election. David observed:
Efforts before the election to depolarize or to reduce the heat, even to stem violence, are going to have limited effect, just because no matter how many millions of dollars and thousands of events we have, it just gets trivialized by the billions going into divisiveness right now.
However, I do think that there's an inoculation strategy we should be focused on. We should be going underneath the big, broad movement and be finding specific pockets of early adopters that are willing to band together and make their cause the idea of nonviolence and democracy renewal and strengthening of civic culture. And if we can create that small, thin set of early adopters that are beginning to feel like they have hope and opportunity and feel really motivated to engage hard after the election, that's our inoculation strategy. And after the election, we really begin to pick up some more steam because the engineers of divisiveness, hopefully, will be a little bit more tired. Then it's that small set of early adopters that's likely to help us set the tone. And if we're just so discouraged that we don't make anything happen before the election, then we're going to be much further back than if we were operating somewhat invisibly over the next five, six months.
Guy added another thought, on ways to convince people that they can have success if they get civically or politically involved. He suggested
having what amounts to a franchising operation, where you find a case where somebody's done something in some local community that worked well. Then they should make it clear how that worked and share that and share what people have learned. Think in terms of lots of discrete little projects that people could do that made a real difference in toxic polarization and to try to make it easier to do that, so you don't have to reinvent the wheel each time.
One could imagine putting together a website of these incremental steps on which people can share information. We talked, I think, in our earlier conversation about on-ramps and off-ramps — how you make it easier for people to get involved in this sort of thing. One of the professors we worked with years ago as graduate students did a big study of activist communities. And what he found was that a big part of the drive to participate was social relationships. So a big part of why people go and do all these things is that it's fun. You get to meet people who have similar views. You get to do something worthwhile. So cultivating that also makes sense, especially if you can stop short of cultivating a common hatred for the other side.
All three of us agreed that there is a lot more of this kind of effort going on now than there used to be. David shared that , over the last 10 years, the number of organizations that have in their mission statement the idea of bringing Americans together across divides has increased from something under 20 to in the thousands.
So while we maybe can't do much to increase this now, we agreed, we can lay the groundwork, so we are ready to move in a big way after the November election.
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