Today is my last full day at Mother Jones, although I'll be around for the rest of the weekend and blogging as the mood hits me. With that in mind, I want to outline my take on what's wrong with politics in the US these days. I've gone over the details of each of these points before, and I have a half-written long version of this as well. For now, though, I want to present it in the simplest, clearest possible way.
My goal here is not really to convince you I'm right. It's just to get you thinking. Here it is:
- In material terms, the United States is in pretty good shape. Incomes are up; crime is down; financial satisfaction is high; and overall happiness is stable. This does not mean we have no problems. It merely means that our problems are not any worse than they've ever been.
- Democracy is in pretty good shape too. The Trump insurrection was scary, but it was a one-off. Overall, elections are held normally; voter turnout is stable; Black turnout is up; we have greater diversity in Congress; and the attempt to challenge the 2020 election was a dismal failure.
- Much of the distress over politics is due to the fact that the country has been stuck in a 50-50 pattern for so long. This kind of endless trench warfare irritates everyone. But it's not a sign of instability. It's just a sign that neither party has done a very good job of building a large and durable majority. It's also a sign that few people are terrifically unhappy over our current situation.
- Nevertheless, what fundamentally defines modern politics is that we're all scared. That is, we're scared of the other party. Why?
- It isn't because we're more prone to conspiracy theories these days. The evidence suggests that belief in conspiracy theories has been fairly stable since the 1960s. Nor is it because of social media. This fear goes back to at least the year 2000, far before social media had any impact. And obviously it isn't because the US is facing ruin. We aren't.
- The reason is simple: Fox News. Newt Gingrich may have been the original prophet of fear, but it was Fox News that executed his vision and then gained a national following in the early 2000s. Fox broadcasts are dedicated almost exclusively to scaring the hell out of their audience about what Democrats will do if they gain power. They will tax your money away. They will give your money to Black people. They will crush Christianity. They want government bureaucrats to control every aspect of your life. They want schools to teach your kids that gay sex is good and patriotism is bad.
- This is the explanation for the most fundamental question everyone should be asking about the 1/6 insurrection: what on earth scared so many people so badly that they were willing to storm the Capitol in order to keep Joe Biden from becoming president?
There are two things we can do about this culture of fear. First, liberals need to avoid going down the same rabbit hole as conservatives. We're not close to that yet, but there's not much question that we've been moving in that direction. It needs to stop.
Second, and most important, we need to mount some kind of broad, aggressive battle against Fox News. This obviously needs to be a fully private battle, and it needs to be waged in every possible way. We can boycott advertisers. We can pressure cable companies. We can air commercials that take on the fear machine. We can even compromise on some of the political positions that conservatives find most unnerving.
In general, we need to do everything we can to reduce the fear that conservatives have of liberal rule. You may think this is unfair: why should it be our responsibility to do this? But that's politics. Our job is to win converts, and fair or not, this is the way to do it.
I don't think a single blog post is going to convince a lot of people. Fair enough. But spend a little time thinking about this. Roll it around in your head. Compare it to other theories and you'll find that most of them don't really hold water. In the end, we need a no-holds-barred battle against Fox News and a massive PR campaign to persuade the conservative rank and file that Democrats don't, in fact, want to send them off to reeducation camps. This is the only way to get American politics back on track.
Which ones? Are you going to cave on immigration to try and appease them? On women's reproductive rights? On gay marriage, or race topics?
I don't think that will work, not least because those aren't the issues that win or lose elections. Republican politicians, for example, are way more radically anti-choice than their constituents - but they can still win because those constituents don't really care that much about abortion, at least not to the point where it matters.
The real truth is that we're working uphill, as David Shor has pointed out. Republicans effectively have a favorable advantage due to geography in the Senate and Electoral College, and now they have an opportunity to gerrymander to favor them in the House in 2022. All we can try and do is keep message discipline and run on the popular stuff, while doing the less popular stuff as well to appease our base once we're in power.
You forgot about the end of the cold war. As long as there was an existential enemy that everyone agreed on, leaders felt the need to be somewhat responsible.
hmmm...no edit feature?
... we're scared of the other party. Why?
Well, Republicans may believe that Democrats are trying to take their money, confiscate their guns, and destroy Christianity, but other than taxation -- which is kind of inevitable -- I don't know of any actual evidence to this effect. On the other hand, there is ample evidence that Republicans are violent, anti-science, and racist or at least racist-adjacent (along with several other types of bigotry), and their avowed leaders -- especially their most recent president -- are not just incompetent but anti-small-d-democratic. That's a lot to be reasonably scared of.
IOW, Republicans have delusion, but Democrats have real evidence.
Progressives are violent and anti science. Or did you not notice violent BLM protestors this past summer? Progressives cast a stink eye on GMOs, vaccines, and nuclear power.
Democrats have their own set of conspiracy theories. They just don't look at it to you because you believe them.
Yep. Not only were progressives violent through to get summer, their politicians justified it.
Kamala Harris set up a bail fund for protestors, Pelosi, AOC and The Squad made excuses. As much as I'm not a Republican, I didn't see any prominent figures on the right condone Jan. 6th.
I'm sorry, Kevin, but you are simply mistaken about this. The proof is a matter of dates. You and I are almost exactly of an age. Do you remember the Reagan campaign? Not the public campaign, but the one conducted by deniable surrogates behind closed doors. Fox News did not exist in 1980, but the rhetoric was the same. The targets were the same -- targets of convenience, of course, tailored to each audience, but foremost and by default, not blacks but "ni66er-lovers", which was code for educated whites.
In 1976, when Reagan ran for the Republican nomination but lost, the big secret promise was compulsory church attendance. In 1980, the big secret promise was a blind eye to the resumption of lynching. Once in office, Reagan reneged on that promise and that is why the people who went on to support Trump have always regarded Reagan and the Republican "establishment" as treacherous squishes.
Doubtless a lot of this was in place as far back as 1964 and even 1950, but it certainly is exactly the same today as in 1980. Fox was simply a stage of the technological evolution of media, and it is now being replaced by the next stage, which is the likes of Twitter, and Facebook, and Parler, and 8kun, and whatever springs up in the small hours of tomorrow morning.
That is completely insane. There were no such promises. Those are . . . . what is that word again? Oh yeah! Conspiracy theories.
Testing! Fuckity fuck fuck!
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^^^^^
Best Comment To Date
"we're scared of the other party. Why?"
Because "conservatives" want to kill me.
Kevin consistently gets it half right: narrative driven news has to go. Fox is bad.
But so is CNN, MSNBC, and his previous employer, MoJo, who also routinely mangle facts in support of their narratives. I contacted MoJo about Nathalie Baptiste continuously misreporting on Breonna Taylor; they perma-banned me from posting.
So much for not going down the rabbit hole.
It's this kind of thoughtful writing, not those damnable, incomprehensible graphs, that keep me coming back to read your stuff, Mr. Drum. More think pieces, fewer graphs, please.
That said, if Fox News could be killed another would soon take its place. Not that the effort wouldn't be worth it, but the war will be never ending. Thanks, Newt!
"Turn off your TV" should be one of those slogans like "Just Say No"