ShitBurger No More: Democratic Brand Management in Rural America

Voters in South Dakota—one of the most Republican states in the nation—just voted to implement the Affordable Care Act’s expansion of Medicaid. That’s right, they voted for Obamacare. Good news for Democrats, right? Not at all. Even as they were voting for the most well-known Democratic policy achievement since LBJ held office, they also voted to reelect Republican John Thune 70% – 26%.

They voted for Obamacare, even as they voted for a Republican who has vowed to eliminate Obamacare.

It’s a similar story in Kentucky. There, voters struck down a ballot initiative that would have ended any constitutional protection for abortion, even as they gave Rand Paul 62% of the vote. Rand Paul… who not only asserts that life begins at conception, but has tried to make it illegal for courts to even hear cases about abortion rights in the future.

They voted for abortion rights, even as they voted for a Republican who opposes abortion rights.

What gives? There are a few possibilities:

1. Republicans like a few specific Democratic policies, but these are not enough to outweigh some other policies they dislike more.
2. Republicans don’t realize these are Democratic policies, and if only someone would explain this clearly, then they’d be open to voting for Democrats.
3. Policies have very little impact on the decisions of Republican voters.

I’m in camp 3.

While there may be some argument for the other options—and I will admit 1 & 2 may matter a little at the margins—I tend to believe voting is more often a statement of identity than an indication of support for or opposition to any specific policy. Most of the time, in other words, when someone explains why they support a specific candidate or party, the reasons they offer are post-hoc justifications. Sometimes these are rooted in broad ideology (“small government”), sometime in more specific (but often still-broad) policies (“pro-life”), and perhaps most often they are tied to irrelevant external factors (the price of gas). But whichever justification is offered, the vast majority of the time, it is just that: a justification for a decision already made.

So what does this mean? It means rural Republicans aren’t voting Republican because they love Republican policies or because they hate Democratic policies, or even because they just don’t know about the wonderful things Democrats have done. No, they vote Republican because they see themselves as Republicans and can’t imagine themselves a Democrats. They admire the Republican identity, and scorn the Democratic identity.

The problem, in other words, is not the product, it’s the brand.

Imagine a burger franchise called Hit Burger. It’s popular, and selling well. Eventually, though—perhaps through the clever marketing of another burger chain—people begin to call it “Shit Burger.” Soon everyone in town calls it “Shit Burger,” and predictably sales begin to decline. Even people who like the food don’t want to ask their friends out for a shitburger after the game. There may be shitburger fanatics (probably from out of town) who put shitburger stickers on their weird little bubble cars, but everyone there knows that only losers eat shit… burgers.

And now imagine that in response, the chain decides that what it really needs to do is introduce a new double cheeseburger. Taste tests reveal that people like it more than the competitors’ burger. When offered anonymously at the potluck, people gobble them down. And then they go right back to eating at the competitor.

The problem is not the product, it’s the brand. And if you own a Shit Burger franchise—oops, I mean a “Hit Burger” franchise—you have every right to be furious at the folks in charge of corporate advertising. You bought the franchise on the assumption that corporate would sell the brand—through effective and innovative national marketing—while you focused on turning out a great product. You try to salvage your sales by offering coupons or doing local promotions, and maybe this helps a little, but in the end the brand is just too toxic to your audience, and you’re fighting a losing battle.

In the rural U.S., Democratic candidates are ShitBurgers.

Is it really that bad? Well, see what Jess Piper (@piper4missouri) says about her experiences talking to rural voters.

But brand identity can change. Sprite was once a losing brand, the weak competitor in the clear-soda market. But an effective national campaign changed the image of the product with the audience they were after—kids, in this case.

And frankly, Democrats are doing great with kids. And with city folks. And even with suburban folks. We’ve only lost the popular vote for President once since 1992. It’s a huge success story, and we should be proud. Most of the country is on our side.

But unlike the consumer market, the political market is rigged toward the rural and the old. I’d love to see gerrymandering banned, the electoral college tossed out, and the anti-democratic Senate restructured, but in the meantime Democrats have to be able to fight on the terrain we have, and that means figuring out how to win rural votes (while keeping the voters we’ve got). A great product is vital. It’s fantastic. We should keep coming up with more and better policies. But that will never be enough to get the rural folk to eat at Shitburger.

We also need better branding.

And it should be the national party who does this. Democratic candidates are the franchisees, and they can implement the great products developed at HQ, and offer insight into how to improve these products. But they can’t brand. They are too small, too local, and too underfunded. Branding is the job—maybe the main job—of the big national organizations. When you buy a McDonald’s franchise, you know you are going to benefit from a steady flood of McDonald’s advertising coming from corporate. That’s a big reason you are willing to pay those hefty franchise fees.

So DNC and all the rest, it’s time to step up and start selling the Democratic brand. Not the policies. Not the candidates. The brand itself. It’s worth the cost.

How might you do that? Well, I’m just a guy with a blog no one reads (and a doctorate in rhetoric, for whatever that’s worth), but I have a couple ideas I’ll follow up with soon. First up, Republicans as the corporate cowboy in loafers.

Bro-Nationalism: George Mosse on German Fascism

Having written some broad speculation about the connection between fascism and hegemonic masculinity, I want to take a little time to write about some of the sources I’ve found that look at the topic from a historical perspective. Because it was cited in virtually everything else I read. I’ll start with George Mosse’s Nationalism and Sexuality.

The primary point of the book is that contemporary notions of respectability developed concurrently—an in mutual harmony with—the rise of nationalism. Nationalism is, he suggests, at least in part an attempt to control respectability—an act that in turn helps define (and presumably strengthen) the nation.

From the start, though, nationality has been fundamentally tied to masculinity. He writes, “nervousness was supposedly induced by the practice of vice, while virility and manly bearing were signs of virtue. Nationalism adopted this ideal of manliness and built its national stereotypes around it” (p. 10). These stereotypes, and the corresponding social roles tied to them, were not fully developed until the late 1800s, he argues, but they became the key to society, governing respectability, and in so doing classifying who belonged and who did not.

If nationalism was thus built on a stereotype of masculinity, what Mosse writes suggests that fascism is built on hegemonic masculinity. It is, at its heart, a sort of bro-nation ideology, with all the ideals and manners of the worst frat-boys.

German fascism—Mosse’s primary example—offers a clear example. Prior to the Nazis there existed the idea of The Männerbund: the society of men. Male friendships were thought to be better & deeper than men could have with women. Men’s association with women was physical, but with one another it was deeper and spiritual. So women in general are devalued, and reduced to sex objects and mothers (p. 161). The Nazis then extended this idea, conceiving of Germany itself as a Männerstaat—a “Man-State,” characterized by “an aggressive nationalism based upon the ideal of masculinity” (p.  170).

Bro-state indeed.

However, the core of hegemonic masculinity is that it defines itself by what it is not. It sees itself as different than, and better to, all alternatives, which include other masculinities, and of course femininity. As such, the fascist Männerstaat was profoundly terrified of things that might threaten it.

And what threatens hegemonic masculinity? Anything that hints at any sort of threat to the existing hierarchy. In other words, anything new. Fascism was, therefore, not a form of modernity, but a reaction to modernity, attempting to halt change and recapture some fantasy of past greatness.

Homosexuality (among men) was one central threat. Gay men, it was assumed, lacked the power and virility of straight men, being prone to “effeminacy, sensuality, and luxury” (p. 34). The fact that attitudes toward homosexuality began to liberalize in the early 20^th century thus served as the catalyst—the “corruption” against which the Nazis claimed to be acting. Not surprisingly, internal contradictions reigned. Even as the Nazis attacked homosexuality as a violation of the “natural,” they also believed it was highly contagious—a belief particularly held by Himmler (pp. 165-166). And given their bro-centric society in which the homoeroticism of men doing manly things—athletic and half-clothed things—in the company of men, they were desperately afraid of being (or seeming) gay.

The result was horror.

Wilhelm Frick proposed that “all homosexuals should be castrated… a policy meant to safeguard respectability and at the same time preserve the image of the Third Reich as a male society. Action was taken immediately after the seizure of power to combat pornography in general and homosexuality in particular” (pp. 163-164).

The most obvious threat, though, was the foreigner—the racially “impure” contaminant. However, this too was built on hegemonic masculinity, at least in part. Mosse writes that “European racism took the stereotypes of the sexual ‘degenerate’ and applied them essentially unchanged to the ‘inferior races’: lack of morality, lack of self-discipline, excessive sexuality, female traits” (p. 36).

Women, a bit ironically, were less feared. It is certainly true that the Nazis believed in an absolute division of labor between men and women, with women relegated to being “the bearer of children, the helpmate of her husband, and the preserver of family life” (pp. 176-177). And physically, this meant, according to Goebbels, that women should “be strong, healthy, and good to look at, which meant there must be no visible muscles on their arms and legs” (p. 177).

Consequently, while U.S. women were called into the workforce to replace soldiers at way, Germany only very reluctantly allowed their women to work, and then only sparingly. Opposition to such modernity was, after all, precisely what fascism itself was designed to prevent, and was built of the same ideological foundation the opposition to gay men. “The close connection between the persecution of homosexuals and the effort to maintain the sexual division of labor was demonstrated when the same team which combated homosexuals was given the additional task of proceeding against abortions” (p. 164).

A side note offered by Mosse is that while the Nazis were desperate to prevent their Man-State from being “infected,” they spared very little attention for women, and so had no coherent policy about lesbians. While the existence of this group might seem to be a threat to the Nazi ideals, Mosse speculates that they were so profoundly sexist that they simply didn’t notice or accept the possibility of gay women.

Urbanity—the city itself—became the symbol for all that Nazis hated. “The city was home to outsiders—Jews, criminals, the insane, homosexuals—while the countryside was the home of the native on his soil. Such notions, common by the middle of the nineteenth century, were to be repeated almost word for word by Heinrich Himmler during the Third Reich” (p. 32).

So, per Mosse, German fascism was built on a stereotype of masculinity that itself relied on victimizing all around it, in order to maintain its power. It hated gays. It hated immigrants. It hated urban centers. And it demanded traditional gender roles.

Sound familiar?

Fascism as Performative Masculinity: Some Musings

The fact that there is a connection between toxic/hegemonic masculinity and fascism[1] is pretty obvious, and my early reading reveals a rich literature on the topic. From this literature (and from the abundance of examples we’re subject to every day), I’ve pulled together a few observations to try to develop a more complete explanation of the connection.

1. Fascism is (often) a way men—especially young men—perform masculinity (as per Butler). In this sense, it is little different than lifting weights, racing cars, buying annoying loud car stereos, installing ridiculous lift-kits on their oversized pickups, or any number of other actions designed to signal “I’m a Man.” It may be vastly more harmful than these other things, but in many ways the basic motivation is the same. As such, it’s not only easy for fascist leaders to find their “brown shirts,” but there exists a pool of brown shirts enacting fascism even in the absence of a leader.
2. The alignment between fascism and toxic/hegemonic masculinity is deep. Both favor “strength”—both physical and metaphorical—as the most desirable characteristic (it’s no accident dictators are called “strong men”). Both are built on (often) violent opposition to an enemy. Both love militarism (guns, camo, uniforms, etc). Both prize physical fitness and sport. (But it’s got to be aggressive/violent sport. No curling in the alt-right, I suspect.) And both primarily consist of cis straight men.
3. Historical fascism has often occurred right after—and clearly in response to—movements promoting the equality of women and the LGBTQ community. In pre WWII Italy and Germany, in Brazil in the 2010s, and in the U.S. today, fascist political movements had strong anti-gay, anti-feminist elements. No doubt many other examples exist. The literature on this is extensive.
   • _{Why then didn’t the U.S. have a fascist movement after the women’s rights movement of the 1920s, as did Germany and Italy? Well, first off, we did. But before it could take off, we were at war with European fascism. This war gave men another means of performing masculinity, and so apart from giving fascism a bad name, it also undercut the performance-drive that might have recruited more young U.S. men to fascism. Of course, they still constructed the war as the men fighting to save the ladies back home, so the appeal to toxic/hegemonic masculinity remained.}
4. But why is masculinity so bothered by feminism or LGBTQ rights? Toxic/hegemonic masculinity is defined by its negatives. As per Said’s notion of Orientalism, “Real Men” in such communities define themselves primarily by what they are not: weak, emotional, compromising, gay, women. If one defines one’s masculinity by the degree to which you are unlike and in opposition to the Other, and then that Other suddenly gains social status, then your own social status is correspondingly reduced (in your own mind, at least). Phrased differently: the thing that makes a hero great is the power of the enemy he defeats. Minimize the power of the villain and you’ve reduced the status of the hero. If you are totally the opposite of a woman, but then “woman” turns out to be a good thing, what does that make you?  
5. Can there be fascism without toxic/hegemonic masculinity? I don’t know. I suspect not, but I’m not sure. I’m wondering about the left-wing authoritarian movements (Stalin, e.g.), but I don’t know enough to answer.
6. Can there be toxic/hegemonic masculinity without fascism? I don’t know this either, but I also suspect not. Or at least, not eventually. There may not be enough such people to form a significant political movement, but online communities of proto-fascists are rampant. And I think attempts to appeal to such masculinities by even mainstream political parties are always steps—no matter how incremental—toward fascism.

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[1] A quick note on terminology: I’m using “fascism” loosely here. If it bothers you, substitute authoritarianism.

Image credit: https://twitter.com/BrunaLab/status/1108346134077018112?s=20&t=B_YIIMDkMFBfXMiLoAtr6g

Obergefell Will Be the Next Roe: Why Republicans Will Attack Gay Marriage Next

It’s been widely noted that the next target of the right is likely to be gay marriage. I agree.

But I also think that while Republican voters may care about some policies like abortion or gay marriage, Republican politicians care only about power. And this is precisely why I think the right-wing media machine will try to turn Obergefell into the next Roe v. Wade.

To understand Republicans, I would argue, you need to realize that asking what they are for? is pointless; the only question that matters is who are they against? Who, in other words, are the publicly-promoted enemies around which the party is centered? Who are the villains they use to rally their voters?

Over the years, those villains have changed a bit:

Reagan: The Soviet Union, Black people (“welfare queens”), government, and Roe vs. Wade

Bush I: Saddam Hussein, taxes, and Roe vs. Wade.

Bush II: Saddam Hussein, Muslims, gays, and Roe vs. Wade

Trump: Immigrants, China, and Roe vs. Wade

You could add to each list, of course, and inject a bit of nuance, but you get the idea. And you get that throughout it all, opposition to Roe has been a constant.

Well, if Politico is to be believed, Republicans are the dog that has finally caught the car as far as abortion is concerned. For ages overturning Roe has been the key motivation for the segment of the Republican base more concerned with domestic virtue than international security. Opposition to abortion has been the single foundation of the right’s self-perceived moral superiority, and by far the biggest issue currently linking rich white Southern Evangelicals with the poor Hispanic Florida Catholics. More than anything else, it has allowed the religious right to see themselves as being on the side of the angels even as they ignore each of the Beatitudes in turn. Overturning Roe has been the thing that inspired protests and posters and donations and, most of all, voting.

So what happens when a party motivated only by villains loses its key domestic enemy?

Well, first—to be clear—there will certainly be a shifting of the goalposts. With Roe gone, attention will turn to a national ban on abortion. Or more likely, a series of national bans, each one more draconian than the last, and all offering the states the option to be still more extreme. But this won’t have the same impact, as it doesn’t have the unifying singularity of “Roe,” which gives a name to the enemy.

So how will the right continue to motivate those followers who see themselves as religious and need to convince themselves that this religion demands nothing more than voting Republican?

The sad and obvious answer is that they will try to overturn the gay marriage.

Of course, opposition to gay marriage is nothing new on the right. For some time now right-wing Christians have effectively reduced their religion to three commandments: overturn Roe, hate gays, and vote Republican. (With the last one essentially a shorthand for the first two.) But until Obergefell, opposing gay rights was too abstract to win voters; it’s hard to rally people in support of something they already have.

So now, when Roe v. Wade is officially overturned, I fully expect Fox News and the other Republican media affiliates to try to make Obergefell into the new Roe. I expect protests and vigils and heartfelt testimony from megachurch pulpits. And I absolutely expect every single elected Republican to wholeheartedly endorse the effort, because they will see that doing so might enable them to hold on to power.

Will this work?

I suspect not. I hope not. And I can think of at least three reasons why it might fail. First, gay marriage is hugely popular, and getting more popular all the time. Second, gay people are much more part of mainstream media than abortion ever was. For all the remaining prejudice, gays show up in television and movies far more often than does someone getting an abortion. This may seem minor, but it is really the foundation of how a whole generation defines “normal.” And finally, “Obergefell” is simply a hard name to say or remember. With villains, you really need an easy slogan.

That being said, Roe is (was?) also very popular, so the Supreme Court has made it very clear that popularity isn’t a deterrent. The Court has also made its disdain for Obergefell quite clear, as evidenced in the leaked Alito opinion. And the Court has amply demonstrated in a number of cases a willingness to go through tortuous legal contortions to justify support for whatever Republicans currently want. Any notion that they are “above politics” can now be rightfully laughed off.

Furthermore, the Republican Party has been transparent in its prejudice of late, attacking trans children and toeing the Q-line by linking the entire LGBTQ community to pedophilia at every turn.

So don’t think anyone is safe. Republicans have mastered the art of making the powerful majority feel threatened by the marginalized minority, and they’re absolutely willing to sacrifice any number of LGBTQ kids on the altar of their power.

Republicans’ Trans-Panic and the Eternal Quest for Victimhood

Social media just now is littered with Republicans chirping about their latest moral panic: transgendered people (in particular, trans women).

Let’s set aside for a moment those elected Republicans who are so repugnant that they don’t actually believe in their own propaganda, but are willing to destroy lives anyway in the quest for a political advantage. They merit no thought, beyond Vonnegut’s admonition from Mother Night: you are what you pretend to be.

Instead, consider the true believer, whether an elected official or your offensive uncle on Facebook. Sure, this person was no doubt ranting about critical race theory a month ago, praising the virility of the Russian military two months ago, and huddled in a ball fearing the “caravans” a year ago. But just because they are reeds bending to the wind of every organized outrage doesn’t mean they aren’t also true believers, entirely convinced each time.

What strikes me is the very particular focus of the trans moral panic: children and athletes. The folks who plan such outrages (and don’t doubt for a moment that such folks exist) are no fools, and they understand that for the movement to achieve its goal, they need victims. Whether they are trying to strip basic human rights from a marginalized group, or put a bunch of Republicans in office—either way, they needed to convince the true believers that they are the ones in the crosshairs.

Consider the anti-gay crusades of previous decades. Their argument was not exactly that gay people are bad (though that was certainly part of it), but rather that gay people were threat to straight people: the “gay agenda” will ensnare your kids and undermine the “moral fabric” of the nation, and then we’re all doomed. (They glossed over the causal mechanisms here.) Eventually, though, enough gay people came out that this threat began to seem silly. Cousin Andy or Aunt Betty wasn’t a threat. They weren’t part of an “agenda.” But they were real people being denied basic rights.

So now the right has moved on to attacking trans people, and in the quest to convince Bill from Kansas to care about the issue, they have to persuade him that he’s the real victim here. So they’re back to talking about kids, banning even the mention of gender identity in schools, and prosecuting those who give health care to trans kids, the assumption being that those trans people are trying to rope your innocent little Billy Jr. into wearing a dress. Won’t somebody think of the children!

At the same time, they’re talking about sports. Think of the poor girls on the 7^th grade volleyball team, crushed by the irresistible masculinity of that trans girl on the other team. Unfair! What fragile (real) girl could possible stand against a (real) man? What if that poor (real) girl was your daughter? Won’t somebody think of the children?

Setting aside the hateful misgendering, we could talk for pages about the implied sexism in the assumption that of course a boy would beat a mere girl. We could also go on about the confused doublethink that enables Republicans to consider trans women to be “sissified” men, while still considering them so masculine as to be beyond all competition.

Instead, I’ll just suggest that what Republicans surely fear the most is not that a trans woman dominates her sport, but that she fails to do so. What would that say about male superiority, after all?

Jack Reacher, Q-Anon, and the Fantasy of Moral Clarity

The Netflix series Jack Reacher sells any number of fantasies, virtually all of which are aimed at the adolescent male mind, but its main fantasy is one that underlies so much bad drama… and so much bad politics.

It sells the fantasy of physical power, not only with its extensive lingering on Alan Ritchson’s physique (lots of scenes with tight t-shirts, and lots of scenes with no shirts at all), but with the many, many fight scenes. As one person on Twitter noted, the most remarkable thing about the show is the number of people eager to get into fights with this bulging giant of a man. Taking out six (seven? eight?) hardened convicts in a prison bathroom? No problem. A few bruises is all. And after that, we know exactly what will happen when four drunk locals are served up as the next round of fist-fodder. So does Jack. And he tells them so before he does it. Very appealing stuff for the adolescent boy that lurks within all men.

But Jack is no empty-headed jock, and those who assume such are apt to receive an intellectual beating on par with the physical beatings that are the rhythm of the script. So the show also sells the fantasy of competence, where Jack knows about everything and knows how to do anything. Clean the char off the VIN in a burned-out car using only a ketchup packet and some salt? Check. Arrange a hotel room to minimize the chance of being killed by foreign assassins? Check. Make Sherlock-Holmes-esqe inductions about strangers’ pasts based on their clothing and an overheard comment? Check. Engage in witty banter about the short fiction of Eudora Welty? Check.

But lest you think Reacher is some kind of modern man, think again, as the show also sells the fantasy of emotional invulnerability. Indeed, the gimmick of the opening minutes is that we’re not sure Reacher actually can speak, as he stares down person after person in total silence, even after being falsely arrested for murder. And when he finds (SPOILER ALERT) that his brother has been killed? Nothing. No quiet sobs. Not even a lone tear. Heart-rending flashbacks end with closeups of his dry-eyed face, the only hint of turmoil being a slightly wistful look and a few flatly-delivered lines about killing everyone involved in the murder.

Of course, we know there are feelings down there somewhere. And so does the lovely cop Roscoe, played by the wholesome Willa Fitzgerald. So, of course, the show sells the fantasy of the woman irresistibly drawn to this combination of stoicism and violence. But Roscoe is a modern woman, as a guy like Jack would want her to be, versed in violence and eager for some commitment-free sex. Though even in episode four it’s clear she’ll soon be a one-man woman, smitten by Reacher’s crafted physique and the occasional hints of vulnerability he reveals (but only to her).

But the main fantasy—the one that is the foundation of the shows pleasure and its danger—is the myth that we live in a world of absolute moral clarity. Everyone in the story falls neatly into one of four roles. The primary villains are scum, causing everything bad that happens, and murdering their enemies in the most grotesque way. The secondary villains are hardly better. They may not personally kill, they are deceptive and wily and weak, and they enable the pure evil of the active villains. Reacher doesn’t kill these simpering fools, of course, but we can rest assured they will get what’s coming to them. Then there are the victims, pure innocents, weak and helpless. Weeping widows and their children. Innocent Iraqi boys abused by horrific elder men. None are complicit. None are compromised.

And into this comes the hero, whose course is as clear as a runway lit up in the dark of the night. To avenge his brother, to protect the innocent, to restore order to a fallen world, he need only kill the right people. And nothing but killing will do. But fortunately, killing is his specialty. Because he’s a hero. And that’s what heroes do.

 The violence of the show is appealing, but it is only appealing because it is situated in a world so devoid of social and moral complexity that it would embarrass even the hackiest of comic-book writers.

Great drama—real drama—may still have heroes and villains, but as in reality, the lines blur. Villains think themselves heroic, and heroes turn out to have feet of clay. And most of all, virtually every problem turns out not to be a result of some villain, but rather of the overall situation itself. And as such, it is so difficult to solve that the word “solution” ceases to apply. Marriages break up not because of a villainous interloper stealing the affection of one person, but because both partners are a bit too selfish. The poor suffer not because a villain is forcing to work on a planet-destroying super-weapon, but because the bus routes are unreliable and they can’t find a better job. People muddle on, making things a bit better, improving situations where they can, and killing someone doesn’t help anything.

The thing is, the tension between these two narratives—between the melodrama of Jack Reacher and the drama of reality—is exactly the conflict between Republicans and (most) Democrats. While Democrats are busily engaging with the messiness of the world, trying to reform the tax code or insurance regulations to produce at least some improvement in people’s lives, Republicans promise a paradise for all… so long as the villains get what’s coming to them. Reagan promises a shining city on a hill… so long as we get rid of the (Black) “Welfare Queens” and nuke the Russians. Bush offers a peaceful future… so long as we take out the (Brown) terrorists. Trump offers greatness… so long as we rid the nation of (Brown) immigrants and (Black) BLM protesters. And now, in what is often seen as a wild fringe, but is clearly the natural culmination of melodramatic politics, the Q-Anon wing of the Republican Party suggests that Democrats themselves are the primary villains, offering the fantasy that the political opposition is a group of Satan-worshiping child-molesters.

It’s a simple story. Wrong and dangerous. But popular… as adolescent boy fantasies always have been.

Bangs and Whimpers

What happens when the Irresistible Force of an increasingly liberal population meets the Immovable Object of a political system that is increasingly biased toward conservatives? Some speculations.

Irresistible Force

Change is in the air, politically speaking. Or should I say, change is already here, but so far it’s been successfully suppressed and ignored.

Nationally, Republicans currently have about half the power (a split Senate, a close to split House, and a pair of close Presidential races). At the state level, they hold well more than half, having trifectas in 23 states (to Democrats’ 15), very near their record high of 26 in 2018.

From those two stats alone, you’ll guess Republicans to be the more popular party. But you’d be wrong. Very wrong.

A Republican president has won the popular vote exactly once since 1988. And that singular win was Bush II, still riding the popularity surge of Iraq-war-fever. He would fall to a stunning bad 25% job approval by the time he left office.

Meanwhile, Democrats in the current evenly-split Senate represent 185,000,000 Americans (56%), while Republicans represent only 143,000,000 (44%). (https://www.vox.com/2021/1/6/22215728/senate-anti-democratic-one-number-raphael-warnock-jon-ossoff-georgia-runoffs). And we can see similar number in the House when looking at total votes rather than districts.

Meanwhile, the future looks even more bleak for Republicans, as their support is strongest among the oldest Americans, while people under 40 are strongly Democratic.

Furthermore, despite popular belief, people tend to have very stable political beliefs across their lifetime, and do not become more conservative as they age (mostly) (https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1113&context=poliscifacpub).  

So the unpopular Republican Party is likely going to become much more unpopular with each passing year.

Immovable Object

What’s kept Republicans in power, of course, is four things:

1. The Electoral College, which gives small states much more influence in presidential elections. Currently that is about a 3:1 ratio in the worst cases.
2. The Senate, which is anti-democratic to the extreme, and currently gives voters in the smallest state 70 times the power of voters in the largest (https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/opn-columns-blogs/syndicated-columnists/article226101590.html). Sixteen percent of the nation has half the power in the Senate right now, and with population shifts in the states, this will get much worse in the future. Combine this with the filibuster and in the near future something like 10% of the population will be able to halt the will of the other 90%.
3. Gerrymandering, which has become a science. And while both sides do it, the breakdown of states and districts means Republicans benefit far more than Democrats, particularly at the state level. In 2018 in Wisconsin, for example, Democrats received 54% of the votes statewide, but Republicans won 64% of the seats in the State Assembly (https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2018/12/chart-of-the-day-wisconsin-gerrymandering-was-awesome/).
4. The Supreme Court, which thanks to the Electoral College and anti-democratic Senate, currently has four justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. Not surprisingly, the court also declined to do anything about gerrymandering, and is likely to oppose any effort that weakens the party they represent (https://repustar.com/fact-briefs/were-half-current-supreme-court-justices-appointed-president-who-lost-popular-vote-his-first-term).

And none of this takes into account voter suppression or the media ecosystem.

Taken together, we have a situation where traditional political action is extremely unlikely to be able to address the problem. In order to pass political solutions either Republican would have to vote to diminish their own political power, or Democrats would need to get an unprecedented majority (65% of the vote? Higher?).

In other words, we are in a left-leaning nation that will only become more left-leaning in the coming years, but we have a political system that will give Republicans political control much of the time, and veto power almost all the time.

The irresistible force of demographics collides with the immovable object of the U.S. political system. What give?

How Will it End? Bangs and Whimpers.

How does all this get resolved? Here are some speculations, from the uncomfortable to the horrific, and roughly in my own estimated order of likelihood:

1. Permanent One-Party Control

I suspect the most likely outcome is that the country muddles along. Republicans will further cement control of most of the rural and less-populated states, such that even if those states turn blue overall (Texas…) and begin to elect Democratic governors, senators, and presidents, the state legislature will be dominated by Republicans secure in their gerrymandered districts, and Republicans will therefore control 70% of the House seats.

Liberal states will continue to grow and become destinations for basic freedoms (keep an eye out for the daughters of rich Texas GOP figures taking trips to California for abortions). But for the most part, Republicans will rule, despite being a dwindling minority of voters. The U.S. will no longer be a functional democracy.

Republicans will ensure that the rules of the system prevent change from within. Some people will get very angry about this, but occasional Democratic presidential wins will serve as a relief valve, making people feel there’s hope. Few people will understand how little presidents can do on their own, though, and when those Democratic presidents don’t fix things, angry leftists will get disillusioned with the Democratic party, and soon Republicans will regain power.  

We continue like this indefinitely.

2. Big Event -> Big Change in Popularity -> Big Democratic Majority -> Rule Change

Something happens—a botched war, a remarkable scandal, a massive legislative overreach—and suddenly Republicans become vastly unpopular, akin to the later years of Bush 43. Democrats get a huge majority in the House and Senate, and somehow decide that rather than squabbling amongst themselves, they should unify (hah!) and fix some of the fundamental failings of democracy. What would they do? First, probably ban gerrymandering. That would help a little. Hopefully they add a couple states as well. Welcome District of Columbia and Puerto Rico! Then, when all this gets struck down by the radical right judges on the Supreme Court, they add a few seats to the court and get back to something resembling parity.

There will, of course, be backlash. And because “doing things” is just generally unpopular, Republican may well reclaim power right after these reforms. They would likely undo some of them. Undoing anti-gerrymandering laws would be quick. It would be much harder to undo new states, though. Maybe impossible. And the net effect of Republicans following Democrat’s lead and adding even more judges to the court might be a short-term win for the right, but in the long term it would make the court’s political nature apparent and perhaps reduce its power. Probably a good thing overall.

So in the end, things are better.

3. Republican Party Split

Republicans have managed to keep the most virulent and angry fringe, and at the same time do very little but pass laws helping the rich. It’s a good scam. Get the rabble roused with incessant talk of immigrant caravans or Black Lives Matter or cancel culture or critical race theory or gun grabbers, and fund all that advertising with donations from the corporations, banks, and billionaires who get the actual legislative benefits Republican rule.

But maybe this alliance breaks down at some point. Maybe the crazies get real power and tries to institute their fringe plans, and sends us back to #2 above. Or maybe the crazies get tired of waiting and decide to create their own party. Trump was right on the verge of that, after all. Remember the first Republican debate, where the Fox News host asked him if he’d accept the results of the primary and not start his own party? They knew the possibility was real, and the results would be electoral catastrophe. We also have tiny hints of a reverse split already, with some pro(ish)-democracy Republicans splitting away from Trump (Liz Cheney, Bill Kristol, and so forth).

So far the “sane Republican” angle hasn’t drawn many supporters, though, so I don’t hold out a lot of hope. As far as I can tell, Republicans have morphed into a party without any ideology beyond power, which would seem to make such ideological splits less likely.

4. Secession

This time, I don’t think it would be the South leaving. Instead, I’d guess we’d see the coasts leave. I have no idea what that would look like apart from a huge flood of internal migration, but I doubt we’d see any open warfare to stop it. Republicans hate California, after all; why would they fight to keep it? So in the end, maybe we’d see a split nation, with the west coast and northeast formed into one country, and the old south and middle west another. Confederations do collapse, after all.

5. Democrats suddenly get popular with rural white people

You’ll note that I rank this a bit lower than secession in likelihood, as the decline in Democratic popularity here has trended in only one direction for decades. Plus, I think the die is cast at this point;  Republicans have made a clear decision to be the party of white voters who oppose a muti-ethnic nation, and Democrats have cast their lot with the other side. But maybe something can happen to change this? I have no idea what that would be, but perhaps it’s possible. Perhaps the immovable object can be moved after all.

6. Constitutional Convention

Or maybe we’ll all go back to first principles, and realize this whole messy conglomeration of a nation trying to represent states instead of people—a system built out of an attempt to appease slave owners—needs to be discarded. Maybe we’ll end up with a reasonable parliamentary system that actually makes sense.

What would it take for this to happen? Probable it could only come after the complete collapse of even the pretense of democracy and some decades of an open dictatorship. And then—hopefully peacefully, but perhaps not—the people could decide to start from scratch.

But knowing us, knowing the divisive power of partisan media machines and social media platforms, we’d botch this too.

What Next?

So in the end, my hopes are that we’ll see #2, but my fears are that we’ll find ourselves in #1, and hardly even realize it, as per the meme:

As for my money? My donations mostly go to state-level organizing, which may yet save us all. After all, it wasn’t so many decades ago that Republicans were so very out of power that people wondered if they’d make it back. What did they do? Well, mostly Fox News and talk radio. But in terms of elections, they started with the states.

So let’s all set up automatic donations to folks like Stacey Abrams and the Democratic Parties of Wisconsin, Georgia, Arizona, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and wherever you happen to live. (But if you’re a billionaire, I suggest you start a Spanish language talk radio station, and expand from there.)

Despite everything, I still believe power flows from the bottom up.

Back on (the) Track

After a year (!) off for what seemed like a minor injury but just wouldn’t go away, I’m back and starting one of those 10k plans that’s included with my Garmin Forerunner 245. It’s very fancy.

I made my way back slowly, starting with pitiful little two-mile runs three days a week, and dutifully following the 10% rule. So six miles the first week, 6.6 the second, 7.3 the third… and then 12 miles, then 15, then 20, and finally up to thirty.

Okay, I pretty much totally ignored the 10% rule.

But I did take everything slow, which for me is about 9 minutes per mile. After a few thirty mile weeks, with thirteen mile long runs, I decided I was ready for more.

Enter Christmas, where my wife bought me a new Garmin. Surprise! Actually, no surprise at all. My old 220 was dying randomly in the middle of runs, so I gave her link to the 245 and said “that one.”

But it was still cool to get, and there was all this new data. Heart rate! Intensity minutes! A sleep tracker! Steps! And mostly, VO2 max! It made me want to do something besides chug along at conversational pace. I might not be able to set too many PRs these days, but maybe I could at least improve my stats. (VO2, I’m lookin’ at you!) Of course, a PR would be cool, and since I’ve only run a handful of 10Ks, that seemed like my best bet.  

So I looked over the three 10k plans they offered, and signed up for “Coach Amy” (That’s her at the top of this post.) I’m only on week three, but so far it’s been fun. Here’s a few things that have stood out.

• The different plans have different numbers of workouts per week (3, 4, or 5), and different emphases. You also get to select which days will be off, and which day will be your long run. Much easier that re-jiggering a paper plan to fit your schedule.
• You don’t get to see the whole plan at once, so you only know what the very next workout will be. I suppose this is because it’s an adaptive plan that adjusts based on performance, but the result has been that I can’t look weeks ahead and obsess about some brutal workout.
• The particular plan I chose seems to emphasize tempo runs, which have been a real weakness of mine. (Insert dreams of a PR here!)
• The Garmin has a nice pacing feature for such runs. The top of the watch displays a sort of dial, akin to a gas gauge, with a red section on the left (too slow!) and another on the right (too fast!), and a broad green section in the middle. I tried once or twice with my old 220 to use the pace feature, but it was so sensitive that it was giving me warning beeps practically all the time. The 245 has a wide range of acceptable paces (30 seconds per mile?), so it’s pretty easy to get yourself dialed in, and even to decide if you want to run at the upper or lower bound that day.
• The heart rate monitor is cool too. I really had no information about this before so had no point of comparison. What surprised me, though, was the slow and inexorable increase in heart rate during a long steady run. I did a six miler that started out at the lower end of zone 3, and ended up at the higher end of zone 4, but all while I kept a constant pace. Apparently I’ve been pace-conditioned, so even though the whole run felt basically the same to me, my heart clearly felt otherwise.
• Apparently I might need to see a sleep clinic about my O2 levels at night.
• The accuracy of the VO2 Max indicator is much-maligned online, and I suspect mine is even worse since I just use the wrist heart-rate measurement. But it’s still cool. And frankly, as long as it’s consistent that’s all I need to know whether I’m improving or not.
• I bet there are going to be some hill repeats at some point, which is going to be a real issue as there simply are no hills where I live. The closest thing is an overpass.

So right now, I’m a fan!

In the meantime, I’ve got to go obsess about the goal-pace repeats in my next workout. Yikes!

Conservatism in an Age of Peace: An Invitation to Autocracy

Narrative Worldviews

As I’ve discussed earlier, I think there are two basic political worldviews: the complex (comic, to use Burkean terminology) and the simple (tragic or melodramatic).

You’ll note that these are not ideological (mostly), having little to do with any coherent set of policies, but are instead about how we people see the world. Such worldviews do, of course, nudge people toward particular kinds of political acts, so they are not entirely divorced from policy. Therefore, while it’s tempting to tempting to see the chart with two column and think they represent the two major parties or political ideologies, the reality is more complex. As I’ve argued here, while the right is largely tragic/melodramatic, the left is actually split between the two approaches (think Hillary/Biden as aligned with the comic worldview, and Bernie with the tragic/melodramatic). In other words, the worldviews may push people toward policies, but the strength of that push remains undetermined.

Villain Dependency

While the chart above is wholly fascinating (I think!), what I want to focus on today is the role of the two villains: the primary villain (the “person” causing the problem) and the secondary villain (the political opposition). Comic folks see problems as systemic, and so not caused by any particular villain. So crime, for example, is seen as caused by things like poverty or racism or access to guns, and is therefore a difficult and complex problem that can be mitigated but not truly solved. The political opposition, then, is not causing the problem, but is merely preventing effective solutions to those underlying (systemic) causes.

But for the tragic/melodramatic folks, things are quite different: problems are caused by specific villainous agents. Crime is caused by criminals, who are simply bad people, and the solution is easy: lock them up. Solving poverty won’t do anything, they think, because bad people are fundamentally bad (they are not made bad, they simply ARE bad). The political opposition is then seen as being “soft,” coddling these fundamentally bad people instead of tossing them in prison forever.

The End of Villains

For a long time this dynamic was stable, largely, I suspect, because of the cold war. Liberals proposed policies aimed at winning the hearts and minds of disputed countries, persuading people that democracy and capitalism could make their lives better. Conservative proposed policies aimed at threatening or killing commies (think Reagan “joking” about outlawing Russia and saying the bombing begins in five minutes). And later, we had terrorists jumping into the primary role, and again we gunned up against the “axis of evil.”

All of this led to horrendous foreign policy, of course. Ruinous military spending on things that ranged from the truly horrific to the absurd. But domestically, it led to stability. As much as Republicans hated Democrats, the commies or the terrorists remained the target of their most violent rhetoric.

But now there are no easy villains to fill that primary role for the right. Putin is a threat, but more of a regional threat. China is played up as a threat, but it’s largely an economic threat; hardly the sort of world-in-the-balance stuff needed to sustain a tragic/melodramatic narrative. What’s an angry conservative to do? Who are they supposed to hate?

The answer, I’m afraid, is that they simply hate Democrats. Where before they hated the Soviet Union and merely scorned Democrats as weak, they have now collapsed the roles of primary and secondary villain. Democrats are the new “evil empire.”

It’s easy to blame Trump or Fox News for this move, and no doubt they deserve some blame, but at its core, a worldview that equates solving problems with defeating villains cannot survive in the absence of a villain. Consider, for example, the Republican Party platform in the 2020 election: do whatever Trump wants. This is a party without an agenda. People joke about how “owning the libs” is the sole activity of Republican congresspeople, but that’s only funny because it’s so true. Or maybe it’s only horrifying because it’s so true. What are Republicans for? Who knows? But what are they against? That’s easy: they’re against Democrats. And how does a democracy endure when one side believes the other to be essentially evil? I’m not sure it does.

Scripts and Scenes, Lumping and Splitting: The Narrative Nature of the Brain

A recent New Yorker article about the biological nature of thought had an interesting aside that I want to explore a bit as it implies narratives are not merely artificially constructed aspects of literature or art, but are instead a fundamental component of memory. (You can find the article here: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2021/12/06/the-science-of-mind-reading.)

In discussing the nature of memories, the article describes an experiment by Christopher Baldassano that involved putting people in fMRI machines and having them watch episodes of “Sherlock.” Baldassano predicted that brain areas associated with things like color processing would be changing all the time, while other areas, associated with things like a particular character, would be stable (so long as that character was present). This all proved to be true. What he discovered, though, was that another area  of the brain also remained stable… until the show switched scenes.

Another study, this one by Asieh Zadbood, asked subjects to narrate aloud the “Sherlock” scenes they’d watched, and this narration was then played back to other people who had not seen the show. What they found was that both groups showed activation in the same “scene memory” portion of the brain. As the article states, “the scenes existed independently of the show, as concepts in people’s heads” (p. 33).

 Taken together this suggests that while we do certainly process discrete sensory input, we make sense of that input by forming it into “scenes” that, taken together, form larger “scripts.” Some scenes are simple, such as the chunking of the “navigate the airport” script into the “get your boarding pass” scene, followed by the “get through security” scene, and then the “go to your gate” scene, and so forth. In our day to day lives, these scenes are bounded in any number of ways. They can be physically bounded (going from one room to the next), or bounded by an event (the doorbell rings), or, I would imagine, by a conflict (my wife and I got in a fight) or a resolution (we made up).

In other words, stories are not merely things we impose on the world in the name of literature and art, but are instead key structures of our memories themselves.  Furthermore, it seems to me that such memory forms are actually more durable than almost any other. We may quickly forget the colors or the exact words of something like The Lord of the Rings movies, but we do remember the basic “script” (Frodo needs to go throw the ring in the volcano), and from this script we can reconstruct many of the scenes quite well, even if the sensory detail has been lost. The narrative script, in other words, remains as the foundational framework of our memories; it is the way we understand that event.

The article later talks about how we use such scripts to navigate new situations. When we encounter something unfamiliar, we either “lump” it into an existing scene or script (navigating one airport is much like navigating another), or we “split” it into a new category, and devise a new script. This, of course, reminds me of Piaget’s notion of assimilation versus accommodation. We generally “prefer” to use existing scripts, so we try to lump (assimilate) new experiences and see them as validating our existing narrative worldview. However, at times things are just too strange, and we’re forced to split (accommodate), and create a new narrative to make sense of this new experience.

The point of all this, though, is simply that when we talk about things like narrative frames, we’re not describing intellectual abstractions, or some poli-sci theory being imposed on the world. Instead, we’re talking about the fundamental way we process, remember, and navigate the world.