My big issue with a lot of the rhetoric about saving democracy is actually similar to some of the rhetoric about climate change. I think in both cases there is a clear danger and risk to inaction, but the rhetoric is so often catastrophic and sometimes doomist that reading about it is both extremely stressful for someone like me, and demoralizing/disempowering. The rhetoric so often feels like it's aimed towards a small group of elite corporate/government actors to accomplish some goal, and the everyday reader can only either act in their small way in advocacy/voting, or merely suffer in anxiety and fear over it.
That feeling is made worse by the disconnect I see between what politicians and elites say about saving democracy versus what they do. I think Yglesias pointed out that for how urgently many groups and politicians talk about saving democracy, the policy they pursue and the actions they take don't seem to match the level of urgency in their rhetoric. And at that point I start to wonder: is there a discrepancy between how urgent and dangerous they say the problem is versus how urgent they believe it is? Are they exaggerating the threat to maintain my attention because it's useful for them if I'm scared?
I really don't want to think like that. I want to feel like I have an accurate sense of the threat of democracy, like with climate change, without feeling helpless or like I'm being taken advantage of. January 6th unfortunately brought me back into a day of doomscrolling and losing sleep, because the coverage in the news and online was so frightening for me. And then the next day the coverage went back to normal -- that frustrates me and leaves me inclined to skepticism. I wonder how many other people might feel the way I feel about this.
Polis has done a great job, and I wish there were more Dems like him. But I'll also take DeSantis's approach over the more heavy-handed Dem governors. If DeSantis stopped with the weird banning of mask mandates, I'd like it much more. Let local communities decide what's best for themselves.
It's not surprising to me that Polis is the example of a Democrat taking the reasonable approach. While Colorado is a Bluish state, there is still a very high Libertarian streak on both sides of the aisle here. He can't stray too far from the personal responsibility mantra without alienating a large part of his own base. DeSantis has arguably chosen the path most consistent with cost/benefit analysis of the "science", and he got there earlier than anyone else. Polis' position is similar in practice, but less caustic to the other side of the political divide. DeSantis is more caustic, because he has been relentlessly attacked from the beginning, and his constituency feels more alienated by outsiders. Us vs. Them is real in today's politics, and any politician who isn't tuned into that can get primaried - both sides of the aisle. Polis and DeSantis are close to the Center on Covid outcomes. The fact that one is hailed for his leadership while the other is a media pariah speaks more to the positioning of the media than anything else.
Good advice to focus on the nuts and bolts of governing. Racist this, and evil that will not protect your party if the world is coming apart in the real world. It may scare the base, but it equally inflames the other base. I see Biden following the Trump playbook right now, with similar outcomes if he doesn't fix it. I've come to realize most voters wake up the day of the election, and determine how they feel about their lives. If the larger world around them feels pretty good, they vote for the incumbent. If not, they give the other guy a try. Demonization and morality takes may move the needle at the margins, but it's not gonna change an unhappy, dissatisfied voter from booting you out on your backside. "Evil Trump" will not work unless evil Trump is on the ballot. If he's running against "Incompetent Joe" it'll be another tossup...
OMG, a rational voice although one that seems to be crying in a political wilderness. I'm already glad I subscribed. Thanks.
For what it's worth, along the lines of normalization, along with horror stories about hospitals at capacity and turning away non-emergency patients due to an overload of Covid-positive people, I'm seeing allegations that all of these people aren't being treated for Covid but are in for other medical conditions, are being tested because of the extra precautions needed if they are positive and added to the statistics thereby skewing the actual number. Statistics without context are a shaky basis for personal or public policy making and it would be helpful to all of us if one standard was agreed on and followed when discussing the prevalence of the disease and its potential impact.
The overheated rhetoric from Democrats regarding "saving democracy" reminds me very much of Republicans' overheated rhetoric regarding Obamacare for the 6-7 years after it passed and before they reclaimed the Legislative & Executive trifecta. It reminds me of it in as much as it's being used to rally up the base and drive media coverage in service of other, mostly unrelated political issues and that, when they had the power to make good on those promises, they didn't actually have a realistic plan for it.
Democrats have now, for about a year, talked about the "absolute necessity" of assuring the right to vote & free elections & strong institutions, yada yada yada. But they have spent almost all their time & political capital elsewhere. Total disconnect between their expressed & revealed political priorities.
It really does make me wonder if they don't prefer having Trump & the threat of additional electoral shenanigans around as some kind of perverted Sword of Damocles to keep their voters wired & riled.
Thoughtful essay (so I subscribed!) but you appear to be stuck in a model that thinks issues and policy matter to vote outcomes. Here is an alternative model:
In the modern information-saturated world, all that really matters is *perception* of alignment versus aversion to candidates and their respective tribal identities. Then if you ask, the marginally attentive middle will justify their preferences by simply projecting kitchen table issues from the latest news cycles. Your marginal voter from either side can barely name the three branches of government, let alone explain why gas costs more this week. (Not even economists agree on that.)
Of course votes matter to who gets elected and what policies are enacted, but correct attribution of outcomes to policies is so complex that the political game boils down to storytelling. Enough decontextualized "facts" can be selectively grabbed from data to justify any narrative. So what wins is the best cognitive fit to the extant belief systems that are continually being manufactured and massaged in tight feedback loops designed to optimize segmented audience share. For a variety of reasons, intellectual honesty is a handicap for winning in politics, even while it is absolutely necessary for devising good policy.
What has changed historically is the democratization of the information ecosystem to the point where the reality that matters most is the pure social reality of which voices can best channel and harness respective strains of the collective mind. The physical reality of the pandemic and employment are only a backdrop for the gladiator sport of persuasion.
This is not a novel viewpoint. It is not contrary to your essay Mr. Barro, but somewhat orthogonal and insufficiently acknowledged. To me, this explains a lot more about what we are seeing than your essay does.
Love this; as maddening as it is to feel like democracy is in peril and people don't care, it's on the politicians to either continue to bemoan that a significant percentage of the electorate simply doesn't see it as a risk or to find a different way to incent voters to choose the party that actually believes in democracy as a functioning institution. A spoonful of sugar and all of that...
"pointless pageantry" -- I like that! Bari Weiss recently wrote a "Welcome to Year Two" post, and in it she stated the following:
"But we’re all here because we share some important things in common: a commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation. In our upside-down world, holding fast to these ideals can sometimes feel lonely."
In her mind, I'm sure it's a nice gesture in an effort to bond with her audience. In my mind, it's pampering her audience to believe something that's demonstrably false.
I'm not familiar with you, Mr. Barro -- but just on what I've seen so far, you strike me as the serious-minded person you advertise yourself to be. But whatever honesty and excellence you offer -- its impact hinges on the kind of community you build. I'm not saying you should censor your subscribers for their behavior; I'm suggesting you keep an eye on it.
And unless your people deserve it -- don't do what Bari did. Raise the bar: Even if it's just by occasionally reminding them that this is a forum for serious-minded discussion, not slinging snippets of certitude & childish insults for a fix.
Since you mentioned Hamilton: "There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on." — Major William Pierce
As M. Scott Peck perfectly put it: "[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it." This nation has no chance of turning the tide until both parties take some responsibility for America going totally off the rails.
And believe it or not, I have a plan for pulling that off. It's complicated -- but only because the psychological gymnastics of human nature makes it that way. But with some "commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation" -- all will become clear.
Thanks for your time -- and good luck with your site.
I agree with you that the central focus of Democrats in power should be on the issues that people care most about.
That said, if former Republicans are animated to act by disgust at Trump/MAGA world and fears that swing states voting could be legally corrupted, then they should act. The two can and should co-exist. They each have a role, or, to use the political cliche, a lane. With his Georgia speech, for example, Biden swerved wildly out of his proper lane.
I'm not sure its accurate to say politics is virtually always about material interests—most voters do not have the time or interest in analyzing which wide range of policies are actually best for them, so the question turns to one of who you can ~trust~ to make decisions that are best for you. The endgame is material, but mass politics is shallower than that. This is why delegitimizing individual politicians by accusing them of all kinds of character problems is an extremely effective strategy: voters won't care if their ideas seem better because they don't trust the person who claims they will implement them. Republican efforts against Hillary Clinton were quite successful at this (does anyone remember what her actual policies were?).
I'm not saying Democrats are doing a good job with what they focus on when it comes to contrasting themselves with Republicans, but that they're doing a bad job of the surface level, character-based stuff as well, which really does matter.
Inflation is nothing more then excess funds chasing limited products/services.. expand the debt to contain inflation is nonsensical.. each and every inflationary period was cured by contracting money supply, thus reducing demand... As for the congressional hearings into the Capitol Riots, 50% of the population deem them to be simply a partisan process.. unlike the 911 panel which was balanced and objective, the current committee, is not!
My big issue with a lot of the rhetoric about saving democracy is actually similar to some of the rhetoric about climate change. I think in both cases there is a clear danger and risk to inaction, but the rhetoric is so often catastrophic and sometimes doomist that reading about it is both extremely stressful for someone like me, and demoralizing/disempowering. The rhetoric so often feels like it's aimed towards a small group of elite corporate/government actors to accomplish some goal, and the everyday reader can only either act in their small way in advocacy/voting, or merely suffer in anxiety and fear over it.
That feeling is made worse by the disconnect I see between what politicians and elites say about saving democracy versus what they do. I think Yglesias pointed out that for how urgently many groups and politicians talk about saving democracy, the policy they pursue and the actions they take don't seem to match the level of urgency in their rhetoric. And at that point I start to wonder: is there a discrepancy between how urgent and dangerous they say the problem is versus how urgent they believe it is? Are they exaggerating the threat to maintain my attention because it's useful for them if I'm scared?
I really don't want to think like that. I want to feel like I have an accurate sense of the threat of democracy, like with climate change, without feeling helpless or like I'm being taken advantage of. January 6th unfortunately brought me back into a day of doomscrolling and losing sleep, because the coverage in the news and online was so frightening for me. And then the next day the coverage went back to normal -- that frustrates me and leaves me inclined to skepticism. I wonder how many other people might feel the way I feel about this.
Polis has done a great job, and I wish there were more Dems like him. But I'll also take DeSantis's approach over the more heavy-handed Dem governors. If DeSantis stopped with the weird banning of mask mandates, I'd like it much more. Let local communities decide what's best for themselves.
It's not surprising to me that Polis is the example of a Democrat taking the reasonable approach. While Colorado is a Bluish state, there is still a very high Libertarian streak on both sides of the aisle here. He can't stray too far from the personal responsibility mantra without alienating a large part of his own base. DeSantis has arguably chosen the path most consistent with cost/benefit analysis of the "science", and he got there earlier than anyone else. Polis' position is similar in practice, but less caustic to the other side of the political divide. DeSantis is more caustic, because he has been relentlessly attacked from the beginning, and his constituency feels more alienated by outsiders. Us vs. Them is real in today's politics, and any politician who isn't tuned into that can get primaried - both sides of the aisle. Polis and DeSantis are close to the Center on Covid outcomes. The fact that one is hailed for his leadership while the other is a media pariah speaks more to the positioning of the media than anything else.
Good advice to focus on the nuts and bolts of governing. Racist this, and evil that will not protect your party if the world is coming apart in the real world. It may scare the base, but it equally inflames the other base. I see Biden following the Trump playbook right now, with similar outcomes if he doesn't fix it. I've come to realize most voters wake up the day of the election, and determine how they feel about their lives. If the larger world around them feels pretty good, they vote for the incumbent. If not, they give the other guy a try. Demonization and morality takes may move the needle at the margins, but it's not gonna change an unhappy, dissatisfied voter from booting you out on your backside. "Evil Trump" will not work unless evil Trump is on the ballot. If he's running against "Incompetent Joe" it'll be another tossup...
OMG, a rational voice although one that seems to be crying in a political wilderness. I'm already glad I subscribed. Thanks.
For what it's worth, along the lines of normalization, along with horror stories about hospitals at capacity and turning away non-emergency patients due to an overload of Covid-positive people, I'm seeing allegations that all of these people aren't being treated for Covid but are in for other medical conditions, are being tested because of the extra precautions needed if they are positive and added to the statistics thereby skewing the actual number. Statistics without context are a shaky basis for personal or public policy making and it would be helpful to all of us if one standard was agreed on and followed when discussing the prevalence of the disease and its potential impact.
Agree completely. Too many people think "VOTE MY WAY, YOU STUPID BIGOTED PIECE OF TRASH!" is a winning message. It isn't.
The overheated rhetoric from Democrats regarding "saving democracy" reminds me very much of Republicans' overheated rhetoric regarding Obamacare for the 6-7 years after it passed and before they reclaimed the Legislative & Executive trifecta. It reminds me of it in as much as it's being used to rally up the base and drive media coverage in service of other, mostly unrelated political issues and that, when they had the power to make good on those promises, they didn't actually have a realistic plan for it.
Democrats have now, for about a year, talked about the "absolute necessity" of assuring the right to vote & free elections & strong institutions, yada yada yada. But they have spent almost all their time & political capital elsewhere. Total disconnect between their expressed & revealed political priorities.
It really does make me wonder if they don't prefer having Trump & the threat of additional electoral shenanigans around as some kind of perverted Sword of Damocles to keep their voters wired & riled.
Thoughtful essay (so I subscribed!) but you appear to be stuck in a model that thinks issues and policy matter to vote outcomes. Here is an alternative model:
In the modern information-saturated world, all that really matters is *perception* of alignment versus aversion to candidates and their respective tribal identities. Then if you ask, the marginally attentive middle will justify their preferences by simply projecting kitchen table issues from the latest news cycles. Your marginal voter from either side can barely name the three branches of government, let alone explain why gas costs more this week. (Not even economists agree on that.)
Of course votes matter to who gets elected and what policies are enacted, but correct attribution of outcomes to policies is so complex that the political game boils down to storytelling. Enough decontextualized "facts" can be selectively grabbed from data to justify any narrative. So what wins is the best cognitive fit to the extant belief systems that are continually being manufactured and massaged in tight feedback loops designed to optimize segmented audience share. For a variety of reasons, intellectual honesty is a handicap for winning in politics, even while it is absolutely necessary for devising good policy.
What has changed historically is the democratization of the information ecosystem to the point where the reality that matters most is the pure social reality of which voices can best channel and harness respective strains of the collective mind. The physical reality of the pandemic and employment are only a backdrop for the gladiator sport of persuasion.
This is not a novel viewpoint. It is not contrary to your essay Mr. Barro, but somewhat orthogonal and insufficiently acknowledged. To me, this explains a lot more about what we are seeing than your essay does.
Love this; as maddening as it is to feel like democracy is in peril and people don't care, it's on the politicians to either continue to bemoan that a significant percentage of the electorate simply doesn't see it as a risk or to find a different way to incent voters to choose the party that actually believes in democracy as a functioning institution. A spoonful of sugar and all of that...
"pointless pageantry" -- I like that! Bari Weiss recently wrote a "Welcome to Year Two" post, and in it she stated the following:
"But we’re all here because we share some important things in common: a commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation. In our upside-down world, holding fast to these ideals can sometimes feel lonely."
In her mind, I'm sure it's a nice gesture in an effort to bond with her audience. In my mind, it's pampering her audience to believe something that's demonstrably false.
I'm not familiar with you, Mr. Barro -- but just on what I've seen so far, you strike me as the serious-minded person you advertise yourself to be. But whatever honesty and excellence you offer -- its impact hinges on the kind of community you build. I'm not saying you should censor your subscribers for their behavior; I'm suggesting you keep an eye on it.
And unless your people deserve it -- don't do what Bari did. Raise the bar: Even if it's just by occasionally reminding them that this is a forum for serious-minded discussion, not slinging snippets of certitude & childish insults for a fix.
Since you mentioned Hamilton: "There is no skimming over the surface of a subject with [Hamilton]. He must sink to the bottom to see what foundation it rests on." — Major William Pierce
That's what I set out to do in this 5-part series -- and it doesn't get any more serious than taking on the entire country: https://onevoicebecametwo.life/2021/12/07/behold-the-legacy-of-your-beloved-sowell-part-i/
As M. Scott Peck perfectly put it: "[W]e must accept responsibility for a problem before we can solve it." This nation has no chance of turning the tide until both parties take some responsibility for America going totally off the rails.
And believe it or not, I have a plan for pulling that off. It's complicated -- but only because the psychological gymnastics of human nature makes it that way. But with some "commitment to reason, curiosity, independence, decency, and a hunger for honest conversation" -- all will become clear.
Thanks for your time -- and good luck with your site.
I agree with you that the central focus of Democrats in power should be on the issues that people care most about.
That said, if former Republicans are animated to act by disgust at Trump/MAGA world and fears that swing states voting could be legally corrupted, then they should act. The two can and should co-exist. They each have a role, or, to use the political cliche, a lane. With his Georgia speech, for example, Biden swerved wildly out of his proper lane.
I'm not sure its accurate to say politics is virtually always about material interests—most voters do not have the time or interest in analyzing which wide range of policies are actually best for them, so the question turns to one of who you can ~trust~ to make decisions that are best for you. The endgame is material, but mass politics is shallower than that. This is why delegitimizing individual politicians by accusing them of all kinds of character problems is an extremely effective strategy: voters won't care if their ideas seem better because they don't trust the person who claims they will implement them. Republican efforts against Hillary Clinton were quite successful at this (does anyone remember what her actual policies were?).
I'm not saying Democrats are doing a good job with what they focus on when it comes to contrasting themselves with Republicans, but that they're doing a bad job of the surface level, character-based stuff as well, which really does matter.
Inflation is nothing more then excess funds chasing limited products/services.. expand the debt to contain inflation is nonsensical.. each and every inflationary period was cured by contracting money supply, thus reducing demand... As for the congressional hearings into the Capitol Riots, 50% of the population deem them to be simply a partisan process.. unlike the 911 panel which was balanced and objective, the current committee, is not!