Agnostic in America

Students of history know all the signs. They can identify historical parallels - the inevitable, timeless forces that drive political polarization, and ultimately the fracturing of society in democracies.

Ray Dalio's Bridgewater lays out the archetype for populism, the underling conditions that fuel its rise, and typical sequence of events....

• By and large, these populists took advantage of the confluence of several characteristics of the times: 

• Weak economic conditions, which made people disillusioned with the current ruling parties.
•  An uneven recovery in which the elite was seen as prospering while the common man was struggling. 
• Political squabbling/ineffectual policy making, preventing the bold action people saw as necessary.
• A feeling among a country’s majority that foreigners, or those who didn’t share the same background/ethnicity/religion, were threatening their values and way of life

•  Where populists achieved some measure of success, they would refuse to join governing coalitions or support government policies, making the gridlock that they campaigned against even worse and preventing policies that would boost the weak economy. This, in turn, tended to increase support for populists. In that way, a rise in populism can be self-reinforcing.

• And while their political ideologies vary, the 1930s populists shared most of these core beliefs and policy goals: 
• They aligned themselves with “the people” or “the common man.” 
• They were anti-establishment and attacked the current ruling interests (government, corporations, wealthy individuals, etc.), calling them elites who were out of touch and had failed the people. 
• They sought to undermine those elites in favor of others by, for example, advocating wealth redistribution or the nationalization of industry. 
• They were strongly nationalist and held national unity as a key aim. 
• They detested the debate and disagreement inherent in democracy, and sought to empower the executive branch, using strong-arm tactics to prevent others from getting in their way and, in more extreme cases, undermining democracy. 
• They tended to be anti-international, anti-global trade, and anti-immigrant. They often railed against foreign influence in their countries. This often translated to hostility toward other countries, which pushed those countries to embrace political extremes as well.

• Conflicts between factions became increasingly intense, leading to great obstructionism, crackdowns on opposition and free media, etc. This led to more autocratic leadership. Those that had the weakest norms/shortest history of democratic institutions were quickest to move away from democracy to dictatorship. 

Sound familiar?

However in the case of the United States, I believe there may be one element missing. In statistics there is the concept of probability and severity. No one can argue the probability or either left-wing or right-wing populism has increased dramatically since the turn of the century. Increasingly extreme political ideas by increasingly audacious political entrepreneurs are gaining traction by an increasingly polarized electorate. 

But what about severity? In this case I am thinking about severity in the context that despite the fact Americans are becoming more polarized politically, despite politicians pandering to that polarization, despite the mainstream media pouring gasoline on this dynamic - how much does the typical American truly care? 

How severe is this political dynamic to them personally?

"The first thing to note is that most voters pay little attention. Those who follow politics tend to assume that everyone else does, too, but they are mistaken. According to the American National Election Study (ANES), a large survey run by Stanford and the University of Michigan and published in March, 94% of Trump voters did not attend a single political rally, speech or meeting last year. The figure for Clinton voters is 90%. The survey is considered the most rigorous study of what goes on in voters’ heads when they cast their ballot. (All the numbers on public opinion in what follows come from the ANES, unless otherwise stated.) Only about a fifth of Americans pay close attention to politics, and they tend to be the most committed conservatives or liberals. For the rest, political issues are little more than “a sideshow in the great circus of life”, wrote Robert Dahl, a political scientist, in 1961. That remains true. Americans do not trust government much and expect politicians to lie; 31% of Trump voters and 36% of Clinton voters think that the American government “probably” or “definitely” knew about 9/11 in advance." - The Economist

How severe is this political dynamic to them personally? 

I bet - not very. 

"So how do the vast majority of voters change their minds? Not by taking each issue, deciding what is important to them, determining which candidate is closer to their preferences and then voting accordingly. In “Democracy for Realists”, the most influential recent book on voting, Christopher Achen and Larry Bartels show that the opposite often happens: people may well decide which candidate they like and then ascribe policies they approve of to him or her, often incorrectly. Each presidential-election year the ANES asks voters to place themselves on a spectrum with “many more services” on the left to “reduce spending a lot” on the right, and then to place the two main political parties somewhere on that spectrum. About 15% decline, or say they have not thought about it. The same number, more or less, will place themselves but cannot place the parties, meaning that 30% of the electorate does not have a good sense of where Republicans and Democrats stand on the most fundamental question about the role of the state.

Of those who do answer, quite a few have a weak grasp of the parties’ governing philosophies. After the election, defeated Democrats spent some time fretting over the 80,000 votes they lost in Pennsylvania, Michigan and Wisconsin, handing Mr Trump a win in the electoral college. They wondered whether the FBI’s late intervention on Mrs Clinton’s e-mails swung the election. But a far larger number of voters did not really know what either party stood for. The ANES also asks voters whether the Republicans or Democrats are more conservative, and found that some 15% of Trump voters thought the Democrats were the more conservative party (as did 6% of Clinton voters). Add in the don’t knows, and 16% of Clinton voters and 24% of Trump voters were not sure which party was more conservative." - The Economist

I used to believe that was a bad thing. An embarrassing reality for the world's model of democracy. An agnostic, uneducated electorate choosing its "leaders of the free world." If only voters could become a little more engaged. If only they could learn a little bit more about important issues impacting their daily lives. Surely the root causes of societal ills would be identified by pragmatic consensus. Surely proactive government policy could then be implemented to drive American prosperity to ever greater heights. 

It could be true, but maybe it is all backwards.

The best democracies are structured for the worst case scenarios. When the social animal of the populace reaches towards its worst human impulses. When it elects conmen, strongmen, or incompetent men ( or women!). Because sometimes democracies do. The United States democracy is not a seamless vessel to implement the will of the people.

It is a straight jacket.

It is constructed to smother policy initiatives, not aid them. Most of the time- it can be a frustrating thing. But maybe it could be the best thing? At the very least - a necessary thing.

"All political leaders operate in a morass of constraints that, to a great extent, render their desires meaningless and compel the direction in which they go. Indeed, the American president is among the institutionally weakest national leaders in the world, and among the most deeply entangled. He also is among the least likely to “decide” on his foreign policy, and the most likely to be compelled by political and geopolitical reality.

All of our lives are caught in a web of reality not easy to escape or change. The reality of a nation-state is far more difficult to elude. Reality evolves in its own time and in its own way. Leaders preside over the shifts far more than they create them.

They are constrained by the reality they find themselves in and craft solutions that in retrospect change far less than they might have wished. A presidential term is four years, and American history is far longer. Presidencies are a moment in that torrent of history, and for the most part, presidents are caught up in the deluge as soon as they take the oath of office.

Great changes in American history are real, and presidents take credit for them. But it is more a matter of reality shifting under its own massive weight than a presidential decision. President Franklin D. Roosevelt confronted the Great Depression, and his task was to appear in control of an event that was far beyond him. Trump, like any president, is the creation of history far more than its author.

The presidency is, as Theodore Roosevelt said, a “bully pulpit.” The president can set a cultural tone and decide on lesser things. But changing US-Chinese relations, transforming US Middle East policy, or dealing with North Korea in a radically new way are not things that are easily done.

All presidents discover the limits of their office. Many are surprised and embittered, and many are crushed. Some flourish. Those who flourish understand that history makes the president, not the other way around." - George Friedman, Geopolitical Futures

Democracy can be a messy business. The American people do not pay attention to Washington. For the politically engaged this can be almost impossible to forget. We watch CNN and Fox News. We read the New York Times. We live and die with the rise and fall of our political heroes, or our political enemies. Especially the enemies. We see that political ideas ARE becoming more dangerous. We see inequality IS fueling this rise. We recognize the vicious feedback look that is marching the nation inevitably from hostile political conflict towards a broader more frightening social conflict. We know this cycle WILL eventually effect the average American in a SEVERE way.

Unless we are wrong about it of course.

How severe is this political dynamic to them personally? 

How many people watched the last Democratic Primary debate? 

6 million.How many voting age Americans are there?

235 million.

So - somewhere between 2-3% of voting age Americans felt engaged enough to watch the debate. I'd be willing to bet that the 2-3% figure is a pretty good representation of the politically engaged generally, that 2-3% is watching CNN and Fox News, that knows who the presidential candidates are on more than a surface level.

For every one else it is either theater or irrelevant. That isn't to say most Americans don't have political opinions, of course they do. We all have water cooler chats to maintain after all. I don't believe this is necessarily a bad thing. I believe it is rational. The American political system is a straight jacket - by design.

Most Americans are not ready to march in the Me Too Movement or protest the removal of Confederate statues. Most Americans are too busy signing up for Disney Plus.

When viewing the past 3 years of the Trump presidency - the made for TV show-trials, the dog whistle rhetoric, the virtue signalling, the victim worship and subsequent demonization - the American people have grown tired and burnt out by the constant manufactured "outrage". That isn't to say that recent political events aren't outrageous, or that there truly is no impact on American's personal lives - it is simply to say in the context of the average American's life how do these events compare to the impact of a family members health, gaining or losing a job, or the success or failure of their children? That is true severity to them. 

In an age where politically dangerous ideas, with political dangerous people are threatening to expand beyond the political into the societal, the best defense Americans have may be that they simply are not interested. Perhaps "this too shall pass."