How about moving the middle?
October 31 is a good day for exploring magical thinking, eh?
We oh-so sensible American lefties look down our noses at QAnon loons and their belief that a cabal of adrenochrome-drinking, baby-eating pedophiles secretly run the world. When everyone knows “the private-equity industry is devouring” public companies at an alarming rate. In secret, “with almost no regulatory or public scrutiny,” Rogé Karma explains in The Atlantic:
A private economy is one in which companies can more easily get away with wrongdoing and an economic crisis can take everyone by surprise. And to a startling degree, a private economy is what we already have.
[…]
Across the economy, private-equity firms are known for laying off workers, evading regulations, reducing the quality of services, and bankrupting companies while ensuring that their own partners are paid handsomely. The veil of secrecy makes all of this easier to execute and harder to stop.
Investors hunt weak companies, consume them, and jobs disappear overnight with no Van Helsings stepping up to stop them. But I’m stretching the metaphor.
Brian Klaas explains (also in The Atlantic) that belief in magical forces resides in populations far beyond QAnon:
Roughly two-thirds of Latvians, half of Brazilians, a third of Spaniards, and a fifth of French people self-report a belief in witchcraft. In the United States, the figure is 16.4 percent—one in six Americans. And in the United States, unlike, say, in France, a subset of those who believe in demonic forces and witchcraft have become a potent political force, exerting significant sway on right-wing elected officials.
The reality-based community insists in the face of evidence that the crazies respond to logic, data and sound policy “rather than to the knock-on effects of widely held conspiracy theories or other nonrational beliefs.” Feelings trump facts. Sorry.
Klaas writes:
In other words, most of us who professionally study human societies—or try to explain political systems in the press—have a severe case of rationality bias: We think of ourselves as purely rational agents, and we too often wrongly assume that everyone else thinks about the world the same way we do. This assumption distorts our understanding of how people actually make decisions, why they behave the way they do, and, by extension, how and why big social and political changes take place.
Figures vary, but by most estimates, about 85 out of every 100 people in the world believe in God. And yet, an analysis of top political-science-research journals found that only 13 out of every 1,000 articles published were primarily about religion (a rate of just over 1 percent). That figure is absurdly low—professional malpractice for a field that attempts to explain political systems. But the scholarship is even thinner on disorganized but widespread belief systems, such as acceptance of the power of witchcraft. The analysis didn’t provide data on how many research articles focused on other forms of supernatural belief, including shamanism, animism, and the like, which we can safely assume have received even lower billing. The upshot is that we political scientists have an enormous blind spot. Pundits are even worse: When’s the last time you heard a serious cable-news discussion about the political influence of witchcraft and demonic forces? A serious rift divides the way professional analysts explain political systems and the way voters within those systems actually see the world, whether in the United States or in societies where such seemingly strange beliefs are more openly discussed.
The Bulwark’s Jonathan Last finds that beliefs about Joe Biden are wildly out of step with “Based Joe Biden.” Among a certain class of liberal pundit, the reason Democrats have lost ground with non-college voters has something to do with notions floating around the social media fringe: decriminalizing illegal immigration, defunding the police, transgender issues, etc.
In fact, Last argues, Biden’s administration resembles none of those:
Here are some actual policies Biden has enacted in the real world during his administration:
- Building a portion of Trump’s border wall
- Adding $37 billion in federal money to support local law enforcement
- Approving the Willow oil project in Alaska
- Standing shoulder-to-shoulder with Israel
Too far left? How about these?
- Killed Ayman al-Zawahri
- Bitch-slapped Vladimir Putin back to the ‘70s
- Blew up a bunch of Iranian Revolutionary Guard troops in Syria
- Secured the release of U.S. hostages from Iran and then re-froze the ransom money
- Spent a bunch of money to kickstart semiconductor manufacturing as a way to (a) bring jobs back to the United States and (b) create a hedge against Chinese aggression
- Passed Joe Manchin’s bipartisan infrastructure law with tons of spending for red states and rural areas
- Passed gun reform so moderate that he got 14 Republicans in the House and 15 in the Senate to vote for it
So what’s the deal? Why do non-college voters perceive Biden and Democrats as out of step with mainstream America? Is Biden really too far left? Is the problem bad comms strategy (per Matt Yglesias) and Biden needs to punch more hippies? Or is it voters who are out of touch?
Last writes:
Voters literally believe that we are in an economic environment as bad as the Great Recession of 2008/2009. There’s no way to argue people out of their vibes; no policy or metric you can point to. My feelings don’t care about your facts.
If those feelings are stubbornly immovable, Last suggests, “Orange Man Bad might be Biden’s best strategy.” Emphasize all the ways in which Trump’s policies are the ones out of step.
Still, it’s somewhat magical to believe that what moves voters comes primarily from the top down. A reader asked the other day why, if he receives a dozen fundraising emails a day, Democrats don’t use those lists “to carefully explain what they intend to do in Congress, foreign policy, and, generally, for the good of the American people.”
Long story short, there’s no one in charge of coordinated messaging. Republicans aren’t any better. They just have billionaire-funded media outlets and a dozen right-wing think tanks to tell Republicans what their message is and to help disseminate it.
But an idea a friend posed has potential. There are tons of small, understaffed, rural weekly papers hungry for free content. When I peruse them, there are frequently op-eds from right-wingers and none from the left. (Letters to the Editor from far-flung readers are less like to see print.) It’s worth a try. I’ll be gathering their contact info here in N.C. I may have to get back into the op-ed business.
You can’t win if you don’t show up to play.
Happy Halloween.