The Momentum of Principle

Here's a fairy tale:

The incumbent party was in disarray during primary season. They had spent the better part of the previous decades in positions of dominance in the Federal government, doing their best to enshrine their beliefs in legislation and court decisions, viewing with alarm and incredulity the growing unpopularity of their positions in certain parts of the country. They were highly principled and eager to fight for their beliefs ... when they weren't fighting among themselves.

During the primary contest, one element of the party believed they should take a strong, no-compromise tone emphasizing their core principles, even knowing that doing so would further alienate the rabid, polarized forces of the other party and possibly lose them the election. Moderates feared the outcome of such a fiery position and argued for a more centrist stance, gaining the upper hand in a painful series of contests. Furious, crying betrayal, the extremists broke with their party, nominating one of their most respected orthodox adherents to stand on their behalf.

Meanwhile, the minority party was having an equally difficult time. A rising group of leaderless, fiery insurgents - featuring prominent evangelicals and freely borrowing religious imagery and symbolism - believed they were on a holy crusade against an immoral government. Nevertheless, within the party itself, conventional wisdom pointed to a moderate, well-respected establishment candidate, but as events developed, party elders were worried that the front-runner was not colorful enough to oppose the coming challenge from their opponents.

After a series of contests, support swung behind a more down-home, folksy character who had lost a visible national election quite recently and never served more than a half term of their single state-level office. This individual, loathed by the other side and weighed down by nicknames and a conscious allusion to a humble background, had shown a gift for oratory and had a proven ability to fire up the base of the party. With a bit of skillful behind-the scenes efforts and loud-voiced support from an enthusiastic grass roots supporters, the radical got the nod.

Meanwhile, alarmed at excesses of partisanship and sectionalism and fearing the outcome of the the radicalism of both parties, a centrist group tried to mount a late-game appeal to reason and decency and reconciliation of the sections through compromise.

The result: a four-way election. Two strong radicals with grass-roots support, on opposite sides of an insurmountable ideological fence, and two moderates - one fatally compromised because of an historical affiliation with a broadly unpopular policies, the other an underfunded outsider.

A plausible fairy tale for 2012? Or, because of the absence of an incumbent running for reelection, maybe 2016? Drop Mitt Romney into the role of flawed establishment candidate, overshadowed by the folksy Sarah Palin. Cast your choice of Democratic politicians in the incumbent roles, and Michael Bloomberg as the doomed centrist/outsider third party candidate.

The astute will recognize the events as the election of 1860. Swept up by a tide of hyperpartisanship and a split field of candidates, the winner was the folksy radical who could fire up the base. This winner gathered no more than 40% of the popular vote, but was so despised by the other side that before even taking office half the country was speaking of open revolt. Before Lincoln won, the north spoke regularly of secession from a United States where slavery is legal; after his election it went the other way.

Okay, am I saying Palin could be Lincoln? Lincoln the candidate, positioned for victory by a mix of principle and circumstance, perhaps. And in other ways: a spotty public service record, a consciously folksy pedigree, enormous rhetorical appeal among his supporters, yes. Most importantly, a polarizing figure for both sides, someone you either love or hate - enough to drive even sober people to extremes of emotion.

But put the personal characterizations aside for a moment, and look at the events themselves. The parallels are a bit creepy, and the implications even worse: imagine Sarah Palin at her victory rally after election night, then imagine the discussions taking place in every blue-state back room. Lord knows what the result might be, but none of the scenarios are pretty.

The parallel breaks down quickly beyond this, of course. It's clear in retrospect that the weight of history was on Lincoln's side - it's impossible to justify slavery in any reasonable way. And of course Lincoln was the radical forcing change on the conservatives in the South - Palin's radicalism is consciously in the name of restoring values, not advancing them. Geography mattered immensely in the sectarian conflicts of the antebellum years; today's blue state/red state divide is more cultural/philosophical.

The moral of this fairy tale is this: the last time we saw a period of hyperpartisanship akin to the one we are living through now, the result was Not Good. At all.

For 150 years, few have been able to credibly imagine a way the country could have avoided the outcome of the period. The momentum of principle - on both sides - made the issue of slavery one that naturally pushed people to the extremes, making even the idea of compromise seem impossible. Most agree that the refining fire of the conflict provided a decisive verdict in the end, and possibly the only resolution that could have resulted.

We are seeing a momentum of principle in our era as well - one which seems at first blush equally impossible to resolve. As Lincoln said, "a nation divided against itself cannot stand ... It will become all one thing, or all the other." He was right, and one wonders if there is any reasonable way to avoid repeating history.

Unless we're smart enough to calm down and avoid making old mistakes. Despite what some radicals would say, our era doesn't have a single issue with the moral equivalence of slavery at its core. We have many more issues, but few are even close to slavery's breadth or monstrousness. Most may prove exceedingly difficult to sort out, but each - when viewed in a calm, narrow way - seems more susceptible to compromise and gradual resolution.

Do we have the will to divert the momentum of principle? Can we avoid the place towards which we are being swept?

How the Conflictariat Works: Narratives

"‘Narrative’ is a marketing buzzword, and it still has some leverage because it has only been doing the rounds for a few years. ... It is a response to people’s growing resistance to marketing of all kinds. They are exposed to subtle and clever messages almost all the time they breathe: they don’t trust slogans, they ignore advertisements – but they do listen to stories."
- David Boyle, UK Political Blogger

In communications terms, a narrative is a set of linked ideas that lies behind what a group does, says and believes. It provides an explanation that doesn't need to be repeated to those who already understand it. In other words, a narrative provides an easy subconscious shorthand to govern thought and action. Narratives make us safe.

The visual metaphor that comes to mind is one of a tree or shrub, where each branch is a rule or statement of belief or fact, and each branch ties in to other branches that support or relate to them. Those who understand a narrative can usually follow the branches forward and backward quite intuitively. Most narratives come back to a big root or trunk idea from which the rest naturally emerge. And these root ideas, at their essence, are stories.

In business, marketing and communications has long focused on crafting narratives around companies or products. The pursuit of slogans, unique selling propositions, branding, mission and value statements, image advertising - all are ways of helping refine a narrative. Our institutions need narratives for their employees, for their customers and clients, and for the world at large to understand them in that easy subconscious way we all find so appealing. Institutions with clear narratives attract emotional loyalty from their constituents; institutions without them become defined by the narratives of others.

A narrative always has certain attributes:

• It implies a story. Narratives have an implied beginning, middle and end. They explain where they came from and where they're going.
• It explains other narratives. If a narrative is a story about the world, then it's natural that it include stories about what it sees around it.
• It implies a big idea. Or a series of big ideas which it connects in a coherent way. A narrative without a big idea is just like a story for toddlers.
• It explains the big ideas. If you have a narrative that explains the problem, a back story that articulates the basic situation, then big ideas can slip into the debate and start uniting a constituency of interest round them.
• It works better when vague. We trust narratives in which we fill in the blanks with our own experiences. At the end of the day, we trust our memories and our own experiences more than those of others. In fact, articulating a narrative in definable terms is one of the easiest ways to alienate people.
• It's personal. To be effective, narratives have to be adopted emotionally by their supporters, and to do that, people must find it appealing in some primal way. A cardinal rule of storytelling is to make the audience 'relate' to the characters and events in the story. This is why social media and blogging have become so effective – because there is something real and authentic at the heart of it, a person, a place, a tale to tell.

Here's a summary of what Mother Jones magazine recently published about the outcome of the 2010 midterm elections in America.

"What does the American economy need, according to conservatives? That's easy. Lower taxes. Smaller deficits. Reduced spending. Less uncertainty. It may be nonsense, but it's not an act. They are 100% convinced that this is bedrock truth, and they tell their story with absolute conviction.

And what's the liberal story about what the economy needs? Don't all raise your hands at once. More stimulus? ... A payroll tax holiday? ... Policies to weaken the dollar? ... A direct government jobs program? Work subsidies? Maybe, kind of, and we're not sure.

In other words, liberals don't have a story at all. In the halls of power and the corridors of the media, liberals have nothing but a collective clamor of pet ideas and peevish finger pointing. So even if the economy does improve, there won't be any way for them to persuade the public that their policies were responsible. For starters, they themselves probably won't really believe it."
- Kevin Drum, Mother Jones

The point here is that the conservatives have done an excellent job of conveying the essence of their narrative, so much so that even Mother Jones magazine finds it clear, even if they don't agree with it. Conservatives didn't accomplish this by laying out a distilled platform of bullet points for public consumption (they did, but behind the scenes). They did it by telling stories over and over again that had as those bullet points as their morals.

It's important to note that narratives need not be comprehensive or all-explaining. Some can be very small in scope and ambition. And they need not conflict or complement to enjoy our adherence - we simultaneously hold thousands of narratives in our heads at any moment, flipping from one context to another. Human beings are adept at holding conflicting beliefs simultaneously - our intellect only bothers to integrate them when challenged.

All this in some ways is simply to state the obvious: we form our beliefs, values and actions based on an accumulation of stories to which we personally, emotionally relate. Humans have always employed narratives in the service of making other people change their behavior, and it is natural for us to become so immersed in our own narratives that we react in contradiction to our own stated values - sometimes violently - to those that threaten or conflict with them. People kill and die for their narratives all the time.

Here's what's new: technology and advanced techniques have made it unprecedentedly easier for groups to use our own narratives against us. The goal of those who do this are often banal - often simply the perpetuation of their institution or the pursuit of a mundane outcome - but more and more involves the accumulation of money and power for aims different from those stated. The individuals who do it are often professionals who have adopted the narrative of their institution quite personally - and believe they are acting in good faith. But in stoking the natural conflicts between narratives in pursuit of their narrow goals - without regard for the broader consequences - they are doing harm.

How the Conflictariat Works: Case Study No 1

One of my Progressive friends sent me this article today:

• "Glenn Beck’s two-part “exposé” on George Soros, whom Beck calls “The Puppet Master,” was so shocking, even by Beck’s degraded standards. The program, which aired Tuesday and Wednesday, was a symphony of anti-Semitic dog-whistles. Nothing like it has ever been on American television before."
  - Michelle Goldberg on The Daily Beast
  

And later this reaction:

• "Fox News host Glenn Beck was criticized Thursday by the Anti-Defamation League, a leading Jewish advocacy organization, in response to a televised segment about the financier George Soros and the Holocaust."
  - Brian Stelter, New York Times
  

My friend was naturally exorcised over all this, citing it as further proof of the criminal culpability of Glenn Beck.

Okay so I'm no Glenn Beck fan. He is the apotheosis of the problem I think is really threatening us as a whole: a self-interested 'conflictariat' with a financial and cultural interest in conflict rather than in governing, sociopathically radicalizing the country and making it impossible to solve real, important problems. Goldberg's article was an opinion piece, finding horrific anti-semitic messages in Beck's television program (kind of like college literature papers find hidden meanings in Shakespeare plays). Stelter's article was about the "furor" it caused.

What struck me at first was that some of the worst quotes in the Stelter article didn't seem to appear in the transcripts of Beck's actual show.

• Stelter: Citing Mr. Soros’s statements about the decline of the dollar, Mr. Beck said, “Not only does he want to bring America to her knees, financially, he wants to reap obscene profits off us as well.”
  >> I can't find that quote in the transcript. I think that's the gist of what Beck was saying, but putting quotation marks around it implies that Beck said it verbatim.
  

• Stelter: Mr. Beck said that during the Holocaust, the 14-year-old Mr. Soros “used to go around with this anti-Semite and deliver papers to the Jews and confiscate their property and then ship them off.”
  >> I can't find that quote in the transcript. Beck does say "when George Soros was 14, his father basically bribed a government official to take his son in and let him pretend to be a Christian. His father was just trying to keep him alive. He even had to go around confiscating property of Jewish people." That's not pleasant, but it's not a lie. Soros himself said that in a 1998 interview on 60 Minutes. Beck doesn't say anything about Soros helping Nazis "ship them off," in fact, he muses (albeit not kindly) on what being forced to live through such a horrific episode would do to a man.
  

So either Stelter is deliberately mis-quoting Beck's actual words to get more sensationalist effect, or Fox omitted the quotes from the transcript. My sense is that the latter is possible but unlikely, given Fox's understanding that once released all media is permanently in the public domain and such a step would be discovered.

But after mulling this for a bit, here's some backchannel I found. The ADL's Abe Foxman is actually a Beck supporter because Beck is a supporter of Israel. Why would Foxman send Beck a letter one week expressing support, and then attack him the next week as an anti-semite, then qualify his condemnation a day or so later? Maybe this relationship is not as simple as we're being led to believe? I don't think these nuances are going to find its way into the conversation, however, because they take time to explain and don't fit cleanly into the narrative of either side. What we're left with from the Goldberg/Stelter articles that Beck is an anti-semite and Foxman is nobly and righteously calling him out.

Here's what I think: Beck is a horrifically damaging demogogue. But as a result of the Stelter/Goldberg articles, my Progressive Jewish friend (their intended audience) will hate Glenn Beck a bit more, be a bit more tempted to view the ADL favorably, and be a bit more convinced that Republicans are evil/racist/anti-semitic. She'll probably view people with critiques outside her narrative (like me) as secret anti-semites or worse.

In other words, her personal anger, distrust and fear quotients just went up, as did the fortunes of the groups and individuals generating the stories.

In effect, my friend's (absolutely well-founded and legitimate) fear of anti-semitism was manipulated this morning by a (very sophisticated) group of professionals and organizations in order to generate money and political support to perpetuate their own existence. The next time she gets her call from the phone bank folks soliciting her money or votes for companies/products/candidates aligned with her narrative, she'll be more likely to say yes.

Fox News and Beck do the EXACT same thing on the other side of the spectrum: overstate or deliberately mis-characterize an event in order to grab a headline and persuade the masses to push the message viral. Which my friend did.

The really amazing thing is that Beck BENEFITS from the New York Times/ADL reaction. Their supporters will never be his, but HIS supporters view their reaction as proof he's on to something. Neither side cares what the facts are or who's right or whether it matters in any real way. THEY BOTH WIN. Goldberg, Stelter, Beck, and Foxman all got pats on the back today for doing their jobs and bringing recognition to their organizations.

This is the game. The news cycle will blow past and few will remember these specifics by next week. But underneath it all, everyone outside the conflictariat who paid attention just got a bit more frightened and distrustful and radicalized. They also got a bit less likely to support compromise with politicians (or citizens or friends, for that matter) seemingly aligned with the opposing narrative. And so it goes.

• "The press can hold its magnifying glass up to our problems, bringing them into focus, illuminating issues heretofore unseen - or they can use that magnifying glass to light ants on fire and then perhaps host a week of shows on the sudden, unexpected dangerous flaming ant epidemic."
  - Jon Stewart

Hyperpartisans Holding Us Hostage

There is now a gap between the politically active and the politically dependent - that is, between obsessives who have a stake in the nature of political debate and those ordinary people who have a stake in the outcome of political debate. From cable television to the Internet, we are now living with a political class which has a financial and cultural interest in conflict rather than in governing. - Jon Meacham, Washington Post

This is the red hot center of what's going on in our modern political environment. (Can anyone think of a precedent for this in history? I can't. And all the ones that are close ended *exceedingly badly*...)

The quote was from a Washington Post article about how the current environment is eating Obama alive. The big takeaway is that for the first time in history there is a group of powerful, well-funded, highly-sophisticated people who have a deep self-interest in perpetuating the fight rather than solving actual problems. Republicans stonewalled Obama and were rewarded with money and power, and meanwhile huge issues got left insufficiently addressed. Meaningless votes routinely take place to provide candidates with fodder for the next election. There's no incentive to compromise for either side.

Many of my more extreme political friends would rather have no reform than imperfect reform. If you asked them what they would do if they had to choose between fighting and compromising, most of them would fight - even if that means that people suffer while the battle rages. They laud those who Never Give In. But that's not how it works. The best of our statesmen - even those passionately committed to one view or another (Ted Kennedy comes to mind) - routinely worked with their ideological counterparts. They knew how. Lincoln did it. Both Roosevelts did it. Lyndon Johnson did it.

And I think Obama wants to do it. Many see in Obama what they want to see, but *my* belief is that he sincerely wants to govern. His personal beliefs may be progressive, but I suspect he'd be okay with a partway solution if it represented a move in a good direction. His position on last week's election was "Yes we can, but not all at once." When solving interpersonal problems, my first-grade daughter's teachers say: 'does this move us closer to a solution or farther away'? Children want the world to be perfect overnight, and will throw a tantrum if they don't get their way. Many adults realize that things are messy, take time, and very seldom end up the way they would prefer. But you try to move things forward anyway.

Many people believe that civility means giving in to the other side. But the point isn't to compromise or change your beliefs, it's to put your righteous anger in the closet and treat your opponent with respect in order to get something accomplished. Refusing to talk to the people you loathe (or calling them names) is not how democracy works. It may make you feel better about yourself, and get applause from your like-minded fellows, but it doesn't get laws passed.

I really want to ask my partisan friends to think about this: one side or the other won't win this thing outright, not any time soon. The guy you hate is not going to just give up and go away. Do the rest of us just have to wait for you all to play your silly game until we get ANY kind of health care reform, immigration reform, a recovery, tax reform, energy policy, environmental policy ... and on and on?

Fight the good fight. Don't give up your principles and do your level best to persuade us all that you've been 100% right all along and we should all agree with you. But for god's sake don't hold the country hostage until you succeed.