Will Democracy Survive? (I don’t know. Do Enough People like Democracy?)

At this point, I think the “nothing will change” and “why bother voting?” come from people who fall into groups:

Group 1: They don’t really understand how government works and they don’t know much history. They think, “I’m just one person.” They feel helpless and frustrated and they communicate their frustration to others. Some have very large accounts. Some think they are experts in all things so they tell people why the Democratic Party is screwing up and therefore there is no chance and so we are all doomed.

Group 2: They want the Republicans to win so they want to persuade you not to vote. Some are burn-it-down revolutionaries who think that if the Democratic party crashes and burns, a better party can replace it.

Nope. If the Democratic party crashes and burns, we will sink so deeply into a Christian fascist state that it may take decades to get out.

Some think that the Democrats are not “strong” enough or “tough” enough. (Notice the words: They want a strongman.)

The Democratic Party is the rule of law and due process party. Again from Ziblatt and Levitisky’s How Democracies Die, Democracy is slow grinding work. It requires compromise and give-and-take.

Authoritarianism is quick and satisfying (if the authoritarian does what you want). He dispenses with rules and due process and GETS THINGS DONE NOW.

To beat back the threat of right-wing extremism, a lot of people have to come together. That takes work and compromise. (People hate compromise. They think it’s WEAK because when you compromise, you don’t get everything you want. You have to give something away.) Compromise is the way to build a large enough coalition to overcome a fascist uprising.

This is from Annie Dillard’s lovely book, the Writer’s Life:

A well-known writer got collared by a university student who asked, “Do you think I could be a writer.”

“Well,” the writer said, “I don’t know… do you like sentences?”

The writer could see the student’s amazement. Sentences? Do I like sentences? I am twenty years old and do I like sentences?

If he had liked sentences, of course, he could begin, like a joyful painter I know. I asked him how he came to be a painter. He said, I liked the smell of paint.”

If you’re going to be a gardener, it helps to like the smell of roses.

If you’re going to be a writer, it helps to appreciate sentences.

I think of this passage when people ask, “Will Democracy survive?”

The answer is, “I don’t know. Do enough people like democracy?”

Do they LIKE rule of law and due process (which are slow and cumbersome)? Are they willing to compromise to build coalitions? Obama annoyed a lot of people when he warned against purism.

Democracy (rule by the people) means that the people have to do the work– and it’s a lot of work. Do people want to do the work, or do they want to sit back and demand that someone else DO SOMETHING.

Checks and balances create a system designed to move slowly. That’s really what kept Trump from making himself a dictator. Are people okay with a slow-moving system?

Autocracy is SWIFT and exciting and thrilling. The leader lands blows on the enemy and people cheer.

Democracy and rule of law are boring.

Are people okay with boring?

I don’t know the answer to those questions, so I don’t know if democracy will survive.

What complicates this is that a certain percentage of the population is predisposed to authoritarianism.

Part II: People Inclined Toward Democracy

The Paranoid Style in American Politics

Historian Richard Hofstadter, in his classic 1964 work offered an eerily accurate description of today’s politics.

Hofstadter conducted a thorough review of American politics from before the founding of the nation through McCarthyism. He noticed a pattern among a small impassioned minority on the fringes of the political spectrum.

He called their behavior the “paranoid style” in politics.

Those embracing the paranoid style of politics believe that unseen satanic forces are trying to destroy something larger in which they belong.

According to Hofstadter, the “something larger” to which they belong is  generally phrased as “the American way of life.”

They “feel dispossessed” and that “America has been largely taken away from them and their kind.”

They are “determined to repossess it and prevent the final act of subversion.” (This sounds to me like the battle cry of the January 6 insurrection.)

They therefore adopt extreme measures. They will stop at nothing to prevent what they see as an impending calamity.

These apocalyptic warnings arouse passion and militancy: The evil enemy must be destroyed—and the fight must go beyond the ordinary “give and take” of politics.

After Goldwater’s defeat, Hofstadter noted that some of the worst distempers of American democracy and become “a formidable force in our politics” and quite possibly, a permanent one. In 1992, Newt Gingrich captured this frustration—and call to militancy—when he said Republican must resort to any means necessary. The culmination of “any means necessary” was, of course, the January 6 insurrection.

This is important: Hofstadter says that the paranoid style exists on the left end of the spectrum as well as the right. Some authoritarians move from “the paranoid left to the paranoid right.” In his book, Hofstadter focuses on right-wing paranoia presumably because right-wing paranoia has been far more destructive.

The Authoritarian Personality

Political psychologists started studying the authoritarian personality after World War II to try to understand the rise of fascism in the 1930s.

The authoritarian personality describes the followers (the rows of people dressed alike raising their hand in salute) not the demagogic leader, who may or may not have an authoritarian personality. (Some authoritarian leaders cunningly manipulate those with authoritarian personalities.)

For a good summary of the scholarship in this area, see Right Wing Authoritarian Scale (Benjamin A. Saunder and Josephine Ngo.)

Those with an authoritarian disposition are averse to complexity. In the words of political psychologist Karen Stenner, they prefer sameness and uniformity and have cognitive limitations. They are, to use her phrase, “simpleminded avoiders of complexity.”

Diversity is a form of complexity. (Slavery and racial segregation were authoritarian.)

Conspiracy theories appeal to those who are averse to complexity. Globalism gets complicated. Our federal government has grown complicated. People who are afraid of complexity are eager and able to see evil in it. A conspiracy theory a belief that some covert but influential organization is responsible for a circumstance or event. Conspiracy theories seem complicated, but in fact, they reduce complicated situations down to a simple explanation that fits the world view that enemies are attacking us from within. How Trump lost the election is complicated and may not make sense if everyone you know supported him. It’s easier to believe that the election was stolen from him.

Political psychologist Karen Stenner has concluded that about 33% of the population across cultures has this personality. She also says people are born with it as a predisposition.

[Memory: Several decades ago, someone candidly told me, “When I see men wearing the Jewish skull cap, I feel a revulsion. I can’t explain why, but I do.” I suppose he had an authoritarian personality.]

Authoritarian Dynamic

This section comes from Karen Stenner, the author of The Authoritarian Dynamic, a book and article coauthored with Jonathan Haidt. A readable version of her work is here.

Those with authoritarian personalities can be good citizens. They will embrace institutions and they’ll follow rules. They will support traditional values when those values are endorsed by the authority figure.

However, when riled by what political psychologists call a normative threat, they can become cruel and tolerate cruelty in others. They can show aggression toward out-groups when authorities sanction that aggression.

A normative threat is something that threatens sameness and order.

How the Authoritarian Dynamic Works

There’s a tendency to see the current surge in right-wing anti-democratic, authoritarian norm-breaking as something new in America, and therefore both frightening and baffling. In fact, it is part of an endless cycle, or dynamic.

In a nutshell:

• Liberal democracy naturally expands
• As it expands, those with authoritarian dispositions push back

By liberal democracy, I mean this:

“A liberal democracy is a form of representative democracy with free and fair form of elections procedure and competitive political process. A liberal democracy may take various constitutional forms such as constitutional republic, or federal republic, or constitutional monarchy, or presidential system, or parliamentary system, or a hybrid semi-presidential system.”

Once a democracy is established, new groups seek to be included. In the United States, initially the only group included in “we the people” were white, well-educated, mostly landowning men. Our democracy gradually expanded to include women and minorities. I say gradually because it was really hard to get some of these groups included because there was often fierce and bloody pushback. See, for example, the Civil War.

Put another way, as liberal democracy expands, a leader can come along and raise a normative threat, like this: “Those people are coming to take your jobs! Others want what belongs to you! Those brown-skinned invaders at the border will destroy what is good about America! If enslaved people are freed they will pose a danger to white people!”

(There is a link between this and what Hofstadter calls the paranoid element.)

Part III Social Media is Making Lots of Non-Authoritarians act like Authoritarians

Authoritarians exert power beyond their numbers. They always have.

The dynamics of social media have made the problem worse. Social media is creating an environment in which people without authoritarian personalities are suddenly acting like authoritarians.

This is getting long, so in a later post I will explain how and why social media is turning more people into authoritarians, (and what we can do about it.)

To be continued.

Dog Content

After that, you need to see how JJ looks when he is freshly bathed and brushed. Also, the definition of a recognized psychological condition:

Canine Narcissism: When you are 100% persuaded that your dog is the cutest on the planet.

So when the kids were young, my phone was full of cute kid pictures. Now the kids are bigger and my phone is filled with cute dog pictures. Friend, “Teri, o what do the kids look like now?” Me, um, “I”ll send you something later. Meanwhile, isn’t the dog cute?”