Setbacks in the Senate + The Inner Life of Authoritarians
+ Provocations, Delights, and Inspirations to End 2021
In this issue, our last of 2021, we take stock of setbacks in the Senate against the backdrop of a cascade of chilling revelations about the extent of the Trumpists’ conspiracy to overturn the 2020 election. And we feature insightful pieces that explore the roots of the authoritarian turn in American politics.
In the Delights and Provocations section, we feature reports, essays, and films that moved, intrigued, or alarmed us, including a new report on climate migration by Unbound Philanthropy; new research on the Latino vote by Equis and Way to Win; a new paper on narrative change by Greisa Martinez Rojas and Matthew Desmond; a riveting documentary by Adam Curtis; Donald Cohen’s new book, The Privatization of Everything; an article in The Forge by Megan Ming Francis and Erica Kohl-Arenas about philanthropy and “movement capture”; a roundtable about policy feedback loops and asymmetries in how Republicans and Democrats wield power, featuring Kevin Simowitz, Jamila Michener, Connie Razza, and Deepak.
Also, because we could all use some inspiration now, we close the year with a speech at COP26 by Pacific Climate Warrior and 350.org activist Brianna Fruean and James Baldwin’s poem “For Nothing is Fixed.”
But first, a reminder . . .
December 22nd is the deadline to apply for “The Path of Sacred Warriorship: Invitation to An Experimental Workshop at the Intersection of Spirituality and Social Change,” co-taught by Deepak, Oxiris Barbot, John Churchill, and Nicole Churchill. You can find out more and apply here.
The workshop will draw on a variety of traditions and disciplines, including contemplative, spiritual, and social movement lineages, and psychology, sociology, political science, and medicine. It is designed for experienced social change practitioners who also have a spiritual practice of some kind.
Setbacks in the Senate + The Inner Life of Authoritarians
This has been a very bad week for Senate Democrats, who announced that Senate consideration of Build Back Better (BBB) — the signature legislative proposal of the Biden administration — has been delayed until 2022, as arm wrestling with Joe Manchin about the scale and scope of the legislation continues. And then, the Senate Parliamentarian — who is simply a staff person serving at the pleasure of Senate Democrats — announced yet another poorly argued ruling against the inclusion of pro-immigrant provisions in the BBB bill.
(One of the open secrets about all of this has been the fecklessness of Senate Majority Leader Schumer’s stewardship of the legislation. In the summer, Schumer negotiated a secret agreement with Joe Manchin for a price tag for BBB that was less than half the size of what the rest of House and Senate Democrats, not clued into the deal, were moving forward with. Speaker Nancy Pelosi, who has all along been more effective than Schumer at negotiating with Manchin, expressed her displeasure about not knowing about the Manchin-Schumer secret deal. In our experience, Schumer’s style of legislating is to say “yes” to everyone during the negotiating process, resulting in an inevitable car crash as conflicting promises collide at the very end of the legislative process. There is never a plan for the endgame, only chaotic improvisation to get over the hurdle of the moment. Divisions within the Democratic Party and close margins in Congress always meant that BBB would be far less than progressives want or the country needs, but Schumer’s incompetence has resulted in an unnecessary stalemate and a dramatic, public show of weakness. The contrast with Mitch McConnell, or Schumer’s predecessor in the Senate, Harry Reid, is painful to observe.)
Adam Jentleson, a top aide to Reid, made this point about the spectacle of Senate Democrats getting punk’d not once, but three times by their own staff assistant:
Senate Democrats’ inability to deliver unfolds against the backdrop of an avalanche of new revelations about the extent of the conspiracy by the former president, his chief of staff, sitting members of Congress, and outside groups to overturn the results of a democratic election. Senate Democrats announced their intention this week to move from BBB to voting rights, with hints of progress on changes to the filibuster that might enable action on the voting rights bill. The awkwardness of the public pivot from BBB to voting rights had the whiff of air freshener to make their missteps on BBB stink a little less, but we hope their new resolve and the momentum are real. As authoritarians prepare to try to take both chambers of Congress in 2022, we could not agree more with Leah Greenberg of Indivisible.
Lacking the requisite sense of urgency, the Senate has in fact left town (just as, incredibly, some Virginia Democrats prefer their holiday vacations to codifying Roe v. Wade in state law before a Republican Governor takes office in January).
Delivering BBB, overruling the parliamentarian to provide a path to citizenship, and passing voting rights are objectively hard. And a lot turns on whether Senate Democrats can get their act together, in very short order. Child tax credit benefits for millions of people expire in January, legislating gets harder as the 2022 midterms approach, and Republican efforts to rig elections will begin again in state legislative sessions in January. On voting rights and the filibuster, Sen. Raphael Warnock gave an impassioned speech in which he implored his colleagues to take action, pointing out that the filibuster was waived to allow Democrats to increase the debt ceiling. “If Democrats alone must raise the debt ceiling, then Democrats alone must raise and repair the ceiling of our democracy. How do we in good conscience justify doing one and not the other?” Sen. Warnock said.
The deeper problem all of this drama reveals is the failure of many establishment Democrats to reckon with the deadly seriousness of the threat that authoritarians pose to democracy. Surely, they seem to have thought, once Trump was out of office, all of this unpleasantness would go away? The greatest challenge we face in defeating the authoritarians may be the inability of too many powerful people to understand the nature or depth of the appeal of Trumpism and the threat. Hyper-rationalists to the core, many upper-middle-class liberals find it hard to believe that so many people would buy the big lie, act “against their own interests,” and continue to support Trump with fervor despite all the evidence of his malfeasance, graft, and sociopathy. This rationalist fallacy (“if only they knew what we knew”) results in bad strategy by Democratic elites — for example, the view that “good governance,” reasoned arguments, or more generous economic benefits will all by themselves defang the authoritarian threat. But if the grievances driving Trumpism have more to do with questions of race, status, and recognition than with anxiety about economic precarity, the kind of technocratic, economistic response pursued by the Democrats to date was doomed to fail.
A sober analysis of the psychological origins and depth of Trumpism would have led to different strategic choices than the Biden administration has made thus far. They should have prioritized passage of pro-democracy legislation like the For the People Act and the John Lewis Voting Rights Act early in their term and made the threats to democracy the central topic of governance and public debate after the January 6th insurrection made the danger vivid and undeniable. Advocating a “return to normal” was a disastrous decision that wasted an opportunity to capitalize on the country’s outrage about January 6th, hold the perpetrators to account, and expand democratic rights.
Biden’s decision to downplay the democracy crisis has been a catastrophic miscalculation. As Barton Gellman cogently argues in “Trump’s Next Coup Has Already Begun,” the plotters of January 6th have not only not been deterred, they are redoubling their efforts, with more planning and competence, and are working to undermine the next election in plain sight though rigging election rules and efforts to install Trump lackeys in key positions. An accurate assessment of the threat would have led establishment Democrats to prioritize an agenda calculated to rouse energy in the multi-racial base whose intensity is needed to save democracy. We are now faced with a dangerous asymmetry as we head into the 2022 midterms: there is passion and a will to power on the authoritarian right, and, outside the activist left bubble, there is a low-energy, pessimistic gloom among working-class people of color who are the core of progressive politics. Given the failures at the top by Democratic leaders, a successful strategy to defeat Trumpism and authoritarianism will have to be driven from outside the Democratic party establishment (though progressives may need to take more aggressive steps to force that establishment to change course).
A winning strategy to defend democracy will have to confront the authoritarian bloc forthrightly, rather than try to conciliate or pretend that we’re in the age of bi-partisan, neoliberal consensus that people like Biden and Schumer grew up in and forged. A winning strategy will 1) skillfully divide the authoritarian coalition, weakening the ties that hold it together; 2) unite a broad front of pro-democracy constituencies who may disagree about many other issues to win in 2022 and 2024; and 3) above all, rouse passionate energy in the pro-democracy majority, particularly among working-class people of color who are its heart. Democrats could learn from the savvy and strategy of Officer Eugene Goodman, who helped thwart the January 6th insurrection. We’ll say more about what this means early in 2022.
But the starting place for a sound strategy is a sober analysis. Here are some pieces we recommend that interrogate the sources of authoritarianism, with a focus on the “inner life” of its adherents.
An earlier issue of The Platypus highlighted a crucial paper, “Activating Animus: The Uniquely Social Roots of Trump Support,” by Lilliana Mason, Julie Wronski, and John V. Kane, published in the American Political Science Review in June. The paper makes the case that hostility towards “out-groups” (they focus on African-Americans, Hispanics, Muslims, and LGBT people) is a driver of support for Trump across party lines and crucially that this animus is a very widespread and potent force in our politics that can be weaponized by other politicians. A tweet thread by one of the authors, Liliana Mason summarizes the toplines:
First, the people who really like Trump in 2018 are the same ones who really disliked Blacks, Muslims, LGBT+, and Hispanics in 2011. It's NOT THE SAME for the GOP in general, or even for Ryan or McConnell. Trump is drawing on this particular group of people to a unique degree.
He is also doing this ACROSS PARTIES.
The new MAGA/anti-MAGA conflict is not an entirely partisan one. It's about white Christian supremacy versus a fully multi-racial democracy. The Trump effect occurs most powerfully at the most hateful end of the spectrum (above 0.5 on the animus scale).
And it's not happening for anyone on the Democratic side. Hating Christians and White people doesn't predict favorability toward any Democratic figures or the Democratic Party. So it isn't "anti-White racism" (whatever that means) motivating the left. It's not "both sides."
This means that there is a faction in American politics that has moved from party to party, can be recruited from either party, and responds especially well to hatred of marginalized groups. They're not just Republicans or Democrats, they're a third faction that targets parties.
THIS is the faction we, as Americans, should be worried about. "Bipartisanship" is not the answer to the problem. We need to confront this particular faction of Americans who have been uniquely visible and anti-democratic since before the Civil War (when they were Democrats).
We haven't really talked about them — except in extreme and isolated ways like talking about the KKK. But Trump served as a lightning rod for lots of regular people who hold white Christian supremacist beliefs. We neglect to name and identify them at the peril of democracy.
Their current control over the GOP makes it seem like a partisan issue. But this faction has been around longer than our current partisan divide. And calling it partisan is a misdirection (even if it is facially true).
It draws our attention away from the faction and forces us to "both-sides" democracy v. anti-democracy. These two sides are not equivalent. As academics and journalists, who are pressured into non-partisanship, it makes it difficult to speak honestly about the threat.
But this current research locates the faction in 2011, and observes them moving toward Trump himself by 2018, from across the political spectrum. Trump solidified the faction's control over the GOP, but they are not loyal to a party — they are loyal to white Christian domination.
This is the true but uncomfortable conversation we need to start having. It may seem "uncivil" or rude. It may break the norms of objective reporting and research. But these rules and norms have always protected this faction.
More than "polarization," we need to worry about the very real threat posed by an anti-democratic group that has always existed in the electorate, and has taken control of parties to cover for their explicitly anti-democratic aims. When we do point at them, they are indignant.
As long as they can hide behind party labels they are protected by "bipartisanship" and the both-sides implications of "polarization" research. It's time to bring this faction out of the protection of party labels and the veil of political civility, and into the discussion.
The paper builds on a now classic paper by Larry Bartels, “Ethnic Antagonism erodes Republicans’ commitment to democracy” which found that
substantial numbers of Republicans endorse statements contemplating violations of key democratic norms, including respect for the law and for the outcomes of elections and eschewing the use of force in pursuit of political ends. The strongest predictor by far of these antidemocratic attitudes is ethnic antagonism—especially concerns about the political power and claims on government resources of immigrants, African-Americans, and Latinos. The strong tendency of ethnocentric Republicans to countenance violence and lawlessness, even prospectively and hypothetically, underlines the significance of ethnic conflict in contemporary US politics.
Part of the problem is a failure to understand that people’s understanding of their own interests extends beyond economic issues.
Michelle Lamont pushed back against this tendency in her 2017 speech as president of the American Sociological Association, “Addressing Recognition Gaps: Destigmatization and the Reduction of Inequality.” “Contemporary sociologists,” Lamont said, “tend to focus on inequality in the distribution of resources, such as occupations, education, and wealth. Complementing this research, this address draws attention to ‘recognition gaps,’ defined as disparities in worth and cultural membership between groups in a society.” Lamont’s speech surveys a large body of research and contains many gems, but it’s especially relevant to the question of authoritarianism because, as she writes,
stigmatization [the “mirror opposite of recognition”] matters for politics—influencing Donald Trump’s ability to speak to the white working class, for instance. Indeed, an analysis of 73 of Trump’s electoral speeches revealed that he systematically aimed to appeal to this group by validating their worth as workers (Lamont, Park, and Ayala-Hurtado 2017). He did this by removing blame for their downward mobility, that is, by repeatedly pointing to globalization to explain their economic plight. He also systematically put down the competition (immigrants in general, singling out “illegal immigrants,” Mexicans, Muslims, and refugees) and raised workers’ status by stressing their role as protectors and providers of women and children (including against Muslims!). Thus, the recognition gap experienced by workers helps explain the role played by this group in the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election. This applies not only to Trump’s election, but also to Brexit (Dodd, Lamont, and Savage 2017) and to populism more generally (Bonikowski 2017). (p. 423)
This past June we lost the influential literary and cultural theorist Lauren Berlant, a leading proponent of “affect theory,” and a writer whose keen attunement to the power of emotions in politics allowed her, in 2012, to foresee the “Trumping of Politics.” In her poetic essay “Trump, or political emotions,” from August of 2016, she writes,
People would like to feel free. They would like the world to have a generous cushion for all their aggression and inclination. They would like there to be a general plane of okayness governing social relations. It is hard for some to see that the “generous cushion for aggression” might conflict with the “general plane of okayness.”
When I listen to Donald Trump, I think he’s not wrong about some things, especially the awful neoliberal-Clintonian trade deals and bank deregulation that sold out the working class in the US because of a muddled idea that any wealth at all is a general social benefit. . . .
Trump’s people . . . want fairness of a sort, but mainly they seek freedom from shame. Civil rights and feminism aren’t just about the law after all, they are about manners, and emotions too: those “interest groups” get right in there and reject what feels like people’s spontaneous, ingrained responses. People get shamed, or lose their jobs, for example, when they’re just having a little fun making fun. Anti-PC means “I feel unfree.”
The Trump Emotion Machine is delivering feeling ok, acting free. Being ok with one’s internal noise, and saying it, and demanding that it matter. Internal Noise Matters. The reason white people can be so reactively literal-minded about Black Lives Matter, reeling off the other “lives” that matter too, isn’t only racism. It’s that in capitalism, in liberal society, in many personal relationships, they feel used like tools, or ignored, or made to feel small, like gnats. They feel that they don’t matter, and they’re not wrong.
In 1950, Theodor Adorno and his co-authors concluded their monumental study The Authoritarian Personality with wisdom highly relevant to our current political crisis: “we need not suppose that appeal to emotion belongs to those who strive in the direction of fascism, while democratic propaganda must limit itself to reason and restraint. If fear and destructiveness are the major emotional sources of fascism, eros belongs mainly to democracy.”
The authoritarians can be beaten. Doing so will be a decade-long project, and it will require sober strategy, massive organizing of the organized, and the mobilization of energies and emotions that can match the ferocity of our opponents. We’ll explore these themes further in 2022.
Delights and Provocations
a provocative new report Unbound Philanthropy, “On the Frontlines of the Climate Emergency: Where Immigrants Meet Climate Change”
important new research on the Latino vote by Equis and Way to Win
an insightful new paper on narrative change by Greisa Martinez Rojas and Matthew Desmond, “Beyond the Easiest Cases”
Episode 1 of the riveting documentary series Century of the Self by Adam Curtis focuses on Edward Bernays, Freud’s nephew and a pioneer in the field of public relations who mastered the dark arts of mobilizing emotions for consumption and then for right-wing politics, a lineage that has nourished Republican strategists for more than 50 years.
Donald Cohen’s valuable new book The Privatization of Everything
a crucial article by Megan Ming Francis and Erica Kohl-Arenas about philanthropy and “movement capture”
a roundtable about policy feedback loops and asymmetries in how Republicans and Democrats wield power, featuring Kevin Simowitz, Jamila Michener, Connie Razza, and Deepak.
Inspirations: James Baldwin and Brianna Fruean
Check out this powerful speech to COP26 by Brianna Fruean, one of the Pacific Climate Warriors and a longtime part of the 350.org network. She makes the case for climate action from the perspective of residents of some of the most vulnerable communities on earth. “Pacific youth,” she says, “have rallied behind the cry: “We are not drowning, we are fighting!’”
We close with this poem by James Baldwin, about the inevitability of change and our responsibilities to future generations and each other.
For Nothing Is Fixed
For nothing is fixed,
forever, forever, forever,
it is not fixed;
the earth is always shifting,
the light is always changing,
the sea does not cease to grind down rock.
Generations do not cease to be born,
and we are responsible to them
because we are the only witnesses they have.
The sea rises, the light fails,
lovers cling to each other,
and children cling to us.
The moment we cease to hold each other,
the moment we break faith with one another,
the sea engulfs us and the light goes out.