When's the last time you had a substantive discussion about policy instead of politics? Everything is now about horse races, political rhetoric, scandals—but rarely about how to solve real problems.
Deep in our brain is an organ called the amygdala. Visual and auditory input is processed through the amygdala before it reaches the higher brain functions. That allows us to jump away from a rattlesnake before we actually process that there is a rattlesnake. That’s helpful when we were hunter gatherers. Knowingly or not, politicians who seek power and not solutions take advantage of this. Biden is old!, they scream. Jews are evil! They are coming to get (fill in the blank)! The list goes on and on. That’s why people go to TFG’s rally — to have their amygdala activated (and why people go to horror movies).
Our collective ignorance of how our body works is threatening our lives and our country. Narcissists, who are the result of childhood trauma or neglect relied on their amygdala, and everything becomes a threat to the self. So they endlessly seek to fill the void that their amygdala has repeatedly created. Sensational news takes advantage of how the brain functions. Trump clearly is one amygdala activated narcissist. There simply is no reasoning with this part of our brain.
Thoughtful analysis, being comfortable with different people and contrary ideas requires mastery of the self, something that American does not value. Reading, rather than watching, allows us to process information and perspectives much more effectively. Yet, as a value, we no longer cherish and support reading and discussion.
Alas, we build huge (taxpayer subsidized) football stadiums rather than libraries. We need the next level fighter plane rather than investing in diplomacy (I am not against national defense, but not at the extent of failing to invest in the daily health of our collective society). We do not see the sleight of hand that those in power use over and over.
But we can't help ourselves. It's who and what we are; our current state of being is no accident; We didn't lose our way; this is our way. We live in a determined universe, where every effect has an adequate, undeniable cause, although we may not even recognize it, e.g., I hate anchovies. I don't know exactly why, but I know that I hate them. Something in my physical makeup or environment made me hate them. People can change, but it takes a powerful, usually sustained effort to move them off the path they're on. Trump changed us. He had lots of help, but he moved the needle significantly, in my opinion from a bad place to a worse place. Thus, countermeasures are called for, but I'm too old, tired, and weak to make much of a difference. All I do is write these largely unread posts hither, thither, and yon, which, I imagine, are rejected and quickly forgotten. We're all searching for the next big thing, something exciting and rewarding, but, again, that's how we roll until forced to do otherwise.
I’m raising three children, now near adulthood (they would disagree, having decided they were adults during their adolescence) and one thing I have impressed on them is that, despite cause and effect, we are neurologically constructed to make choices, including poor ones to learn from. I hold on to some slight hope that a nation of people will learn from its poor choices in recent years.
Spot on! It is the narcissism of victimhood whether perceived or real where nothing is ever their fault and absent the “conspiracy” to keep them down they would be “great” and all powerful. Never mind the logical inconsistency with such a view of the world and self. We all have some kind of trauma…but it is a matter of how we deal with it, and being willing to get help if needed to get through and over it.
Might I bring your attention towards policy-focused groups like The League of Women Voters? They may seem stuffy and old fashioned, but depend on them to research policies, and to disseminate well-thought out recommendations. Also environmental groups, and others. It's always good to check out reputable issue-focused organizations.
One of the president’s policies that has been very successful is the rebuilding and updating of our nation’s infrastructure, largely because of the efforts and communication skills of Sec. Buttigieg. Women’s health and reproductive care has also been front and center, and policies affecting that care will likely be the single greatest determinant of who wins the next election. I wish that foreign policy and its effects on domestic policy could be covered in much more depth. To paraphrase from your book, everything affects everything else.
Yes, there have been major policy achievements, but part of Biden’s problem is derived from what I’m arguing in this essay: most people don’t know about them or only have a vague sense about the legislation. That compounds the problem, as you don’t even reap the political rewards of good policy because the press spends more time covering today’s latest scandal than explaining what has changed about major matters of governance. We need to be able to cover both!
There are many of us who reside in the policy and solutions world despite the noise. Depending on the arena, much can be done through the regulatory and administration processes that exist today where political performance art is not present. We see the benefits and wisdom and import of what the Biden administration has done! But getting wider attention at the legislative level is next to impossible for problems that cannot be solved without legislative intervention and change. And that is frustrating.
I worked in Eastern Europe for more than 20 years helping countries prepare for accession to the European Union. My motto has always been (informal translation) from Laotzi (Lao Tsu) “With the best leadership the people will say we have done it ourselves.” Which means recognizing the conflict between recognition and accomplishment. As a part-time journalist, I recognized that my work was hard to understand and communicate, and as a practitioner really should not be given attention. And this was vital to the accomplishment. I appreciate that you and these comments understand this. And it is frustrating. I sometimes tell people that we never know which snowflake will unleash the avalanche, and there is no avalanche without the millions of snowflakes that fell before it. Keeping hope alive is a vital part of the work.
I mourn the death of the long form interview. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher, David Owen, Roy Jenkins loved having detailed policy arguments with the likes of Peter Jay and Brian Walden.
Now you're a British citizen (dunno what the suitable welcome greeting is but welcome in anyway new Brit!) you could cheer yourself up a bit by tuning in to the UK's most popular podcast The Rest Is Politics which is mostly about policy though there is a certain amount of slagging off some recent prime ministers.
A hard angry read, I agree with it and am frightened (it is fear) by the conclusions. I fear even more the spiralling inevitability of this decent, with communications so swamped by arrant nonsense. I am sorry you had to write this as much of your work has given me cause for a cautious optimism. It was necessary though, I believe, as much of the media noise does appear to attempt demoralisation and promotes avoidance of engagement, not to say an indifferent numbness in me. I will try to remain engaged.
Governmental affairs and activities are most often boring. Wars, of course, are exciting, so, yes, we attend to those, but as Klaas says, tax policies? Get outta here! Who cares?
Humans are particularly and egregiously bored by modernity. Thus, we crave and demand action, which is why ESPN is more watched than C-SPAN. Politics as a blood-sport, thanks to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and many right-wing shit-stirrers on radio, is now a big thing in our lives. It matters -- if there's a fight about it, but a calm, reasoned discussion going on for hours, days, weeks? No thanks. That's a headache or a sedative.
I don't see a solution for this problem, at least not for the masses. That's why we're the masses, i.e., we aren't specialists with great patience for detail and complexity. Keep it simple, right? We hate stress, ennui, and difficulties. So we seek the life of Riley; in fact, a lot of us are too lazy to hardly get off the couch, so we sit home and watch our screens as much as possible. Work is an annoying interruption. Yet I'm perhaps surprisingly not denigrating our attitudes, because it's who we are. Why kick against the pricks? If God or Nature had wanted all of us to be angels, political saviors to all mankind, we would be. However, we should listen to our "angels," men and women who seek the common good and try to make it a reality. The rest of us hear the beat of different drummers. (I most often hear John Bonham or Ringo Starr; I don't want to read the full Mueller Report, even though I have a digital copy of it.)
This is thoroughly exploited by corporations and institutions that wish to avoid regulation and by billionaires who want to impose their supposedly superior will on the country and the world. Big Oil and Big Tobacco at least had to manufacture distorted data and interpretations of that data in the past. Companies like OpenAI and billionaires need do so today.
I think the salary of our representatives should be reflective of the household income of their constitutes. US average household is $74,500 a year, but your area is only $67,000...that's what you make as a politician...only. (Screw the kick backs from lobbyist too). If you want to make more as a politician, increase the income of your area. That way policy would be tied directly to improving lives. And that's being generous - average income per person currently is $41,000.
Or, I wonder if we also wouldn't be better served by our peers, like juries are selected. Instead of a week or two of jury duty, it would be a year or two of full political service. No more parties, just concentration on policy and problem solving. After a couple of years of MTG, it's worth a try. A real Civics lesson for everyone 😏
Interesting, my brother just suggested the same solution a few days ago. I think the problem is that you find the same “Knowingness” among jury panels that you find in the general population. Actually, Brian Klass, in his book “Corruptible“ solved the issue. What he recommended was that a panel of experts volunteer a policy solution and the elected official has to explain why they did not adopt that recommendation if they choose not to. I thought that was a good suggestion and I also believe open primaries and Ranked Choice Voting will help.
I just got his current book "Fluke." I'll have to look into "Corruptible" next. However, if all citizens may have to serve their time to the greater public good, then we would definitely bring back civics classes into schools, and we could make the citizenship test required learning too 😉
I understand this but think it is pointless. The reason we focus on politics is because the biggest danger now is politics not policy. There are a large number of policy issues that would be useful and fun to debate but if one of the main parties in the country is now owned by thugs who aren’t interested in policy debates but in overthrowing the American system of government what’s the benefit to anyone of discussing, say, Ukraine or anything else. This was an essay looking for a topic
Not sure if you saw this quote from the piece, but I’ve also written extensively about the necessity of covering the political insanity (it’s my second most read article on here, but I have also written about it a ton in the Atlantic). “This is also one of the great, but often overlooked, tragedies of Trumpism. For nearly a decade, his extremism, vitriol, incitement to violence, and threats to the superstructure of American democracy have required us to fixate on him and the endless bile he spews onto the body politic. We can’t ignore it—because the threat is real.”
This essay is both a lament of the fact that we no longer discuss policy and rarely solve problems…and simultaneously an acknowledgment that politics matters in a moment of existential crisis for democracy. However, there’s a better way to reconcile the two: we can discuss the politics but also learn things, have programming that produces better education, and have some policy debates in the process.
Most people consuming cable news already know exactly how they’re going to vote. Would it hurt if some of the programming was about policy instead of a 24 hour politics discussion that often centres on exactly the same stories on repeat? I’m not sure we’re actually better served by that current model even in this moment of existential crisis.
I did see it. And I thought the essay was well done. But I don’t think that anything particularly constructive can be done about much of anything until we decide whether we are or are not a functioning democracy. When NBC hires a McDaniel there is zero hope that programming of any kind will improve until the nation makes the more fundamental decision. And it looks as though the country is deciding against Democracy.
Since retiring I’m ashamed to say, I have focused on the game of politics, not the substance of policy. I scan through at least ten news papers a day, read Substack articles, and stay involved with local activities. I spend far too much time fact checking articles, but I still get side tracked by The Game.
I can say that I did know about what US spends on foreign aid and I’m confident that i could step in and fill MTG’s seat capably.
Exactly this. I've reached the point where I can't even read the news anymore. Everything is just grandstanding. All of it feels completely toxic, even the stuff I nominally agree with.
Sites that offer explainers are often very good - Vox, for example, often produces content where they explain, in detail, how something works, which is the first step to informed policy debate. Foreign Affairs has a certain bent to it, but it has serious ideas debated within it for geopolitics. But to be honest, some of this is just absent. I would ideally envision media outlets in which they take serious challenges (one per week, say) and ask people to submit their specific ideas for policy reform, and then have lots of discussion around them…but that doesn’t exist many places (when’s the last time you saw a Republican OR Democrat pressed on how, specifically, they would reform the American health care industry? It’s been a while). Think tanks can be good (the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the Congressional Research Service, the Brennan Center for things like voter suppression). But it’s a shame that such “wonky” discourse never gets discussed in broader media, or at least if it does, it’s a glancing reference without much substance. I don’t have a perfect answer. It’s harder to find and must be sought out, which is precisely the problem I’m highlighting.
Yes, I second Vox as a good source of understanding. I’ve often been able to find a footing in the conversation because of whag I was able to read and understand on Vox.
Yesterday Jonathan Haidt was on "Morning Joe" talking a out his new book " The Anxious Generation " which not only describes how social media is having a devastating impact on teenagers' mental health, , but recommends practical ways that parents and others can combat these. For information like this I put up with all the ranting, bloviating, and medical commercials on MJ. ( though often muting it, and reading from my emails, articles like this one, etc..). There is usually at least one segment per morning, including recebtly Brian himself, that I'm glad to have seen, amid all the dreck.
I'm glad I'm connected.
"PBS News Hour" has good, balanced policy discussions. And no psoriasis commercials.
100%! I love doing these shows - I’m not saying they’re bad - and politics is hugely important, even at the expense of policy, particularly when political machinations are posing a threat to democracy. It’s more that we need a mix, and our current information diet is really, really lopsided.
Deep in our brain is an organ called the amygdala. Visual and auditory input is processed through the amygdala before it reaches the higher brain functions. That allows us to jump away from a rattlesnake before we actually process that there is a rattlesnake. That’s helpful when we were hunter gatherers. Knowingly or not, politicians who seek power and not solutions take advantage of this. Biden is old!, they scream. Jews are evil! They are coming to get (fill in the blank)! The list goes on and on. That’s why people go to TFG’s rally — to have their amygdala activated (and why people go to horror movies).
Our collective ignorance of how our body works is threatening our lives and our country. Narcissists, who are the result of childhood trauma or neglect relied on their amygdala, and everything becomes a threat to the self. So they endlessly seek to fill the void that their amygdala has repeatedly created. Sensational news takes advantage of how the brain functions. Trump clearly is one amygdala activated narcissist. There simply is no reasoning with this part of our brain.
Thoughtful analysis, being comfortable with different people and contrary ideas requires mastery of the self, something that American does not value. Reading, rather than watching, allows us to process information and perspectives much more effectively. Yet, as a value, we no longer cherish and support reading and discussion.
Alas, we build huge (taxpayer subsidized) football stadiums rather than libraries. We need the next level fighter plane rather than investing in diplomacy (I am not against national defense, but not at the extent of failing to invest in the daily health of our collective society). We do not see the sleight of hand that those in power use over and over.
Sigh.
But we can't help ourselves. It's who and what we are; our current state of being is no accident; We didn't lose our way; this is our way. We live in a determined universe, where every effect has an adequate, undeniable cause, although we may not even recognize it, e.g., I hate anchovies. I don't know exactly why, but I know that I hate them. Something in my physical makeup or environment made me hate them. People can change, but it takes a powerful, usually sustained effort to move them off the path they're on. Trump changed us. He had lots of help, but he moved the needle significantly, in my opinion from a bad place to a worse place. Thus, countermeasures are called for, but I'm too old, tired, and weak to make much of a difference. All I do is write these largely unread posts hither, thither, and yon, which, I imagine, are rejected and quickly forgotten. We're all searching for the next big thing, something exciting and rewarding, but, again, that's how we roll until forced to do otherwise.
I’m raising three children, now near adulthood (they would disagree, having decided they were adults during their adolescence) and one thing I have impressed on them is that, despite cause and effect, we are neurologically constructed to make choices, including poor ones to learn from. I hold on to some slight hope that a nation of people will learn from its poor choices in recent years.
Spot on! It is the narcissism of victimhood whether perceived or real where nothing is ever their fault and absent the “conspiracy” to keep them down they would be “great” and all powerful. Never mind the logical inconsistency with such a view of the world and self. We all have some kind of trauma…but it is a matter of how we deal with it, and being willing to get help if needed to get through and over it.
Word.
Might I bring your attention towards policy-focused groups like The League of Women Voters? They may seem stuffy and old fashioned, but depend on them to research policies, and to disseminate well-thought out recommendations. Also environmental groups, and others. It's always good to check out reputable issue-focused organizations.
Yes! Excellent suggestions!
One of the president’s policies that has been very successful is the rebuilding and updating of our nation’s infrastructure, largely because of the efforts and communication skills of Sec. Buttigieg. Women’s health and reproductive care has also been front and center, and policies affecting that care will likely be the single greatest determinant of who wins the next election. I wish that foreign policy and its effects on domestic policy could be covered in much more depth. To paraphrase from your book, everything affects everything else.
Yes, there have been major policy achievements, but part of Biden’s problem is derived from what I’m arguing in this essay: most people don’t know about them or only have a vague sense about the legislation. That compounds the problem, as you don’t even reap the political rewards of good policy because the press spends more time covering today’s latest scandal than explaining what has changed about major matters of governance. We need to be able to cover both!
There are many of us who reside in the policy and solutions world despite the noise. Depending on the arena, much can be done through the regulatory and administration processes that exist today where political performance art is not present. We see the benefits and wisdom and import of what the Biden administration has done! But getting wider attention at the legislative level is next to impossible for problems that cannot be solved without legislative intervention and change. And that is frustrating.
I worked in Eastern Europe for more than 20 years helping countries prepare for accession to the European Union. My motto has always been (informal translation) from Laotzi (Lao Tsu) “With the best leadership the people will say we have done it ourselves.” Which means recognizing the conflict between recognition and accomplishment. As a part-time journalist, I recognized that my work was hard to understand and communicate, and as a practitioner really should not be given attention. And this was vital to the accomplishment. I appreciate that you and these comments understand this. And it is frustrating. I sometimes tell people that we never know which snowflake will unleash the avalanche, and there is no avalanche without the millions of snowflakes that fell before it. Keeping hope alive is a vital part of the work.
I mourn the death of the long form interview. Politicians like Margaret Thatcher, David Owen, Roy Jenkins loved having detailed policy arguments with the likes of Peter Jay and Brian Walden.
Amen to this -> taking responsibility for our eyeballs and clicks. Focusing and refocusing on policy, not just the daily political circus
Now you're a British citizen (dunno what the suitable welcome greeting is but welcome in anyway new Brit!) you could cheer yourself up a bit by tuning in to the UK's most popular podcast The Rest Is Politics which is mostly about policy though there is a certain amount of slagging off some recent prime ministers.
A hard angry read, I agree with it and am frightened (it is fear) by the conclusions. I fear even more the spiralling inevitability of this decent, with communications so swamped by arrant nonsense. I am sorry you had to write this as much of your work has given me cause for a cautious optimism. It was necessary though, I believe, as much of the media noise does appear to attempt demoralisation and promotes avoidance of engagement, not to say an indifferent numbness in me. I will try to remain engaged.
Governmental affairs and activities are most often boring. Wars, of course, are exciting, so, yes, we attend to those, but as Klaas says, tax policies? Get outta here! Who cares?
Humans are particularly and egregiously bored by modernity. Thus, we crave and demand action, which is why ESPN is more watched than C-SPAN. Politics as a blood-sport, thanks to Fox News, Rush Limbaugh, and many right-wing shit-stirrers on radio, is now a big thing in our lives. It matters -- if there's a fight about it, but a calm, reasoned discussion going on for hours, days, weeks? No thanks. That's a headache or a sedative.
I don't see a solution for this problem, at least not for the masses. That's why we're the masses, i.e., we aren't specialists with great patience for detail and complexity. Keep it simple, right? We hate stress, ennui, and difficulties. So we seek the life of Riley; in fact, a lot of us are too lazy to hardly get off the couch, so we sit home and watch our screens as much as possible. Work is an annoying interruption. Yet I'm perhaps surprisingly not denigrating our attitudes, because it's who we are. Why kick against the pricks? If God or Nature had wanted all of us to be angels, political saviors to all mankind, we would be. However, we should listen to our "angels," men and women who seek the common good and try to make it a reality. The rest of us hear the beat of different drummers. (I most often hear John Bonham or Ringo Starr; I don't want to read the full Mueller Report, even though I have a digital copy of it.)
This is thoroughly exploited by corporations and institutions that wish to avoid regulation and by billionaires who want to impose their supposedly superior will on the country and the world. Big Oil and Big Tobacco at least had to manufacture distorted data and interpretations of that data in the past. Companies like OpenAI and billionaires need do so today.
I think the salary of our representatives should be reflective of the household income of their constitutes. US average household is $74,500 a year, but your area is only $67,000...that's what you make as a politician...only. (Screw the kick backs from lobbyist too). If you want to make more as a politician, increase the income of your area. That way policy would be tied directly to improving lives. And that's being generous - average income per person currently is $41,000.
Or, I wonder if we also wouldn't be better served by our peers, like juries are selected. Instead of a week or two of jury duty, it would be a year or two of full political service. No more parties, just concentration on policy and problem solving. After a couple of years of MTG, it's worth a try. A real Civics lesson for everyone 😏
Interesting, my brother just suggested the same solution a few days ago. I think the problem is that you find the same “Knowingness” among jury panels that you find in the general population. Actually, Brian Klass, in his book “Corruptible“ solved the issue. What he recommended was that a panel of experts volunteer a policy solution and the elected official has to explain why they did not adopt that recommendation if they choose not to. I thought that was a good suggestion and I also believe open primaries and Ranked Choice Voting will help.
I just got his current book "Fluke." I'll have to look into "Corruptible" next. However, if all citizens may have to serve their time to the greater public good, then we would definitely bring back civics classes into schools, and we could make the citizenship test required learning too 😉
I understand this but think it is pointless. The reason we focus on politics is because the biggest danger now is politics not policy. There are a large number of policy issues that would be useful and fun to debate but if one of the main parties in the country is now owned by thugs who aren’t interested in policy debates but in overthrowing the American system of government what’s the benefit to anyone of discussing, say, Ukraine or anything else. This was an essay looking for a topic
Not sure if you saw this quote from the piece, but I’ve also written extensively about the necessity of covering the political insanity (it’s my second most read article on here, but I have also written about it a ton in the Atlantic). “This is also one of the great, but often overlooked, tragedies of Trumpism. For nearly a decade, his extremism, vitriol, incitement to violence, and threats to the superstructure of American democracy have required us to fixate on him and the endless bile he spews onto the body politic. We can’t ignore it—because the threat is real.”
This essay is both a lament of the fact that we no longer discuss policy and rarely solve problems…and simultaneously an acknowledgment that politics matters in a moment of existential crisis for democracy. However, there’s a better way to reconcile the two: we can discuss the politics but also learn things, have programming that produces better education, and have some policy debates in the process.
Most people consuming cable news already know exactly how they’re going to vote. Would it hurt if some of the programming was about policy instead of a 24 hour politics discussion that often centres on exactly the same stories on repeat? I’m not sure we’re actually better served by that current model even in this moment of existential crisis.
I thought your essay was a needed corrective to our obsession with political personalities over the real politics of policy.
I did see it. And I thought the essay was well done. But I don’t think that anything particularly constructive can be done about much of anything until we decide whether we are or are not a functioning democracy. When NBC hires a McDaniel there is zero hope that programming of any kind will improve until the nation makes the more fundamental decision. And it looks as though the country is deciding against Democracy.
Excellent point. No policy without politics.
It appears that the Know Nothing Party has been literally reincarnated.
Since retiring I’m ashamed to say, I have focused on the game of politics, not the substance of policy. I scan through at least ten news papers a day, read Substack articles, and stay involved with local activities. I spend far too much time fact checking articles, but I still get side tracked by The Game.
I can say that I did know about what US spends on foreign aid and I’m confident that i could step in and fill MTG’s seat capably.
Thanks for highlighting this problem.
Exactly this. I've reached the point where I can't even read the news anymore. Everything is just grandstanding. All of it feels completely toxic, even the stuff I nominally agree with.
Does anyone, including you Brian, have thoughts on those outlets that inform, educate, and debate solutions where we can turn? Thanks.
Sites that offer explainers are often very good - Vox, for example, often produces content where they explain, in detail, how something works, which is the first step to informed policy debate. Foreign Affairs has a certain bent to it, but it has serious ideas debated within it for geopolitics. But to be honest, some of this is just absent. I would ideally envision media outlets in which they take serious challenges (one per week, say) and ask people to submit their specific ideas for policy reform, and then have lots of discussion around them…but that doesn’t exist many places (when’s the last time you saw a Republican OR Democrat pressed on how, specifically, they would reform the American health care industry? It’s been a while). Think tanks can be good (the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities, the Congressional Research Service, the Brennan Center for things like voter suppression). But it’s a shame that such “wonky” discourse never gets discussed in broader media, or at least if it does, it’s a glancing reference without much substance. I don’t have a perfect answer. It’s harder to find and must be sought out, which is precisely the problem I’m highlighting.
Yes, I second Vox as a good source of understanding. I’ve often been able to find a footing in the conversation because of whag I was able to read and understand on Vox.
Yesterday Jonathan Haidt was on "Morning Joe" talking a out his new book " The Anxious Generation " which not only describes how social media is having a devastating impact on teenagers' mental health, , but recommends practical ways that parents and others can combat these. For information like this I put up with all the ranting, bloviating, and medical commercials on MJ. ( though often muting it, and reading from my emails, articles like this one, etc..). There is usually at least one segment per morning, including recebtly Brian himself, that I'm glad to have seen, amid all the dreck.
I'm glad I'm connected.
"PBS News Hour" has good, balanced policy discussions. And no psoriasis commercials.
100%! I love doing these shows - I’m not saying they’re bad - and politics is hugely important, even at the expense of policy, particularly when political machinations are posing a threat to democracy. It’s more that we need a mix, and our current information diet is really, really lopsided.