Oof.
The last few weeks on Kairoticast have been tough. We’ve talked about bears and guns and democracy – lots of stuff that is not for the faint of heart.
I have mentioned Project 2025 a few times at this point, and my producer and I talked about the fact that I really need to devote some time to that – but I just didn’t know if I could do that to you this week. Do I think Project 2025 and the upcoming election are the biggest threats to face America since we declared our Independence? I actually kind of do. I know that is wild and dramatic and may seem like a step too far, but this is where we are. I truly don’t know if the American experiment is going to survive the next four years. I mean, to the point that I have started thinking in terms of how I am going to take care of my family if America crumbles. Plan ahead and whatnot.
But we are just slammed with terror and anxiety. It’s funny, sometimes I think about what life was like when Rome was falling. What did people do? What did they think?
And the truth is, daily life probably goes about like regular for most people while the empire falls. People go to the market, and get their wages, and think about their daily schedules, and manage their family’s life – all while the world falls apart around them. The ancient Romans were probably just trying to make it to the end of the day while the Senators and Caesars were tearing each other apart.
And that’s what we’ve got going on today. Americans just want to check their email and pay their bills and get their kids to soccer practice. Most Americans aren’t concerned with things like the fact the guardrails of the republic have completely come off.
And it would be really easy for me to get all high and mighty and yell about “why aren’t you paying attention??” “This is so serious!!” “Politics matters to everybody!” But the truth is, I know the score. We all only have so much bandwidth. And if you are using all of your energy to focus on things like where your next meal is, then I don’t blame you for not having a lot in the tank left over for things like Supreme Court decisions or plans for the government that aren’t even put into action yet.
But the thing is, the powers that be totally bank on that. There are a lot of really powerful, driven people who are very vested in the fact that most Americans are more concerned with paying their electric bill than what happens in the halls of government. And that makes sense, you know? Whether you can pay your electric bill makes a difference to you know, here and now. But the missing link here, what people don’t seem to connect all that well, is that the cost of your electric bills, and even whether you have access to electricity, is a matter of all that “halls of government” stuff we have no time for.
This is on purpose, my friends. Politics is designed to be dull, and as user-unfriendly as possible to keep out as many people as they can. I mean, we are told over and over again that if you are a fan of sausage or law and democracy, don’t look how either is made. But that advice only benefits the people who are doing the making. You should absolutely know how democracy is made and works. You should absolutely know what goes into the law. But the people who are in charge are kind of banking on the fact that you won’t be interested in the process because if you were you’d be horrified at how screwed you are.
When I was a grad student I taught a lot of speech classes. The thing about teaching speech to undergrads is that you hear a lot of the same topics over and over again, usually done pretty poorly. So, when you hear something unique, or something done really well, it often sticks with you.
One semester, I heard a young woman give a speech arguing that Texas senators and representative should be paid more. Like, a lot more. This seemed to be a really weird take. Most people would think of our politicians as particularly over-stuffed, wealthy, elite people who are already disconnected from everyday folks. Why would we want to line their pockets even more so that they are even less attuned to the needs of the common Texan?
She argued that actually, that is precisely the point. At that point in time, Texas politicians were paid a kind of symbolic sum. It wasn’t enough to live on. If you were going to represent Texas, you did it for love of the game. What that meant was, you had to be independently wealthy to be a Texas senator or representative. You had to have a separate source of income if you wanted to run for a Texas congressional seat.
Her argument was that this salary cap was actually KEEPING middle and lower class people from running and making sure that only wealthy Texans could be representatives. She argued that if we wanted a diverse make-up of representatives, we had to pay them so people from all backgrounds could afford to be politicians.
I thought this was a really fascinating and thought-provoking argument. I certainly never would have come up with it on my own. But it spoke to just how effectively our system is designed to be limiting. Only certain people are supposed to be allowed in.
Do you know how taxes work in most other countries? When it’s tax time, you just are told how much you owe, or it just comes out of your check, and you pay it, and that’s it. There is no complicated process of calculations and deductions and legalese. The government just tells you what you owe, and you pay it.
We could absolutely do it that way in America. We have a whole Internal Revenue Service that is devoted to the process of taxation that could quite simply say, okay, you make X amount, you owe X, we’ll take it out of your checks.
Do you know why our taxes are so complicated?
H&R Block and other tax firms and big-box accounting firms have lobbied to KEEP it complicated.
There have been efforts to make taxes simpler. To just clean this right up so that we have an efficient, easy system like most other countries. But there is money tied to the system. Groups that make the bulk of their income helping people figure out their taxes are REALLY dependent on you not being able to make heads or tails of the tax code, so they have lobbied for a long time to keep taxes as bewildering as possible.
Things are supposed to be complicated. Things are supposed to be boring. Things are supposed to be inaccessible. That’s not a bug, it’s a feature.
The reason the processes of governing are so befuddling and, quite frankly, dull to most people, is because there is a long history of keeping most people out of the process.
Consider the electoral college for just a moment.
A long time ago, I did an episode on the electoral college. And I got some pretty positive feedback on it. But a lot of the feedback I got on it was, “wait, are you kidding me?” Because most people just don’t know how the electoral college works.
Which is wild, because the electoral college is literally how we get a president. I mean, we call ourselves a democracy, but we are not. We are a republic, though a democratic republic, and our system of representatives and the electoral college proves that in about a thousand ways.
And most of us took some kind of government or civics class in high school. We were supposed to cover this. And yet the vast majority of adults have no idea what the electoral college is or how it works.
Friends, that is by design.
The Founding Fathers were afraid the “common” population would be too uninformed or too illiterate or too whatever to be trusted to choose their own leaders, so electors were chosen to do it for them. So, to this day, voters may vote for a candidate, but in actuality, their votes don’t count, because ultimately it is designated electors from a state who cast a vote on behalf of the voters. And here’s the catch – depending on where you are, there may not be a guarantee that the electors are bound by the votes of the population of the state. So, your vote could actually not make a difference if you have some rogue electors. And if you think that’s not a possibility in the age of Trump, think again.
This is not stuff people think about. And I get it. It’s not stuff people want to think about. It’s stressful. And we have enough to be stressed about.
But this is part and parcel with some of the complaints people make about politics in general. We complain all the time about politicians lie to us. And they do. Politicians have a tenuous relationship with the truth, at best. And some are way worse than others. Why? Why do they think they can get away with it?
Honestly – because they can.
Most Americans are either too busy or do not care to fact-check somebody, especially if it is somebody they kind of agree with. And if they do think somebody is lying, what can we do about it? The assumption is that politicians will lie, so what are you going to do? Cry about it?
This is just one way in which politics is designed to be overwhelming for us.
Remember what I said about the debate last week? Trump is a liar. And not like he stretches the truth now and again. I mean somebody did the math and Trump told a lie every 100 seconds. Most people don’t even talk that much. But he lied almost every minute and a half. That is just too much to handle. There is no way to fact-check that or combat or rebut that. It is just too much.
And it is a strategy. I don’t know if Trump consciously does it on purpose or if it is just habit at this point, but the lying definitely works in his favor because it is SO constant and SO outlandish you can’t rebut it all. It is just overwhelming. It is like a tidal wave of dishonesty.
And he has 100% used this to his advantage. When people have tried to fact check speeches or debates or anything he throws a fit about “liberal bias” in the media because a journalist or professor or whoever will take him to task so much more than his opponent. But that’s ALSO a misrepresentation. It’s not a liberal bias that makes people more prone to point out his inaccuracies – it is because he is SO MUCH MORE dishonest. But he whines about it over and over again, convincing his base that basic standards for discourse are somehow prejudicial.
So now we have come to a point where even basic facts and honesty are suspect in politics.
This benefits nobody but the people in charge.
If voters are confused and don’t know what to believe, and are continually kept ignorant, and if the media doesn’t do us any favors and spends all of their resources covering the sensational things that keep us entertained instead of the actually substantial, and even procedural things, that keep us going, then we will never be able to make sound decisions.
In 2012 the TX GOP platform was changed to include that the party is firmly against teaching critical thinking and higher order thinking skills. In 2016 Trump said he loved the poorly educated. There is a concerted effort among our politicians to keep us out of the loop. A well-informed and involved populous is a dangerous populous. Because we might not put up with this nonsense anymore.
So, politics and government are obfuscated by vague and vitriolic rhetoric, mysterious processes, and outright dishonesty.
I know in many ways I am preaching to the choir. If you’re a regular listener, you are probably one of those people who pays attention to news and the like.
But I am asking us to consider the whole scenario.
Most of our friends probably don’t pay a lot of attention to the news. The news is depressing, it makes us angry, and it is overwhelming.
I don’t know if it is better or worse to think of that as being partially by design.
I do know that the people who make it depressing, angry, and overwhelming are the people who benefit from us shutting down.
The only person who benefits from me saying, “I just can’t handle anymore of Laurent Bobert anymore. I’ve got to tune her out,” is Lauren Bobert. Because now she can do as she pleases without any oversight.
In 1883 William Graham Sumner published an essay in Harper’s called “The Forgotten Man.” It sounds like it would be a hopeful or at least sentimental testament to the most downtrodden among us, but it is literally the exact opposite of that.
Sumner was a social Darwinist, which is maybe the worst misapplication of a scientific concept to something it was never meant to explain ever. Basically, social Darwinists take the idea of “survival of the fittest” and apply it to society and culture. So Sumner’s “forgotten man” wasn’t the sick or the poor. It was the working and wealthy guys who are being left behind by all the do-gooders out there.
I am not even kidding.
Sumner was mad that people were out there taking care of the sick and the poor, when men who were making money and getting rich and taking care of themselves were being ignored. It is literally a “what about all the men who are making money? Don’t they deserve a little something, too?”
Sumner would have been a wildly popular and successful politician today. Tax cuts for the wealthy? Bring it, baby.
Pay no attention to the real problems. Don’t heed the serious crises. Give them bread and circuses and they will never revolt. Put on a show. Make it sound like you are doing something great. Say something about money. Make it sound like you are doing something “fiscal.” People love that word.
Or maybe just overwhelm them so all they can think about is where the cheapest orange juice is from.
Music in this episode is “Fearless First” by Kevin MacLeod at https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3742-fearless-first.
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