The Rules of Politics

Some slightly pessimistic but highly consistent thoughts on what we're all about to experience...

In 2016, the year after I started my first blog, nearly everything I wrote went some level of viral. Trump fever dominated media engagement in a way we hadn’t seen in American politics in some time and my web traffic was a heavy beneficiary. I owe much of the audience I have today from that period so in some sense I guess I should be grateful. I’m really not though. I guess I never felt that great about diving that deeply into the trough.

Today, I’ve mostly stopped writing regularly about politics and politicians. Not because I no longer pay attention to them or don’t think that they’re important. But because I’m close to having written all that I can on the big and recurring issues. After all, how many essays can one really write on the data behind gun control or immigration? Moreover, I’ve come to understand that the individual people involved in politics are subject to the laws of political physics. No matter who wanders into the room, they all end up leaving sounding the same. The true winners are just better at it. And through that lens the people are usually less interesting. And the ones that are interesting usually aren’t in good ways.

As we wade apprehensively back into the election pool that over the last two cycles yielded a surprise win by Donald Trump and a raid on the Capitol to protest the election loss that followed four years later, I’ve found it comforting to inventory some of the rules about politics that help me understand the insanity in a way that really shows its much more predictable than you might think. This is what I came up with.

We don’t actually just look at the cold hard facts and make up our minds logically. This used to really bother me. But in reality we never really have and we never really will. When I wrote political commentary I tried to provide an alternate narrative to the bluster and rhetoric that was grounded in history and data. And it was a hit…with people who believed it was important to look at things through the lens of history and data. For the most part, my audience was self selecting. They already understood the general narratives of the issues as described objectively. I wasn’t really teaching or explaining anything beyond useful details to be wielded in future battle against the lesser well read. In reality, I was confirming biases just like any other pundit. Few (if any) ever changed their minds on political issues after they read what I wrote.

Sadly, rationalists don’t change minds on votes. And they follow far behind the political carnival barkers and conspiracy theorists on driving eyeballs to content. The reason smart and rational humans become politicians and then sound like political NPCs is because that’s what works. Otherwise they would do something else. It’s entirely predictable.

We don’t change our minds on issues. We change our focus. The most common way we do this is when the political authority in our camp tells us what to focus on. I’m not immune. I have my deep data and historical pied pipers too. For others, it often comes from pundits on cable TV but more now than ever it comes directly from major social media influencers or the political alfas themselves. And when that is actually the same person you get Donald Trump who is likely going to dominate conservative politics as long as he’s alive. What we’re told is important rarely has taken the place of something that was solved. We just move on to the next big thing. Choosing that which is salient is the basis for political talent. And this is the power of the individual in a democratic politics. It’s not in changing minds. And it never has been.

Politics is not about aspirations. Politics is about discontent. Aspirations are our own. Discontent belongs to the collective. In any electorate there are deep, festering wells of anger. Going back to them time and time again to feed one’s political identity is where a politician’s power lies. Some wells are more persistent and deeper than others. Some emerge and dry up quickly. It’s not important to solve the discontent. In fact, the deepest and most productive wells are often the ones that don’t have a tangible or widely agreed upon solution. Climate change or “the economy” or inequality for instance. The phenomenon of the modern social media landscape enables people to gather quickly to dig new wells for just about anything. Vaccine mandates, for instance, was a well that didn’t exist outside the fringes of politics ten years ago. There are single issue vax voters now. It’s not new though. It’s just faster.

If you are the sort of person who believes in building something aspirational, politics is not for you. From time to time opportunities like war, the civil rights movement the Great Depression or the creation of the American Government afford aspirational opportunity. But those are exceptions that prove the rule.

The teams really haven’t changed at all. There will be an elite educated class that takes up the case of the most marginalized of society to ensure we avert suffering of the worst sort. There will be an elite moneyed class that takes up the case of the working class (including soldiers) in defense of core values like liberty or prosperity. This has been true since the days of the Tribunes and Consoles of the Roman Republic and the Caesars of the Empire fretting over how to distribute land to their returning veterans. The thousands year old idea is to create a “fixed pie” mindset where giving to one at risk group steals from the other. One could substitute anti-woke rhetoric of modern times for Roman defenses of liberty and masculinity and struggle to tell the difference.

One last one…

People want to feel good about their identity and their culture. Few have ever felt bad about the history of their people because someone from outside it told them to. The harder you try, the stronger their resolve. That doesn’t make them right. It’s just the way it is. The most effective political changes in our history have always been big tent changes. Bringing people in and letting them share in the dreams we all have is the way to true change for the good. And when that stops, maybe we’ve hit the end. I don’t think that’s any time soon from what I’ve seen.