So, post 2021 election, democrats are in a state of fear, afraid of what's ahead. A new talking point suddenly popping up is talking about a poll in which they point out that anti democratic opinions are taking hold in the country. They point to a poll showing a majority of the republican party believes the 2020 election was stolen, and there is a lot of hand wringing over it about how our democracy is in danger.
Honestly, I'm not surprised, but then again, I understand human psychology more than most people. I mean, a huge question in social psychology after WWII was...why were the Nazis like that? So, they started doing experiments regarding authoritarianism to test if German people were susceptible to authoritarianism. The thing is, they actually experimented on Americans to calibrate their studies before hand, and found that Americans can ALSO become very authoritarian under the right conditions. And it actually scared the crap out of the researchers. The milgram experiment was the experiment I speak of, which tested peoples' willingness to give electrical shocks to people simply by being told to do so. And a lot of people were willing. Other early social psychology experiments talked about tribalism and authoritarianism and the like. There was the zimbardo prison experiment where they split college students into prisoner and guard roles, and simply assigning those roles made the guards act increasingly hostile to the prisoners. They actually had to stop the study before people got hurt. Then you got the asch experiment where people would ignore their own sense of reality to conform to a group. It goes on and on. Human psychology is scarily vulnerable to authoritarianism, tribalism, and conformity under the right scenarios. What is the key factor is the environment. And that's what people need to be afraid of.
The thing is, none of this is new about human nature. The American experiment could become subject to authoritarianism at any time. What keeps it away from it is the environment in which Americans exist. There has always been an authoritarian streak in a lot of people in America, it's just that under the past 80 years or so it's been constrained. People won't remember this since it was a long time ago and isn't often talked about, but before WWII, Nazism was actually quite popular in the United States. Don't believe me? here's proof. Right there in Madison Square Garden in New York City. Boom. What happened? WWII happened. And the new deal happened. And that's what we need to talk about if we want to seriously prevent the rise of authoritarianism in America.
The last time we were at this point was the 1930s. Liberal democracy was under assault from rival worldviews of fascism and communism. Fascism was popular in Europe and of course there was the USSR at the time. So, the powers that be had to act. And what did they do? Well, they did the new deal. The new deal wasn't just about improving lives, but saving liberal democracy from rival systems that seemingly offered a better life. And in doing so, they shifted the overton window away from those extremist ideas. WWII also shifted the overton window away from fascism, since nazism was kind of off the table after we just beat a bunch in an existential war.
So, post WWII, America was prosperous, and free. But, the authoritarian mentality still existed in American culture, dormant. It was exploited from time to time, such as when Nixon used the southern strategy to dog whistle the racist whites out of the democrats and into the republicans, but it was largely constrained. Now a generation after that, most of the authoritarians are in one party, and they're taking it over. Trump actually ended up being a bit of a psycho, and ended up exploiting the authoritarian tendencies of the populace. And now we might be heading that way again. And democrats are hand wringing.
Well, before I go into how we fix it, as I already kind of gave a model, let me castigate the democratic party once again. It was them who brought us here, to some extent. people wanted change in 2016. Heck, they wanted change since 2008. And the democrats failed to deliver. In 2016, they explicitly slammed the door in the face of people who want change. If we had it, we would have shifted the overton window left, and ensured that conservatism was defeated for a generation. but the dems were so darned obsessed with moving right to win over conservative voters, that they essentially lost parts of their own base. And honestly, in 2020 they didn't learn. They did a red scare with russiagate, and then they tried the same strategy. And they won. But it's failing. Fun fact. Republicans know the democrats' concern trolling is a farce. One thing I've noticed about republicans lately is they love to call the democrats the "democrat party" instead of the democratic party. Why? because they want to hammer home the democrats arent democratic. They're not wrong. I mean, they essentially rig their primaries internally, guiding the race to play out in ways that favor their preferred candidates, and then they basically turn around and suppress the competition. Just a reminder I didnt vote for ANY democrat in 2020, even down ballot, because the democrats removed my favored presidential candidate from the ballot because they were afraid they would steal votes from democrats and forced me to do a write in. And maybe that's why people dont really believe in democracy to some extent. The older I get the more I realize we live in an oligarchy and our elections are a ruse and we have no real choice. But I digress. Obviously I am democratic and I want to fix democracy. Heck, my support for the forward party is based partially on that. Yang has solutions to fix democracy and make it better. And I support those mostly.
That said, how do we fix this? Well, we need to shift the overton window away from the right where fascism does not have appeal. We need to restore peoples' faith in the system, by making the system actually work. Our system doesnt work. Thats the problem. And people want solutions, and when the democrats dont offer them, they get angry and support republicans who become more and more extreme and unhinged. If we want democracy to actually work, we need to do what FDR did and push an economic package that solves the core economic anxiety that people face. We need to shift the overton window left. Not to socialism, mind you, the ideal overton window is one in which socialism is to the left, and fascism is to the right of acceptable opinions. We had it about right in the 1950s-1970s. Back then, republicans were closer to today's democrats and democrats were more socially democratic. That's what I think is ideal. Having a moderate republican party and a socially democratic democratic party. I don't even mind market socialism. I think that it's fully compatible with liberal democracy. Hard socialism is a no though.
But that's where public opinion should be. When you have parts of the left descend into socialism like has happened since 2016, and parts of the right descend into fascism, thats a problem. And this is kind of where, once again, Yang is right. I didn't really understand this when he first pitched the opinion, but the more I think on it, about the tribalism and extremism in American society today, the more I understand it. And I believe he has the solutions. When Yang says he wants a moderate, he isnt saying he wants something in the middle of the republicans and democrats. Rather, he wants people to stop dehumanizing others and grasping at ideological extremes. If we wanna fix this country, we need to solve the core issues of our time, and break the two party duopoly as it exists. Feckless, weak, but anti democratic democrats are just enabling the right to become more extreme, and the right simply is being allowed to run amok with few checks on them. If democrats are serious about saving democracy, they need to 1) step up to the plate and solve problems and 2) stop being anti democratic themselves. Seriously. We can do it. That's actually kind of why I wanted to shift the overton window back in 2016. And it's why im so anti idpol. Well, one of the reasons. The fact is, we need to de-escalate tensions on social issues, and quietly move the overton window left away from the growing fascist movement.
Democrats have this thing where they like to take on cultural issues head on in an abrasive way. And as someone who has been getting back into advance wars recently, it's like charging your helicopters right into the enemy's anti air. I dont' care if you're sensei and your copters are better, you're still gonna lose. but I digress. The point is, the democrats need to shape up. What they're offering isnt working and if they're serious about stopping republicans, they gotta stop being merely the lesser evil nobody likes.
And that is the problem, isn't it? This grave the dems seem to be in, they dug it themselves. I've warned them all along. But they just kept insisting on doing it. Well, look at where we are. We don't wanna be here. Let's get out of here.
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