Treason

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What do you think about this?

 I can only imagine what's going through your head. What kind of short-sighted idiot would say such a thing?

This is America after all.  The freedom to "defy" and oppose the President is at the very core of who we are as a country.  Heck, it's practically out duty as citizens to oppose our leaders when they do something evil or stupid.

After all, this isn't a dictatorship....yet.

The fact that people actually believe this sort of thing about Trump just shows how dangerous he is.

Right?

Well, maybe not.

Don't Get Distracted

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Effective activism in the Trump era is largely about deciding where to funnel your energy. You can’t have a march or rally or an internet campaign about every crazy tweet Trump fires off. You need to pick your battles and focus on the stuff that really makes a difference to people’s lives.

This is harder than it sounds.

The Terrible Budget that Doesn’t Matter

On March 18th President Trump released his budget proposal and liberals on the internet went bananas. They had a good reason to be concerned. The budget proposed slashing funding for a number of critical departments and programs, like the National Institute of Health:

…and even the program that funds “Meals on Wheels”

These memes make it sound that we need to ensure that Trump’s budget isn’t passed, in order to protect our health, and our seniors. 

But what these memes don’t tell you (and what their authors might not even know) is that even in the unlikely event that Trump's budget passes, it wouldn’t have any impact on the funding of any of these programs.

That sounds too bizarre to be true, but to understand why it is you have to spend a few minutes wading through…

The American Federal Budget Process!

This is Your Brain on Bias

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These days it seems like Trump and his supporters are living in their own alternate universe. If you've ever tried to talk to a Trump voter about politics, you know how frustrating it can be. It's like they refuse to accept basic facts about reality, even when the proof is right in front of their eyes, but they're willing to believe whatever "fake news" they read online, or whatever crazy thing Trump says, even if there's no evidence at all.

What do we do about this?

Clearly conservatives just need to stop being dumb and admit that we’re correct, right? Our views are supported by science and data; theirs are not.

But it's not that simple.

Remember This?

To me, this is obviously a white dress with gold trim. Maybe you agree with me, or maybe you're one of those people who sees it as a blue dress with black trim. While the internet was losing its collective mind arguing about this in 2015 someone found out that the dress really is blue and black. But even after learning that, I still can't help but see is as white and gold, no matter how hard I try. If you're part of team "blue and black" I probably sound crazy.

How can different people disagree so profoundly about something so simple as the color of a dress? 

"The Dress" highlights a quirk on how all of our minds work. When we perceive things in the world, like a picture of a dress, we don't just "see it," we construct it.

Political Persuasion 101

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If your social media feed is anything like mine, you probably see a lot of political memes like these:

Memes are funny, and they can be insightful. But sometimes we get fooled into thinking they’re persuasive. They're not.

Take that “Obamacare” meme. For many conservatives it felt like an “epic burn” to liberal supporters of the Affordable Care Act.

But if you’re a liberal like me, it doesn’t even make sense. Obamacare isn’t a “thing” you can “have.” It’s an individual mandate to purchase health insurance, a Medicaid expansion, a bunch of regulations, and tons of other stuff. But aside from that, it’s not even clear what point this meme is making. Why wouldn’t Democrats want to be “first in line” to “have” Obamacare?

The meme only makes sense when you realize that the author just can’t wrap his or her mind around the fact that some people actually like Obamacare. In the world this author lives in, that's not something that's even conceivable.

We can laugh, but the liberal “Willy Wonka” meme is no better.

This meme is making the argument that Obama obviously couldn’t have been the worst President ever because George W. Bush was clearly so much worse. Maybe that sounds reasonable to you and me, but to a conservative it would make no sense at all. After all, the reason a conservative would want to say that Obama was the worst President ever was because they thought he was so much worse than the guy who was President right before him.

Sure, lots of bad stuff happened in the Bush years, like 9/11, the financial crisis, and the Iraq war, but most conservatives don’t think all of that stuff was Bush’s fault, just like liberals don’t think that the rise of ISIS was Obama’s fault. Maybe conservatives are wrong - maybe all that bad stuff really was Bush’s fault, but this meme doesn’t make that argument. It assumes that you already think that Bush’s presidency was terrible. But anyone who believes that probably doesn't also think Obama was the worst President ever. 

In both of these cases we have “arguments” that appear persuasive to the people who already agree with them, but which are unpersuasive (or incomprehensible) to the very people they are supposedly trying to persuade. If you look through your social media feed you'll see that most political memes are like this.

Obama made America more conservative (but Trump is probably making it more liberal)

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In America, there are about as many conservatives as there are liberals. That means that, if you are a liberal, you are going to need to convince some conservatives to become liberal in order to get anything done - because of the whole "democracy" thing.

But maybe not. I sometimes hear liberal activists say that that if only conservative Americans could get a taste of how awesome liberal policy actually is, they would "come to their senses" and become liberals, without us ever having to talk to them.

By this logic, all we need to do is just use whatever tricks we can come up with (even potentially "undemocratic" ones - like a coup or revolution) to impose  more liberal policy. Even if most Americans say they don't want these sorts of policies, they'll change their minds once they see how well things are going. Right?

Unfortunately, history tells us that's probably not going to happen.

The Public is a Thermostat.

There's this weird thing that happens in American politics. Believe it or not, the following are both true:

• Americans tend to become more liberal when a Republican is President
• Americans tend to become more conservative when a Democrat is President. 

What happens when America gets concerned about inequality?

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An article of mine on the political implications of American concerns about economic inequality was just published in the scientific journal Political Behavior. The actual article is really long and technical, with lots of math and academic jargon, but here it is in a nutshell.¹

What happens when Americans get concerned about economic inequality?

Economic inequality has been getting worse for the last few decades. You can see how the percentage of total income earned by the top 1% has been increasing since at least the 1980s, and the Occupy protests have apparently done nothing to slow it down.

A number of researchers have been trying to figure out why we as a country don't seem to be doing much to respond to increasing inequality.

For many of us, there seems to be a pretty obvious explanation: The "1%" have been using their power and influence to keep the government from stepping in and doing something about inequality.

This is precisely what many social science researchers think is going on. These researchers argue that many Americans are really concerned about inequality, and want the government to step in and do something about it, but the government isn't listening. These researches think that influence of the rich and powerful is preventing government policy from reflecting the “will of the people.”

A key part of this argument is the claim that, when Americans are concerned about inequality, that means they want the government to do something about it. Some researchers who have tried to test this assertion even think they've confirmed it.

But my research shows that they're probably wrong. Americans can get more concerned about inequality without getting any more supportive of government action. In fact, they might actually become less supportive!

Activism in the country of Smallonia

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When you're trying to understand something complicated, like American politics, it can help to start by imagining a simplified "model" that strips away some of that complexity. So, without further ado...

Welcome to Smallonia

Imagine that you are a Leftist activist in the country of Smallonia.  Smallonia only has 100 citizens. Like America it is a capitalist society, but the government taxes some of the rich people and uses the money to help some of the poor people. Smallonia has only two political parties – the Left and the Right, and each party has a “moderate” and “radical” wing.

• Those on the Radical Right want Smallonia to become a purely libertarian society – no taxes, no welfare, just the “free market” doing everything. 

• Those on the Moderate Right think the basic system is fine, but want lower taxes and less generous welfare programs for the poor

• Those on the Moderate Left also think the basic system is fine, but want higher taxes and more generous welfare programs for the poor. 

• Those on the Radical Left (including you) want Smallonia to become a purely socialist society – where the government distributes wealth equitably, and there are no more for-profit corporations. 

Smallonia is run by a democratically elected President. Each party chooses its nominee by majority vote, and then whole country votes on which of the candidates should become President. In the case of a tie, the winner is decided by a coin flip.