"They're the ones attacking democracy; not us!"

Trump's verdict reactions; and the importance of understanding the other side's narratives

Ever heard of the podcast Outrage Overload, with David Beckemeyer? I think David’s done a great job examining polarization-related topics. Recently he invited me on to be a part of an episode he was making titled “America on the Knife’s Edge,” which was their first documentary-style episode (as opposed to the standard interview-someone format).

The episode examines the pessimistic perceptions that both pro-Trump and anti-Trump people have about the other side’s anti-democratic behaviors. For anyone who wants to lower the toxicity of our divides, I think it’s important to be willing to examine what your political adversaries are afraid of; to be willing to try to see what they see. Trying to see what they see, and not just writing all their concerns off as ignorant and deranged, is what will draw us closer together. Only by doing the hard work of engaging with the divergent, opposed narrative do you pull the narratives closer together and prevent them from widening even further.

Some who see themselves as fighting for democracy speak in contemptuous, zero-empathy ways about their political opponents, without realizing that their contemptuous behavior is a factor in hurting democracy.

I’m going to paste the transcript of the ‘America on the Knife’s Edge’ episode below but before that I’ll mention a couple interesting things I’ve seen lately, which are related.

“The conservative narrative.” I saw a post from Murtaza Hussein that included a short summary of Trump voter narratives that Democrats were behaving undemocratically. (I thought it was such a good wrap-up I added an excerpt from it to my book How Contempt Destroys Democracy.) That’s here.

Contemptuous engagement around Trump verdict. Regarding the Trump verdict; I’ve seen so many anti-Trump people speaking in contemptuous ways; as if disagreeing about the verdict was a sign one was simply ignorant, or deranged, or stupid, or a Trump apologist. But anti-Trump people should try to understand the better points of why people saw the trial and result as unfair. I recommend this piece by Tangle News for understanding some of these views. If you can see how even liberal and anti-Trump people can criticize things in that area, you’ll be better able to understand how those criticisms manifest on the right, and how those criticisms are weaved into broader narratives of Democrats behaving undemocratically. And you’ll be in a better place to pursue your political goals without unintentionally being perceived as undemocratic.

And yes, there are many Trump supporters acting in extreme, wild ways, speaking about civil war and things like this. Talking about those overreactions could be a whole other piece in itself. But how we reduce the prevalence of catastrophizing, extreme views, in the long term, is by taking the more rational aspects of people’s concerns seriously and not dismissing them as crazy or ignorant.

America on the Knife’s Edge transcript

If you want to listen to the episode, it’s here. The transcript below may contain errors.

David: Welcome to Outrage Overload, a science podcast about outrage and lowering the temperature. This is a bonus documentary-style episode about electoral politics. As we gear up for the upcoming big presidential election, I can't help but wonder, why are these elections always so close. And what happens when the winner wins by a razor-thin margin? It feels like each election is more important than the last. But what does it really take for our democracy to work? To find out, we're diving into the world of elections, drawing lessons from a silly movie and real-life insights from history, political science, and contemporary discourse. Join me on this adventure as we navigate the wild world of electoral politics and maybe even find yourself facing more questions than answers, but coming away with a clearer picture of it all, nonetheless.

[Swing Vote Movie Trailer]

Molly: Don't forget today.

Bud: What's today?

Molly: Election day, dummy.

Bud: Well, I'm not even registered.

Molly: I registered for you in the mail.

Bud: That's great. I could get jury duty now. 

David: That's from the 2008 movie, Swing Vote, a comedy with Kevin Costner who plays Bud, who's kind of a loser who's not particularly interested in politics, but through a wild set of circumstances, ends up playing a big role in the presidential election.

[Movie Trailer]

Reporter: A single irregular ballot is holding up a final decision for the American presidency. One American citizen will effectively choose the next President of the United States.

David: So then the media and campaigns and, of course, the presidential candidates themselves descend on this small town in New Mexico and try to woo the vote of a single person, Bud. 

[Movie Trailer]

Candidate 1: All we have to do is win over one American mind.

Candidate 2: I want to know what he reads, what television shows he watches.

Candidate 1: Welcome to the party, Bud. 

Candidate 2: People really like you, Bud. They feel like you're one of them.

David: So, it's a comedy and it's pretty farcical, it's pretty wild. It kind of reminds me of idiocracy in that regard that it's crazy enough, like, "Oh, man, that's just insanely silly," but at the same time, there's some part of you going, "I could maybe see this happening." Okay, so why am I telling you all this? Well, I'm telling you this because I see Bud as a metaphor for these undecided voters in our swing states. He's got a lot of the attributes that we see folks ascribe to these independent voters. He's apolitical and disengaged, he doesn't really show much interest in politics. He's pretty much undecided and unsure. It's sort of like he's easy. He kind of struggles to understand things and he's kind of easily swayed. At the end of the day, he's also a metaphor for this electoral situation we're in where these few states decide everything. Here's what SNL had to say about these undecided voters a few years ago. 

 SNL: It seems that more than 96% of voters have already made up their minds about this election. Well, I guess some of us are just a little bit harder to please. We're not impressed by political spin or 30-second sound bites. Before you get our vote, you're going to have to answer some questions. Questions like, 

"When is the election? How soon will we have to decide?" 

"What are the names of the two people running? And be specific." 

"Who's the President right now? Is he or she running? Because if so, experience is maybe something we should consider. 

Anyway, recent real presidential elections these days are decided by an incredibly small fraction of voters in a few key states. 

[News Clip]

Reporter: Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania.

Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania.

Georgia, Pennsylvania, Michigan, Wisconsin, Arizona and Nevada. 

David: Anyone remember the number of votes that clinched victory for President Biden in Georgia in 2020? 

Donald Trump: So, all I want to do is this. I just want to find 11,780 votes, which is one more than we have.

David: Then there was the contentious 2000 election. That was the one about Florida and hanging chads and it ultimately came down to the Supreme Court determining the result. 

[News Clip]

Unknown speaker: And he and I grabbed the decision and we started trying to read through it. 

Unknown speaker: It does appear, as I look through here, to be a five-four opinion. 

Unknown speaker 3: And what the Supreme Court- the US Supreme Court- ultimately said was that Florida was not treating the recount questions the same. In some counties, a dimpled chad counted as a vote, in some counties, it did not. But the Supreme Court said there wasn't enough time to start the recount over. 

Unknown speaker 4: There's no doubt here, Tom. There's just no way that the court thinks a recount is possible. 

Unknown speaker 5: I called one of the lawyers for Al Gore's team and I said, "It's over, isn't it?" 

Unknown speaker 6: Gore conceded the next day. The final official margin, 537 votes.

David: Here's political scientist, Kevin Smith.

Kevin Smith: If you take a look at a presidential election, because of the kind of goofy way that we elect a president, the elections aren't going to be close in California. They're probably not going to be close in Texas. But you're 100% right in the sense that the outcome for the most powerful office on planet Earth is boiling down to a handful of boats and a handful of states. 

Unknown speaker: In the past, it wasn't uncommon for election to swing by large margins like 20% or more. But not so much these days. 

David: Here’s social psychologist, Eli Finkel.

Eli Finkel: It wasn't at all weird to have 20%-25% victories. But you're not seeing that anymore, right? And basically, what you're seeing over the last 100 years in the presidential elections is that there used to be large margins, there also used to be high variance. These sorts of shifts were not that rare, right? Where you'd get a pretty robust victory for one side, followed by for the other side. In '64, we had a 20-some point win for the Democrats, and then two election cycles later- this is Nixon- 20-some points for the Republicans. And so now what we have is these elections are hanging on a knife's edge. Well, there's good political science on that. So well, what does it mean if each election is just a little bit more effort- from your side- a little bit more getting out the vote, a little bit more persuading people in the middle, like fractional, might tip power in the White House. It might tip power in the Senate or in the House of Representatives. Well, there's a lot of good political science on this stuff in the last 5-10 years. And what it says is, things get crazy.

David: This is where if I had a license for popular music, I played the beginning of Pat Benatar is Love is a Battlefield. Look it up. With the electoral battleground shrinking down to just a few key states, the stakes are sky-high for both sides. It's not just about winning an election anymore, it's about wanting to keep their ideology and policies dominating the political scene indefinitely. 

Advocate: I want everyone to vote for progressives in every election, and progressives can't do anything if they're not in office.

David: But in a democracy where both sides cast their votes, and with swing voters like Bud, the pendulum swings back and forth and neither side is able to totally wipe out the opposition.

Kevin Smith: I also think that there's a long-standing problem with the electorate in the sense of I think there's a fundamental misunderstanding amongst many people. I see this in my students of how democracy works. You know, if pick your presidential favorite, if my guy gets in, he'll be able to do X,Y, and Z. Well, actually, that's probably not true. The president cannot make law. And I mean, you see candidates for Congress running on the basis of "if you vote for me." I mean, they're making explicit promises. "I'm not going to compromise. I'm going to go up there and I'm going to fight for you and stick it to those so and sos on the other side of the aisle." And they're being cheered on, at least by their partisan base on both sides. And I think that is feeding... That sets up an unfortunate, potentially dangerous negative feedback loop. Because it sets a set of expectations that are virtually guaranteed not to be met.

David: And when they can't get what they want, people get mad and frustrated. And it's like a never-ending loop. That makes them want this ideological domination even more. But then when they lose, it makes them even madder, and they get mad at the other side. So they want it more but it's still not happening, so it just keeps spiraling into intense anger, hatred, and frustration. And so this super competitive battleground is no joke.

[Movie Trailer]

Presidential candidate: I don't really feel comfortable with this. [gunshot] [laughs]

Molly: I read about you in the paper. They said you'd do anything to win, even if it meant selling your mother's soul. 

Presidential candidate: If you met my mother, you'd understand.

David: Folks on each side pull out all the stops to clinch that victory. They're out there rallying their loyal supporters. They're trying to charm those swing voters like Bud. They dive into their bag of tricks, and they're relentless about it. If you accidentally found yourself subscribed to candidates' text messages or email list, you get a taste of it firsthand. Basically, they try to scare the heck out of people. 

[Political ad]

Unknown speaker: There is an inferno raging in Washington!

Unknown speaker 2: Swamp Captain Mitch McConnell has created millions of jobs for China people.

Unknown speaker 3: I absolutely refuse to bow down to Sharia law.

[gunshots]

Unknown speaker 4: I support the Second Amendment. 

Unknown speaker 5: Some people see a dumpster fire and do nothing but watch the spectacle.

David: But partisans quickly realize that winning is no walk in the park. Every step of the way, they're facing off against obstacles and enemies all around. No matter how hard they try, they're up against the resistance from the other side, as well as systemic barriers.

Kevin Smith: The average American voter likes democracy in the abstract, but doesn't like it in practice. By far their preference is that the government would do what they prefer to be done with no muss, no fuss, no public conflict. And that is a completely unrealistic notion of how a representative democracy works. I mean, if you just go out and you talk to people, they basically throw up their hands and say, "Well, why can't they just get together? Why can't they just get things done?" And it's, "Okay, well, what do you want them to get done?" "Well, I want them to do X?" You know, there's a big chunk of the electorate who also have representatives in Congress and they don't want X to be done at all. In fact, they're dead set against it. Now what? You got to kind of have a donnybrook and fight your way to a middle ground. And I don't think the American electorate is too thrilled with that notion of governance, and I don't think they ever have been.

David: And then there's something we talked about a lot on this podcast; the state of our affective political polarization. That is voters' emotional hostility towards voters on the other side. There are many players who benefit from keeping us outraged and afraid, including the media, political campaigns, and social media platforms. They want us to be terrified of the other side.

Tucker Carlson: These people seek absolute sameness, total uniformity. You're happy with your corner coffee shop, they want to make you drink Starbucks every day from now until forever, no matter how it tastes.

James Carville: Mike Johnson and what he believes is one of the greatest threats we have today to the United States. This is a bigger threat than Al-Qaeda.

David: Functioning democracy needs compromise and cooperation, but with everyone digging into their own corners, any kind of cooperation becomes almost impossible. Everyone gets frustrated, even the winners, because they never get everything they want. So I know what you're asking, why don't we just fix the Electoral College? Well, there are some big hurdles to that. First, it's built into the Constitution. And with our state of polarization, it's basically impossible to do anything that requires that kind of majority to change.

[News Clip]

Unknown speaker: Throughout our nation's history, over 700 proposals have been introduced in Congress to modify or abolish the Electoral College. That's more proposals than on any other subject. None have resulted in a constitutional amendment. Until new laws are passed, presidential elections will hinge on the battleground states that could switch between red and blue in any given year, even though in reality, there's no truly red or blue state.

Kevin Smith: You've got to be really careful about getting rid of institutions and processes. Institutions and processes that have worked reasonably well for a long time- I mean, in the context of the Republic for a couple of centuries, they may have flaws, they may produce some outcomes that some people don't like, but you better have a really good sense of what would be a better replacement for them. Everything has trade-offs and the Electoral College is like the poster child for this, right? But there are trade-offs even there moving towards a popular vote. In that case, there's a whole bunch of states that effectively disappear from presidential interest and attention. I mean, I wouldn't be paying much attention to Nebraska if I was a presidential campaign getting elected on a popular vote.

David: In short, changing the way we pick a president, forget about it, at least for now. So when partisans can't seem to get the upper hand on their opponents, they start eyeing some pretty sketchy options. They're tempted by the idea of strongman leaders, populism, and even breaking the rules of democracy to get what they want. The idea of a strong leader with a no-nonsense attitude is appealing to some right now, especially if they promised quick fixes and talk a big game against perceived threats to things like cultural norms, traditional values, crime, jobs, or status. You may be listening to this and thinking I'm referring to a particular candidate or a particular party. I'm not. It's fair to say right now the elite in the Republican Party- meaning those in power- have shown greater willingness to embrace anti-Democratic ideas. But partisans on both sides show support for breaking democratic norms. And there is anti-democratic and populist fervor among Democrats as well as Republican voters as shown in the data. Folks can start looking for drastic measures. They're tempted by leaders who promised to take charge and cut through the red tape, even if it means ignoring the usual rules of the game like the Constitution, the courts, or democratic norms. Here's political scientist, Andreas Schedler.

Andreas Schedler: So, not just the idea that the other side kind of self-interested and amoral actors who put party interests above all. That's kind of standard. But the idea that they do this and they would be even willing to wreck democracy for their own interest, that they won't be willing to do anything. And that goes even into taboos and fears like violence. So we have today a kind of mutual fears of political violence that the other side might be willing to breach that fundamental rule of democracy- the renunciation of violence- in the pursuit of partisan interests. And that's really something dramatic, I think.

Eli Finkel: If everything hangs on this next election, the future of the Republic, the ability ever to have a democracy again before they change all the voting rules... Like, "If these are the stakes, I don't know what to say. I would support some violence. I would support some political chicanery. If those are the stakes, what's wrong with suppressing some votes on the other side?" Really, those are the stakes and we're going to get all hot and bothered about some principal? And a little violence here and there.

David: When democracy's basic rules are tossed aside for the sake of strongman tactics and loudmouth leaders, we're staring right at the possibility of violence and our democratic system falling apart. We want to be careful not to overstate it but look, we've seen it. The 2020 election didn't go the way some people wanted. They thought they were cheated. People can attempt to rewrite history. But on January 6th, many were prepared to take extra legal action to achieve their end.

Protestor: If they don't go to the Capitol like I said earlier, if they don't go to the Capitol and take over and walk in there and just relieve everybody of command, what's going to be the difference and we're coming out here? What's going to change? Why did we come out here then?

Ben Hamilton: But my point was originally, legally, I don't think this crowd of people has the legal right, or even the moral right, to relieve the Congress of their position. 

Protestor: 1776, the same way without a gun being fired. It didn't say-

Ben Hamilton: What are you talking about? 

Protestor: 1776 relieved them, right?

Ben Hamilton: That was one of the longest wars in American history. Lots of people died in the American Revolution.

Protestor: In the end, they went to the Capitol and they relieved the people that were there, didn't they? 

Ben Hamilton: I mean, but there were a lot of guns fired, tons, for years on end. 

Protestor: Well, it was time to make a stand, right?

David: And everyone saw live on TV serious attacks of violence, as well as threats of violence, including calling for the Vice President to be hanged.

[Protesters' sounds]

Unknown speaker: [inaudible]

Unknown speaker2: We need to [inaudible] the doors of the Capitol.

[Protesters' sounds]

Unknown speaker2: I need [inaudible]

David: Here's political scientist, Barbara F. Walter.

Barbara F. Walter:Between December of 2020 and early 2021, the United States was officially classified as an inaccuracy. Inaccuracy is just a fancy term for partial democracy. It's a government that's neither fully democratic nor fully autocratic. It's something in between. 

David: But a violent coup is not the only way for an undemocratic takeover. Here's Polish American journalist and historian, Anne Applebaum, talking about the situation with Viktor Orbán in Hungary. 

Anne Applebaum: What's important about Orbán is that he was democratically elected. Hungary was a democracy, it's still a member of NATO, it's still a member of the European Union. Orbán had popular support, he won a big election victory, actually. But what matters is what he did after he won. He then began to systematically piece by piece dismantle the institutions of democracy. And he did so, in his case, he did so first without breaking the law. He changed the Constitution because he had a constitutional majority, he altered the judges, he began doing something behind the scenes. For example, he played around with the press, people who advertised in the opposition press suddenly had trouble getting government contracts. And because Hungary is a small country, he also began to dominate the economy, making sure that his businessmen and his oligarchs stayed ahead. And by doing so over a number of years, he made himself impossible to remove from power. That is now the model of democratic takeover. When you want to destroy democracy nowadays, you don't have a coup d'etat, you don't need to send the tanks into the presidential palace and shoot up the ceiling. What you do is you take it apart piece by piece. And others have copied him. The previous Polish government attempted to copy him, they didn't quite succeed, and they lost an election in October. The Israeli government has tried to copy him, and that was actually the big story in Israel last summer before the Gaza war began. It's not that different from what Hugo Chavez did in Venezuela. This isn't necessarily a Right-wing process, it can also be a Left-wing process. But what he has- Not what he says. I mean, what he says about LGBT rights or about migration is horrific, but it's not so much that. Those are the games that he plays to keep your eye away from the ball. And what matters is what he does to the judges, what he does to the civil service, what he does to the media.

David: I want to point out here that Hungary is quite a bit smaller country than the US and it might be a little bit more challenging for a wannabe autocrat in the US to achieve some of those same things. At the same time, we have to be careful not to overestimate the idea that we are exceptional, and therefore immune to these kinds of attacks. Here's Dr. Thomas Zeitzoff.

Dr. Thomas Zeitzoff: The thing that concerns myself and folks who maybe have been in places where democracy is not quite as solidified, at least as we tend to think here in the US, is that a lot of the threats and investigations and other things have been done in other countries. And you talk to people who've lived through those, it's not a fun place to be. And a little bit of irony was like when I was talking with some of my political scientist friends and I remember we were having dinner with a bunch of them, and some of them were people who specialized in American politics, and they said the institutions will hold, right? The institutions will hold, the institutions are there. And folks like myself and others who study comparative politics in places outside were like, "I don't know, I've seen this movie before. And the institutions hold until they don't." So I think that's probably the most concerning sort of viewpoint about this recent turn in rhetoric. There's some of it that's ridiculous, but then some of it is serious. Right? You know, the more that we find out about all the other things that were done, even if they were done in a slapdash way, it was Trump was trying to hold on to office through irregular means. Political scientists call that an autogolpe or a self-coup. And people in the media doesn't want to- Not maybe doesn't want to, but is hesitant to call it that. And there's some political scientists who say you have to have the military for it to be considered a coup but that, you know? There was a legitimate debate in academic circles and a lot of people like the Cline Center at the University of Illinois and other folks who I would say are experts on coup, like there's a big debate about whether or not you'd consider what happened was a self-coup. I think that's a problem, right? And so I think there's both the over-coverage of some of the more flamboyant statements, but then there's also a missing, you know, some of the really big concerning things. 

David: We're at a crossroads. We've got to decide whether to stick with democratic principles and accept losing sometimes, or give in to the appeal of strongman tactics and undemocratic means to get our way. Do we go down the path of democracy with all its messiness of competing, compromising, and the peaceful transfer of power, where our side is unlikely to dominate? Or will we get swept up in all the temptations of populism and authoritarianism because we're dead set on thinking our ideas are the only ones that deserve a place in society? 

Kevin Smith: Some of my students in my Intro to American class are shocked when I say the United States government was designed specifically not to work. It only works under a set of very particular circumstances. And those circumstances are where you can stitch together the different arenas of responsibility and authority that the divided power system sets up, that you can stitch them together and get them to agree. And the threshold for doing that is at a minimum, you've got to have a fairly broad area of compromise to make that happen. You know? One side or the other is going to have a hard time getting that done, even if they have reasonable majorities in the House of Representatives in the United States Senate. It's going to be hard. I mean, it's cliche, but it's true. There's only one way to pass a bill and there's a thousand ways to kill it. 

David: It's up to us to decide. Do we embrace the uncertainty of democracy understanding that it's what makes our system resilient and open to everyone? So, check it out. We've got a choice ahead of us. There's the sweet victory of winning elections- fingers crossed, it's our side. Right? But then there's the scary option; heading down a dark road where democracy takes a back seat. And here's the thing. The more we're all about winning at any cost, the harder it is when elections inevitably swing the other way. And that disappointment, it just adds fuel to the fire, increasing the likelihood of the undemocratic takeover that we're so concerned about. In the Swing Vote movie, the candidates and their campaigns reflect this desire to win at all costs.

[Movie Trailer]

Unknown speaker: You used to stand for something, both of you. 

Unknown speaker 2: What are we about? 

Unknown speaker 3: Winning. Because if we don't win, you can't do what you set out to do. 

David: And because it's Hollywood, they learn their lesson and start to treat each other better. The last scene is a presidential debate where Bud gets to ask the questions. And of course, Bud gives a moving speech and the audience representing the electorate has their Kumbaya moment. And spoiler alert, we never get to know who Bud votes for. 

[Movie Trailer]

Bud: I'm ashamed in front of my daughter and my country. I've never served or sacrificed. The only heavy lifting I have ever been asked is simple stuff like, you know, pay attention, vote. If America has a true enemy tonight, I guess it's me. 

David: So, is there another way? Eli Finkel talks about enlightened disagreement. Is that an answer? And what does that look like? Can we ditch the idea of needing to crush the other side, and instead get good at disagreeing without hating each other? Can we come to respect each other's views and find some common ground on the democratic process without leaving our principles behind? But that's got to go both ways. We can't have one side disarming while the other side is loading up on metaphorical nukes. 

Andreas Schedler: We often cite democratic norms as if they were absolute, kind of, you know, "Respect free and fair elections, renounce violence, obey court rulings," etc. But all these norms only hold if you really think that the other side respects them as well. We respect elections as long as we think they are not rigged. We respect Supreme Court rulings as long as we think that the Supreme Court is not just a bunch of partisan hacks, etc. So really, the whole edifice of democracy and the set of norms that holds it together is based on this expectation of mutuality. We play fair, you play fair, and we get along. And when this unravels, it's really difficult to see the bounds. 

David: It's a prisoner's dilemma of sorts. How do we get there? And how do we get past this prisoner's dilemma? And how can we champion compromise and cooperation without feeling like we're giving up our principles? There's a lot of consensus among the experts that the path we're on doesn't end well. 

Andreas Schedler: I'm from Austria. And in interwar Austria, we had such a spiral of polarization, and kind of those people who saw each other as enemies sat together in prison and then learned, well, probably we should have treated each other differently. But of course, we don't want this. We don't want to end democracy in dictatorship or civil war and then start adjusting our behavior.

David: There's a lot less agreement on what the off-ramps are. I spoke with Zachary Elwood about these questions. Zach is a friend of the show who works on reducing toxic polarization with his own writing and books, and also works as a writer for the organization Starts With Us. 

Zachary Elwood: Yeah, 'we will defeat them forever!' I see that a lot, like basically saying, "We just need to wait for these older Conservatives to die, basically." You hear that a lot and I'm like, You don't realize that there's rising racial minority support for Trump. You don't realize that... You really overestimate your idea of defeating the other side. People do that on both sides. Yeah, that's a big part of the problem. And the more people speak in those ways, the more it riles up the other side, et cetera, et cetera. I wrote a piece about reading Geoffrey Blainey's "The Causes of War". It's a classic book about the causes of war, obviously. He talked about how one of the factors is wars often happen because people overstated or had an exaggerated sense of their ability to win a war. Right? So that made them act in more warlike ways. And I think that's a fundamental human tendency too, to overestimate your chances of winning something. It's like we have a distorted view of the landscape, of the battlefield, of conflict, and we overestimate our chances of winning in the same way that we often overestimate our chances of success at things. I think a lot of that is related to our distorted perceptions of each other because when we can't even understand the more rational elements of why the other side believes what they do, then it's only natural that we act in ways that amplify the tensions and amplify the temperature. For example, immigration. Bernie Sanders was against... He was for strict immigration controls for most of his career. He said lax border policies, he was a Koch brother's policy because he saw loose immigration policies as helping big businesses and hurting American workers. That's just to say, no matter what you think on that, I think liberals would be more generous to Bernie Sanders' views on that than they would if a Republican expressed the same view. This is just to say that the more that we can embrace the more rational and understandable views on the other side, the more we'll bring down the temperature. And I think that's a big part of it, is to try to see those rational views as much as we can. And abortion, for example, Caitlin Flanagan wrote a really good article. I think it was for the Atlantic, where she described the best thing activists on either side can do is to actually deal with the better arguments of the other side and think about those things and not portray them in the worst possible ways. So yeah, the talk of vanquishing and defeating the other side, I think those things come about when you really view the other side's fundamental views as really dangerous. And I think a big part of that is having distorted views. 

That's not to say we can't have understandable concerns about the dangers of harms posed by the other side, but it's also true that our animosity, the toxic divides are what help create some of those concerns. They help generate some of those concerns. So, by dealing with the underlying root causes, as I see it, which is the over-pessimistic and distorted framings of the other side's core political beliefs, I think we bring down the temperature. That also helps to understand that we're not going to defeat the other side easily because it does come down to these core understandable differences in opinion on some core beliefs. And I think there's a few things in that area too, because it's like, A, I don't even think you necessarily need to have a compromised mindset to work on some of these things. Because you could work hard as much as you're able, you know, work very hard for things while speaking and behaving in less polarizing ways. And then B, yeah, you do need compromise. And I think, often, there's more room for compromise than people understand. One thing that comes to mind is the bill in Florida, the one that the Liberal people called Don't Say Gay Bill. They had a ruling that it only applied in certain contexts, and both sides of that debate viewed it as a win, which struck people as surprising. But I think it goes to show that sometimes the things we're arguing over are not as all-encompassing as we think they are.

For example, you could probably find a lot more common ground on immigration than a lot of people believe. And a lot of people overstate what they think their adversaries actually want. The way these things tend to build up is these extremely sky is falling catastrophizing views. Again, that's not to say that there can't be valid concerns. But people who are interested in building a less toxic future, a more healthy future for America, if you want to do that, you need to be willing to examine, "Are my fears potentially overstated?" And if I'm worried about those things, it would behoove me to not overstate my fears because overstating fears can be a factor in amplifying tensions. So it's not to say we can't be concerned about things, but I think it's important to speak in careful ways that don't accidentally amplify tensions. That's what I see. Because I see a lot of people speak in very overly certain ways about what specifically Trump will do, what he'll accomplish, what the worst-case framings are on either side. And a lot of those are just ultra-certain statements and not really expressed as a concern. It's like, here's what will happen. Here's what the worst things are that will happen. Or here's what will happen if Trump or Biden is elected. So I think people interested in lowering divides need to, as Thomas Zeitzoff said, he's written about the dangers of speaking in overly certain, extremely pessimistic ways because there can be a self-fulfilling prophecy to that. It's like there's a danger, there's some risks, and I think we need to be aware of those too. And people will say, "Yeah, there's also a risk of not worrying enough." Right? But yeah, that's true too. You need to think about what your worst-case fears are, but also be aware of how there can be risks to speaking in overly pessimistic and certain ways too, and how they amplify conflict and animosity and such. But yeah, none of these things are easy, obviously, but that's how I view it as like threading the needle of trying to work against things you're concerned about while trying to also lessen polarization and speak in less polarizing ways, which is obviously difficult. For people who care about these things, it is worth trying to see what your adversaries are seeing and what they're actually concerned about. Even if you think that those concerns are hugely overstated or even silly, it's like a lot of people do believe those things and I think you have to grapple with that fact. And even if you think they're overstated, even if you think people are using those fears for overstating those fears and manipulating those fears, it's like people do really believe those things. And I think you have to grapple with that and also try to see some of the rational underpinnings. 

I've written pieces- and it's in my books, too- about the distorted polarized views about Trump or perceptions about Trump, for example, and seeing how you can get into the mind frame of seeing how there was a lot of irresponsible coverage of the Trump-Russia things and how that feeds into a narrative of Trump and Republicans always being attacked unfairly. People on both sides, you can view the other side as worse or more contributing to the problem, but I think a lot of people use their views of the other side, their fears and animosity toward the other side, as a way to avoid working on the problem where it's like, to me, one can see the other side as worse and more contributing to the toxicity of the divides while feeling it's very important to work on reducing those divides. Because conflict is very complex and that should tell us that we should take some humility about the nature of the divides and really not let our animosity towards the other side get in the way of us working on the problem. But I think a lot of people just let their animosity and fear make them throw up their hands and say, "Well, it's their fault. I'm not going to work on it." Whereas I see it as this is a very important problem. And groups are asymmetrical in a conflict, they can be hard to compare. For example, there's educational polarization, there's the fact that liberals really control a lot of the institutions in society; academia, mainstream media, entertainment media. So, just to say that the conflicts can be quite complex and we can be prone to seeing the conflict how we want to see it and using that as an excuse to not help, whereas I think we should embrace some humility and ask what can we do on our side to solve these things, right? No matter who we think it works on these things, right? I think political leaders, pundits, political activists tend to speak in these ways that acknowledge some of the more rational and understandable objections and concerns on the other side while saying, "And yet here's what I believe. Here's where we differ. Here's why I think what you're doing is wrong." Right? But I think what happens is so few people are willing to even speak to those more rational objections that it just becomes a game of like, "Well, I'm going to completely ignore all your concerns and never speak about them because that's perceived as weak." But I think we need to embrace in our daily lives as everyday citizens to people who have a lot more influence. 

I think we need to embrace seeing what the other side sees and speaking to their concerns more. But yeah, that's hard for all sorts of reasons. Everybody listening to your program, anybody out there is going to have their political views, right? We have our political views of who's doing harm, and who's doing the most harm. But if we can try to engage with our adversaries as much as possible in depolarizing ways, to me, that is one of the main ways we can all help with this problem. And I think that kind of approach mainly helps with the more politically influential, right? Like the political leaders, the pundits, the political activists. But I do think trying to get them to see the value of working towards their political goals in depolarizing, de-escalating ways, which in practical terms means trying to understand what's bothering your political opponents and setting them at ease, right? But that's the last thing that most of us feel like doing. We actually feel like actually taking our opponent's concerns seriously because we view their concerns as so goofy or even dangerous, we don't have an incentive to speak to their concerns. But I do think part of the path out of this is getting more political leaders and activists and pundits to see the value in speaking in those more persuasive ways and taking their opponent's concerns seriously as much as they're able to. I think that's a practical thing that all of us could do even in our daily lives as everyday citizens. 

That's kind of the approach I would because clearly, we're not going to rid ourselves of major divides and major divergent narratives, right? We're not going to do that maybe ever, but we're definitely not going to do it overnight. But yeah, that would be my instinct for how to wrap it up. 

David: Our exploration of the desire to crush the other side and remove opposing ideas from society has revealed the dangers of political polarization and the futility of seeking to silence dissenting voices. As we navigate the complexities of a deeply divided society, it's imperative that we resist the urge to view political opponents as irredeemable adversaries, and instead, strive for dialogue, understanding, and compromise. So, where do we go from here? How do we move forward in a landscape marked by disillusionment and division? The answer lies not in placing our face solely in electoral politics, but in recognizing the power of collective action, grassroots organizing, and sustained advocacy to bring about lasting change. We are often told to vote harder, as if the solution to our societal challenges lies solely in electoral victories. But what happens if your candidate loses? What then? How do we reconcile the fervent hopes of electoral success with the stark reality of defeat? Just like the final game of a championship, someone has got to lose. The reality is someone is going to lose the upcoming election. But what matters most is not the outcome itself, but how we respond to it. Instead of succumbing to despair or resorting to division, we must channel our energies into protecting the institutions that underpin our democracy. It's in times of uncertainty and adversity that our commitment to the rule of law, free and fair elections, and the separation of powers is put to the test. So, how can you work to protect these institutions? How can you ensure that your voice is heard and your values are upheld regardless of who holds power? These are the questions we must grapple with as engaged citizens in a democratic society. Remember, your guy might lose. What will you do when that happens? Will you retreat into apathy and resignation? Or will you rise to the challenge with resilience and determination? As we conclude this episode, let us remember that the true measure of our democracy lies not in the outcome of any single election, but in our collective commitment to upholding the principles of justice, equality, and freedom for all. Because in the end, it's not about winning against each other. It's about winning together. 

That is it for this episode of the Outrage Overload podcast. I'd like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who contributed to this episode. Big thanks to political scientists Kevin Smith and Sean Evans, as well as Andreas Schedler, Thomas Zeitzoff, and thanks to Eli Finkel. Also, my co-director Austin Chen, documentary filmmaker Alex Shebanow, and my wife, Lisa, who offered invaluable feedback and guidance. Finally, many thanks to Zachary Elwood of Starts With Us. Your collective support made this episode possible. I can't thank you enough. All right, see you in a couple of weeks.