Massively Parallel Problem Solving and Democracy Building: An Ongoing Response to the Threats to Democracy in the U.S. - Part 2
Newsletter 285 - October 11, 2024
This is the second installment (of 5), drawn from Guy and Heidi's paper "Massively Parallel Problem Solving and Democracy Building: An Ongoing Response to the Threats to Democracy in the U.S." which was originally published by the Toda Peace Institute on September 16, 2024 as one of their policy briefs.1 We are also sending it out in one-a-week installments in this newsletter. The first installment laid out six essential dispute handling functions that all successful democracies must be able to perform. It then gave a quick overview of the challenges democracies commonly face when trying to perform those functions, and suggested a process akin to Adam Smith's invisible hand to "organize" a "massively parallel" democracy building and problem solving effort, which we see as the key to democratic resilience. We ended the first installment explaining that the paper focuses primarily on American democracy, as that is where our expertise lies. However, we expect the dynamics we are observing here in the U.S. are also happening in many other parts of the world. Indeed, through our participation with the Toda Global Challenges to Democracy Program, we have learned that this is true. But we leave it to our colleagues to describe events in other countries. Our focus here remains the United States.
In this installment, we delve more deeply into the threats facing U.S. democracy. We look at threats from the political right, threats from the political left, and threats that cross the political divide. We then discuss where these threats might lead us, if we do not make a considerable effort to address them now, in positive ways. The last three installments explore what we mean by that — and how a lot of progress is actually already being made to strengthen and expand democracy in the U.S.
Added on November 1, 2024: Since all the installments have now been posted, here are links to the entire series: Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 (corrected version) | Part 5
Threats to U.S. Democracy
While almost everyone is worried about the state of democracy in the United States, there is little agreement about what those threats are, with huge differences between left-leaning, right-leaning, and centrist perspectives.
Threats from the Right
Progressives, liberals, and Democrats more broadly, together with many independents (people who do not belong to any organized political party) most often focus on Donald Trump and his supporters as being the gravest threat to U.S. democracy. They look at the January 6, 2021 attack on the U.S. Capitol and fear future break downs of the orderly transition of power, trust in elections, and norms against political violence. They look at the many attempts that Trump made to change the outcome of the 2020 election: trying to seat fake electors in the Electoral College, trying to get the Georgia Secretary of State to “find” non-existent votes, trying to pressure lawmakers and election officials in other states to change electoral votes from Biden to Trump, using his Justice Department to conduct bogus election-fraud investigations. After losing many judicial challenges to the vote count, Trump even went so far as to suggest that the U.S. Constitution should be “terminated” in order to allow him to overturn the 2020 election.
Trump is adding to these fears by promising to seek revenge and retribution if he is elected to a second term as U.S. president. He has said he would use the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate his adversaries and have them charged with crimes, using a special prosecutor to “go after” President Biden and his family. Going further, he has promised to prosecute anyone who has challenged or challenges him politically in the future and to fire all the unelected government workers who he deems are operatives of the illegitimate “deep state.” He is also planning to make sure everyone around him is a supporter who will not question his antidemocratic actions. He does not want the pushback he got from White House lawyers and cabinet secretaries, for instance, the first time around. He has promised in at least one speech, that if supporters vote for him this time, “they won’t need to vote again,” suggesting that he will end elections.
All of these actions, which are met with cheers and support from Trump’s base, are, indeed, deeply concerning. Also concerning is the fact that most Republicans still believe that the 2020 election was “stolen,” and they expect the same thing to happen again, if they don’t take massive efforts to prevent that, which Democrats see as anti-democratic electoral tampering on the Republican side (by making it harder for Democrats to vote, for example).
Threats from the Left
There are real threats to U.S. democracy coming from the Democratic Party as well. For example, in 2022, the Democrats tried to manipulate the Republican primary elections by contributing money to and otherwise supporting the campaigns of extreme Republican candidates, in an effort to get weaker opponents on the ballot in November. This may be what they are doing again by pursing so many court cases against Trump during the 2024 election season and filing so many cases on dubious grounds (such as the mishandling of classified documents or efforts to conceal an illicit affair (remember President Clinton and Monica Lewinsky?). It would have been vastly better to have a definitive verdict on the core charge that President Trump had used illegal means to subvert the election. These court cases (which are widely seen on the right as political “lawfare” (“warfare through law”) may or may not weaken Trump (but his poll numbers seemed to rise every time more charges were filed.) They also focused the limelight on him constantly, taking the attention away from his would-be Republican challengers (before he won the nomination) who were not as tainted (and hence were perhaps stronger) than he is. While Democrats accuse the Republicans of gerrymandering (manipulating electoral district boundaries to unfairly favor one side), the Democrats do this whenever possible too.
In addition, Democrats have managed to drive their political agenda far beyond the ballot box to dominate
K-122 schools and higher education, as well as private enterprise, by demanding adherence to Democratic Party values (termed “DEI” or “diversity, “equity,” and “inclusion”) for hiring and retention. Most students, then, are being indoctrinated with these values that violate much of what half of the U.S. population believes. Even if these views are better than others, insisting that only one set of political (and often cultural) beliefs be taught in schools and universities, and followed by private enterprise, is a fundamental violation of freedom of speech and belief, a central tenant of the U.S. Bill of Rights and hence U.S. democracy.
In another highly contentious case, three states (Colorado, Illinois and Maine) tried to remove Donald Trump from their presidential primary election ballots, even though Trump has not yet been found guilty of any crime or “insurrection,” which is what was being charged. This effort was later overturned by the Supreme Court.
Other Threats
Other threats to democracy cross the political divide. One is the prevailing sense that the U.S. government no longer works. Most people think that it doesn’t work to protect our citizens (fear of crime is substantially up in recent years, even though actual crime rates are down) and the two parties are so polarized that they are widely seen as unable to govern effectively. According to a September 2023 Pew Research Center Poll,
When asked about various aspects of the job those in Congress are doing, such as working with members of the opposing parties or caring about the people they represent, Americans are critical on nearly every domain.
72% of respondents viewed Congress with disfavor, saying that they didn’t listen to the concerns of people in their district, they didn’t keep their personal financial interests separate from their work (implying they were corrupt), they didn’t work effectively with the opposing party, and they didn’t take responsibility for their actions. These assessments cross party, age, gender, race, and education.
Violations of the rule of law are a concern to both sides as well. Democrats see Trump’s many attempts to overturn the 2020 election as a massive attempt to subvert the rule of law, as, they charged, he often did with his executive orders when he was President. The Republicans, too, charge that Biden has been subverting the law with his executive orders, which, for example, bypassed Congress and the Courts in an effort to forgive student loans which heavily benefited his constituency, not the Republicans’.
Dis-and misinformation is another threat that crosses political boundaries (though those are terms that are largely used by the left and the term “fake news” is used more by the right.) Social media has become a primary source of information and “news” for many Americans, even though it has been flooded with fake facts and fake people by internal and external provocateurs. Rather than presenting the truth, or even the facts as article authors honestly see them, these “bad-faith actors” knowingly spread false information to deepen the political divide for their own benefit. “True believers”—people who consume this dis- and misinformation without questioning it and spread it further—contribute to the polarization. Most traditional or legacy media— newspapers, radio, and TV—also cater to narrowly focused segments of the United States’ highly polarized society. Media funding models in the United States rely on advertising, which relies on audience numbers. So, like social media, the traditional media tells people what they want to hear – regardless of whether it is true.
However, attempts to control this flood of bad information have sometimes gone too far. What has come to be called the “censorship industrial complex,” has not only blocked or countered actual mis- or disinformation; at times, it has also blocked legitimate contrary views.
Economic challenges are another threat to democracy that is bipartisan. Almost everyone has been hurt by inflation, and many feel less economically secure than they did in earlier years. The Democrats have also raised the fear of climate change to an existential threat, suggesting that its impacts will make it impossible for young people to have a secure and prosperous future. Taking all these things together, according to PRRI, 75% of Americans believe that “the country is going in the wrong direction,” while 55% believe that “American culture and way of life has changed for the worse since the 1950s.”
The Growing Desire for Strong, Authoritarian Leaders
These beliefs have led a disturbing number of people to see authoritarianism as a valid, even needed, response. According to the same PRRI poll cited above, taken in October of 2023, 38% of Americans agree with the statement: “Because things have gotten so far off track in this country, we need a leader who is willing to break some rules if that’s what it takes to set things right.” Nearly a quarter agree with the statement “because things have gotten so far off track, true American patriots may have to resort to violence in order to save our country.” Agreement with this statement came from 33% of Republicans, 22% of independents and 13% of Democrats.
Distrust of the other—driven, of course, by manipulative media and social media—is another bipartisan problem that is driving these numbers higher. According to a study described in the Washington Post, although few Democrats or Republicans say they would be willing to subvert democratic procedures or norms in a variety of circumstances, they estimated that their opponents would be very likely to do so. And, if their opponents did so, they would have no choice but to do so themselves. As the author Jason Willick observed,
All this helps show why the “democracy vs. autocracy” framing that has become popular among American elites doesn’t reflect the actual challenge to self-government in the 21st century. People who champion democracy can easily persuade themselves to undermine it if they think the other side is prepared to do the same. To the extent that there is a risk of authoritarianism in the United States, it doesn’t come from hostility to democracy. It comes from Americans’ deepening attachment to democracy and their growing fear that it will be taken away.
The Specter of Complete Democratic Collapse
In sum, the problems with American democracy include, but go far deeper than governmental dysfunction, which structural “tweaks” might fix. They go deeper than distrust in elections, the prevention of violence, and the re-establishment of the rule of law, although all these things are part of the story, and all need to be addressed.
The problems go from the top to the bottom: from our highest political leaders to the grassroots citizens (and non-citizen residents) trying to make a good life for themselves in this country. As was hinted at, but not explored deeply above, there is widespread distrust between American citizens, who increasingly see the other, not as “fellow citizens,” or even “people with differing views from mine,” but as evil, even sub-human, existential threats, who must be neutralized.
And these views are reinforced by a continuing set of feedback loops between leaders and followers. Leaders are afraid of saying anything “nice” about the other side or working with or compromising with the other side for fear of appearing “weak” and losing the next election. Followers go along with the hateful statements that they hear from the leaders, their friends and associates, and on social media, for fear of looking like a “traitor.” Moderate, calming, de-escalatory voices are increasingly being silenced while extreme, hyperbolic voices are accentuated and amplified.
This distrust, fear, and hatred of the other is extremely dangerous, not just to democracy, but to peace. In fact, it is sometimes hard to understand why large-scale civil unrest has yet to break out. Should that happen, it wouldn’t be very hard to fall into something that starts to look like civil war (perhaps similar to the troubles in Northern Ireland).
In the wake of the explosion of global anti-Semitism that followed the October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel, and the open calls for the destruction of Israel that ensued (on U.S. campuses and many other places around the world), it has even become reasonable to fear outbreaks of genocidal violence. If the sins of those that the left views as “oppressors” are sufficient to justify the barbarity of Hamas’ attack, then democracy’s peaceful system for handling intractable conflicts is truly endangered.
And even short of civil war or genocide, if we don’t start now to remedy the problems listed above, we are quite possibly looking at increasingly widespread governmental and/or societal breakdown, or, perhaps, the almost complete domination of one side (the left or the right) over the other. This could easily be blended with something that looks like true authoritarianism.
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1 Our thanks go to Olivia Dreier for urging us to write the policy brief and being patient when it took us a very long time. And thanks to Olivia and Rosemary McBryde for your editing and posting on Toda. We also very much appreciate Toda's willingness to allow us to repost the paper in our Substack Newsletter, and on BI, and more broadly, We also appreciate Toda's support of our work. We have learned a great deal from our participation in the Toda Global Challenges to Democracy Program.
2 K-12 in the U.S. education system means elementary, middle, and high school.
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