Democracy Is Not a Failed Experiment
By: Douglas Rushkoff
Tags: Politics, Column, Democracy, Elections, Trump

Democracy Is Not a Failed Experiment

Instead of seeking to represent us, the GOP has weaponized manipulation. Sadly, some Democrats are following suit

Photo: Emma Espejo/Getty

Do we have to accept the sad premise that people are just too dumb, too uninformed, and too easily fooled to vote intelligently or even rationally? Most of the political class, from both sides of the aisle, seem to think so.

Back during George W. Bush’s re-election campaign, I was invited to a fancy lunch with an ancient former secretary of state and some of the associates from his consulting firm. It was at the height of the swift boat “controversy,” when the Democrat candidate John Kerry was being accused of lying about his tour of duty in Vietnam. Some of the veterans who served with him said he wasn’t a hero but a coward. It wasn’t the first dubious, emotionally charged campaign to undermine the integrity of a political candidate, but it was among the first of the internet era, and it spread not just through mainstream media, but virally, and to great effect.

The former secretary was apparently interested in what I’d have to say about all this. Or at least one of his people thought it would be worth having a digital type at the table. I had written a rather hopeful book about the way what I called “viral media” would make for a healthier, more honest communications landscape. I tried to argue that the truth would eventually rise to the surface, and that—thanks to the informational bias of the net—voters would come to value facts and policies over rumors and personal attacks. The culture of the net would embrace what I considered to be rational efforts, such as Creative Commons and MoveOn.org over the Tea Party and Fox News.

“My friend,” he said, his voice conveying something between pity and condescension, “when will you be ready to accept that the experiment of democracy has been proven a failure?”

I was shocked. Stunned into silence. The other people at the table smiled politely but knowingly. I felt like Tom Cruise at the end of Eyes Wide Shut. Were they playing with me or was this their truth?

That’s not to say I don’t understand his line of reasoning. Back in the early 1900s, Walter Lippmann, the father of public relations and one of the progressive intellectuals who founded the New Republic magazine, joined Woodrow Wilson’s administration. He was quickly disillusioned by the way Wilson ran for office on a peace platform, then changed his mind and used every underhanded propaganda tool at his disposal to convince the public to support America’s entrance into World War I. Is this any way to govern a democratic people? Tell them what to believe? He sought to figure out some compromise that could uphold his progressive values while acknowledging the need to steer the popular sentiment of the crowd.

Lippmann wrote a book, Public Opinion, in which he reluctantly concluded that the masses (that’s all of us) were indeed incapable of understanding what was going in the world, much less making intelligent decisions on our own behalf. We were just responding to the “pictures in our heads,” which could be coming from anywhere: movies, religion, fantasies, or even propaganda. We, the people, can’t be truly entrusted with evaluating or actually deciding anything consequential. Rather, he argued, the government should set up a council of experts who make scientifically informed decisions about everything. Then, the powers that be should hire public relations specialists to manufacture consent for these policies. It’s not about finding out how we feel, but getting us to feel the way that serves our best interests—as determined by our benevolent leaders.

Now, perhaps more than ever, political appeals are characterized less by the facts voters need than by the nostalgia, attacks, and melodrama to which they instinctually respond.

This may sound well-meaning compared with fascism, but it’s essentially democracy in reverse. And it has informed political campaigning ever since. From Lippmann’s protege, legendary spin doctor Ed Bernays, right through to modern political tricksters like Roger Stone, the object of the game has become to put pictures in people’s heads—true or false—that get them to vote in particular ways. As Bernays put it in the opening of his book Propaganda, “We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of. This is a logical result of the way in which our democratic society is organized.”

Maybe the elder statesman had been correct in his assessment of our citizens’ incapacity to serve as the informed electorate in a functioning democracy. Even back in 2004, Fox News and Rush Limbaugh had proven themselves quite effective at winning adherents through emotionally charged hot-button appeals. We were on the brink of the second term of a president whose economic and geopolitical record was calamitous, but whose propagandists were winning. If the only thing differentiating candidates is the willingness of their PR people to manipulate by any means necessary, then democracy really has failed. Rather than competing to persuade the electorate, politicians have applied their efforts—and money—toward manipulating them instead.

I’ve thought about this problem often, but the Obama wins of 2008 and 2012 seemed to demonstrate that perhaps the opposite was true, heralding an age when people would actually respond favorably to a cool clinician making appeals to rationality.

Or was that just another example of good storytelling? As rational as his approach may have been, Obama’s appeal was largely emotional. If Democrats had been true wonks, they would have likely supported Hillary over a young man with no international experience. In that sense, eight years of Obama may not disprove the former secretary’s contention so much as validate it.

Now, perhaps more than ever, political appeals are characterized less by the facts voters need than by the nostalgia, attacks, and melodrama to which they instinctually respond. And the pollsters and policy pushers don’t give this manipulation a second thought. To them, democracy is less about persuading members of an informed electorate to support one’s policies than the right to do whatever is necessary to make the electorate vote the way you want them to. They’re just the masses—a means to an end.

In 2006, I met up with Republican strategist Frank Luntz, and I took the opportunity to confront him about some of the tactics he had been using to manipulate people’s opinions on major issues. He’s the guy who sold Republican policies to the public by changing “drilling for oil” to “energy exploration” and “estate tax” to “death tax.” He advised Israel to refer to Palestinians only as Arabs, the border wall as a fence, and occupied territory as disputed territory. In an interview on NPR’s Fresh Air, Luntz used the term “Orwellian” positively and without irony, to mean “the skillful application of emotional language.” He told me he understood that John Kerry wasn’t really a traitor to the United States, but that the swift boat campaign positioned him that way quite effectively for millions of Americans—and cost him the election. When I asked Luntz if it was really ethical to frame one’s political policies and enemies so emotionally and even inaccurately, he replied, “Do you want to win?”

And for all the talk of going high when they go low, Democrats—at least establishment Democrats—operate from the same set of beliefs, even if they do it a lot less blatantly. Unlike the Right, the Left hasn’t been actively stoking violent, racist hatred. But their operatives, particularly in the wake of the bruising they took from Trump in the last election, seem much less interested in describing the logic of their own policies than in frightening people about those of their opponents.

In the final months of Trump’s campaign, I offered to conduct a “memetic analysis” of Hillary Clinton for party leaders. Trump was wiping the floor with all his adversaries by stressing or inventing negatives. This was Frank Luntz on steroids. Instead of “climate change,” though, it was “crooked Hillary.” Instead of Luntz’s “Contract with America,” it was “lock her up.”

I got it into my head that I could help. I understand these tactics, but I believe they can be countered with facts and rational appeals. After doing a memetic analysis of the landscape and coming up with a few insights I deemed valuable, I approached my contacts at the Democratic National Committee as well as some of its policy tributaries. No, I wasn’t asking for money, but I felt I could show them how to position their candidates and policies in ways that resonated better with people’s concerns, neutralized some of the attacks on them, or even helped strengthen cultural immunity to these viral assaults. If only I could get to Neera Tanden at the Center for American Progress. Or John Podesta, Clinton’s campaign manager, whom I once interviewed for a documentary…. Nobody was interested. I’m sure they assumed Hillary would win anyway. I ended up sharing my findings with my friends and grad students instead and braced for the worst.

Within hours of Trump’s election, every progressive in New York was holding emergency meetings with Democratic operatives and planning how to fight back or at least win the next time out. Suddenly, it seemed like everybody was ready to speak with me.

I don’t know how many of these impromptu sessions I attended. I ended up in apartments, churches, and conference rooms with everyone from the editors of Adbusters magazine to New York State Attorney General Eric Schneiderman. I finally met Tanden, the president of the Center for American Progress—probably the most Clintonian of the political advocacy groups. Now she seemed interested in what I had to say.

I explained my research methodology. I analyze the memes around particular issues in order to figure out the real obstacles people have in accepting certain people or policies. It’s not about words so much as ideas. Many people associate energy conservation, mutual aid, or the social safety net with weakness. And the combustion engine with masculine power. But why? And how can one begin to reframe those ideas in more successful ways?

In the wake of Trump’s empty but effective verbal assaults and nationalist rhetoric, I thought the Democrats could counter by implementing or even just fostering real-world solutions. I suggested that the best option would be to promote various forms of mutual aid and local resilience, retrieving some long lost democratic approaches to problems. Let people—both red and blue—benefit from enacting simple, commons-based strategies, such as local currencies, “favor banks,” civic engagement, after-school programs, and food pantries, and they will come to value the progressive agenda through direct experience.

Emphasizing negatives, triggering crowd panic, playing to outrage, and going low is a wholesale abandonment of democratic values.

This wasn’t what Tanden had in mind. She wanted to know which aspects of Trump were most susceptible to attack. “Can’t you do a memetic analysis of Trump?” she asked. The object of the game, as she saw it, was not to bolster the Democratic argument, educate the public about policies that would improve their lives, or even foster the creation of bottom-up efforts to enact positive social change. No, it was to “drive up Trump’s negatives.”

There certainly was a political logic to this. Midterms may have been two years away at the time, but primary season was just around the corner, and even impeachment was still a possibility if the country turned on Trump. She likely believed that if I could identify Trump’s biggest vulnerabilities—particularly with swing voters who had gone for Obama in the last election—she and her team could then go on CNN and MSNBC and highlight them. Besides, as long as those networks are covering everything Trumps does, negatives become the only viable fodder for discussion and critique. If you have no airtime to make your own policies and politicians look good, then at least make Trump—and everyone associated with him—look bad.

Believing that any effort spent appealing to the intellect of the informed citizen is at best a waste of time and money, many Democratic operatives resigned themselves to competing in Lipmann’s propaganda war over the pictures in people’s heads.

Having seen how successful the Trumpian strategy had been, they gave up even the appearance of trying to persuade voters—gave up on democracy itself—and doubled down on emotional manipulation.

This has been the de facto strategy of establishment Democrats right up through this midterm election. And if the “blue wave” fails to materialize, it will be because of this strategic failure.

Call me naive, but I believe Americans do care about how their votes will impact the real world in real ways. I believe our higher faculties can still inform our choices. Emphasizing negatives, triggering crowd panic, playing to outrage, and going low is a wholesale abandonment of democratic values.

And it’s not even working. Each shrill reaction on the OpEd page or cable TV to one of Trump’s misdeeds further entrenches him and his supporters in their positions.

Moreover, emphasizing Trump’s negatives further positions him as the protagonist of our national story. He may not be a good president or nice person. He may even be a would-be tyrant with a personality disorder. But he is also a man under constant attack. Eventually, no matter how dastardly a character—Frank Underwood, Dr. Smith, Gru, Richard III, Regina George—the audience can’t help but empathize with their plight when they are on the defensive. Like him or not, everyone can recognize the humanity in Trump’s wriggling, excuse-making, lying, and tantrum-throwing. He is the only human character on the screen, and as a reality TV star, he knows well that audiences will identify with him, even involuntarily. As we have witnessed this week, this sense of identification can yield dangerous consequences.

Here’s a radical idea: What if Democrats acted, instead, as if they actually believed in democracy: the ability of American citizens to understand issues and make choices informed by logic? What if they stated what they believe in, policy-wise—made their case—and counted on the process to work. Yes, a lot is at stake. And many Democrats believe that if they don’t win at least one chamber of Congress in this election, the electoral process will be rigged forever toward the current majority party.

But real democracy demands an informed electorate. The Democrats will always lose in an unprincipled brawl because the Democrats must always at least pay lip service to democratic principles. The Right can argue that unbridled, no-holds-barred competition is the basis of their economic and geopolitical philosophy. Democrats don’t have this option. Besides, if Democrats undermine the fundamental premise of democracy in order to win an election, then what’s left?

If I could go back to that swanky restaurant and answer the former secretary of state, I’d say, “No, I’m not ready to accept that the experiment of democracy has proven a failure. Not yet.”

This midterm election, we still have a chance to remember what it is we’re doing this for. What this is really about. Our role in this process and whether we are up for the challenge.

Are we even willing to show up at the polls, much less understand the issues we are voting on?

Our politicians and their propagandists on both sides have lost faith in our ability to vote purposefully. They believe that the democratic experiment has failed. They are wrong. But the only way we can effectively defend ourselves against the folks on both sides who would underestimate our intelligence, our competence, and our collective will is to vote.