How Is It That Election Politics in the US Have Gone So Far Off Track ?

Lest We Forget

Dear Friends

Moving beyond talking about the causes of the election result (see my last letters) I want to try and understand the toxic relations between the two main political groupings which have plagued the last three elections, and why the US has reached the point where polarization and distrust are a common feature of interaction both outside and inside congress. This letter will look at some of the background, strategies, tactics and propaganda around key elections, and how they have led to our current polarization. What’s the point of doing this? It’s to understand things better in the midst of confusion, so that some day reason may return and normal service will be resumed.

A Look At How Toxic Election Dynamics have developed.

Elections have always involved aggressive charges and countercharges and falsification of opponents’ positions and records within and across the ‘aisle’. But since 2016 presidential elections in the US have been characterized by unique viciousness. This is not a comprehensive survey of the waterfront – just a selective outline of a story that needs re-telling in brief and accessible language.

I need also to mention that I am going to try to avoid false equivalences.

In 1964, as the Civil Rights movement and the war in Vietnam ramped up, the Johnson campaign picked up a third issue, nuclear disarmament, in which their Republican opponent Barry Goldwater was vulnerable. It ran what has become known as the ’daisy girl’ ad, dreamt up by a creative Madison Ave agency. In it a little girl counts from one to ten as she pulls petals off a daisy and as she reaches ten a nuclear countdown begins. The ad was taken down after one showing but it likely helped the defeat of Goldwater who was a military hawk. Some say that this Democrat Ad was the first major example of irresponsible political advertising on broadcast media in the US.

The Daisy Ad was awful but also an aberration. No Democrat electoral promotion effort has since come anywhere near it. Take a look.

Moving away from that, one of the most notable figures in the political attack-dog industry was Roy Cohn who in 1972 helped Nixon beat McGovern by leaking to the Press the shaky medical records of his VP (Eagleton). Cohn was involved in various other ethically questionable activities on Reagan’s campaign and also had the task of advising Trump early in his career. But he kept his head below the parapet.

Moving on several more years, the original player of mass political dirty tricks is thought by some to have been Lee Atwater, an operative for Bush Sr. in 1988 who destroyed his democrat opponent, Mike Dukakis, in a series of attacks about his lack of empathy, patriotism, and ability to lead the military. An ad misrepresented Dukakis as soft on race and crime for permitting a murderer, Willie Horton, to be furloughed from jail, during time which he committed rape. As Atwater said at the time, ‘by the time we’re finished, they’re going to wonder whether Willie Horton is Dukakis’ running mate.’ But in 1991, terminally ill, Atwater was remorseful. He wrote in Life magazine: ‘It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.’

Newt Gingrich as Speaker of the House over 1995 to 1999 was maybe the next in line of succession to Atwater as a wrecking machine, officially and on a larger scale. He went to the remarkable lengths of providing to his members a kind of insult play-book for use against the Opposition, which proposed use of descriptive terms like, in alphabetical order: betray, bizarre, decay, destroy, devour, greed, lie, pathetic, radical, selfish, shame, sick, steal, traitors. After a tumultuous time in office including the engineering of two Government shutdowns Gingrich resigned in 1999 following ethics scandals and because of his failed attempt to use the democratic President’s own scandal for electoral gain.

In 2000, while the main event was Bush Jr. and Gore there was a subplot of Republican candidate (Bush) going after another (McCain) during the primaries under the direction of Republican operative Karl Rove. It was suggested that McCain had fathered a Black child whom he had in fact adopted from an orphanage; that his time as a POW in Vietnam had left him mentally unstable; and that he, a veteran, was anti-veteran. McCain called the Bush team's tactics "dirty politics at its worst".

The 2004 Election saw a publicity campaign by the ‘Swift Boaters’ which undermined Democrat John Kerry, claiming that he had exaggerated and distorted his record in Vietnam and did not deserve the medals that he won. In 2012 Republican Mitt Romney’s campaign was also hit by charges that he was in normal life a corporate raider responsible for job losses, bankruptcies, and export of jobs.

But the level of vitriol was still not as yet great enough to create lasting personal and ideological enmity. Elections over 2000 to 2012 were difficult but somehow finally accepted, and new Governments got on with their job without existential threats. The ability for decency to overcome ideological warfare had been shown in the alliance between Reagan and Democrat Speaker, Tip O’neill. Reagan’s 1984 Debate response to Mondale that he was too old to Govern, is also worth remembering. "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience."

Conspiracy Theories

The period up to the end of Gingrich in 1999 we can look back on somehow as an age of innocence. The reason for this is that the internet had not yet engulfed all discourse. It was still possible for someone to behave like a hero or a villain and not have his or her actions and existence feted, distorted or threatened World-wide. The 2000s ushered in the era of social media which led to the vast multiplication of communications. In doing so it also ushered in the era of mass conspiracy theories.

The age of social media and Talk Radio took polarization to an extreme personal as well as political level. Birtherism, the false claim that Obama was not born in the U.S, spread through Fox News & online groups. Theories were spread about Bill & Hillary Clinton murdering political opponents, fueled by talk radio presenters like Rush Limbaugh, and early internet forums. Conspiracy theories claimed that COVID was a hoax; that vaccines were being used for population control; that school shootings were staged by liberal gun control advocates; and ultimately that the 2020 election was stolen. Rep. Greene of Georgia called Democrats "the party of pedophiles.” Bannon said that Democrats wanted to replace the traditional American population. A large proportion of Republicans believed the Big Lie. Media such as Fox News, and Conservative talk radio amplified all of this.

The new animosity resulted in two unrelated but disturbing incidents that in my mind reflected the new ‘zeitgeist’. The first was an incident in July 2020, where, as reported, Rep. Yoho of Florida met Rep. Ocasio-Cortez of New York on the Capitol steps, calling her among other things "disgusting" and, in an undertone heard by a reporter as he left, a "f***ing bitch." Despite his overheated denials the Christian Group ‘Bread for the World’ decided that Yoho would no longer serve on its board.

The second was the attack on 82-year-old Paul Pelosi by a home intruder armed with a hammer, looking for his wife, the Speaker of the House. Pelosi was leftf with a fractured skull. While there was widespread Republican condemnation there were also other, shall we say less Christian, reactions. Trump shared an image on social media featuring underwear and a hammer which said: "got my Paul Pelosi halloween costume ready." Rep. Biggs talked about Nancy Pelosi on losing control of the House: ‘she’s losing the gavel but finding the hammer’; Rep. Tenney posted an image showing men holding hammers next to a gay pride flag, with the message ‘LOL’. Karri Lake drew laughter from an audience when she said “Nancy Pelosi, well she’s got protection when she’s in DC but her house does not really have a lot of protection”. Steve Bannon suggested that it was a ‘false flag’ operation. Other claims were that Pelosi knew the attacker and was involved with him. Elon Musk also joined the chorus. Rejecting false equivalences it seems really hard to imagine top level democrat leaders participating in this kind of show.

Conspiracy Theories That Came To Life.

Just as conspiracies have usually just created pain and anger, they have also in some ways weirdly come to physical life. Let’s look at ‘pizzagate’ and ‘QAnon’.

In 2016 in an attempt to discredit the Hilary Clinton campaign Wikileaks published hacked emails from John Podesta, campaign chairman, which included some mentioning the words "pizza," "hotdog," and "cheese." Although they had a more likely meaning, users on a Pro-Trump forum claimed that they were code-words for child trafficking and started ‘decoding’ them. The story built up on 4chan, Reddit and other media sites. A North West Washington pizza restaurant called Comet Ping Pong was identified as a hub of the trafficking operation because the owner had interacted with Podesta about hosting a Democratic fundraiser and posted pictures of his children. His restaurant logo was suspected of containing pedophile symbols.

These claims were taken up by trolls like Alex Jones of Infowars and spread to millions. One individual, much annoyed by the story, was Edgar Welch of North Carolina. He texted his friend that he was going to save the children - ‘to sacrifice the lives of a few for the lives of many’. He drove to Comet Ping Pong in DC, entered with an AR-15 rifle and fired shots including into the electrical panel which was behind a suspicious looking locked door. After searching the building looking for a basement he surrendered to puzzled police officers who had arrived at the scene. He said to the judge: ‘I came to D.C. with the intent of helping people, but the information was not accurate.’ He got a four-year jail sentence. The story however stayed alive and the slogan ‘Save the Children’ later became popular among QAnon believers. Misguided distrust of the main media led ordinary people to alternative media in the belief that this was where the truth could be found.

Pizzagate helped to jumpstart the QAnon movement, and even now both Pizzagate and QAnon influence online extremism. The QAnon movement came to life in October 2017 with an anonymous message on the social newsboard 4-Chan. The message claimed to be from a user with a high security clearance (Q) and knowledge of secret Government operations relating to a cabal of Global criminals. QAnon expanded and delivered Pizzagate-like information, including that of the Cabal of world-wide elites involved in sex trafficking, satanic symbols, and drinking blood. QAnon promoted Trump as the ‘chosen one’ working behind the scenes to expose and arrest the pedophile cabal. For several years communities of users analyzed and spread Q messages widely on the networks. QAnon flags were present on January 6, at the Capitol riot, but Q has not been heard from much since 2022. His her or their identity is suspected but not verified.

Another QAnon sourced conspiracy theory was the belief that John F. Kennedy Jr was secretly working with Donald Trump to defeat the deep state. The theory first emerged in 2018, particularly in a group dealing with numerology and Bible prophecy. The belief was that JFK jr faked his own death in the plane crash of July 1999, which killed his wife and her sister, to escape from the Clinton crime family. Some followers expected that JFK Jr., after hiding out for over 20 years, would return as Trump’s running mate. They planned a great awakening where he and Trump would expose government corruption and usher in a new golden age, declaring martial law and capturing deep state criminals. On November 2, 2021, hundreds of QAnon believers gathered in Deeley Plaza, Dallas, expecting JFK Jr. to reappear at the site where his father was assassinated. Despite his non-appearance the theory spread with new beliefs such as a biblical resurrection.

These were examples of the pull of disinformation, and the close link between fantasy and reality on social networks. False narratives didn’t just remain where they belonged, inside fantasy land, but led to actual, dangerous physical results. The leaders of a major US political party were being accused of criminal activity that totally defied commonsense, and this narrative was absorbed into the political discourse, leading to death threats or worse. The Democrats were now not just ideologically incorrect but also criminal and immoral.

How could anyone believe this stuff? Well, a lot did. According to Pew Research and the Public Religion Research Institute, QAnon users tended to be from a demographic of older, white, less educated, evangelical Republicans living in rural areas and smaller towns, part of the Trump constituency that thought they had been left out of America’s success story. It’s of course not the case that everyone agreed with the ranting of QAnon, but excessive exposure to fantasies showed that they can create realities.

With the help of the conspiracy theory environment, ultra-fast communications, and the polarization of politics, through his two campaigns Trump brought the science of personal attacks to a new level. Nicknames may seem like trivial things to complain about considering other affronts like birtherism and Stop the Steal, and they are usually harmless. But in this context they seemed not only to be a means to cause pain but also to exert dominance, a key feature of the current state of politics in the US. Derisive, relentless nicknaming like ‘nasty,’ ‘unstable’, ‘unbalanced’, ‘crooked’, ‘lyin’, ‘stupid’, ‘low- IQ’, ‘mentally impaired’, ‘sloppy, ‘crazy’, ‘devil’, ‘birdbrain’ and ‘giraffe neck’, are more for the school playground than for the political leadership of a great nation. But such language hardly raises an eyebrow any more; it has been normalized, though no one calls Trump names. Trump 2.0, armed with the experience of his previous term, has a comfortable home within the chaotic environment. With his formidable ego, dominating many other oversized political egos, and his relentless pursuit of his ambitions Trump was carried to victory partly by this large constituency who had been encouraged to believe that the opposition was immoral and corrupt, and that the corrupt, rigged, economic and political system run by democrats had left them stranded.

The Role of Religion.

The political contest was further inflamed as religion permeated politics, starting in the 1970s with the ‘Moral Majority’ and evolving most recently to Christian Nationalism. A significant segment of American voters, and some in Congress, now seem to think in terms of ‘good and evil,’ and ‘God and Devil’ when they go to cast their vote.

The Opposition may now be seen not just as ideologically wrong but as morally and spiritually unworthy, even condemned in the afterlife. This is not a recipe for rational agreement on electing leaders or practical issues of Government, and it opens the gates to cults which are uninterested in reason. It is no longer just a conflict between capital and labor, personal initiative and welfare, small and big government, free and regulated competition, traditional and progressive social values, things on which rational people may be able to compromise. It’s a conflict between allegedly different levels of personal worth. The Party of God treats with contempt the party that it claims does not have God’s favor.

Final Thoughts

The contest is also now asymmetrical. The asymmetry is between a Republican belief in their natural right to rule, and a Democratic belief in their justifiable right to rule. It is the Republican assumption of natural right that has been reflected in actions like government shutdowns, virtual packing of the Supreme Court, arbitrary firings, blocking of agreed spending, unwillingness to enable major bipartisan legislation, providing a permission structure for voter suppression and violence and, now, the weakening of constitutional checks and balances in favor of a Republican led executive branch. The assumption of natural right seems to be linked to an assumption of natural competence. The leadership thinks that it can d eal with very difficult problems in a very short time, including some that have had multiple previous attempts at a solution. Failure is likely in many places, but the proof of the pudding will of course as usual be in the eating.

It’s obvious that I believe that the responsibility for the large majority of the dysfunctional political activities in this sixty-year story is not with Democrats, even despite the Daisy Ad. I have tried to give reasons which I think are credible. The next letter will look more into the asymmetric contest.

I hope you have been able to tolerate and even enjoy this story, But please comment whichever way you feel.

With regards to all

David