The Heart Of Political & Party Discourse – The Truths Behind Red Vs. Blue Polarization, Radicalism, and The American Voting System-Part 2-

Even before Black Lives Matter, Portland was a city of protest. In 1981, Portland held its own march against racism after Portland police through dead possums in front of black-owned businesses. This happened the same decade as Walkman and Nintendo Game Boy. The same protest came back in 1988, when Mulugeta Seraw, a black Ethiopian student, was beaten to death with a baseball bat by east side white pride, a Portland branch of the Aryan resistance.

In the 1990s, Portlanders protested the trojan nuclear power plant until it was decommissioned in 1992. Portlanders protested during Occupy Wall Street, in Women's March of America and for Hands Across Software, which was a local pro-gay rally after a homosexual couple was cornered at the waterfront and beaten by five men.

 Since Trump's presidency, Portland has become a city of non-stop protest. The march for science, march for our lives, domestic terrorism, indigenous people’s day of rage, and George Floyd. The list goes on and on. Journalist Shane Dixon Cavanaugh once wrote an Oregonian, “Portland's convulsive protest thrust the city of the national spotlight as they often descended into violence and chaos, even as most demonstrators remained peaceful. The churn of marches, demonstrations and rallies has been coming during fiber in the fabric of the city.”

So, when the Amir Locke rally happened last February, they were received by most as just another protest. Amir was a 22-year-old black man shot by police in Minneapolis. The protests around his death became an extension of Black Lives Matter, just another march in a season of marches. Except this was also a day Benjamin Smith was watching Fox News and checking his Facebook. This was the day Benjamin Smith was overheard by his roommate screaming about Liberals ruining America The day Benjamin Smith grabbed one of his handguns, walked outside to Normandale Park and began shooting. In the city with a long history of protest, this was the catalyzing moment, the moment when a man felt morally justified in killing a sixty-year-old woman who had volunteered as a crossing guard and heading into the crowd with his 45 handgun, paralyzing another person and injured several more…hitting five people in total.

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Today is part 2 in our two-part series about the state of political parties in America. In last week's episode, we focused on moral outrage and why it has become the default tool for media and politicians to mobilize us and why outrages actually are pretty awful for you on a personal development level. In today's episode, we want to try to reverse the political friction we've seen here in Portland. After all, what are we really fighting about? If you feel strongly about a law issue, you should go vote on it, right? Instead, we have the system George Washington warned us about. He called the parties potent engines which cunning men could hijack to insert government power. Today we ask, is there a better way? Can we untie the knot of war between Liberals and Conservatives before we are back to muskets and cannons? To start our investigation into the parties, we have a few myths to bust.

Myth One - How polarized have the parties really grown? Are we just fooling ourselves when we talk about the good old days of Republicans and Democrats being able to pass bills together?

Joe: I want to give a little bit of a shout-out for this episode to Jason, a conservative researcher I go to for advice sometimes on episodes. Whenever we touch our toe into politics, I kind of check with folks who can explain both sides to me fairly eloquently and I need that because I do watch all sides of the news just to see what you know what everyone's buzzing about, but it is getting less and less informative. So, I need people who can actually give me information and not just talking points. I also had my therapist give me good advice: to stop trying to be right all the time. So, when the shooting happened, did you see it in the news?

Todd: I did, but it didn't really touch my heart like it did when I've been doing the research for this one,

Joe: Yeah, it flew into the radar for me, and I didn't know why until we started sort of working on this episode. They tried to downplay it from the start, and speaking of checking all sides, I read the Fox news report on this, and I read The Oregonian report on this and almost every group tried to underplay this, except for some from Oregon live that were saying this was crazy.

Todd: Well, anytime someone's paralyzed even more so than getting killed, it seems to stick in my heart in my head much longer.

Joe: Police Chief Chuck said it was a confrontation between an armed resident and armed protesters, which we're going to find out is not just inaccurate, that it is a gross misinterpretation of what happened.

We talked in the last episode about moral foundations, the idea that Democrats or Liberals and Conservatives aren't going to see eye-to-eye on just foundational morals. But something I've been noticing copycats of not just murders but copycats of their defense of why they went out shooting; that is actually probably a better way to say it is. This certainly was going to be a copycat. When you watch the Rittenhouse videos, for example, people are running at him. In that situation, you can at least understand that there is fear when people are running at you. I see what they were able to get across in court. This Benjamin Smith event is not that situation. This is a man who grabbed his gun, had a history of being radicalized and then started a confrontation with his gun; he was looking for this.

I want to talk about getting radicalized. I have had this experience where I will see somebody on TV that appeals to me. I can see myself getting angry enough to run out to a protest and confront people. I may not have a gun, but the moral outrage demon that sits on everyone's shoulder and tells them they're right every night…that's what these news channels are doing for people, and that's something we haven't had before. In the past, we didn't have the ability to look up Fox News or YouTube links or MSNBC Clips; we didn't have that thing on our shoulder telling us that we are right to be outraged all the time. That's a new demon. And how radicalized do we become? It depends on where we start. It can start slow and work its way up. But if you are already from a place like Benjamin where you are angry, and you're feeling morally superior, you don't have that much further to be pushed into radicalism. You feel like you are losing control, and those aren't people to you anymore. You feel at that point like the world is better off without them because of their politics and that's an insane place to get to.

I have frequently gotten people who have messaged me or talked to me thinking that I am in one political camp or the other, and they will go off on me because they're expecting me to spar back. What they don't realize is that I'm not in a political party. And also, I know that they are not trying to convert me to thinking that their way they're not trying to help me. They're not trying to make me see the light or teach me. They're trying to score points so they can go back and tell their friends about it and their friends who agree with them politically. I listen and ask questions. Because sometimes, they say something that I don't expect, or sometimes I learn something new. The first time I learned about fiat currency was when a crazy person in a Guy Fawkes mask during Occupy Wall Street screamed at me. I looked it up at the time, and it led to interesting places. So, I didn't convert to his way of thinking, but I certainly wanted to know it.

We've spent a hundred years trying to spread democracy, telling everybody how awesome democracy is, but now we can't pass a single bill to save our lives. We can't fix a bridge; we can't get a bill passed, and we can't lower medical expenses. Nobody could agree on anything. China now points to us as an example of why democracy doesn't work; it gets locked in place, and just nobody moves. The parties get paid to lock horns.

If you're wondering, Pew research talks about how the polarization in today's Congress has roots that go back, but we have become more ideologically cohesive. They say there are only about two dozen moderate Democrats and Republicans on Capitol Hill. There used to be more like to the tune of 160 or something in the 70s. Again, this is from Pew. Both parties have moved away from the center. Democrats, on average, had become somewhat more Liberal and Republicans, on average, have become much more conservative. And something else that's interesting is Democrats lost a lot of votes from non-college-educated moderates the last cycle, which they called the diploma divide. The uneducated masses seem to think our current system favors the wealthy. Speaking of wealth, if you want to know why Republicans seem so mad about finances, I found out that Republicans were the party of the wealthy back in 2012. The average Republican had more money than the average Democrat, which flipped in the last ten years; Democrats became the wealthy party. This is the biggest divide between the social class. I think it becomes really evident to those who don’t have money.

Myth Two - Not all politicians can be swayed by money. There are a few bad apples, sure. But it's not as if Joe I could use the latest stats to buy our Governor's vote…could we?

It's really hard not to see people with that giant divided in money. Let me give you one that always will stand out to me. Jeb Bush was the governor of Florida. I just fell off the couch when I found out he spent $50M on TV advertising in the state In two months. The incumbent should win, and yet he's putting out $50M that is not his money. So, let's think about all the people who spend more. How much money does it take to get elected? There are a couple of bad apple politicians who are going to take money, which will sway them. But honestly, that's not what people go into politics for, and I believe that. I don't think everyone goes into it thinking someday I'll take a lobbyist's money, and that will make me rich.

But if the way you get a food pellet from the universe is to get elected, the only goal you have in life is to get elected, and you know that you're going to need Ted Cruz money to get elected. You're going to need that $50M to get elected. You have a campaign manager. Here's your target amount of money. You will not get elected without this number, then your life is going to be about getting people to donate to you. And that's even politicians who are serving us right now. The people they are supposed to be our servants and a large portion of their day. Even when they are doing their job is to ask people for money.

So now, Todd and I are going to buy a politician. I wanted to be like yes, you can't sway a politician. This comes from The Roosevelt Institute, and they did a study where they basically found that for every hundred thousand dollars that a democratic representative received from Finance, the odds that they would break with their party’s majority would increase by 13.9%. So, a democratic representative who voted in favor of Finance would receive $200,000 to $300,000 from that sector, which raised the odds of them swaying from 25% to 40%. This article goes on to say that it costs a heck of a lot less to sway somebody who is already voting in your favor. But to vote against their own interest and their own party, the price goes up, but it's not as high as you'd think. Think of how powerful that makes these multi-billionaires. And not even just individual people who have that kind of riches, but businesses…especially on a local government; They could run the city.

I didn't want to make that the focal point of this episode. I just wanted to point out that we actually have statistics and data about how much money it takes to sway a politician. So, as we're going through this, why do Republicans seem mad right now? Why does the Department of Justice and the National Institute of Justice say that Conservatives are much easier to radicalize? Why are they so angry about this division of money? Well, it's because you can buy a vote. It comes down to if you don't have a voice and that your votes are not really going to count when it comes to people putting money into a politician's coffers. They're not going to vote with you.

Myth Three - If all parties are flawed, and we're not supposed to vote based on the candidate's tie color, then what do we base our votes on?

When I talked about going to the National Institute of Justice for data and looking at Ohio State and a study, they did to see how easy it is to radicalize certain groups. So, when we hear about crimes being committed, they often say that it's both sides. Fox News says that Liberals are destroying the Republic, and they're kind of crumbling the foundations of what we have. And they talk about violent crimes, but they are not very specific. It's because the majority of the radicalized crimes are going on. And again, this isn't me saying this; this is the FBI, The National Institute of Justice, and Ohio State. According to the study, Conservatives have lower sensitivity than Liberals and perform worse at distinguishing truths and falsehoods when it's related to the news.

This is partially explained by the fact that most widely shared falsehoods tend to promote Conservative positions, while Liberals typically favor corresponding truth. I don't want anyone listening to this to think, aha…this is the moment we have proven that Conservatives are stupid. I want to go in the opposite direction. In the last episode, we talked about moral foundations and about how if you are Conservative, you connect higher on issues of purity, authority, and social connectedness. That one, most importantly, the idea that you place your ties to the people around you on a higher value. Liberals scored higher on fairness and whether or not somebody's being harmed.

That said, have you heard of ranked-choice voting? This is something that was brought up by Hasan, who has a show called Patriot Act. He's very Liberal but this is also something that Republican states have started adopting. So, we've got a smattering of articles we will hearken to, but Maine became the first state to adopt the format statewide for all their elections. Utah is rolling out pilot programs for it. And I don't think it's because all of them watch the same episode of this very Liberal show. Now, ranked-choice voting is happening for the first time, where voters can actually rank their candidates in their order of preference. If you are running for a red party, you go to the primaries. Folks are going to be able to rank their choices from 1 to 5. Let's say you have 30% of our votes, and we're all going to say we're all in the red party. After that, you only really represent 30% of the Conservatives who voted for you. Meaning I usually never actually represent half of the population. You were only the first choice for a fraction of them. If it's red and blue represents 50/50 will say of the population, you're only getting in that at first primary 30% of 50%. And so instead of one slice moving forward and representing the whole body, what you have is multiple people from every party going up all at once. And people rank who they want their first, second or third pick to be.

If a Trump and a Biden are running against each other, if I am a company like Pepsi, I want Trump to win. So, I just put all of my money into Trump's campaigns and then from that moment on, Trump owes me one. If I follow the statistics, if I buy a governor and put $300K into their campaign, I can now expect them to generally vote my way. However, if there are nine of him running and I know that one of those people is a more acceptable all-around winner, it makes it so much harder for me to invest in them as a campaign. I can't just sweeten one with cash. I can't predict it; you have to buy everyone. It's like going to the horse race and betting on every horse; you'll lose so much money. You'll have the winner, but you lose all your money.

 joe: I don’t want to forget that there was a victim here. Can we talk more about the tragedy?

Todd: The woman who died, five people were shot, including the shooter, who went by June. She was a sixty-year-old who was involved in a lot of the movements in Portland. Big time into the LBGTQ+ movement. And she was that crazy little old lady, the kind that dyes their hair pink and has on the tie-dye t-shirt. She fits the hippie almost like a cliche. And she just had knee surgery, so she hobbles around with a cane. She goes to events, and what she does and what she was doing at this event was performing as the crossing guard. To me, it's a shame that's the person you shoot and kill. It's someone that everyone likes. She had the nickname, and I don't know the relevance and what it means, but she went by the nickname T-Rex. That was her everything. Rest in peace. She was there to protect people, and she did protect someone else from getting killed. She gave her life for her cause.   

Joe: The reason the episode started the way it did, where we named all those many different protests that Portland sees in any given year, it's because we want to point out that this wasn't a “Liberal extremists rioter” who got shot. It was somebody who went to all different protests for all different reasons because she wanted to help people, and she wanted to help people have a voice.

Todd: She wasn't threatening or screaming things like, I'm going to kill you.

Joe: And she wasn't tied to one specific cause. So that's why we haven't heard about her. That's why she wasn't paraded in the news. It's because she didn't fit the narrative of 'the other side.' It was just a person.

Final Thoughts

For the last ten years, social media algorithms have tried to teach us one lesson - win at all costs. Feeling strongly about opinion entitles you to subvert laws, disrespect the other side, and start fights at family dinners. Do anything it takes. Burn bridges. If you're a Conservative, your only goal in life is owning the Libs. If you're a Liberal, your sole purpose is making Conservative snowflakes cry. That's what Facebook's algorithms have decreed, and as Zuckerberg servants, we shall make it so.

Obviously, this isn't our real opinion on The Re-Engineered You. We believe there are bigger issues at stake, which are sitting around unsolved in America because the politicians we voted in aren't doers. The politicians who get our votes are the ones who learn to bark and clap like Facebook. Biden says Conservatives are extremists, not because he believes it but because he needs the Liberal vote, and Liberals are on Facebook. Trump says Liberals are ruining America and sent federal police to club Liberal protesters. Trump also got elected because of his clever use of Facebook ads and his tweeting. Maybe if we need something to unite the parties, a shared enemy, we should think about the data companies who are reengineering hate to keep us polarized.

The Rachel Madcow’s and Tucker Carlson's use algorithms to keep us morally outraged so they can sell his vitamin supplements and add space. And when we focus so hard on being right, we should ask ourselves if we're doing it for our values or because we want our team to win. The more energy we put into being right, the further we get away from our hearts. We don't want to end our two-part episode about political division on a downer. So instead, we'll take a note from our favorite depressed President - Abraham Lincoln: “We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory will swell when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.”