Some thoughts about why it’s so difficult to reverse what’s going on. I think the majority don’t like it: why is there no action? Also: Love one another.

I am not here with an answer: I do not know what to do about what I consider to be evil people destroying our country. I am here with a partial explanation of why it’s so hard to reverse, when we can be rather certain that the majority, even in Congress, do not approve of all this.

Prisoner’s Dilemma

The thought experiment goes like this: The police have arrested you and your crony for a crime that you did in fact commit. The police keep you separated and come to each of you with a proposition: If you both remain silent, you will both get a year in prison. But if you will testify against your partner, and he does not testify against you, he will get three years in prison, and you will go free. He has the same offer, regarding you. But … if you both testify against each other, you will both get two years. What do you do?

It seems pretty clear that the fair thing to do is both to remain silent, take your one year, and get out to commit smarter crimes in the future. But you cannot communicate with each other. And if he rats me out, I get three years. So I’d better rat him out. He reasons as I do. He rats me out. We both get two years in the slam, when we could have gotten away with just one.

Politician’s Dilemma

Imagine now a country whose president is moving in a fascist, authoritarian direction. Just a thought experiment, of course, no one special in mind. We’ll call the President’s party P and the opposition party O. And assume that P has a slim majority in both houses of congress. I know it’s hard to imagine all this but stick with me, it gets harder.

Let’s further assume that there are enough decent P congress people to defeat most of the President’s more egregious actions. (These assumptions are really getting hard for most of us, but just suppose. We’re here to explore why, even when that’s the case, the system is stuck in a bad state.)

Assume even further that the President has a loud and loyal following, and has been able to associate himself with some supporters who have a vast amount of money and no morals to speak of. Again, I know these assumptions are getting hard to swallow but go with me.

The President has made clear that if anyone in the P party steps out of line, he will destroy them. His primary weapon is money: his supporters will spend obscene amounts of money to ensure that the one who steps out of line will not be re-elected. His secondary weapon is abuse: he will begin at once to destroy the reputation of anyone who does not toe the line. He has demonstrated that he will in fact do both these things: he has done them.

Congressional votes are public. If a member of the P party votes against the President’s proposals, he will know and he will strike down with a vengeance on the offending member.

Most of us can take a little abuse, but few of us are in a position to give up all of our power, and our profession, to stand up to someone we believe will destroy us without a second thought. The P party members are not likely to vote against the President when it comes to anything important.

Group Action? No.

But what about group action? Can’t the P party members form a coalition and vote as a block, siding with the O part on important measures, and reversing the situation? The Prisoner’s Dilemma tells us that they cannot.

Every member of the P party has a vested interest in ratting out members who will not stay in line: they can go to the President, rat out their colleague, and receive the President’s blessing, and very likely a substantial contribution from the President’s obscenely wealthy supporters.

No matter how much they hate what is going on, no P member can trust any other member. They can’t form even a small group and try to drum up support for doing the right thing, because every person they share their thoughts with can benefit from turning them in—even if they share the concerns. It’s still to their advantage to rat out their friends.

The P party is trapped. Each member knows that he can be destroyed at the President’s will. And each member knows that if he even looks like he might step out of line, his own colleagues have a credible story to take back to the President, enriching themselves and destroying the offending member.

The system is stuck in a bad state that is getting worse, and the people who could do something about it, and who would like to do something about it, are under such threat that they dare not speak out, much less act.

Is There No Way Out?

As much as I like to have hope, and I do have hope, hope is not a strategy. There are a few ways out that I’ll list here. Some of them are OK. Some are awful.

  1. Somehow, the P party gets its stuff together and holds the line against the President. This seems to me to be very unlikely, but it’s clearly possible. This would be a very good outcome.

  2. The midterm elections are held, and the people are enraged enough to change the balance of Congress to favor the opposition O. They can then begin to resist effectively, if it’s not too late. And if the elections are held.

  3. Through some act of God or Man, the President leaves office early and his replacement isn’t quite so evil. If God or Man also managed to remove or impoverish the President’s cronies, things could conceivably turn around. This seems a bit unlikely: the P team probably has several layers of evil lined up. But at least those backup villains are not as popular.

  4. Non-Violent Revolution. Perhaps via things like universal strikes, protests and the like, things could be turned around. The evidence so far is that protests will be met with violence in some cases, and that the P party members will just stop holding meetings if people shout at them. It might work, I suppose.

  5. Hunger Games, and Katniss Everdeen. We do not wish to go through what the Districts went through before Katniss turned up, and frankly, I think she was rather lucky to succeed to the extent that she did. I believe that the odds are not in favor of this outcome working, and it’s unpleasant even if it does.

  6. Full-on Revolution. This would certainly be awful, and it’s not clear that it would work. In the past, the government and the people had roughly the same level of armament. Today, the fighting power is in the hands of the government and it is far beyond that of the people.

There are probably other options, but these pretty much cover the space. For me, the first three are downright desirable, Non-Violent revolution might be tolerable, I have no hope that Katniss will turn up and a real revolution is unlikely to occur and unlikely to succeed.

What Can We Do?

My own thoughts and actions focus on preparing myself and my family for trouble, writing frequently to my representatives, supporting individuals and agencies who are working to change things, and who are working to support the people being harmed by what is going on.

I am open to better ideas. Love one another, and take care of one another.