Political writer and civic technologist Micah Sifry, co-founder of Personal Democracy Forum and Civic Hall and author of Spoiling for a Fight: Third-Party Politics in America, talks with Pinchbeck about American democracy under a second Trump administration. Sifry traces his path from The Nation to campaign finance work with Public Campaign, which built state-level public financing systems in Maine, Massachusetts and Arizona, and then to internet politics, where open-source collaboration and the Howard Dean campaign suggested a more participatory model. Pinchbeck, pointed toward Sifry by Douglas Rushkoff, argues that liberal and progressive circles are dissociated and insufficiently alarmed. Sifry counters that grassroots organizing is growing, citing the No Kings protests and Indivisible, and closes by urging listeners to join a local group, since organized money usually beats people who stay unorganized.
Guest: Micah Sifry
In brief
- Sifry argues that history moves cyclically rather than in a straight line, and that the present authoritarian turn is a backlash phase that organizing can still reverse.
- Pinchbeck contends that liberal and culturally progressive communities, particularly younger people in New York, are dissociated from politics and have never seriously considered what due process protects.
- Sifry describes the throughline of his career, from Public Campaign's public financing laws to Personal Democracy Forum and Civic Hall, as widening ordinary people's participation in the decisions that affect their lives.
- Sifry frames American history as a contest between organized money and people organizing themselves, with money usually winning because sustaining organization is difficult and unglamorous.
- Sifry recommends local, social forms of participation, arguing that friendship and enjoyment are what actually keep people engaged in political work over time.
- Sifry cites the winning of women's suffrage, achieved by people who could not vote and combining civil disobedience with pressure on male allies, as evidence that the excluded can prevail.
Full text
It's not on you to solve the whole problem, right? No one of us can do everything that will roll all this back. We each can do something. You know, find your thing, find your group. Ideally, find some local group, right? It it always feels better to do stuff with other people. Other people will keep you honest. They will keep you engaged. And you know what? You might even have fun. You might even make some some new friends. And that's what keep keeps people engaged is social connections that reinforce the sense of I belong to a community that's that's doing something meaningful and it's fun to get together and do it.
Okay. Are we on? We are on. We did it. The miracle of technology. Uh yes. Hello sir. Good to meet you. Where where are you? You're out at Hastings. Actually, no. I'm I'm north of there in a little a little hamlet called Golden's Bridge. Uh which is just at the north sort of northeast corner of of Westchester County. And where are you? I'm in Manhattan, the East Village. Uhhuh. Okay. And I actually I um I mean I've heard your name for many many years, but it was through my my buddy Douglas Rushkov who I know you know. I was like, Douglas, who do you know who's actually really involved with like maybe involve, you know, putting together these no kings protests and Indivisible and so on?
And he thought that you would be a great person to to reach out to. That's And then I looked I looked at your, you know, bibliography of books, but I didn't have a chance actually to to to grab one and and check it out yet. Uh, but it seems like you've been doing a lot of stuff on on civic tech and um kind of tools to enhance democracy and so on. May maybe just tell us a little bit about yourself for for for people who are joining from my group who may not know you very well. Sure. So uh I started out uh at the Nation magazine many years ago uh spent the first 13 years of my career there uh with originally an interest in the Middle East.
Um and then found that topic a bit too depressing to spend my whole life on. uh and started writing more and more American politics and in particular uh politics outside the two-party uh mon you know duopoly monopoly and uh eventually I actually wrote a book about third parties Ross Perau Ralph Nater Jesse Venturo all those people were uh pretty important back in the 90s then I spent some time working on uh for a nonprofit group called Public Campaign uh that was devoted to trying to get big money out of politics by uh creating state level systems for public fin and we made some progress. We passed uh it in Maine, in Massachusetts and Arizona. we actually uh created those systems and and you can see uh a continuation of that work even in the New York City public financing system that we have today even though it's a little bit different. Um and then the internet came along and I uh got the internet bug uh from my younger brother who was uh very involved in the movement to create uh Linux uh the open sour source software that was uh uh demonstrabably better and uh uh than than anything Microsoft was making.
And I remember thinking back, this is around 2000, 2001, that this collaborative way of working that open source software uh uh was showing us uh that all of that was eventually going to hit politics. um uh bottom up, you know, two-way conversation, uh self-organizing, all of those things were uh going to dramatically open up uh how much people participate in politics. Um and I collided with a guy named Andrew Rashche, who perhaps you know, but also a mutual friend of of Rushkovs, um who was just starting a conference called Personal Democracy Forum back in 2004. He had just come off uh trying to help Howard Dean use technology to win the Democratic presidential nomination. And the two of us became partners and um built up uh personal democracy forum or PDF as the place to go where you if you wanted to know how the internet was uh changing politics, whether it was how we run for office or move issues or govern.
um for 15 years we we uh we ran that and we created a a home base for that community called Civic Hall uh in um down in the Flat Iron District in Manhattan. Uh and until co uh Civic Hall was this burgeoning center of gravity for all things civic tech in New York. Um now I have to say throughout all of this I've always you know I've written uh I've also organized um you know the I'd say the throughine in my work is uh what will make it more possible for ordinary people to participate in the decisions that affect their lives. Um, and you know, we are obviously in a a period where, you know, the backlash is much stronger than the front lash. Um, but I, you know, I I take the long view here, Daniel.
I I I think we're in a, you know, history doesn't move in a straight line. It's it's more cyclical. Uh, we're obviously in a very bad back cycle. Um but um I suspect this is where you and I may differ. Uh but I do see a lot of uh grassroots organizing happening now. Um but I I want I wanted to get in touch with you because I hoped you would cheer me up. Okay. I mean I you know I there are days where I'm depressed and overwhelmed too. Uh you know we are I get that. I get that. And um there's every every I I I guess my my corlary would be that I'm afraid that people in the sort of liberal progressive like leftist space are actually not alarmed enough uh strangely enough and or not like um kind of like acting at this point as if not only you know immigrants or legal immigrants lives depended on it but actually even our lives really depend on on what's happening and and I and I'm you know friends with so many people wonderful people and in their like 20s and 30s in New York and they are so dissociated and so disconnected.
Like they, you know, they don't even know what, you know, they don't even know what's being taken away from them. They don't they don't even they've never really thought about due process. They think that politics is just like a horrible thing that you could just keep ignoring and they're going to make their art or like, you know, do do their, you know, tantric work or whatever. And um and I'm kind of at this point um very very concerned you know that even in this type of community that I know liberal cultural progressive there is so such a huge disconnection among so many people. Yeah. Um and um that um yeah I feel that um you know last week after Zorhan won which obviously was amazing um you know I I went and read um some of his father's books and I read one that's about the Rwanda genocide.
Yeah. And um I had always assumed uh not really studying it closely that the Hoous and the Totsis had like a different language or different religion or slightly different ethnic groups and so on. Uh I was I was surprised to learn that actually it was more like urban kind of like people who had a little bit more you know wealth or a little bit more establishment people were more like no mat you know rural or or like farmers or herders or whatever and that you know the Belgians had actually and the Germans had actually created these distinctions and given them identity cards and been like you know you're a hoou you're over a few decades this this this raged animosity had um grown to the point that um you know, even though a lot of the colonial apparatus was gone, you know, it led to this genocide. Yeah. and and my my you know as I said in my email to you I mean um I think there's very very you know serious reasons to be very concerned that things could actually go to that level here you know when you have uh you know these sort of you know right-wing you know white Christian nationalists amassing armaments you know when you see the um the rhetoric they're using and I I pointed you to this book by um LC and Pobiac who inner inner circle, you know, with Trump and Vans like they they accompanied Vans to Munich for his talks to NATO and so on.
And Posobia wrote a book called Unhumans or they wrote a book together called unhumans where they basically say that leftists, socialists, liberals, progressives are not actually human and they don't need to be treated in the same way that human beings are treated. And they say that basically what we need in the US is what Pinocha and Franco did. And they actually praised Pinoce's helicop helicopter killings as a great way to deal with with dissident and journalists. And JD Vance, who could easily become, you know, the the next ruler of the United States, whatever you want to call it, praised the book and said, "This is the kind of this is the right plan for America. This is what we need to do here, you know." Uh, and, you know, if you look at the big, you know, sorry to go on rant a little bit, but I'm I had some coffee and like I'm awake right now.
you know that if you if you um you know then if you read like the big beautiful bill that they're about to pass, they've amped up the money for ICE to a huge degree, you know, they're already building basically, you know, concentration camps uh in Florida and so on. And now they're going to augment that, you know, I don't even know how many times, if it's like three times or 20 times, it's like an insane amount more money. And these are a lot of the people, it turns out, who are being brought into ICE are actually um you know, they're sort of like the the the the what are they called? The Proud Boys, you know, they're these sort of like white militia types, you know, so they're armed and and and ready and game to suppress. And obviously, it's already extremely horrifying what's happening to immigrants and and and you know, quote unquote illegal immigrants or whatever.
But um yeah, I could, you know, and and I'm I'm sort of shocked that that isn't even on the front page of the news every day, but that those same tactics I think are going to be, you know, most likely used on larger and larger segments of the population and and I don't see the kind of movement underway. Like it's nice that people go out and pick up their signs, they go to like protests and so on, but yeah, so I'm I'm kind of curious. So that's kind of my um my state of mind at the moment, you know. Yeah. Hear you. I hear you. Uh and and let me just say that uh you know as as the son of a Holocaust survivor uh who is my mother and who is still alive at the age of 92 um I both uh all of that resonates deeply at at the sort of you know genetic epigenetic level.
Um and uh they uh there are times where I ask myself um am I being like the German Jews who you know in 1934 35 said you know this this will pass uh you know there'll be a coup soon against Hitler and uh you know and and besides leaving is going to be too disruptive. I mean this is you know well documented right a lot of people convinced themselves that it was better to stay and wait things out certainly until crystal knocked um which was not until 1938 if I'm not mistaken. So um there's no question that there's a you know sub routine running in my head going and where's the red line? At what point do you say, you know, this is too dangerous. This is uh you you got to move.
This is deep in Jewish uh DNA, right? Like the reason why we're still here, 2,000 years of exile uh is there was always some portion of us that figured out that we better go somewhere else. you know, um, the ones who stayed in Europe, you know, many of whom were leftists, uh, who didn't believe in nationalism, they weren't going to, you know, they weren't Zionists, they weren't going to Palestine. Um, uh, uh, a lot of them were wiped out. So, that's a I I get the genetic, you know, the that we we have to have that conversation. Um, at the same time, I think we are still underestimating our own resources for resisting and opposing uh and and ultimately turning this thing back.
Okay. Um, the you want we we'd all like there to be more visible signs of of defiance. I use the word defiance, by the way. I hate the word resistance. uh though though some of what people are doing now is beginning to look like real resistance. Um and I'll I'll come back to that in a second. But um you know on on uh no kings day right two weeks ago um something like five to six million Americans showed up in roughly 21 to 2200 locations around the country and those are just the places that like registered to be on the map. Okay. Uh, I'm sure there were more.
Just to put that into perspective for you, when the women's march happened in 2017, it happened in about 500 locations and uh slightly less cumulative numbers. The fact that we have this big dispersed movement of people who are saying no to all of this um is a sign of potential. It's not I I'm actually glad that we're not all saying let's all go to Washington. It's a pain in the ass to do. Um it certainly uh in some ways plays into Trump's hands, right? like he would have loved to send the military on any protesters who came after his stupid parade that day. Uh I think that some of what's happening is that people are quite rightly being careful and figuring out what are effective means of opposition rather than just express okay like you uh it may make some people feel good to just express protest but if it doesn't change anything you want to ask yourself well why keep doing it.
So the things that I think are good and not enough are things like the Tesla takedown protests, right? Um that came completely organically. uh a a woman named Joan Donovan who happens to be a you wellknown internet researcher um posted something on blue sky I think on like February 1st which was like why don't we go protest at the local Tesla dealership somewhere in Boston and it mushroomed from there and to the point where I I mean Musk we you know he is he has we we fractured that piece of the regime to the degree that uh that alliance between and Trump was so dangerous. I mean, I have no idea what Elon Musk is going to do next. If he if he follows through on his process to his promise to create a third party now because he's now opponent of the the big ugly bill, um that'd be great.
I mean, it's going to fail, but it may actually fracture some of Trump's electoral base. The other reason why Musk was so important, it was why it was so important to reduce Musk is basically he was promising to spend whatever it took to defend the president's agenda in primaries against any Republican who, you know, uh, showed any sign of dissenting. Now he's saying the opposite. Again, who the hell knows if the guy is going to keep the promise? But um you know he went after that judicial race in um Wisconsin. He spent $20 million and his candidate was crushed. Yeah. So sure. Yeah, that's all true.
I mean I I you know I mean I appreciate the I just want to give you a little bit of a Yeah. What else are people doing now that I think is good? You're seeing a move towards people forming small teams that are going to places like Home Depot, all right, to do their best to defend day laborers from ice raids. Now, these ice raids are horrible. They're a lot like uh you know in the 1850s when uh bounty hunters came up north and tried to uh kidnap uh uh free black people and take them down south. Um and those scenes were inflammatory. Um, and they did produce some of the tension that led to the Civil War, but at least they woke a lot of people up.
The bottom line to I think what you're about to say is I don't think most Americans feel it yet. I mean, you're a highly sensitive observer of events. So am I. We're we all this stuff is got all our you know radar tingling but I think a lot of people do not yet have actual visceral personal experience of how much is being wrecked. Okay. Um it's starting to happen this stupid bill which will take a while to implement. Let's not forget, you know, Congress passes laws all the time and then it takes them years to actually spend the money, but a lot of these cuts and changes are just beginning to radiate out.
And our job as organizers is to highlight those stories to get to talk to more people. You know, you can't assume that someone else is going to do this work for you, right? When you're in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging and you start building your your path out. Um, and that unfortunately means we have to do a lot of organizing. We have to do a lot of community engagement and there's no one else coming to save us, right? Like there's no other calvaryary out there that's like going to do the work. Um, I would take the last thing I'll say and then and then go.
Uh, is what happened last week in city sort of belies a little bit your point about all these detached young New Yorkers who aren't paying attention. I mean, the the turnout numbers in the mayoral primary astounded me because this never happens. You never have an election where the turnout from young voters, people under the age of 40 outnumbers the turnout from people over the age of 60. It just never happens. Older people are the most reliable voters and younger people are the least connected. You know, a lot of them don't feel rooted to the place where they live. They haven't bothered to register or they're lazy or they forgot.
um they're just not as engaged as somebody who feels rooted to a place. This is why young versus old, we've always had greater turnout from older voters. Zoran Mandani comes along, runs a fabulous electrifying campaign, organizes like hell. He had 50,000 uh volunteers on his campaign. That's like one for every 25 people who voted in New York City. Um that's big. and and it it turned out I mean nobody there was one pollster who predicted mom Donnie would win the primary and the only reason that pollster got it right is because they decided that they wouldn't exclude from their sample people who had not voted in 2021.
And this pollster even said as it turns out we didn't weight our sample enough to young people. There were even more young people voting than we expected. So, is that replicable? Is it going to happen in lots more places? No. It's I mean, there are a lot of circumstances that make New York City pretty special. But on the other hand, let's take the win. Um, and instead of catastrophizing, see, this is the thing that I hear you doing and I hear a lot of people doing. that the danger is if you do it a lot it'll paralyze you into like well all is lost there's nothing I can do and the truth is if each and every one of us adopts that kind of cynical depressed point of view we will lose for sure but we don't and the other half of it is it's not on you to solve the the whole problem, right?
No one of us can do everything that will roll all this back. We each can do something. That's all I'm saying is, you know, find your thing. Find your group. Ideally, find some local group, right? It it always feels better to do stuff with other people. Other people will keep you honest. They will keep you engaged. And you know what? You might even have fun. you might even make some some new friends and that's what keep keeps people engaged is social connections, right? Um that reinforce the sense of I belong to a community that's that's doing something meaningful and it's fun to get together and do it.
If any fun enough what's that? If anything, the left is not fun enough. I totally agree with that. Yeah. Um, no, thank you. I appreciate all of that. And yeah, I mean the uh, you know, Zorhan's victory is, you know, a beautiful hopeful sign in this current um, desert. By the way, it's saying that my internet connection is unstable. If we get cut off by any by any reason, I'll just re I'll you just hang out and then I'll rejoin and we'll figure it out. Um, but um, yeah. So, and in fact, I've been talking with Douglas and if you know anybody who is in his circle maybe contributing to um kind of like you know digital strategy um you know kind of um I mean um yeah I mean having written all these books about civic tech and so on.
Yeah. I mean I assume you're very aware of like Audrey Tang and Plality. Yeah. And uh the fact is that she managed to revitalize democracy apparently in Taiwan to a certain extent, right? People had lost their trust in democracy and she created these more res resilient and responsive systems, but obviously we're not going to have that in the nation under Trump, but we could have it in New York or we could have it in California. Um do you know of any initiatives uh happening now along those lines or is it is it sort of still fresh territory in a way? So, just to talk about Taiwan for a second, which is a story I'm pretty familiar with.
What first of all, Audrey Tang is wonderful, but I would not give Audrey Tang all the credit. I I say you know what's important to understand about the civic tech or what's called gov zero uh is the name of their community in in Taiwan is that it grew out of a student uh movement for democracy and transparency in government that 10 years ago whatever it was I forget exactly when um the the government in power was in the process of uh pushing a bill that would um change some trade relationship with China and there was no transparency around the bill and people were questioning whether this was a good thing and student protesters basically went and occupied the square around the parliament and then more of civil society joined them and they even got to the point where they they went in and occupied parts of the the parliament itself. They won a big concession from the existing party to actually allow for time for debate on that bill, blah blah blah. But it was an incubator moment. And the movement, which by the way came out of the free culture movement in Taiwan, um then allied itself with the opposition party.
And the opposition party, which is where Audrey Tang is so important, said, "We promise if we get into power, we're going to change how government works. We're going to make it more not just transparent and accountable, but more participatory." And that's where the civic tech community and movement in Taiwan got to actually do some real things which are now embedded in the framework of how democracy in Taiwan works. We had something not similar to that here when Barack Obama got elected in that a lot of the people who worked on his campaign and um came out of the sort of good transparent accountable government world that was using technology to open up awareness and participation. Many of those people also went into his administration but his administration kind of paid lip service. I I wrote a piece about this recently about why Obama's egovernment initiatives he he created a website where anybody could create a petition and then he they promised they would answer the tit questions right do folks may even remember this and when they rolled it out one of the top questions was about legalizing marijuana one form or another the mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar mar marijuana legalization movement had organized and pushed to make sure their questions would be somewhere near the top.
And Obama's people thought this was embarrassing. They they had promised they would answer the top questions. So when Obama came out with his answers, he joked and he he sneered. He says, "Well, I don't know what this says about the internet uh typical internet user, right? But we're not going to legalize marijuana to, you know, make money for taxes." I mean in fact at that time public opinion was already shifting towards legalization. Um but the political establishment rejected this. This is a difference between us and Taiwan. Right? Our the Obama movement was basically not really an insurgent movement. It was a movement you know Goldman Sachs was in charge of right.
Um, so we missed the civic tech community in the United States kind of got co-opted and missed its moment. Um, now what I would say today about Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, in in retrospect, I mean, I just have um such a negative feeling about Obama. I mean, such a catastrophic failure of um and it just turns out that that's who he was. I mean, he was somebody that, you know, Wall Street kind of appointed him to deal with the wreckage of the of the 2008 crash where no where no Wall Street bankers, you know, were, you know, imprisoned. Yeah. I blame Well, too, I I would also just say that for many many people, Obamacare is actually been a good thing.
Um, you know, it's more popular now than it ever was. Uh so it's a mixed but yeah his he will not go down in history as one of our greatest presidents on the other hand first black president something but to to answer your question about civic tech now um I would say the movement is is much smaller than it was. There is still a lot of people who want to make government uh work better for everyone. uh and Elon Musk, you know, Doge basically destroyed those people uh fired all of them. Many of them are in effect in exile uh searching for what their next move is.
Some of them want to go uh uh into state governments, you know, in other words, we have 23 or whatever it is, blue states um that are going to have to deal with the of all of these cuts and all of these changes. And so some of these people will end up with plenty to do. Um I think we're beginning to see more oppositional civic tech. There's this thing called Ice Block, for example, which is an app. Uh I I I would like to check with my security uh expert friends about this. Uh we've all been watching the development of these kinds of tools with a little bit of concern because anybody who collects this kind of information becomes uh very much a target for the Justice Department, right?
Like if you report an ICE uh uh event, um we got to be damn sure that none of your information is being collected. Okay. uh otherwise it becomes really really advantageous for the justice department to just go to the developer of of this app and say give me all your data and if you won't you know uh we're coming at you with the full force of the law. So um we have to be really really conscious of the need to you know yes we can use these kind tools um to to gum up the system to make it harder for ICE to do what it's doing. Um but what I see mostly happening on that front now are trusted communities using existing consumer technology whether it's Whats App or Signal um and not these big anonymous reporting collectives you know where anybody can you know uh put information on a map who knows if it's really true.
Uh but we're like I said before, Daniel, I think we're in we're in a a moment where a lot is shifting. A lot of people are just beginning, I think, to recognize the impacts to hear about them from, you know, people who they know who are being affected and and so we're it's early days. Now, these early days may not be coming fast enough for you know what you're worried about. Um to go back to your point about concentration camps and and you know uh uh Proud Boys deciding to you know shoot people at demonstrations and so on. I mean it's possible. Yeah. Anybody that that's that's only one of my you know different levels of worry but but essentially you know the essentially what I see I mean I you know I actually read Russell Voit's book.
I mean I you know I've been reading all this stuff. I mean um you know they they have a uh you know basically they want to create a kind of um despotic you know Putin-like uh regime here and um that is um that is what they're you know about and like so for instance it feels very naive for me when you know people in the sort of liberal democratic community are putting faith in like the midtown mid midterm elections uh because I already suspect you know being more of a sort of um you know more extreme maybe you know I don't know if I can't say paranoid but more suspicious I guess that even the last elections were not tweaked in certain respects you know electronically you know if you look at how it worked out in all the swing states and how you know um yeah it it feels there was a little bit of a of you know kind of putting a thumb on the scales there not to say that Trump didn't have a lot of support you don't agree I don't having having canvased in Pennsylvania uh over the course of uh several weekends. All I can say is the Democratic ticket was not very uh it was not moving people. Um Democrats Kamla Harris, she was behind the eightball. Uh but she did not in the limited time that she have coherent campaign or message.
And um the other side has been at this for a while. You know, we we we are in a deep hole. Um the degree to which workingass people either have moved to be supporting Trump or or are just turned off. Uh you know, we you Chuck Schumer and and Hakee Jeff are not going to save us. No. Right. Um so that has to be fixed, too. Uh, so anyway, but I'm sorry I interrupted your your you you're making a larger point. What was my larger point? Well, it's not that midterms. Yes, the midterms. We I think we can't put our faith solely in what happens in the midterms.
Um I it's also possible that rather than a dystopian, you know, Gilead nightmare, uh where the entire country is put under the boot, um it's also possible that we, you know, because we're a federal system that there are already parts of the country that are way more fascist, take Florida, uh or Texas, and there are parts of the country that are way less. Um, I don't, you know, I I'm very curious about what's going on in in Southern California, um, in the wake of these ICE raids and in the wake of the, you know, explosion of protest against them. Um, you know, the I mean, LA is like, you know, uh, one quarter immigrant. Um, and a lot of the people there are who are naturalized American or born here are standing up for their their cousins or their uncles. Um, and there are more of us than there are of them.
I mean, you know, we could be in a situation where yeah, it will break out into violence, you know, ser not just the that we've seen so far. Um, and then your guess is as good as mine in in which re in which direction things go. Um, I'm a little bit more in inclined towards the country breaks apart theory rather than the country has a giant horrible civil war. Um, if it comes to, you know, the type of stuff we started to see happen in LA. Um, who says the United States is going to hang together? I I don't know. Well, that would I mean, in a way that would be a good that would be I'd be, you know, completely happy with peaceful separation at this point, but I I just don't think that's in the cards.
Um, yeah. I mean, another thing to um Oh, no. factor in is the influence of artificial intelligence. Yeah. uh both in terms of you know the way I mean Trump is basically already the AI presidents I mean he won in 2016 because of Cambridge Analytica and the machine learning algorithms that tracked 5,000 data points on every adult in the US that theory at all that's not good I'm glad to hear that yeah no I Cambridge look there were salespeople from Cambridge Analytica who were members of Civic Hall the organization that I I was running in New York at the time. Yeah. Um we saw some of their sales presentations.
Uh they reminded me of the kind of vaporware that lots of tech startups uh promote. You know, they well we we've come up with a way to manipulate people so perfectly, you've got to buy it from us. Well, Ted Cruz's campaign hired Cambridge Analytica and then fired them because they their wasn't that good. um the the these theories that that we can kind of manipulate people at this incredibly high level in terms of their political choices are just bogus. Um what the bottom line is I mean most people most people make the decision about how to vote based on party identification. Okay, we are in a highly polarized country because we only have two parties and the two parties have gotten really good at organizing us into two tribes and it's very rare for people to switch.
It's very hard to get somebody to change out of the tribe that they're in. Um that's like 90% of your voting decision is which which tribe, red or blue? Um, and yeah, there was voter suppression for sure, but it's not at the level of 5,000 data points about uh your personality and we know exactly what ad to show to you. All it took were, you know, sure, the Russians putting ads in front of urban black men, reminding them that Hillary Clinton called them super predators, which was true. They didn't make that up, right? Stuff like that. um has always been part of politics and Hillary was not a great candidate.
I mean the the the the idea that Trump only won because of manipulation has to assume that you know people can't make a judgment between two shitty choices. I hear that. But I also definitely feel that I you know because I I used to be have a big I mean I still have a decent size presence on Facebook. have like 30,000, you know, followers, whatever. And I saw people in my extended community switch uh into uh sort of Qanon conspiracy, maja conspiracy and um people who I, you know, really liked or even loved and trusted. Uh, I could see this sort of like brainworm, you know, getting into them to the point where they started to, you know, and I think you you and I seem to agree that the Democrats are are tragic, but um, they started, you know, they started to hate, you know, for all sorts of reasons.
The Democrats to the extent to such a level where they, you know, are more accepting of the Republican kind of like uh, rhetoric and and and and reactionary kind of position. uh and it happens on a very psychological but bombardment that what we we're dealing with here is that's more a sign of uh the Republican party and many of these base movements inside it that make make it up like MA uh or gut rights for that matter being really good at uh welcoming evangelizing and welcoming new people to their rank banks. Um, and where the left is much more judgmental, much more demanding, much more likely uh to tell someone that they're not good enough. Um, and we don't welcome the convert. You know, churches grow uh by welcoming the sinners into their ranks, right?
They don't forgive the sin, but they forgive the sinner. Um, I have a a young friend who lives in Texas. We were talking about this recently. He's a he organized for Bernie Sanders. He's trying to figure out what he wants to do next. Um and we were talking about the different ways that liberals versus conservatives organize people. And he said, "Yeah, you know, I I I went to and by the way, we don't have the same grassroots infrastructure that they do. There are more than 20,000 local gun clubs in America. Uh, I can't point to anything like that on the liberal progressive side. Okay? Not union halls, not liberal churches.
I mean, most of those things are in decline. Um, he described to me, he said, "I I I went to a gun club in the suburbs outside of Austin." Um, and he said, "I was really nervous going in because I don't look like the typical person who's going to go uh, you know, visit a gun club. It was my first time, but I was curious. I wanted to see what it was like to shoot a gun." This is my friend talking. And he says he walked in. As soon as he told the first person there that this was his first time in a gun club and he had never shot a gun before, they fell all over him.
They welcome him with open arms. They were like, "Oh, you got to try this one. Let me show you how to use that." Uh, he said, "I have never felt so welcome." Now, this is not high level manipulative brain science. Yeah. The most basic thing. Um, and I think we have to relearn how to be social with people who we kind of maybe have a little discomfort with, but we want to welcome. And the the degree to which our side's culture is built up around drawing all these fine distinctions and deciding who's not good enough, just made some horrible, you know, used the wrong word or whatever.
I think that it definitely works to our disadvantage. Absolutely. I mean, um, you know, I I can the left has shot itself in in in the in the head basically with this. I mean, um, um, yeah, I mean, I I I don't, you know, I I think some of it is now I mean, I do think that, you know, the the woke progressive mindset is beginning to um kind of let go of that a little bit. Uh that's just like a intuition in a way. But I mean yeah I mean you know look I mean there was me too and the sort of cancellation culture and um you know a lot of powerful men who were more on the liberal side got just completely xed out uh who would have potentially had some charismatic capacity.
Well or they deserve to be xed out. Yeah they did deserve what's Yeah. No, I mean I look I I think there were ex but there's but there was no path to redemption is what I'm saying you know it was it was yeah it became well I would call it I actually think that the uh the excesses then were in some ways similar to MAGA in the feeling that you know people are looking for it's almost like millennialism right like you're you you want everything to be solved um instead of accepting that things move incrementally. Uh I mean I remember the young people in my own organization who you know came in with this you know we can't fix the rest of the world and we can't even work on until we fix ourselves right here right now in this one organization. Um, I always that was just like how did we end up on that dead end and it comes out of idealism and a faith in we transform ourselves we can transform everything else but you know hard to um and at the same time most just want the buses to come on top and you know the rent not to be so high.
Yeah. On those things. Uh so so is there uh since you're connected to Indivisible and these other groups um and I would love to be more connected to these groups. I is there kind of um a strategic multi-year kind of plan for somehow um uh yeah like like kind of restoring democracy in a sense or so the the working I think the working theory so indivisible is one of many network happens to be one with the largest sort of grassroots so most base uh approach um and they've like doubled since November. Okay. Yeah. Um so that's a sign of health. The number of new new groups in in addition to long-standing groups that have kind of gotten rejuven.
That's why 5 million people came out in more than 2,000 locations. that in 50-51 uh which completely new phenomenon uh just a lot of people getting together locally to to organize and demonstrate opposition. I think the working theory is sustaining uh the potential for free and fair elections in 2026, figuring out how to defend that. Um I think that the early days uh February, March, April, May, they've been working from one playbook, you know, Earth One, Earth 2, okay, for the purposes of analytical clarity, the Earth One playbook says, uh every administration comes in with this giant head of steam. They push everything they can as they can and they inevitably overshoot and then there's a correction in the midterms and almost like clockwork.
I think the only example when this didn't happen was maybe 2002 when George Bush was riding off the 911, you know, all his popularity from that. Um but the for the most part the out party typically you know voters kind of go Congress and the White House is doing too much. We want to put some checks in. We're going to and all these marginal members lose right and that's earth one. Uh I would say the bulk of the national indivisible strategy is about sustaining the momentum, building the momentum. Uh if you cannot get uh any of these marginal Republicans to crack, right, and and start listening more to their own voters, then they're going to lose in, you know, a year from now.
Earth two is the one you and I are worrying about, right? Which is we're not going to have free and fair elections. We'll have freeish elections, but they won't be very fair, right? The media will be too intimidated. Your average voter won't necessarily make an informed choice. Uh or worse, you know, it'll be hard for people to organize because they're being intimidated. uh you know they're being arrested by Pam Bondi's you know justice yeah or or or the voting machines will themselves be manipulated I mean you know dur during the uh stop the steel campaign you know Trump's people stole a bunch of the voting software I believe in Georgia and if you look at the background of um some of the the the big companies that handle all the voting machines um yeah they have a lot of ties to Dominionist movement and so on.
Yeah. So there's risk of there's a risk of that. I given how decentralized the voting system is. I'm I'm skeptical of their ability. I'm I'm happy to hear I could be wrong. Yeah. I I I remain skeptical of that, but I also defer to other experts who uh you know tend to worry about this in in greater detail. I do think it's important that we have a verified ballot. In other words, a paper ballot is better than just voting on a touch screen. Um, so if people live in a state where they're still using paper ballots, but they're trying to get rid of them, boy, you should fight that.
Um, because, you know, we do have at least way to go back to the ballot if there's a need to, you know, double check what happened in in an election on paper ballots. Um but Earth 2 is the one that we're worrying about uh which is you know the drift of where things are and if we don't organize more get more visible find more ways to elevate attention to what's going on. Uh yeah then you know the other side deserves to win. What I won't accept, Daniel, is the reasoning that says it's already we're already lost. Um, and there's no coming back even if parts of the country turn into a police state.
I mean, let's go there for a second. Okay? Um, look at a country like Argentina. Look at a country like Chile. Okay? These place did have the military takeover and the suppression of disscent and the imprisonment and killing of activists and and and you know newspaper journalists and so on and now they are again free functioning democracies. So for the people who catastrophize um remember that there's even a way to keep organizing in opposition under police state conditions right the people in Poland who figured out how to build uh a independent trade union movement under communism uh that ultimately was able to organize factory occupations in 500 factories.
not just Gdans and demand that the government negotiate with them and recognize them. They won. How did they do it? Um, so you're the this tendency to go into the darkest worst Hollywood version nightmare of where we're headed and that it will be inescapable. As far as I know, no one has figured out how to keep someone alive forever, which means Trump will die. Right. I'm sure there's a great Yiddish curse that, you know, our grandparents could say now about how that, you know, may that day may we live to witness that day. But the the the fact is he's he's a very powerful unifying figure, dangerous as hell, but he won't live forever.
And I mean, you've studied JD Vance more than me, it sounds like. I don't think JD Vance has I don't think he got the what it takes to hold this whole fractious movement together. I think Trump's sons No. Also, I mean like you know the even in authoritarian regimes there is politics. Yeah. Right. So we may not like you know you and I are I don't know how old you are Daniel I'm 63 so I I you know we are the generation our parents too we that got to enjoy like the post-war miracle years of America of tremendous prosperity and because we're white we didn't you know we we benefited a lot.
Um so we grew up expecting that things would always always just get better. Oh well now we are joining the rest of the world completely you know but even my friends who live in places like Argentina and Chile continued to have children. They continued to figure out how to live and even figured out how to oppose what was going on to the degree that they ultimately collectively overturned it. So maybe maybe maybe that's our fate. Um but I don't think our fate is permanent dystopian nightmare. I just Well, I guess I guess the concern for that and I I really appreciate what you're saying and I of course you know I you know tend to agree with you to a certain extent hopefully yes to a certain extent but you know the the concern would be for instance like the Palunteer Doge piece of the puzzle.
So essentially um their capacity now to you know now that we have all these sort of like um self- spying devices in our pockets. Yeah. To basically utilize that as as a whole control system uh you know and as AI develops like more and more kind of drones and so on. And also yeah I mean another issue is that they think I think that most of the people particularly the urban like professional white collar class don't really have much of a future because of AI. you know that there's like tens of millions of layoffs and artificial int programming and legal and you know graphic design and um you know kind of um you know film production you know so those are all kind of like the that's sort of like the liberal base in a way you know you know even in Wall Street they're talking about a lot of layoffs so uh you know that that also offers up an organizing potential because as those programmers lose their jobs by the thousands you know they may be may be able to see their fate more entwined with the fate of workingclass people or people in the global south and stuff like that.
Um but the concern is that we What's that? I I would say I where I completely agree with you is there's no question that the existing liberal order is is breaking down and is being broken down partly by Russell VA and and you know Doge and all those things and by uh this rush to impose AI everywhere. Um I suspect there will be more resistance. Um, I'm not sure that that congeals neatly into, you know, the sort of political movement that we we need to stop Trumpism in its tracks now. And we may things may definitely, you know, need to evolve more before something new can pull itself together.
Um uh you know it's sometimes I think of our situation as like trying to understand that you know there's this gigantic tidal force in motion. Uh you might you know populism is is a word that people use because it's happening all over the world right? Um, and that if you stand there and stand out in front of the wave, you're just going to it's just going to bowl you over. Um, so what you have to do is you have to figure out how to float. You have to and then build a lifeboat, right? Um, we will get through this. We will get through it together. se, you know, the survivalists, the people who think that what you have to do is, you know, kind of prepare for the worst and hide out.
I I never have understood their theory of how that's supposed to work. Um, and so figuring out how those lifeboats get built is challenging for people who have grown up in hyperindividualistic culture that basically says it's all up to you. you have to figure it all out and if you are good at it, you get win the game and you have a nice big, you know, suburbs. Um, and and enjoy that. Uh, that may be breaking down, but again, the the this colossal thing which you're talking about, which is the battle between the halves, the have nots, and how technology gets deployed in and by who.
to achieve what that doesn't go away. Um I mean all of American history is a history of organized money um trying to have its way against people figuring out how to organize themselves enough to get their peace too. Um and most of the time organized money is winning because it's hard to keep people organized. It's it's a pain. Uh we're not very well organized now, but that doesn't mean we can't do it. It's been done before. Times. How did by the way like how did women win the right to vote when none of them had the right to vote? Yeah. You know, you know, explain things like that.
So, was it tech strikes? I actually don't know. Yeah. Well, lots of things including including uh uh you know, civil disobedience and in some case you know destruction of property. Uh but they also leaned on men, you know. Um I mean there are many many examples. So I would just try for um leaven the the doomism with a little bit of hope too. Um I mean I I do that I do that. But I I appreciate um I think we should wrap up. We talked about an hour now. I'd love to chat again. We could also do a three-way with with Rashkov at some point if you would like.
fun. Wonderful to meet you. I get a very, you know, beautiful feeling of like your like generous spirit and like really wanting to, you know, use your your talents for the good and look forward to staying connected and and uh you know, hopefully, you know, you and you know, tell me what to do. Enroll me and and, you know, tell my cons my my community what we can do to to uh to help this thing. Let's let's uh you and I make a time to talk offline or have coffee and and uh Sounds great. Happy pull you in. That's great, buddy. Uh, have a beautiful day.
We'll talk soon. All right. Be well.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.