No. 3: Raffle off some generators. Beware the one-party state.
Peer pressure does not end after high school.
The Old Truck on Tyranny.
This week continues a series inspired by Tim Snyder’s 2017 book On Tyrrany and the “20 Lessons” derived from his study.
Lesson 3: Beware the one-party state. The parties that remade states and suppressed rivals were not omnipotent from the start. They exploited a historic moment to make political life impossible for their opponents. So support the multiparty system and defend the rules of democratic elections.
The coffee was good. A hint of caramel, steaming in a thick white mug. This Portland café was famous for its “same day service.” The crowd was nondescript by local standards. Some nose rings, some tattoos, lots of hair in various shades and shaves, and indiscriminate gender expressions all around. There were scattered rainbow flags and little punk pins. Just another brunch hour. A small plate of vanilla biscuits disappeared between us as we waited for our omelettes.
An animated conversation two tables over was comparing a woman’s right to choose abortion with anyone’s right to choose whatever they do with their body, period. Someone nearby hard-agreed by flipping their sleeve-tattooed arm defiantly high with a fist and a bird. Murmurs of assent rose over the clink of cups around the dining room. I smiled and tucked into the spinach and Swiss omelette that had just landed in front of me, mentally agreeing that everyone should have absolute control over their own body. Especially me.
I have sixteen years of Catholic school under my belt. I have heard every argument in the debates over bodily autonomy. Had I felt any qualms about a woman’s right to choose what happens inside her body, I would have never spoken them here. The mood in this café dictated which view was correct. No dissent or questions were welcome.
Some years later, and for reasons that would take a separate essay to explain, I joined a traditional men’s lodge. One of the ancient ones fraught with wildly inaccurate conspiracy theories. It has been a good experience. I have built friendships with people, some of whose views are very different from my own, and other times are much closer than I would have guessed, had I not taken the time to know them.
My lodge in Montana holds a fundraising raffle every year. First prize is a rifle, in part because it’s fun to say “rifle raffle” while selling tickets in a bar.
During a raffle-planning meeting a few years back, I began imagining trying to sell these raffle tickets to the many friends of my husband and I who would, on principle, never buy or shoot a rifle. Thinking of expanding our ticket market, I spoke up to ask, “what if we raffled off a power generator instead?” The room went silent. Several turned to me with looks wondering why this guy, who had moved back to Montana from the infamous “Portlandia,” just said something suspiciously weird. Without further comment, they went back to picking a rifle to raffle off at twenty bucks a shot. Pushing my question further would not have changed a thing, much less stopped a single gun sale. I kept quiet and let my question fade away.
We humans tend to want to be liked by other humans. We fear being pushed out of a group and losing access to its resources. Banishment is an ancient threat, second only to death as punishment. These days we call it prison-time or cancellation.
This fear of offending a social group is stretchy, though. Some of us are happy to rant at length about how little we care about anything but ourselves. Libertarians are particularly good at this. It is also fair to notice that such rants are typically issued from the safety of keyboards plugged into the wealthiest economy the world has ever known. What humans will say online and what we will say to someone’s face tend to be filtered very differently1.
Face to face communication is inherently different from tapping a keyboard. When our words could drive others visibly away, we are more likely to weigh the costs, or later wish we had. If I say something others find disagreeable, will someone give me a look? Will I be welcome to the next meeting? Will I be invited to the Christmas party? Is this my hill to die on? Might that handsome waiter wearing a tight old “keep your rosaries off my ovaries” t-shirt spit in my omelette the next time I show up for brunch?
In that brunch restaurant, and in that rifle raffle meeting, only one viewpoint was welcome on the topic being discussed. Disagreement would have been costly. Which goes to the essence of partisan organizing. Questions and disagreement may be socially tokenized, or even fully suppressed, to ensure that political power flows in one direction only. Towards the chief, boss, leader, or whatever name they may be called.
Constitutional democracy, though, was quite literally designed to complicate and slow such flows of political power. Modern legal systems divide power among intentionally competitive, partly overlapping, mutually interdependent branches of government. We then confront the resulting structure with an absolute right to speak our minds about it in the public media. This intentionally complex system was devised—by people who had suffered under centuries of monarchy—to ensure no single faction could hold all the cards at our national political poker table.
Which is why any nation is in danger if a single party dominates all branches of government, the way Republicans dominate ours now. The Republican chattering classes are already proposing that Trump & Company should overthrow our government, and install Donald or J.D. as our national “CEO.”
Their core argument is that dictatorships—whether known as corporations or kingdoms or religious denominations—are efficient, and thus a better choice. In such systems, power flows from one point on high to “just get things done,” at least for those who are in on the party.
Which is how power works in the oceans and jungle. Since Reagan, Americans have been living inside an ever less-regulated economy designed to let the most shark-like behavior win. This is why big box and chain stores have decimated Main Street USA. They are hyper-efficient.
Chain stores may be unfair to their employees, busting efforts to organize for better pay. And, corporations may buy off the governments which tax their customers to pay for the roads, traffic systems, power grids, and other public infrastructure which allows the retail giants to function in the first place. But, no one can say that these corporate chain stores are inefficient. The most successful ones are continually optimized around management’s carefully selected “metrics” to sell us the cheapest possible products, for the highest possible prices, through the most monopolized possible markets. Because that is simply what is best and most efficient. For the owners.
Constitutional democracies are not efficient. They are not meant to be. They are designed to be fair, because they are meant to be so for all of us. They are designed to break up power concentrations, to move slowly, and to consider all sides before making big investments to help the greatest number of us regardless of what the corporate kings might prefer.
This need for fairness plays out in more than just government, though. It plays out any time a group wants to shut down uncomfortable questions about, say, babies and guns.
When historian Tim Snyder advises Americans to “beware the one-party state,” I believe he is referring to far more than just state and national politics. I believe he is referring to any monoculture which suppresses diversity in service to comfort and power. He is warning us against any group in which questions become unwelcome and certain answers are socially required.
Speaking up to have your say, then just agreeing to disagree, can be uncomfortable. It can feel like backing off from a battle we might prefer to fight, particularly if we are safely parked behind a keyboard. Such discomfort, though, is how humans build up healthy, diverse societies, and prevent wars.
Online Disinhibition Effect. Humans will often say things online which we know would get us punched or ostracized if we spoke them to someone’s face.