“Ideologies based on lies…appeal to people hungering to make sense of the world.”The Death of Truth, by Michiko Kakutoni
Following the current (May, 2025) budget reconciliation process is both disturbing and telling. Much of the projected harm has been reported in the media. The number of those who could lose Medicaid coverage over work requirements, and the extensive paperwork attached to those requirements, range from one million to over five million. The negative impact on state budgets is in the billions of dollars. Job losses are projected in the hundreds of thousands, and many rural areas already struggling with limited health care will see what little capacity they have eliminated. All of this is being done to fund a huge tax cut for billionaires and big corporations. That is the disturbing part.
But the process is also telling in the details designed to buy off, as cheaply as possible, a significant enough segment of the voting base, while delaying unpopular changes, so as to prevent a backlash – until after the next presidential election.
If ultimately passed without major changes, the tax cuts will be permanent. However, the elimination of tax on tips and overtime pay will phase out after 2028. Medicaid work requirements will not take effect until January 1, 2029. Why is this? It reminds me of the mortgage scams of the early 2000s, when aggressive contractors, real estate agents, mortgage brokers, and others convinced fixed income seniors not to worry – their extensive refi and home improvement mortgages would be affordable. And so they were, until a year later when the interest rates reset and the seniors found themselves at risk of losing their homes. Do people not see this for what it is, like the banking swindle (be it personal, business or romance-based) when a naïve person is convinced to open up a joint bank account, with each depositing money into it, only to find later that all the money has been withdrawn and the victim is left with no money, and possibly new debt? Does the Republican Party think that people are so stupid not to know that they are being given a small and transitory tax break, which will threaten their health care, potentially raise local taxes (or diminish local public services, or both), increase local and federal debt, which will then prompt further future cuts to health, education, infrastructure, environmental, retirement and other programs?
The answer to whether elected and government officials think we are stupid is obvious – of course they do. We have been socialized to be politically stupid. We have been encouraged and motivated to be politically helpless. We have been taught to accept economic dependence. We are, as Walter Lippman once proclaimed, the “ignorant herd,” unable to be trusted or relied upon to meaningfully engage in public affairs. We think we are important, but any participation beyond that of voting for ‘acceptable” choices, we do as ignorant, meddlesome outsiders. We are, as Reinhold Neibuhr wrote, just ordinary people, or as Neibuhr’s views are characterized by Noam Chomsky, “naïve simpletons.” We are not to be trusted with public affairs. “Rationality belongs to the cool observer, but because of the stupidity of the average man, he follows not reason, but faith, and the naive faith requires necessary illusion and emotionally potent oversimplifications which are provided by the myth-maker to keep ordinary person on course.” [Reinhold Niebuhr, Moral Man and Immoral Society: Study in Ethics and Politics]
And so it would seem, we now put our faith and our futures in one man, a misogynist, xenophobic, narcissistic felon who lies as easily as he breathes. We have come to recognize myths – myths consisting of misplaced grievance, of viewing oppressed, fractured, and displaced outsiders as dangerous enemies, of believing in the God-given right to White nationalism, of convincing ourselves that the government is necessarily the enemy, of accepting as a given the class warfare from above, while engaging in race, ethnic, labor, and religious warfare below, of the comfort of living in a bubble, of believing ignorance is a right, of giving up freedom voluntarily, yet feeling empowered – all this and more making up our view of reality.
How absurd, you might say. I am free to come and go as I please. I have countless consumer choices. My time is my own. I am not giving up my freedom. It is beyond reason to think that a person can give up freedom while exercising it. But that is precisely the case. And it is due to our learned helplessness (in matters of politics and economics). We have been taught to value debilitating self-reliance and to think in binary terms. We have been dulled and made blind to what is right in front of us. We have been conditioned to accept lame anodynes for stark and violent realities. Civilian casualties become “collateral damage.” Forced mass migrations become “population transfers.” Bombed, burned and buried children and their parents become “enemy combatants.” Torture becomes “enhanced interrogation.” People losing their retirement funds is due to “market adjustments.” People losing their jobs and becoming homeless is because of “temporary economic dislocations.” The list goes on.
Being conditioned not to think in real and human terms but in euphemisms, not only disserves those negatively impacted by life-altering events, but also prepares us to separate from the victims – to disconnect from them as not part of our reality, or even our humanity. Combine this with the emphasis on “rugged individualism” that permeates our culture, the destruction of community, the centralization of our economy, the vulnerability of labor, the increasing prevalence of personalized entertainment, the demand and need for living our jobs (or risk losing them), and we have a system where each of us is ripe for the taking.
Beyond the dissociative power of political anodynes and the growth of uber-individualism, we have also been dumbed down to such an extent that every issue needs to be understood in binary, even Manichean, terms. Nuance is to be avoided. It is troublesome and because it makes you think and cannot easily fit into a marketing or political campaign slogan, it loses its relevance to us.
Nuance requires thoughtful consideration. At times, it is not easily resolved, such as when situation leads us into a state of antinomy, where two seemingly contradictory things can be true at the same time. It is easier to abandon the effort and rely on others to resolve the dilemma for us, than to put in the effort and expose ourselves to having to think outside our comfort zones. Failure to make the effort, however, prevents us from living life in all its diverse characteristics.
Besides rejecting simplistic, binary explanations of complex situations and relationships, the process of deliberation requires a clearer understanding of common terms that we have a habit of conflating. To use an easy example, take the well-known Beatles song where the main character (who comes in through the bathroom window) has no problem stealing but cannot rob. Many of us would see these two words, steal and rob, as interchangeable. But in reality they represent different aspects of theft. When we steal, we are taking something that does not belong to us. When we rob, we are taking something from a person. Understanding nuances, helps us understand the point being made or the point we are trying to make. Expand that thinking to other words. Liberty and freedom are two words we consider as meaning the same thing. Understanding the distinction helps us understand one of the problems we face today, namely our total and misplaced reliance on liberty (granted) and individual freedom (from within) to satisfy our needs for self-determination.
Liberty is something provided from outside ourselves. Protected speech, association, religion, these are all liberties because they are granted to us by way of our constitution and protected by law. Freedom, however, comes from within each of us. We exercise that freedom for which we have the capability, or power.
Power is another word often used interchangeably with strength. In her book, On Revolution, Hannah Arendt provides us with a useful construct: “In distinction to strength, which is the gift and the possession of every man in his isolation against all other men, power comes into being only if and when men join themselves together for the purpose of action, and it will disappear when, for whatever reason, they disperse and desert one another.” I would expand upon that definition, and add that power comes from within a person. A man might bench press 600 pounds, but if he is frightened of every little threat, he lacks power, even though he retains his strength. Another way to look at it would be with reference to Viktor Frankl, who writes in Man’s Search for Meaning: “everything can be taken from a man but one thing – the last of the human freedoms – to choose one’s attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one’s one way.” I would conclude, given his frame of reference (having survived four German concentration camps) that he is speaking of that power within us. The internal power also permits us to expand power to include others who agree to work together to build community or engage in some collective effort of mutual benefit.
Another conflation of terms involves, again, power and authority. There is an important distinction between the two. Consider Arendt’s useful definition of power, above. From this, it should be clear that power is not granted to anyone, but developed personally or collectively. The only ways to eliminate power is by its voluntary abandonment or by force. Unlike authority, which can be readily revoked by the source of its making, power can only be abandoned or destroyed.
As elaborated on above, liberty, like authority, emanates from the outside. Freedom, like power, comes from within each of us, whether acting alone, or acting as a group. In many ways, it is only through collective power that individual power – the ability to live our lives, to operate with agency, to be the best of who we are able to be – can be realized. If we abandon collective power, then our personal power will always be at risk of diminishing in direct proportion to the decline of collective power.
As such, for any who seek to take advantage of the weaknesses inherent in democracy, limiting and eliminating collective power is a necessary predicate. But to do this, it is necessary to isolate the population, marginalize people politically and economically, so as to make them subject to manipulation. Without doing this, there can be no autocracy. Consider:
“terror can rule absolutely only over men who are isolated against each other and that, therefore, one of the primary concerns of all tyrannical governments is to bring this isolation about…This isolation… is impotence… insofar as power always comes from men acting together…” Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism
“In isolation, we are no longer truly free, and we are much more vulnerable to manipulation. Josef Goebbels, Hitler’s propaganda minister explained this process as one of “massification,” whereby each person becomes an unthinking, isolated part of a giant industrial/military machine. This is accomplished once there is a transition from the private formation of public opinion to the public formation of private opinion.” C. Wright Mills, Power, Politics and People, The Collected Essays…
It would be difficult to argue that we have not reached that transition, and likely did some time ago. For politics to be successful, there can be competing camps, but those camps must share an ideological base from which different policies and priorities can be developed. That base has been destroyed and not only is there no shared ideology, but we are all operating from different factual frames of reference. I get my facts from MSNBC, you get your facts from Fox News. I learn about world events from CNN, you get your political perspective from OAN. I not only disagree with you, I hate you. You hate me more.
But how do we reconcile our intense focus on individual freedom with what is amounting to a future of peonage for the majority of Americans. That is the irony of freedom. The more we look inward, the more vulnerable we become. Think of people represented by circles, with all the circles joined in seemingly endless sets of connections. There is no isolation; the lines represent interdependence; the entire illustration represents collective power.
If this model was representative and pervasive, short of a national existential crisis or extreme violent revolution, no autocratic takeover would be possible. Now take out all the lines, leaving only the circles. Then, because each circle is now isolated and vulnerable, draw a box around each circle, representing protective walls, intended or needed (perhaps unconsciously) to make up for the absence of collective capacity.
Isolated as each circle now is, any disturbance of perceived justice or accepted norms is a threat. Knowingly vulnerable, each circle closes in on itself, closing off from unfamiliar/uncomfortable social interactions, seeking refuge in deep-seated biases, associating in tenuous and symbolic ways with those who think the same ways we do, and taking refuge in comforting lies. And the same way religious practice binds adherents to a common belief system, regardless of how fantastic the dogma may be, isolated individuals seek to identify with similar, though secular, belief systems, regardless of how inane (think pizzeria basements and Jewish laser beams) those beliefs may be. And separated and isolated as we are, if we do notice the disappearance of a neighbor, we shrug it off, lower the shades, and take satisfaction that “at least it wasn’t me.”
The irony of freedom is the more we pursue what we perceive as personal freedom, the more we undermine collective freedom. The less collective freedom we have, the less power we have. The less power we have, the more isolated we become. The more isolated we become, the less able we are to develop and sustain collective capacity and power, until the only power left to us will be the equivalent of deciding what tattoo to buy and where to place it. A society divided, and bound by lies, cannot survive. Where to start? Reconstruct the connecting, social lines of engagement based upon ideals that once purported to bind us — but this time let’s do more than profess what we claim to believe and live those ideals.