At The Margins

A small minority at the fringes of American politics is making most of us miserable.

How is it exactly that our country is being pulled apart at the seams by a tiny minority of  the total electorate? They are the political fringe, and wield outsized power as long as we let them.

Paraphrasing writer Nate Shivar’s compelling piece, “Why the Past 10 Years of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid,” we learn that, the “Hidden Tribes” study, by the pro-democracy group More in Common, surveyed 8,000 Americans in 2017 and 2018 and identified seven groups that shared beliefs and behaviors. The one furthest to the right, known as the “devoted conservatives,” comprised six percent of the U.S. population. The group furthest to the left, the “progressive activists,” comprised eight percent of the population. The progressive activists are the most prolific group on social media,  but the conservatives are not far behind, and conservatives virtually own cable news and talk radio. The center is afraid of the extremes, because the center is rational, and the extremes are not. They are intimidating. You’ve heard the expression “the angriest person controls the room,” and that’s our current political situation. We are hostage to the margins.

I often harken back to the second half of the Twentieth Century, which many consider the high water mark for democracy. Things were simpler. Media hadn’t fragmented yet, and for over fifty years, we had an agreed upon set of facts that allowed us to think and act uniformly. Even through the most divisive event in the second half of the Twentieth Century, the Vietnam War, we ultimately came together and found our way. It’s easier to get things done when there’s a common enemy, and we had Communism.

Technology and media fragmentation reordered, and in many ways, disintegrated our common dreams, heroes and enemies. In the low-tech days of the Cold War, foreign agents struggled to infiltrate our lives, institutions, and consciousness. Today, because Cyberspace access is easy and so much is online, agents foreign and domestic bent on damaging us only have to have a high speed connection in Pyongyang, Moscow or Beijing—or maybe just a comfy chair in mom’s basement.

The cautionary tale of Croyden, New Hampshire is particularly relevant now. Over the years, a small town in a small state lulled itself to sleep, or at least to apathy and inaction. Few came to town hall meetings, fewer still to school board meetings. Some were busy with work, others with kids. Nobody was paying attention when one man—one man—proposed cutting the public school budget in half, using the mantra: why should I pay for your kid’s education. His plan was to fire half the staff and teachers in Croyden, outsource what he couldn’t dismiss, and ship students off to other villages where necessary.

What’s the nice word for selfish? Oh, yeah, independent, but I’m sticking with selfish, because it is the height of selfishness to forsake the community and the obvious public good associated with an educated populace. He clearly took advantage of a slumbering community. And much like Putin’s misguided theory that he could invade his neighbor with impunity since NATO and the West in general were fractured, this guy figured it would all be over before anyone woke up and presented a united opposition.

Well, just as the Russian invasion of Ukraine pulled the West together, this budget slashing provided a wake-up call to the citizens of Croyden. It’s a town of about 800 people, and the apathy had whittled involvement in public meetings and policy down to fewer than 35 votes. The proposal to, for all intents and purposes, destroy the local public schools, passed 20-14.

Momentum began to build for a do-over when Croyden’s citizens realized what their short attention spans and distractions had cost them. They organized a petition to revisit the schools’ budget and got enough signatures to force a new vote. By local law, half the electorate had to show up. The Save the Schools effort would need 283 attendees at the next meeting; they got 379. The vote to restore the school system budget to a level that would allow them to continue operating was 377-2. The two votes belonged to the schemer and his wife.

The one-man minority that foisted unwanted and cruel change on Croyden wasn’t chastened. He complained of socialism and said that his fellow citizens who voted overwhelmingly to save the schools were a woke, out of control mob. Those weren’t words or concepts Croydenites had heard before. They were the words of partisan politics, a stranger heretofore in the town of Croyden.

Domestically, we’re drowning in a partisan tsunami. Yet, in this intensely partisan moment in the United States, nonpartisans prevailed, proving, at least on a small scale, that communitarianism can triumph over selfish individualism.

©2022 Jon Sinton