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Aryaa Vyas has won the 2022 Paul Bangiola Good Citizen Award, a $250 prize granted annually by the Morris Plains Democratic Committee for an essay by a Borough School 8th grader extolling some aspect of good citizenship.

This years question: What does freedom in a democracy mean to you?

Here is Vyas essay.

Freedom. Liberty. Choice. These words are strongly associated with the United States. They are the foundation on which our founding fathers developed the nation. But what do they truly mean?

To me, freedom in a democracy means a variety of things, from being able to make a difference in the government and how it governs, to having equality for all, regardless of race, sexual orientation, gender, or any other characteristic.

It means having those unalienable rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. It also means that the government is held accountable for its actions, that no one is above the law, and that no one person or group of people can have ultimate power over the people.

One example of freedom in a democracy is being able to facilitate an idea if it has enough support. One should be able to think, I can change this, and no one can hinder me. Bills can be proposed to change or add government regulations or organizations actions, or anything in between. People can generate enough support for or against a policy, and achieve their goal through peaceful protest or by voting for candidates who hold a particular belief.

Our senators and representatives work for the people, and so they must do what they can to uphold the interests of their citizens. People have a choice to have a say in their government and how they are being governed. They can speak their opinions on the government and make their voice heard, because, like President Kennedy said, Without debate, without criticism, no administration and no country can succeedand no republic can survive

The freedom of having a say in the government holds a special place in my heart, as it was something my mother was never able to experience. She grew up in the East African country of Kenya, a democracy only by name.

It only ever had one political party until very recently, and people feared speaking out against those in power. When they did speak, they faced dire consequences. My mothers neighbor was one person who did such. He made his views on the president and the Kenyan government public. When he gained support from others, he was murdered at his home.

Elections also were very aggressiveriots and protests broke out. Cars were burnt so people could not vote for the opposing parties. Roadblocks were put in place. For those reasons, many families, including my mothers, did not ever vote. This means that the government is not held responsible for its actions, essentially gaining ultimate power once its sworn into office.

The regulations officials create are not always in the interests of the citizens, but instead, for themselves, their cronies, and sycophants.

Having freedom in a democracy also means having equality for all, and havingno persecution of specific groups of people. Our Declaration of Independence states that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

Yet throughout the course of American history, we know this never always held true. For instance, in the early 1900s, segregation and the Jim Crow Laws were developed. Or during World War II, thousands of Japanese Americans were incarcerated in internment camps.

And for the majority of our young countrys life, women were not allowed to do the same things as men, like voting, owning property, or getting specific jobs. Even now, there is still an imbalance between women and mens rights.

Though the Constitution of the United States and the Declaration of Independence were written by men who owned slaves, hypocritical to what those documents proclaim, these laws of the land make it possible for those facing injustice to fight to improve their lives and create justness in society.

As we progress, we aim to slowly lessen the discrimination in the United States and achieve the vision of our founding fathers.

Furthermore, freedom in a democracy means that no one is above the law. Those in office, whether federal, state, or local, have the same rights and limitations as a common citizen. Just as a citizen can be tried in court, so can a member of the government.

For instance, in 1972, President Nixon was compelled by the Supreme Court to provide recordings of conversations, and he faced impeachment by Congress due to his role in the Watergate scandal.

Countless senators and representatives under nearly every presidency have also been brought before courts for a variety of charges, from tax evasion to bribery. Most recently in 2019 and 2021, President Trump faced impeachment twice for abuse of power and obstruction of Congress, and incitement of the Jan. 6 insurrection, respectively.

I believe that freedom in a democracy involves exercising the first 10 amendments to the United States Constitution, providing input to the government, and being treated fairly, regardless of someones characteristics or personality.

It means being able to be yourself, saying what you want, voicing your concerns or anything else, which makes the United States as close to a pure democracy as possible.

Other countries, like Canada and the United Kingdom, allow free speech. But there are restrictions, like not being allowed to speak hatefully against a person or group of people, which the United States allows. The White House Correspondents Dinner is one representation of the above.

Trevor Noah, a South African comedian, said at the 2022 dinner, In America, you have the right to seek the truth and speak the truth even if it makes people in power uncomfortable, even if it makes your viewers or your readers uncomfortableI stood here tonight and I made fun of the president of the United States, and Im going to be fine.

Aryaa Vyas, 14, lives in Morristown with her parents and older brother. She has also lived in England and New Mexico. Aryaa loves to travel, swim, run and read. She also loves animals, especially whales and dolphins. She enjoys walking around Morristown and visiting the Morristown & Morris Township Library, and volunteers at The Seeing Eye Inc., an organization that trains puppies to become guide dogs for the visually impaired. Aryaa is a rising freshman at Morristown High School, where she has joined the Marching Colonials as a flute player.

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The meaning of democracy hits close to home for this Morris Plains essay winner - Morristown Green

The secular Lefts campaign to purge the public sphere of all religious practice suffered a major defeat Monday when the Supreme Court ruled that a public high school violated a coachs First Amendment right to exercise his religion when it fired him for praying after a football game.

Joseph Kennedy had been a football coach at Bremerton High School for seven years when he invited an opposing football team to join him in prayer at the 50-yard line after a game. The opposing coach thought it was cool that Kennedy had invited another team to pray with him and approvingly mentioned the practice to the principal of Kennedys school.

The bureaucrats at the Bremerton School District did not think Kennedys post-game prayer was cool at all, however. They sent him a letter ordering him to stop. At first, Kennedy complied, waiting until long after a football game was over before he returned to the field to pray alone.

But then, Kennedy changed his mind. He decided he did not want to hide his religious beliefs from his players. He informed the district that he would pray by himself after games while the team was singing the school fight song. This was not good enough for the district, which issued a new letter forbidding Kennedy from any overt actions that appeared to endorse prayer while he was on duty as a coach. When Kennedy continued to pray after football games, the district fired him.

The First Amendment clearly states that Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion. But the First Amendment also prohibits Congress from prohibiting the free exercise of religion. This means that public schools cannot force a teacher to remove a cross from around his or her neck or a yarmulke from the top of his or her head. Employees of state institutions such as schools should be able to keep their religious identities when they are working.

But the liberal justices on the court disagree. In her dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said Kennedys status as a school official means his right to pray at any time and in any manner he wishes is not absolute. Because of his unique coercive power as a football coach, Sotomayor argued, his players are especially vulnerable to the sight of him praying. The danger of just one player seeing his coach pray and then thinking that he too must pray justified Kennedys firing in Sotomayors eyes.

Fortunately, Justice Neil Gorsuch's majority opinion rests on much firmer ground.

Mr. Kennedys proposal to pray quietly by himself on the field would have meant some people would have seen his religious exercise, Gorsuch wrote. Those close at hand might have heard him too. But learning to tolerate speech or prayer of all kinds is part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society, a trait of character essential to a tolerant citizenry.

The Left, unfortunately, has lost its capacity to tolerate public displays of Christian belief or really of any beliefs except for its own very peculiar moralism. Teachers can sponsor gay pride clubs, and schools have entire curricula centered on environmentalism, feminism, and critical race theory. But if one football coach dares take a knee at the 50-yard line after a football game to give thanks to God, Democrats lose their minds.

Fortunately, the Supreme Court has signaled it will now protect religious believers who are fired for publicly displaying their faith.

Continue reading here:
A supreme win for football, faith, and democracy - Washington Examiner

Democracy Rising is a series of blog posts on deliberative democracy: what it is, why its powerful, why the time is right for it, how it works, and how to get it going in your community. The series originates in the United States but will discuss principles and draw upon examples from around the world. Views and opinions expressed in each post are those of the individual contributor(s) only.

The climate crisis is urgent and its global! So how can we possibly rely on tools that are slow and local? When I speak with environmental activists about the value of local democracy, this is, hands-down, the most common question.

Are local change efforts too small in the face of the enormous problems we face? In my view, no. In fact, the opposite is true. Local, place-based actions are among the surest (and, ironically, fastest) ways that we will ensure transformation. Because place-based change is change at a human-scale.

International policy solutions are terrific in concept. Those with expertise and access should work toward them, with firm guidance from the international science community. But for better or for worse, human beings must still be at the heart of these solutionsnot only to create and implement them, but to embody and live by them. Humans are deeply flawedso we need to frame changes deliberatively, in ways that our brains will allow us to embrace them (as discussed in Democracy Rising 4). And for a number of reasons, local, place-based action will be crucial to the sustainability of these solutions.

Perhaps not surprisingly for Resilience readers, some of the most important lessons about the value of place have arisen from the field of environmental education.

Lessons from Environmental Education, Part One: Fall in Love

The first Earth Day in 1970 is often seen as the launch of the modern environmental movementa global clarion call to Love Your Mother (Mother Earth, that is). In the decades following the first Earth Day, environmental educators launched countless innovations to explain the importance of ecology to kids. Classrooms were filled with pictures of sewage being piped into rivers and smokestacks belching toxins to awaken students to issues like water and air pollution.

But by the mid-1990s, environmental educators were noticing a disturbing trend. Children had been so inundated with news of ecological catastrophe that they started to fear the natural world. Antioch professor David Sobel dubbed it ecophobia [1]: Children were so attuned to stories of environmental disaster that they literally became afraid to go outside. And who can blame them, with this messaging? By 2005, Richard Louv coined the term nature deficit disorder,[2] identifying trends in youth that, due to alienation from the natural world, led to ADHD, obesity, and depression.

Today, most environmental educators agree with Sobels policy, No Tragedies Before Fourth Grade. Instead of starting with melting polar ice caps, teachers and parents need to introduce nature to children through the sheer joy of it.

In order to want to save something, we have to love it first.

So to nurture budding environmentalists, we encourage them to put their hands in the dirt, catch fireflies, and build forts and fairy houses. Listen to birds, observe anthills, and watch the clouds. Explore, create, imagine. Fall in love.

Lessons, Part Two: Make a Difference

Also in the 1990s, environmental educators made another discovery. For decades, those in the field believed that providing learners with solid information would improve their attitudes and behavior toward nature. From Awareness to Action was a common conference theme. (It sounds good, right? I dont even want to count how many publications and events I helped create with this motto.)

But a comprehensive study by professors Harold Hungerford and Trudi Volk examining what had inspired people to become active environmentaliststo exercise environmental citizenshiprevealed the opposite.[3]

Hungerford and Volk found that what really inspired environmental citizenship were factors like:

So From Awareness to Action never really covered it. In fact, a more accurate way to think about this very human dynamic is From Action to Awareness.

In other words, when we get up to our elbows in stuff that we love, care about personally, and where we see we can make a difference, thats when we hear a democratic click in our heads. Now, were ready to be environmental citizens.

Theres a valuable lesson here about engaged citizenship. To combat the climate crisis, we desperately need people to commit to environmental action and democratic change. But news about uncivil discourse among congressmembers, contested national elections, and dysfunction in federal government is the democratic equivalent of watching sewage piped into rivers. Increasingly we look at the national public sphere as something toxic. Like children suffering from ecophobia, citizens are afraid to go outside and take part in national democracy.

Fall in Love and Make a DifferenceLocally

Few Americans are confident that national partisan leaders will help us get along. Our partisan polarization has gotten so deep that 40 percent or more of both Democrats and Republicans see the other party not only as folks they disagree with, but as a threat to the well-being of the nation.[4]

When assessing our local options, however, Americans are consistently more confident. According to Gallup, an average of 70 percent of those polled trust local government to handle local problems, compared to only 53 percent who trust the federal government to handle domestic problems.[5]

Taking a look at preceding articles in this blog post series gives us a clue as to why. From the Portsmouth Listens citizens group successfully navigating local controversies in New Hampshire (see Democracy Rising 7) to Montevallo, Alabamas, pathway to a non-discrimination ordinance (see Democracy Rising 19), at the local level people can, as Montevallo Mayor Hollie Cost wrote, come together to discuss some fairly wicked issues using exceedingly civil means.

Working locally, we can follow the lessons of environmental education. We can fall in love with the changes we can create through deliberative democracyand watch as we actually make a difference.

For climate activists, examining place-based change offers a number of valuable take-aways:

Place teaches us. Focusing on the local gets us two for the price of one. We not only improve local decisions (environmental sustainability in Portsmouths city plan; welcoming of LGBTQ+ residents in Montevallo, Alabama), but we strengthen our civic infrastructure. By working through deliberative processes, we strengthen our skills at self-governance. This improves the chances that future decision-making opportunities will lead to more sustainable decisions.

Place cant deny nature. A farmer friend of mine makes it clear: Folks who work close to the land are experiencing climate change personally. For them, there is no denial; the growing seasons are changing, water tables are altered, and novel pest infestations are frequent.

When we focus on the local, we are forced to listen to our neighbors who have the most intimate experience with our natural systems. My farmer friend expressed it compellingly:

I personally believe centuries of human activity has contributed to climate change, but even if I didnt, I would still need to take necessary actions to continue farming. Debating the existence and/or causes of climate change is a red herring for me, because it distracts from dealing with what is happening in real time, right before my eyes.[6]

Place is real. Many find conspiracy theories irresistible, especially online. But when were meeting face-to-face about very local issues, its harder to get away with presenting alternative facts. In todays world of nationalized and globalized debates, its weirdly refreshing to skip arguing about the truth, and move straight on to how were going to deal with it. And thats what can happen at the local level.

In Florida, communities have been dealing with rising sea levels, flooding, and salt water in their wells for years. Having worked successfully with civic and business leaders to approve adaptation and mitigation measure there, Yale professor Dan Kahan argues that while these problems are caused by climate change, the most successful discussions are framed around local solutions.[7]

The best way to overcoming the entrenched political economy at the national level is to activate demand at the local level, notes Kahan. Here, community members from planners to realtors to store owners can literally see, feel, and even taste the need for immediate action.

Its a practical discussion among people who have a common objective Then it doesnt matter whether theyre red or blue or whatever, notes Kahan. They all have a stake in it, and they trust each other because they can see that they all have the same relation to it.

What you dont want to happen is for those conversations to become infected with the same kind of polarizing significations by which climate change as a national policy issue is characterized, Kahan explains. And what you really dont want are people who arent parts of those communities to come in and tell people, oh, your conversation is about this. That really is counterproductive.

Place is realer to some than to others. Social psychologists tell us that many of our dearly held values are not simply opinions. They are largely innate, and even help explain conservative, liberal, and libertarian worldviews. In his book The Righteous Mind, Prof. Jonathan Haidt explains why certain of these qualities gave us survival advantages evolutionarily, and that they are, to a significant degree, hard-wired.

Some humans may be more innately likely to focus on the local than others. Indeed, some researchers argue that whether we are more or less place-based may be a significant factor in todays polarization. British journalist David Goodhart offers an intriguing analysis that divides modern cultures into two groups: what he calls the Somewheres and the Anywheres.[8]

In Goodharts penetrating analysis, Anywheres are cosmopolitans. They have accumulated enough formal education and career success that they can live, well, anywhere. Their achieved identity is portable. They tend to be comfortable with new places and people; they value autonomy, mobility, and novelty. Anywheres have no problem thinking globally.

Somewheres tend to ascribe their identity to a particular place and groupoften multi-generational, perhaps because their work is placed-based, whether its fishing or mining or factory work. They tend to value tradition and social contracts like families and community. While they do live in the real world, and evolve with changing norms about race, gender, and other issues, they prefer change to be moderate rather than rapid.

Goodhart argues that Anywheres, who often hold leadership positions, have increasingly not understood the values or the needs of Somewheres. He points to a gutting of vocational and apprenticeship education programs, and housing and transportation crises, that primarily impact Somewheres. And Goodhart offers extensive sociological data making the case that the misunderstanding and lack of respect between these two worldviews help explain both the rise of Brexit and Trump.

However, it would be an oversimplification to draw all place-based preferences simply along liberals vs. conservative lines. Political science professor Frank Bryan wrote that local democracy practitioners are perfectly situated on the nexus where traditional local control conservatives and newer small is beautiful liberals meet.[9]

While Somewheres sound more traditional and in some ways conservative, their value of place should be a value for environmentalists to celebrate. We can help ensure broader acceptance of environmental solutions by emphasizing what is, in fact, a common priority.

Place is Literally Our Commons

Peoples amenability to difference, and to change, varies a lot. Some human beings will always resist rapid change, and were stuck with that truthbecause some portion of these qualities is genetic.[10] But we can work to diminish these negative reactions. A canny response to help create sustainable change is to lead with, focus on, and indeed celebrate what we have in common.

In the U.S., we have centuries of place-based sins to reckon with, from violently displacing Native American populations from their homelands to enslaving and forcibly relocating Africans to our shores. Whether or not by design, the U.S. is also a nation of multicultural communities, incorporating immigrants and refugees from across the globe. Whatever our histories, many people feel a strong, natural connection to what is now their home placeand experience a very human need to engage with it.

Looking at place from a social change perspective, even those of us who tend to think globally would do well to understand the values of those who focus on the local. It will strengthen our chances of creating policies that will gain broad acceptance.

Farmer and author Wendell Berry, famous for his understanding of place-based culture, has defined community this way:

A community is the mental and spiritual condition of knowing that the place is shared, and that the people who share the place define and limit the possibilities of each others lives. It is the knowledge that people have of each other, their concern for each other, their trust in each other, the freedom with which they come and go among themselves. [11]

As is often said, there is no silver bullet to address the climate crisisits going to take silver buckshot. It will require millions of individual actions combined, in service to our shared placethe very definition of community. The good news is that when place-based wisdom informs local solutions, the solutions are all the more sustainable.

[1] David Sobel, Beyond Ecophobia: Reclaiming the Heart in Nature Education (Great Barrington, Mass: The Orion Society and the Myrin Institute, 1996); https://www.davidsobelauthor.com/beyond-ecophobia.

[2] Richard Louv, Last Child In the Woods: Saving Our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder (Chapel Hill, N.C.: Algonquin Books of Chapel Hill, 2005).

[3] Hungerford, H. R., &Volk, T. L. (1990). Changing Learner Behavior Through Environmental Education. The Journal of Environmental Education: Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 821.

[4] https://www.pewtrusts.org/en/trust/archive/winter-2020/how-americans-view-trust-facts-and-democracy-today.

[5] https://news.gallup.com/poll/355124/americans-trust-government-remains-low.aspx.

[6] https://www.addisonindependent.com/2022/02/03/climate-matters-farmers-must-deal-with-reality/.

[7] https://ideas.ted.com/how-can-we-talk-about-climate-change-or-can-we/.

[8] David Goodhart, The Road to Somewhere: The Populist Revolt and the Future of Politics (London: Hurst & Company, 2017).

[9] Susan Clark and Woden Teachout, Slow Democracy: Rediscovering Community, Bringing Decision Making Back Home (White River Junction, VT: Chelsea Green Publishing, 2012), p. x. Foreword by Frank M. Bryan.

[10] Stenner, Karen (2009). Three Kinds of Conservatism. Psychological Inquiry: Vo. 20: 142-159.

[11] https://hoptownchronicle.org/magazines-short-selective-biography-of-berry-has-lines-from-forthcoming-book-which-will-offend-most-everyone/

Teaser photo credit: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Community_meeting.jpg, Tom Cat King, This file is licensed under theCreative CommonsAttribution-Share Alike 4.0 Internationallicense.

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Democracy Rising 22: Deliberation and the Promise of Place - Resilience

Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.

George Santayana

July 4, 2026, will mark the 250th anniversary of Americas democracy. There are serious doubts this will ever occur. Never in the history of our country have our basic freedoms been under attack as they are now. Rights that were once taken for granted are now being taken away.

Fair and free elections, once the hallmark of American democracy, are now being attacked as anything but. Pushing whats called the Big Lie, Donald Trump and the Republicans are attacking that cornerstone of freedom. Falsely and repeatedly claiming the 2020 election was stolen, they want to far-right their imaginary wrongs.

To that end, Trump and the GOP want to install secretaries of state across the country to make sure he wins. If he loses a state, that secretary of state can refuse to certify the states elections. If enough SOS do this, Trump could steal the election.

This almost happened. But because there were enough patriotic people who thought it was more important to defend America than Trump, his plan failed. But if those people were replaced with Trumpers, who would stop him then?

The GOP has stopped trying to govern this country. Their plan is now getting Trump back in office and little else matters. Not helping families or the economy, but making sure Trump wins. Since SOS control the elections, the GOP will control the SOS and make sure the election goes their way. If not, votes could be stolen or created to ensure a win.

Trump might pull the same stunt in Michigan that he tried in Georgia. Tell the SOS: I lost Michigan. Find me enough votes to win. Obeying Trump, the SOS could try that. The current SOS Joycelyn Benson would never obey such an illegal order, but the Trump one would. It is imperative that she and others around the country stay in office to prevent the theft of your vote and Americas democracy.

SOS Benson aptly described election deniers. Its like putting a bank robber in charge of a bank and giving them the keys to the vault, Benson said. This is a choice between whether or not well have a democracy moving forward.

The GOP is doing this in Michigan. They nominated Kristina Karamo who has no experience as a SOS, but plenty of experience spreading far-right conspiracy theories. Her loyalty doesnt lie with the people of Michigan, but with those who live in Mar-a-Lago.

The threat continues. In November, 2020, Trump supporters falsely claimed there was voter fraud at the TCF Center in downtown Detroit. Some had to be barred from entering. The Michigan GOP wants to hire these same conspiracy people as election inspectors. Talk about putting the Fox News in the henhouse. SOS Benson fears some of these people could intentionally disrupt the upcoming elections. Now they want these same people counting votes? Theres a disaster waiting to happen.

Karamo was also at the TCF Center. She claimed she saw voter fraud. She didnt. She claimed there were voting irregularities. There werent. And now she wants to be secretary of state and control your vote and Michigans elections? Lets hope not.

The threat is real. The danger is real. Trump defended Russia, called Putin a genius and tried to launch a coup against America. He cannot come anywhere near the levers of power. If Trump gets back in office, thats the end of America as we know it.

As the only functioning party in America, the Democrats need to keep the House and Senate. By doing so, they will keep Americas democracy alive. Its been said before but this really is the most election in history. Our democracy is at stake. You can argue about Democratic policies later. First lets save our country and deal with other issues afterward.

In November, vote like your countrys freedom depended on it because it does.

Southgate resident Allan Bieniek has appeared in several publications, including The New York Times and the Harvard International Review.

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The demise of democracy is at stake in Novembers election - Dearborn Press and Guide

Events since the presidential election of 2020 have led a great many people to fear for the future of democracy in the United States. I share the view that democracy is in trouble, not just here but worldwide, but not because of anything connected to the last presidential election. As I wrote in my last essay, neither the attempted coup inspired and encouraged by former President Trump, the much-ballyhooed polling that purports to show high levels of Republican support for violence to achieve political goals, nor the many restrictions on voting passed primarily in Republican states after the election have had or will have much if any effect on democracy in this country. I fail to see how something can be a threat if it will have no likely impact.

Yet that doesnt mean these events are unimportant. On the contrary, they matter a great deal, though not for the reasons people imagine. They are a consequence and a cause of the sickening tendency in American society to conceive all social problems as existential tribal grievances. As I described before, virtually every attempt at political persuasion and media propaganda in this country sticks to a drearily familiar, three-step script. First, the event is cast as a life-or-death threat to something the listener holds dear. This could be something intangible or symbolic, like freedom, a way of life, or our most sacred values, or it could be something very real, like a job or property values. Next, the danger is traced to the willful misdeeds of an identifiable person or group, who are imagined not as bumbling and incompetent (and therefore safely ignored) but as organized, well-funded, disciplined and relentless. This concentrates the anger and creates a single-minded focus on a particular target. And finally, a simple solution is put forward that, presto-chango, promises to make everything better. Vote Democratic (or Republican). Buy a gun. Prosecute Trump. Send money.

This tribal blame machine is entirely bipartisan. In the denunciation of former President Trump, the attacks come generally from the political left but nobody can match the propaganda machinery of some actors on the political right. Consider, for instance, the attacks aired by the NRA in 2008 during Barack Obamas first presidential campaign. The gun lobby vowed hed be the most anti-gun president in American history who would support a huge new tax on [your] guns and ammo. One ad featured a veteran: I served my country on the battlefield to protect our freedoms. Theres no way Im voting for a president who will take them away. Another featured a Michigan hunter reacting to Obamas remark that some working-class voters cling to guns and religion because they are bitter. Because I believe in traditional American values, go to church, exercise my right to own a firearm, Barack Obama says Im bitter. Well Im not bitter, Im blessed. And every ad ended with the simple solution: Defend Freedom. Defeat Obama. These ads had it all: real and symbolic threats, a single target, and a simple solution.

The blame machine takes a terrible toll, both on the individual and on society. To begin with, it produces enormous stress. Those who spend their days certain that their most cherished values hang no more securely than the Sword of Damocles endure a truly tormented life. Even before the pandemic, a steadily increasing proportion of Americans reported exceedingly high levels of stress, and things have only gotten worse in the last two and a half years. In 2020, more than three in four Americans said that worries about the nations future were a significant source of stress, nearly seven in ten said the same of the current political climate, and more than seven in ten thought this was the lowest point in the nations history that they could remember. And this was before the inflation crisis and the war in Ukraine. In 2022, nearly 90 percent of Americans said it felt as though they had lived through a constant stream of crises without a break over the last two years.

Of course, many would insist that we have lived through one crisis after another, and that the problem is not with the packaging that explains our reality but with the reality itself. I do not for a minute discount the very real problems we have confronted and continue to confront. COVID-19 and inflation, to name only two, are realities of current life. But separating the problem from its packaging is not that straightforward. Social problems do not simply exist; our knowledge of them comes from the ubiquitous tribal blame machine, from which they emerge twisted and misshapen, sometimes bearing only a distant resemblance to reality. Anyone who doubts this need only recall the mask and vaccine wars of the last two years. COVID-19 is very real, but for a great many Americans, the nature of the threat cannot be separated from the tribalism that brings the threat to their ears. And what is true for COVID-19 is true for all our most pressing problems, from rising crime to rising prices. I cannot think of any social problem that exists in public life as an unfiltered reality; if you can think of one, let me know.

And this gets us to the second, equally serious effect of casting everything as an existential tribal grievance: problems are badly misperceived. It is one of the most enduring features of human existence that we tend to be abysmal judges of them. When it comes to democracy, the effect of this distortion can be catastrophic. As a group of political scientists recently described, partisansDemocrats and Republicans aliketend to overestimate the extremism of their political adversaries. This is bad enough, but even more disturbing is the fact that such overestimation is associated with willingness to take, or support, extreme action oneself. Research shows, for instance, that partisans who underestimate their opponents support for democratic principles are more likely to support anti-democratic practices and violations of democratic norms. Similarly, partisans who overestimate rival partisans support for violence report greater willingness to engage in violence.

Building on this literature, other researchers who study what they call the perception gap have found, unsurprisingly, that the partisans on the left and right who attend most closely to media coverage are those who are most egregiously misinformed about their political opposites: People who said they read the news most of the time were nearlythree timesmore distorted in their perceptions than those who said they read the news only now and then. In other words, those who consume the largest diet of news packaged as existential tribal threat are both the most misguided about their opponents and the most willing to support anti-democratic behavior. As the psychologists Joachim Krueger and Theresa DiDonato eloquently put it more than a decade ago, The price of social identity is the loss of a neutral perspective.

Nor is it hard to see how this distortion occurs. More than anything, the blame machine makes people angry. For years, scholars have studied how anger influences behavior. Consistent with the lesson of universal experience, researchers have found that angry people are disinclined to make the cognitive effort required to understand complex issues. Instead, anger elicits simpler [mental] processes and reliance on heuristic cues to make snap judgments. Those who are angry tend to engage in motivated reasoning, in which misinformation consistent with prior beliefs is more likely to be accepted, and contradictory information will tend to be rejected. When you are angry, you are more likely to interpret information in a partisan manner and experience reinforcement of prior-held beliefs and affiliations. Angry people are less inclined to compromise and forgive and more inclined to punish and control. And as anyone who has spent five minutes on Twitter can attest, those who are angry are often hostile and rude.

***

No one should misunderstand what I am saying. The January 6 assault on the Capitol was wrong. Its goalto thwart the will of the electorate by violence and intimidationwas obviously anti-democratic. Like any grave moral and legal wrong, it demands an appropriate response. But a mature democracy cannot achieve that response without a fair, sober, even-handed appraisal of the facts, free from hyperbole and pot-banging. Sadly, the tribal blame machine renders that appraisal all but impossible. Instead, it causes personal distress and social distortion that intensifies division and impedes deliberation. And as with the assault on the Capitol, so with each of the many problems we face: we do not inch toward solutions by driving each other apart.

Even in the best of times, democracy is hard. And these are not the best of times. Whether we are prepared to preserve our democracy remains to be seen.

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Democracy and the Tribal Blame Machine - Justia Verdict