Latest / The Overlap / It's Working: Flooding The Zone

Transcript

It's Working: Flooding The Zone · The Overlap

0:00
So I want to start this one somewhere we don't usually start.
0:03
I'm like tired. Not tired like I stayed up too late or drank a little
0:10
bit too much last night. Tired like I opened three browser tabs this morning trying
0:14
to figure out like what we should cover this week and I closed all of them
0:18
and I sat there and I I didn't pick anything because picking one of them felt like
0:23
agreeing to ignore the other nine million things that could have been
0:27
in that very same tab.
0:28
And look, there were there were like forty.
0:30
And I know because we've been doing this show for like a year and a half that
0:34
the number is going up and not down.
0:36
So let's just say what this episode is.
0:40
This is not a news episode. There's no docket number this week,
0:43
there's no chart. This is the two of us talking about the fact that
0:47
we are exhausted. And that a lot of you are also exhausted,
0:52
and that the exhaustion is not like a side effect of what's happening,
0:56
it's kind of the point.
0:58
of what's happening. So that's the thesis today.
1:01
If you take one thing out of the next,
1:03
you know, episode minutes, take that one.
1:06
The tiredness, the exhaustion is the product.
1:10
It's not evidence that you're weak or that you don't care enough or that you've
1:16
got some kind of moral stamina problem that other people don't have.
1:20
It's the intended output of a strategy that has a name and an author
1:26
and a documented.
1:28
And I want to be careful here because I know how this can sound.
1:32
There's a version of this episode that's just like two guys complaining into
1:36
a microphone for 40 minutes, and then everybody feels pissed off,
1:40
and then you turn it off. And that's not what this is gonna be.
1:43
And that would actually be a small contribution to the problem,
1:48
is why we're not doing that. So here's kind of the shape of it.
1:52
For the first half, we're gonna be precise about
1:56
What's being done to us and how it works.
1:59
Not because I think that being precise and exact about it some sort of takes some
2:05
of its power away. But the second half is strategy,
2:09
not vibes, not you got this. Actual peer-reviewed research on
2:14
why people in movements burn out and what the ones who don't burn
2:19
out do differently. And some of that research is 40 years old and nobody talks about
2:25
it, which
2:26
Annoys me personally.
2:27
A noise may be an understatement.
2:30
Yeah, it annoys me a lot. And we'll get there.
2:32
One more thing before we start,
2:33
and I mean this. If you're listening to this and you've already stopped following
2:38
the news, if you've muted the words,
2:41
if you've deleted the app, if you just can't anymore,
2:46
you're not the villain of this episode.
3:04
So the phrase, flood the zone.
3:06
Some people have heard of it. Most people haven't.
3:09
Steve Bannon talking to the author Michael Lewis,
3:12
believe he's the author of Moneyball,
3:14
if not mistaken, or anyway, some of those economic books,
3:18
~ around twenty eighteen. ~ he's talking to Steve Bannon,
3:23
and Steve Bannon says, with the real the real opposition to the agenda
3:28
at the time he was working for for ~ Trump.
3:31
The real opposition is the media,
3:33
and the way to deal with the media is to quote,
3:35
flood the zone with shit.
3:37
And that's like the whole doctrine.
3:39
That's it. Just that's the sentence.
3:41
Just that. Flood the zone with shit.
3:45
I mean it's honest, I'll give him that.
3:46
He's not being cagey, he's describing a method.
3:49
And so we're gonna break down what the method actually assumes because this
3:54
is the part that is kinda clever and equally
3:58
~ combustibly evil all at the same time.
4:02
It doesn't assume you're stupid.
4:04
It actually doesn't assume you believe the shit.
4:08
No.
4:09
It it assumes that you have this finite amount of attention.
4:12
Like, that's it. That's the whole bet.
4:15
The bet is that attention is somehow a fixed resource.
4:20
It doesn't scale. You can't buy more of it.
4:23
And if I just generate the shit faster than you can process the shit,
4:29
I win by default. Not by convincing you.
4:32
Not by by winning the argument,
4:35
but just by
4:37
Exceeding you horizontally.
4:39
like the debate kids who just keep talking and talking and talking and talking.
4:43
You never you can't even track what they're saying much less get a word in.
4:46
But
4:47
Yeah, like a Jubilee post.
4:49
yeah. But that's why the scholars who write about this describe
4:52
it as specifically anti-democratic rather than just straight up dishonest.
4:56
Because it's not targeting your beliefs.
4:59
It's targeting your capacity to hold anything steady long enough to act on it.
5:03
And the ability to sustain public attention on a thing.
5:07
is sort of load bearing for the whole democratic arrangement.
5:09
Oversight requires attention. Accountability requires attention.
5:14
You can't actually hold somebody accountable for something you've already forgotten
5:19
because four other things just happened.
5:22
Or forty or four hundred, right.
5:24
Right. Or renaming Lake Ontario to Lake America.
5:27
So here's why I want to bring in an actual study because I I just I don't want
5:32
to be just the two guys with a theory.
5:34
There is a longitudinal piece by Julia Meetag and Gwendolyn Gurr published
5:40
in twenty twenty three and they they tracked people over time through
5:45
a referendum campaign. Not anything exciting,
5:47
but it was just a referendum campaign,
5:49
and they found a very specific causal change.
5:53
Not a correlation, a causation.
5:56
Walk us through it.
5:57
So information overload comes first.
6:00
That's the feeling of there's too much of this and it's updating faster than
6:06
I can possibly process it. And that overload reduces what they call news
6:13
efficacy, which is basically your sense that consuming this gish
6:19
gab actually does anything for you.
6:22
So it's not an issue of can I understand it?
6:25
It's an issue of does understanding it help me or how do I apply what I understood?
6:30
Right. And then that drop in efficacy is what predicts news
6:36
avoidance. So the sequence is basically just overload,
6:40
then loss of efficacy, then withdrawal entirely in that order.
6:47
And that matters enormously because the story people tell about news avoiders
6:51
is that they're lazy or apathetic or checked out.
6:53
That's exactly what we're seeing at the polls right now with who is voting
6:59
why and how often and whatever.
7:02
But the truth is they're not lazy or apathetic or checked out.
7:06
They're responding rationally to a system that stopped paying out.
7:11
If you pull the lever a hundred times and nothing comes out,
7:15
not pulling the lever is not apathy.
7:18
It's avoiding the definition of ex insanity.
7:21
It's it's learning
7:23
The system where every time you pull the lever,
7:26
nothing happens.
7:27
I'd say this might be closer to the experiments where they shock you
7:30
for pulling the lever. But that's where the psychology term comes in,
7:34
which we're going to use carefully here because it gets thrown around loosely.
7:37
The term is learned helplessness.
7:40
The original work is about what happens when a subject is exposed repeatedly
7:45
to a stressor they cannot control.
7:47
And the finding is that eventually they stop attempting to change the situation,
7:51
even when the situation changes and they could.
7:53
Even when they could, and that's the ugly part of all of this.
7:59
Right. The learning outlasts the conditions that taught it.
8:02
So basically if you wanted to design a system that produced a population that
8:06
had entirely given up and checked out,
8:09
but then felt like it was their own decision,
8:13
you would build exactly this. You wouldn't censor anything.
8:17
Censorship is expensive and it creates martyrs and it's pretty obvious.
8:21
You'd just publish everything constantly,
8:24
forever, and let people exhaust themselves sorting through it.
8:29
Feeling like I'm in a cage right now.
8:30
~ the exhaustion feels like a personal failing because of that rather than
8:34
a policy outcome. Right? Nobody forced them to turn off and drop out.
8:37
They did it on their own.
8:38
Which is
8:39
exactly which is why it's so easy to spot.
8:41
Like that's how you know it's working exactly as they designed it to.
8:45
When the harm gets experienced as a character flaw by the person it's happening to.
8:52
I wanna add the piece from my side of this,
8:54
which is the institutional piece,
8:55
because there's a second thing the flood of information on the flooding
8:58
of the zone does that gets less attention.
9:01
It's not just wearing out individuals,
9:04
it's overwhelming the whole machinery of the system.
9:06
Say more, King.
9:08
Every institution that's supposed to check power runs on a queue,
9:11
right? Courts have dockets, newsrooms have staff,
9:14
congressional committees have hearing calendars,
9:17
inspectors general, when they are allowed to carry out their inspections,
9:21
~ have caseloads. Every one of those is a system with a throughput limit,
9:27
and none of those limits are secret.
9:28
If you generate at four times the rate the queue can clear,
9:31
you don't have to beat the queue,
9:33
you just have to fill it.
9:34
And then all of those things passed because nobody got to them.
9:40
There just wasn't time. Not because they were argued for successfully,
9:43
but there just wasn't a lane open.
9:45
Right. So look, I wanna do the thing we always do,
9:48
which is actually check whether the story we're telling survives contact with
9:53
numbers, because we've been saying it's working,
9:56
and I I wanna be honest about the fact that it's not working evenly.
10:01
Sounds good.
10:02
So the courts by the middle of May twenty twenty five,
10:06
there have been thirty-nine injunctions issued against this administration.
10:11
They've blocked massive federal layoffs,
10:14
they've blocked funding freezes,
10:17
deportations, but ultimately it comes down to thirty nine things,
10:22
and that's just May. We're in September,
10:24
right? May of twenty twenty five.
10:26
So now we're in September of twenty twenty six.
10:29
Right, that's that's a lot of losing for something that's supposed
10:32
to be steamrolling everybody.
10:34
No, it is. And and more recently,
10:36
the the Congressional Research Service looked
10:38
at thirty-four predecision injunctions.
10:42
And as of June twenty seventh of this year,
10:45
forty one point two percent of them were still in effect.
10:49
So like a meaningful chunk of the early agenda
10:54
is still right now legally blocked and mostly in the immigration space.
11:01
And the biggest one.
11:03
Yeah, i i it is the biggest one.
11:05
Basically it's Trump versus Barbara.
11:07
June thirtieth, twenty twenty six,
11:10
just a couple of months ago, the Supreme Court struck down
11:13
the birthright citizenship executive order,
11:16
six to three. Like it wasn't close.
11:18
You know, it wasn't our nail biters that we're usually having,
11:20
like what overturned Roe versus Wade.
11:22
So that's not a like a technicality,
11:25
right? It's not a delay. That's like a that's like a ha a loss,
11:28
right? A landslide, as he said about the election.
11:32
And keep in mind six to three is this is going the other way,
11:35
right? Six to three is the ideological breakdown,
11:38
but the other way. There's supposed to be six conservatives
11:41
or roughly roughly conservatives,
11:43
you know, right of the other three,
11:44
and then three liberals left on the court.
11:47
Right. And it went opposite. So sit with that for a second because your entire
11:53
information diet is the flood.
11:56
And you've probably experienced that as like a a headline for like ninety minutes
12:02
and then it was gone.
12:03
Now for the other column.
12:05
Yeah, I'm going to because I I'm not interested in doing sort
12:08
of this like cheerleading episode.
12:09
The the Fourth Circuit lifted the block on the anti DEI orders.
12:16
So key provisions of those are live and enforceable.
12:20
But the Supreme Court led the administration ~ to keep denying accurate
12:27
gender markers on passports for trans and non binary Americans.
12:32
And the mail voting order has been a genuine shit show.
12:37
It was lifted partly in August and then blocked again just a couple of days ago,
12:42
but it's still moving.
12:44
So the honest summary is a split.
12:47
Right. Which is not as easy of a headline to really swallow,
12:52
right? Because some of it's dead,
12:54
some of it is currently law,
12:58
and a lot of it is just still kind of ethereal,
13:01
like we haven't figured it out yet.
13:02
We don't know.
13:03
And I wanna name why I think that split is actually the most important fact
13:07
in this episode. It's not the one people expect.
13:11
Go for it.
13:12
So both of the emotionally available positions are wrong.
13:14
Position one is they're unstoppable,
13:16
it's over, nothing works. That's factually false.
13:20
Thirty-nine injunctions, a six to three loss at the Supreme Court.
13:24
The courts are standing up to the administration to some degree,
13:27
and those things worked.
13:28
But
13:29
Position two is that the system held,
13:31
the guardrails worked, everybody relaxed.
13:33
Also factually false. The DEI provisions are enforcing right now.
13:38
Real people lost real passport access access.
13:42
So both of these these comfortable stories that we've been told,
13:48
one that the position held and one that the available positions
13:54
are wrong are both lies.
13:56
Right, and people want a clear cut answer,
13:58
right? But both of the clear cut,
13:59
comfortable stories are lies, and they're comfortable for the same reason,
14:03
which is that they let you stop paying attention,
14:05
right? One says it's hopeless,
14:07
don't even bother, don't turn on the TV.
14:09
The other says it's handled, so why bother?
14:11
Go watch something else. Different route,
14:13
same destination.
14:15
Yeah, and that that kind of lands directly on the thing you said about tabs.
14:19
The reason it's hard is that the actual state of affairs is that some of
14:25
it is is stoppable and some of it isn't.
14:28
And you have to figure that out for yourself.
14:31
And figuring that part out, that that cognitive load,
14:35
is expensive, both calorically as well as intelligently.
14:41
Right? That is the work.
14:43
And they're betting that you either won't or can't do it.
14:47
Right, which brings me to the thing I said last week and and I'll put
14:51
it on record here. A very large share of what actually gets announced
14:57
is not expected to survive. It's not drafted to survive.
15:02
It's just drafted to be loud.
15:04
And how do we tell?
15:06
I mean I go back and forth. ~ th there are there are tells,
15:10
right? Like I mean, you can kind of see through it a little bit,
15:14
but it's mostly opaque. But they're boring.
15:16
Which is exactly why they work.
15:19
A thing a thing that's meant to actually happen has like full text written
15:24
by attorneys and it's ironclad and it was already decided in Project 2025.
15:29
Not some like concept announced from a podium that they have ~
15:34
Hastings of a thought process of a plan that's gonna take place in two weeks.
15:37
And it it has a named agency that actually puts it into effect and
15:42
it has an effective date and there's money and a budget attached
15:45
and an appropriation or an existing line item that they can tap into.
15:50
It already has people hired to do it.
15:53
And it usually moves very quietly,
15:56
often on a Friday and a lot of the times with no press coverage at all.
16:01
And I'm guessing rubber stamped in a committee if if at all sent to a committee.
16:05
But the things meant to be noise,
16:07
what do we what do we think about those?
16:09
Yeah, they're they're just kind of announced rather than filed,
16:12
right? No no implementation mechanism legally weak in ways that
16:17
are obvious to actual attorneys who drafted it.
16:20
It gets a lot of press. But there's not a lot of paperwork or,
16:26
you know, adjudication put into figuring out what the law actually says.
16:31
It's just kind of a a weak argument that is loud.
16:37
It's
16:38
Gross. It's supposed to make you go,
16:41
there's no way they can do that and get angry.
16:44
But the biggest tell of all is that that's usually the thing that they carry,
16:49
right? That's the thing you see actually see in the headlines because
16:54
if passed would be awful. Because it's something that's actually moving,
16:59
that doesn't need to be announced twice,
17:02
that's happening in the left hand versus the right hand.
17:06
Right. So I mean it's it's not even it's not propaganda.
17:11
It's more like what is it they call that?
17:12
I don't know, there's all these words for these things where like is it rage bait?
17:15
Is that a thing?
17:17
Yeah, I mean Trump Trump is been doing this for quite a while.
17:20
Is is he puts the loud thing out there in front so you pay attention to that
17:24
so you don't pay attention to what's happening behind the curtain.
17:27
Right. ~ thank you, Donald Copperfield.
17:29
~ so we can we at least follow the staffing and the money.
17:34
I mean sure, but not the volume.
17:38
A quiet thing that hires and the appropriation part of it that
17:43
the Congress is actually backing him up with,
17:45
that's real. A loud thing with a podium and no personnel is kind of theater,
17:51
it's designed for that. And we've actually done this on this show before,
17:55
right? The controlling the checkbook episode was a was a docket number
17:59
and four hundred and twelve pages that nobody was reading.
18:02
That was the real one. It was silent and nobody had heard of it and it
18:07
was just kind of passing underneath the radar because it was a full build
18:12
and it was so big that nobody had even bothered to take it apart because it's also
18:16
not gonna get CNN headlines or MS Now or Fox News or or whatever.
18:21
And you may be circle circling back to this,
18:23
but ~ I mean that sometimes they can be mixed in,
18:26
right? Like the big bullshit bill.
18:28
~ that was like
18:29
Right.
18:30
some loud stuff and some quiet stuff,
18:32
right? That actually mattered.
18:33
~
18:34
Yeah, like the Save
18:34
Act. the I mean the the Senate just passed or was bragging about ~ the fact that
18:40
a hundred and twenty nine Democrats didn't vote for this this thing that denounced
18:45
what was it, d denounced socialism,
18:49
right? Specifically denounced socialism and look at all these things.
18:52
But it was earmarked with this very particular clause inside that would have passed
18:56
the SAVE Act, which means that anybody who's ever changed their name or been married
19:02
Has to bring like live birth certificates and legal documents just to vote.
19:05
It's super gross, but they're doing it out there on purpose.
19:11
And they know that it's gross.
19:13
So instead of carrying the fact that they're trying to pass the Save
19:17
Act underneath our noses, they're like,
19:19
~ look, Democrats won't denounce socialism.
19:22
They're all communists. I'm like,
19:23
well, those those aren't even the same thing.
19:26
And don't listen to those pink o commies because they're gonna tell
19:29
you what to think. We would never do that.
19:31
Right? As we tell you what to think.
19:34
Exactly. Literally.
19:35
~
19:37
okay, so I'm gonna I'm gonna take this next part,
19:38
take a lead on this next part because I think for reasons that'll become clear
19:42
as along the way, I'm actually qualified to talk about this a little bit.
19:46
That's why you're here.
19:49
Not for not just for my good looks.
19:51
Among other things. Yeah,
19:52
actually our our good looks actually translate rather well over this podcast.
19:56
Right. ~ there's
19:58
there's a body of research on this,
20:00
not on burnout generally, but on activist burnout specifically.
20:03
And the person who's done the most careful work on it is a a man by the name
20:07
of Paul Gorski. And the core study interviewed twenty-two social justice
20:13
and human rights activists across a range of different movements.
20:17
And what he found when he sorted out the causes was four categories.
20:21
Ooh, I like these. They're like ~ infographics.
20:24
Four categories. Go.
20:25
Yeah.
20:26
Yeah, some fun new words to learn and throw out at the dinner parties.
20:29
emotional and dispositional causes,
20:32
which is the stuff you bring in with you.
20:34
Structural causes, which is the scale of the problem itself,
20:38
backlash causes, which is what gets done to you for participating,
20:42
and then there's a fourth one.
20:44
Do I even want to know?
20:45
It's kind of sad. It's it's in movement,
20:47
which is causes
20:48
Mm.
20:48
that come from inside the thing you join.
20:50
So again, these are the four categories of things that can cause you
20:53
as an activist or cause activists specifically to burn out.
20:55
So the emotional and dispositional stuff,
20:58
this is what you're bringing, this is what matters to you when you start
21:00
as an activist. Structural causes.
21:01
Well, I
21:03
I'm sure I can guess the the most important one 'cause you left it for last.
21:07
Sure, it's the fourth one. and it's not close,
21:11
even in terms of how much the interview material it accounts for.
21:13
So people described infighting,
21:16
backbiting, struggles over power,
21:18
and they described movements reproducing internally the exact things that they
21:22
existed to fight, like sexism inside anti-racist and anti ~
21:27
or you know organizations seeking ~ gender equality,
21:31
racism inside progressive organizations.
21:34
Yeah, that's ~ that's the dark side of a lot of this stuff.
21:38
Yeah, it's definitely bleak and it's consistent.
21:41
And then there's the finding that I think about the most,
21:44
which is Gorsky named the culture of martyrdom.
21:47
Mm. That sounds interesting. Tell me more.
21:49
It's an implicit expectation inside movement culture,
21:52
which is an amazing thing that there's a movement culture,
21:56
but that if you haven't been burned out,
21:58
you weren't really committed. So this is like the for ~ for those
22:01
not steeped in this literature or this this ~ part of culture,
22:06
it's like the the CEOs.
22:07
This is the no true Scotsman
22:08
argument that a lot of the leftist organizations like to like to easily call upon,
22:12
right?
22:13
Right, or I'm thinking like something for more of like of our time is
22:17
the CEOs who brag about getting up earlier and earlier,
22:20
right? Like there's the four AM crowd and the three AM crowd,
22:22
and then if you're not if you didn't stay up all night,
22:24
you weren't really working. It's it's that kind of thing,
22:26
Okay. Sure.
22:27
right? So you feel guilty,
22:28
they make you feel guilty for wanting to rest and wanting to restore yourself.
22:32
And then, you know
22:33
Because you're not you're not in the grind.
22:36
Right, exactly. So if you if you raise an issue about being exhausted,
22:39
then you're marked as not serious.
22:42
Well, I I mean so essentially what you're saying is that basically
22:46
the movement kind of generates its own attrition.
22:50
Right. It's it's ~ eating their young,
22:52
right, in a sense, or eating their own,
22:54
~ in the the race to get the problem solved.
22:57
And I wanna be really clear about the implication here because it is uncomfortable.
23:01
If exhaustion is the opponent's strategy and your own side treats exhaustion
23:05
as a badge of honor, then your culture is doing their work for them for free.
23:09
Yeah, and I think I think that's kind of the the point of all of this
23:13
is that we have th when they win,
23:15
it's both by design, but also your own independent badge of honor that makes
23:21
it feel like you've done more than you really have.
23:24
Right. And there's a related finding I want to talk about from Christina Masleck,
23:28
a scientist who's essentially the person who built the modern research on burnout,
23:32
working with Gomez. and their observation about activists specifically
23:38
is that activism cultivates awareness of enormous problems that
23:42
the surrounding society will not acknowledge.
23:45
And that gap between what you can see and what everyone else around
23:48
you is willing to see produces a very particular kind of pressure and isolation.
23:53
Which then just feeds back directly in a loop to ignite or reignite the burnout.
24:01
Exactly, which in this case is driven by just sort of an ongoing despair,
24:05
right? an isolation, just a l a sense of deep loneliness,
24:09
lasting loneliness. Plus a culture that says you're not allowed to mention that it's
24:13
breaking you, right? So you just gotta grin and bear it while you're dealing with
24:16
all of this.
24:17
Can I can I say kind of what this what this seems to be the most obvious part of it?
24:23
Please, by all means.
24:25
And look, you know more about this than than the research does,
24:27
at least personally. ~ I just I I I think it matters for this one.
24:33
Yeah, and I I I hate to pull this card,
24:35
so to speak, or I don't wanna make this about me,
24:38
but for the benefit of those who may be going through this and feeling that they're
24:42
struggling alone. So if you haven't been with the podcast for very long,
24:46
or if you've wondered where I am in a about eighty percent of the last
24:50
few months episodes, I have been diagnosed with young onset Parkinson's.
24:55
And there's a whole lot to that.
24:58
I'm not gonna go into a lot of detail,
24:59
but essentially took my career
25:01
option from me practicing the law is just not an option for me anymore which i've
25:05
talked about a little bit ~ but it also takes away a good chunk of every
25:10
day which i haven't talked about the everyday stuff but you know there's
25:14
a a persistent sort of constant pain ~
25:18
and ~ just things that interfere with your ability to do basic things like
25:24
sit in a chair for an hour and talk
25:28
~ some days and many days I just can't do that.
25:31
And ~ so the thing you learn when your body is making the decision for
25:36
you is that pacing is not a moral failure,
25:39
right? Like it's not me. This is not me saying I need a break,
25:43
I need some time off, I I need ~ you know,
25:46
whatever mental health days. This is me saying I can't get out of bed or
25:51
I can't sit up straight for more than five minutes without being in agony.
25:56
Mm-hmm.
25:56
And ~ you know, you come from a a country that's that prides itself
26:00
on its Puritan work ethic. And you think,
26:03
wow, you know, I'm just if I'm not working hard,
26:05
then I'm not contributing to my society,
26:08
I'm not taking care of my family,
26:10
providing the way I'm supposed to.
26:12
And when that instinct becomes associated with something like that,
26:16
when you're feeling guilty for having a degenerative disease that
26:20
is affecting you and it's it's an objective,
26:22
real thing, it's not in your head.
26:24
~
26:25
That instinct is wrong. And so for me,
26:28
I've had to learn the lesson over and over and over again.
26:31
~ because my body is teaching it to me every morning when I wake up in
26:34
the middle of the night.
26:35
So can you kind of lay out what the lesson actually is?
26:39
So the the lesson here, one lesson here is that the goal isn't the most
26:43
you can do today. The goal is the most you can do across the whole span.
26:48
~ you know, you've all heard the saying,
26:51
you you overestimate what you can do in a year when you underestimate what
26:54
you can do in ten years. ~ that's that's kind of the difference we're talking about
26:58
here is just like keep in mind the big picture because there are gonna
27:02
be days where you just can't do it.
27:04
And it's not an option, it's not something,
27:06
you know, pretending is not the answer.
27:08
So when the research says culture of martyrdom,
27:11
I don't experience that as an abstraction.
27:13
It's the thing that would have taken everything from me faster if
27:15
I'd been allowed to keep obeying it,
27:17
right? If I just said, I know that my you know toe is like curled in like
27:22
a pretzel right now and it's agony to take a step,
27:25
but I should keep doing it because it's the you know,
27:27
it's the only way to do what matters and and to be a contributing member of society,
27:31
~ then that would have you know caused my pr disease to progress even faster.
27:37
Yeah. And that's hard.
27:39
Yeah, it it is. And ~ but we need to understand that rest is not
27:42
a withdrawal from the mission ~ or the fight when the attrition is the fight,
27:48
right? Like again, don't do the other side's work for them.
27:52
Don't put yourself in an early grave trying to solve the problem that
27:56
no one else can see. And that's not I'm not saying that as like a ~ you know,
28:01
a placebo pill to just say take this little saying and and rest easy.
28:08
It's actually a strategic claim and and I'm happy to defend it.
28:11
Yeah, I mean that's kind of the it sometimes it can feel like a platitude,
28:15
right? But I mean I I understand what you're saying,
28:17
like and I I I hear from your experience,
28:21
personally. ~ Well,
28:24
so I guess the next part is kind of what I've been waiting for,
28:29
and that's the the forty year old research that annoys me.
28:33
Is it the research that annoys you or the people ignoring the research that annoys
28:36
you? Yeah,
28:36
~ you know, it depends on the day.
28:38
~ depends
28:39
right.
28:39
on on my on how many spoons I've I woke up with this morning.
28:43
So yeah. ~ Yes,
28:43
Fair enough. So Karl Vik. Tell us about Carl Vik.
28:47
Karl Vik is an American psychologist from 1984.
28:50
~ he had a paper called Small Wins Redefining the Scale of Social Problems.
28:56
And that's the the sentence I want you to kind of hear and how well
29:01
it describes what we've spent twenty minutes talking about,
29:04
right? He wrote
29:05
That the massive scale on which social problems
29:09
are conceived often precludes innovative action.
29:14
precludes, not just discourages and and that's important because I think
29:18
for you and I this hits right close to home because depending on the day,
29:21
one of us you're likely to hear one of us telling the other one,
29:23
Yeah, but what do we do about it?
29:24
Like there's just nothing that can be done.
29:25
It's too big a problem.
29:27
Right. But it it does he says precludes means makes it impossible.
29:33
But then he also then goes on to give them a mechanism.
29:37
And now I want you to remember this is like nineteen eighty four,
29:41
okay? This is the year I was born.
29:43
Not Orwell's nineteen eighty four,
29:44
You were you were two, right. Well
29:45
but actually nineteen eighty four.
29:46
I mean, you know, is there any difference anymore?
29:48
But he basically says it's because bounded rationality is exceeded.
29:55
And dysfunctional levels of arousal are induced.
30:00
Clear, right, Crystal?
30:02
Sure, sure. Crystal mud.
30:05
Right. Bounded rationality exceeded means that the problem is basically bigger than
30:10
the amount of thinking that a single human can bring to it,
30:14
right? So you can't reason your way to the next step.
30:17
And then dysfunctional arousal is a very ~ three dollar college
30:24
explanation of saying that you get so
30:28
triggered so activated that you essentially become useless.
30:31
Just frozen and spinning you know,
30:36
you've got you've got forty tabs open in your browser and y you have
30:39
to close them all because you're just done.
30:41
Sounds like hell on earth. ~ but it also sounds like the Flood
30:45
the Zone effect thirty four years before Bannon named the the tactic.
30:49
Yeah, I mean he described I wish it was thirty-four.
30:51
It's like
30:53
'Cause well.
30:54
it's it's getting to be a little bit more,
30:56
but he he described that effect before Bannon named it.
30:59
And and the reason why that matters is that he wasn't writing about propaganda
31:04
at the time. He was writing about why well intentioned people like you
31:09
or me or anybody listening here who care a shit ton about real problems consistently
31:15
fail to do anything about them.
31:18
Which means the flood has not ever been a new invention.
31:23
It's a deliberate manufacture,
31:27
it's a deliberate product of a failure state we already knew that people had.
31:33
I'm gonna step out of my lane here for a second,
31:35
but it sounds like an exploit.
31:37
Is that the right word for that?
31:39
yes. I mean in a way, right? In a lot of ways,
31:43
in fact, they this is this has been the Republican tactic for for a good number
31:48
of years now. Essentially find the loophole and then exploit it.
31:53
I mean so exploit is I think is a perfect word for that,
31:55
right? They basically found a vulnerability in the the machinery,
32:01
and then they just scaled up and industrialized that specific workaround.
32:07
And and Vike, in the same paper,
32:08
he actually gives the counter.
32:10
He calls it a small win. And he's specific about the definition.
32:14
A small win, he he says, is it's a concrete,
32:17
complete outcome of moderate importance.
32:22
So not only was it concrete, it was complete,
32:25
but it was moderate.
32:27
And each of those words matters,
32:28
right?
32:29
Yes, and each of those words in their own fashion is kind of like
32:33
a cornerstone of of of the wall.
32:35
It's the it's the load bearing structure,
32:37
it's the steel beam that runs up the brick wall.
32:39
Concrete he he ~ goes on to mention that it's it's a real thing in the real world,
32:45
right? It's not like a raised awareness,
32:47
it's not something we're just noticing from from the periphery.
32:50
And then he says
32:51
Not vibes.
32:52
that right. He says it's complete,
32:54
meaning it's done.
32:56
Right? It's not like phase one of nine,
32:58
it's it's the whole thing. And then moderate means that you have deliberately,
33:02
on purpose, just not tried to solve the whole thing.
33:06
Which for some people sounds like giving up.
33:09
I think for most people it sounds like giving up,
33:11
right? Bec and it feels like giving up.
33:13
But it the truth is it's kind of the opposite.
33:16
And and Vik lists why. And this is the part that you know,
33:20
if you need to to make a cat poster about it or or find your your platitude
33:25
to live on, is that these properties are exactly what you need
33:31
in the specific situation we are in right now.
33:34
Think the right image for this motivational poster is the dumpster fire,
33:37
right? The the dumpster fire meme.
33:39
But nice.
33:39
I like I like cat with machine gun,
33:41
kitten with machine gun. Yeah,
33:43
I I I hear ya. Yeah.
33:43
I think I think it's a better one.
33:45
So
33:48
one, small wins preserve your gains,
33:52
right? I mean they're they're they're losing,
33:54
you know, if you lose the war,
33:56
that's a sad thing, but if you if you're winning battles,
33:59
you have to kind of close it, right?
34:01
You say, I won, and then it's done,
34:04
and it's behind you.
34:06
Okay, what's number two?
34:08
Basically you can't unravel them,
34:10
right? So two, because they're finished,
34:14
right? There's no half finished structure that collapses once you stop pushing
34:18
on it. This isn't like, you know,
34:19
I'm trying to keep the monster from getting through the door.
34:22
This is I can push the monster back long enough to close the door,
34:27
lock it, and then then we're just at the next door.
34:29
We don't have to worry about losing ground.
34:32
We just keep pushing forward. Right?
34:35
So there you
34:36
Basically when you stop pushing on it,
34:38
it you still have the the the the small wind to fall back in and
34:44
and relax before you push on to the next the next door.
34:47
Right, 'cause it's done when you stop with each one.
34:50
So ~ what's three?
34:52
So basically each one requires less coordination to execute.
34:56
It's this it's the ladder theory,
34:57
right? If you tried to jump up ten feet in one go,
35:02
every time you jumped up, you would have to fall back down to the first rung
35:07
or the floor the floor. But with a ladder,
35:09
you create individual steps. And each step is its own win and feels small.
35:14
But the next thing you do is you turn around and you realize you're
35:18
at the next floor because now you've
35:20
Climbed each one of these things.
35:22
So basically, once you understand what it's like to take a small first step,
35:27
the second step is the exact same.
35:29
It's just from a higher distance,
35:30
right? So each of these, you don't need a a coalition of forty organizations.
35:37
You might just need four people to get to step two.
35:40
Okay, and ~ number four is kind of the one that gave me pause.
35:43
Tell us about that one.
35:44
Yeah, so four four is kind of the one.
35:47
Small wins are are relatively unaffected by inter interruptions like changes
35:53
in political administrations, for example.
35:57
So that one's a little hard for me to wrap my head around.
35:58
Can you say more?
36:00
So relatively unaffected by changes in political administration.
36:04
A guy wrote that in nineteen eighty-four in a psychology journal,
36:08
and it's kind of the single most relevant sentence to this episode,
36:11
because the flood is designed to make everything contingent on
36:15
one enormous binary that's that's years away.
36:19
And that basically you personally cannot move to.
36:23
Which is the change of an administration.
36:25
But the but the small win is not contingent on that.
36:28
So you're saying.
36:29
A small
36:29
yeah, a small win doesn't care who won,
36:31
right? Like it's completed, it's done.
36:33
Hm. And the fifth?
36:35
Yeah, th basically the subparts,
36:38
each individual step can be reassembled into different configurations,
36:42
meaning it's a bunch of finished small things that become the
36:46
raw materials for something bigger later,
36:49
in a shape that you really might not have or could not have designed
36:52
in the beginning and then just executed.
36:55
But then you use each of those individual winds to piece together into
36:59
a bigger picture of what you accomplished.
37:01
So let's talk about how this fixes the psychological problems we were talking about
37:05
because it's not just tactical.
37:07
Sure.
37:08
So if we go back to
37:09
the MedTech and and Gur chain,
37:11
right? Overload, then loss of efficiency,
37:14
then withdrawal, right? The point of failure is efficacy.
37:18
It's the middle link. That's where people are lost.
37:21
Right, and a completed small win is just a direct injection of efficacy that can't
37:27
be undone.
37:28
And it's the only thing that is,
37:29
right? Like you can't talk somebody out of learned helplessness.
37:32
You can't argue a person into believing that their actions matter,
37:35
especially when they have evidence of the contrary.
37:37
The only thing that reliably restores it is an action that visibly produces
37:42
a result. Progress, right? Which means finishing something small isn't
37:46
a consolation prize ~ at all. It's it's the whole mechanism,
37:50
right?
37:51
Right, it is the mechanism. It's basically how you kind of stick to
37:55
the game because ultimately it's just a small step that we've taken together.
37:59
So there's one more piece of research that I want to handle carefully because it's
38:03
the most quoted and most abused in this entire space.
38:07
Yeah, is it that three and a half percent thing?
38:10
The 3.5% thing, you called it.
38:12
So ~ Erica Chenowith and Maria Stefan,
38:16
they built a data set of 323 major campaigns from 1900
38:22
to 2006 and compared violent and nonviolent ones.
38:26
Nonviolent campaigns succeeded 53% of the time,
38:30
violent ones 26%.
38:33
That's just over double.
38:35
Right, roughly double. If then that finding is robust and it's genuinely important
38:40
because here's the the headline version is the no nonviolent cam movement they
38:45
got there was no non nonviolent movement,
38:47
sorry, they got three point five percent of the population to participate
38:50
in its peak and then failed to achieve its goals.
38:53
And that number is now I mean it's it's used within within progressive movements.
38:59
Right, it's in every group chat and Chinnawith herself has spent years trying
39:02
to put reins on this because she published cautionary updates.
39:05
She wrote a whole book to add the qualifications.
39:08
So what are w what was she trying to kind of say after the fact?
39:13
She's saying, first of all, the number is descriptive,
39:16
not prescriptive, right? It's not telling you what to do,
39:18
it's telling you what they found.
39:20
'Cause it's a historical sample,
39:22
it's not a formula and
39:22
So it's sort of
39:23
like hindsight rather than foresight.
39:26
Exactly. And she's saying, look,
39:28
nobody can see the future. So it's not a cheat code.
39:32
Second, she says that she's trying to hit the threshold that trying
39:36
to hit the threshold without building a broad constituency underneath
39:39
it doesn't guarantee anything.
39:41
And third, and this is the one that actually changes what you do on a Tuesday,
39:45
she says the other factors are probably just as important as the head count.
39:49
Momentum, organization, strategic leadership,
39:52
and sustainability.
39:53
So s sustainability is in her list.
39:56
Right, and it's equally as important as headcount.
39:59
sustainability is in her own list of what determines whether a movement wins,
40:03
which ties this section straight back to what we were saying about martyrdom.
40:06
Not burning out is not adjacent to the strategy,
40:09
it's in the strategy.
40:11
So I guess what what is that number actually measuring then if it's not like
40:15
we need to hit this?
40:17
So this is the part that reframed it for me.
40:19
The 3.5% isn't the cause of the win,
40:22
it's a symptom of a condition that was already true.
40:26
If 3.5% of a country is in the street,
40:29
that indicates far deeper support underneath and it creates
40:32
a sense of inevitability. And what that does mechanically is produce defections from
40:37
the pillars that hold the thing up business,
40:40
political, cultural, media, security services.
40:44
Those pillars are kind of s the support system behind the mechanism.
40:48
Right. And the the the part of the iceberg that's beneath the surface,
40:51
but when you see the the smaller the the ten percent above the water,
40:55
you see enough of those and you start thinking,
40:57
wow, there's no way I'm making it through here and you turn back.
40:59
So that's what I think what she's kind of saying is that the three
41:02
and a half percent showing up,
41:03
that's the tip of the iceberg,
41:05
that once you become aware of it,
41:06
you realize there's something actually going on here.
41:08
So the
41:09
Right.
41:09
the crowd is the signal that the pillars are about to move.
41:12
So that kind of changes what your job is in the in the grander scheme.
41:17
Exactly. Changes it enormously because if you thought your job was to
41:21
be number body number three point five percent,
41:23
right? To to get over that that threshold,
41:25
that's a job you do once a year.
41:27
And it doesn't feel like it does anything.
41:30
Because if your job is to make defection thinkable for one person inside
41:34
of an institution, that's a job you can do on a Wednesday.
41:37
And there are a lot more of those jobs than there are marches.
41:40
Well, in effect that's kind of a small win,
41:42
right? Like it's a small step up the ladder.
41:45
Exactly right. Concrete, complete,
41:47
and moderate.
41:48
Okay, so let's see if we can we can land this plane.
41:51
the standard move here is kind of a list of action items that everybody nods
41:57
at and nobody actually does.
42:00
And we have a rule about that.
42:01
Right, so nobody's calling their senator on this show.
42:04
~ I checked. ~ nobody mentions the overlap on any of the FOIA requests
42:09
I placed to any senator that I could find.
42:11
So here's what I've actually got,
42:14
and and none of these actually comes out to something we just cited.
42:19
Go for it.
42:20
So one, pick a lane and let the rest go on purpose.
42:25
Not out of like laziness as a decision you make once out loud,
42:31
ideally with a witness present.
42:32
Because the flood only works if you accept the framing that everything
42:38
is equally urgent and equally yours.
42:41
It's not equally yours. You are the marginal difference on most of it.
42:46
And pretending that you're not is how you end up being.
42:49
The marginal difference on none of
42:51
It was number two.
42:53
Yeah, so triage by staffing and appropriation,
42:57
not by volume. We did kind of like the tells earlier,
43:01
what makes it look like, you know,
43:03
i it's trying to flood the zone.
43:05
And a a quiet thing with money and hires behind it is real.
43:09
We already said that. A loud thing with a podium and nobody behind it
43:14
is kind of theater. So if you only have bandwidth for one thing a week,
43:18
spend it on something with
43:21
a docket number and not something with a hashtag,
43:23
right? Like don't don't repost somebody else's post.
43:27
Like choose to do a thing. Use,
43:29
you know, fivecalls dot org or something and and just do that this week.
43:34
That is enough because it's a small win.
43:38
And number three is mine, because it goes back to the martyrdom issue.
43:41
Schedule the rest before you need it,
43:43
and don't frame it as a reward for having earned it.
43:46
That framing is exactly the thing that Kors Korski's participants describe being
43:52
socialized into, and it's the one that pushed people out of movements entirely.
43:56
Rest that you have to earn is rest you will never take.
43:59
And I'll do four. Do it with other people.
44:02
~ I mean, in a lot of things, right?
44:05
But ~ I'll be specific about why,
44:07
because i it's not it's not a warm sentiment,
44:10
right? Isolation shows up as a documented cause in this research.
44:15
So Maslak and Gomez, ~ on the gap between what you see and what
44:20
the people around you actually acknowledge,
44:23
being the only person in your life who is tracking a thing is not just lonely.
44:27
It is a known
44:30
Fire starter of burnout, right?
44:32
So fixing that is not optional wellness,
44:35
it's maintenance on the movement that you're building.
44:39
And take us out with number five.
44:41
Yeah, so five is just finish something.
44:44
Like actually finish it. Something small,
44:47
something concrete, complete this month,
44:50
this week, this day, whatever that is.
44:52
Get one ordinance changed. Find one thing that you really care about
44:57
and just push it as far as you can with reason,
45:00
with other people. File one FOIA request,
45:04
right? And read what actually gets back to you.
45:07
And then write something out to your community that explains.
45:11
Why this is messed up and it and we need to fix it.
45:13
Get a thing fixed at your kids' school,
45:16
right? Show up to one county commission meeting where twelve people are
45:21
in the room and your presence is a measurable percentage of everyone there.
45:25
And that last one is not a constellation prize,
45:27
which is the point of the whole Vike section.
45:30
Right. Efficacy is the link in the chain where people are lost.
45:34
And the only thing that restores that efficacy is a completed action with a real,
45:41
tangible result. And you cannot get there by like reading another article
45:46
or reading another news c p cast or listening to another podcast.
45:50
Reading more is what broke this whole thing.
45:53
And that that brings me to one that I wanna add that's not on your list.
45:57
Sure, go ahead.
45:58
Write down what you think is going to happen.
46:00
Make a prediction. Actually write it down with the date.
46:03
And then go back and look.
46:05
Well, okay, so what's the point in that?
46:06
Two reasons. One, it's the only defense against the flood's memory problem.
46:10
Right. So if everything that you think about or everything everything you're told
46:14
is a a flaming mess right now is being replaced every 90 minutes,
46:18
you lose the ability to notice that something that you were told
46:21
was inevitable didn't happen, right?
46:23
Remember all the the disasters that never occurred.
46:26
~ and two, it's how you find out you were sometimes right,
46:30
which you were. You will be. ~ you know,
46:33
you're making educated guesses or forecasts here.
46:36
So when you're right, it's worth noticing that you're right.
46:38
And you've been right about things and the and the pace of things
46:41
has just stolen your ability to notice.
46:42
Right. You can't even log those wins because you're so busy on the next thing before
46:47
you even have time to reflect on what you did.
46:49
And that theft is part of why you're tired.
46:52
Yeah, it's kinda like it's kinda like the dory like goldfish thing,
46:55
right? The goldfish memory where it just keeps being refreshed every time that
47:00
the the water moves by, right?
47:03
I think I think that that that's a a good example of of what we mean
47:07
in order to write it down. Sort
47:08
Right.
47:08
of like journaling, right? It's so you it's so you can count your wins.
47:11
Right. The goldfish of course comes from the same science with the the frog
47:15
in the boiling pot, but but it it makes the point.
47:18
And so for that reason I think we should take our own advice on this,
47:21
~ this one by the way.
47:23
Yeah, I think we should we should and and I think we're going to.
47:26
we've talked about this and we'll get to that in just a second.
47:29
So here here's where where I've landed,
47:33
and I'm and I'm not gonna tie a bow on it because there isn't a bow to
47:36
be had for this, but they are winning some of it.
47:39
Not all of it. The birthright order is dead,
47:42
six to three, the DI provisions are live and they're enforcing them.
47:46
Both of those are true this month,
47:49
and and I can't change that. Right?
47:51
So
47:52
Half of that alone is just selling you permission to stop paying attention,
47:56
and that's the same thing in different rap.
47:59
And the exhaustion is real, and it is manufactured,
48:02
and those are not intention. It can be a genuine feeling in your body
48:06
and an intended output of someone's strategy at the same time.
48:09
Most of the worst things are both.
48:12
Yeah, I I don't want to steal the former press secretary's words,
48:16
but d she she often liked to say both can be true,
48:19
right? ~ so I I think the thing that I want to leave people with is
48:24
the reframe on tiredness, right?
48:27
If if attrition getting you to leave so that you can be replaced by somebody else
48:32
is the mechanism, then your continued existence in this fight in eighteen months,
48:39
in in three years, is itself
48:42
The resource, right? You lasting is not the precondition for the work.
48:47
It is the work. There's no version of you where burnout in March the
48:53
and and and where basically you're just done,
48:56
right? And that was the strategically correct call.
49:00
Right, like an early flame out is not is never optimal.
49:03
~ and the thing I want to leave people with is a little bit smaller,
49:06
but you you're allowed to not know about something.
49:09
You're allowed to have missed it.
49:11
You know, when the when the group brings up like the did you hear about this,
49:13
did you hear about that? It's okay if you didn't hear about that.
49:16
You're not the answer to every problem.
49:19
And there are a number of things happening right now,
49:21
and the number of things happening right now exceeds what a human being,
49:24
a single human being, can hold in their head.
49:26
And the fact that you cannot hold all of it is not a referendum on whether you're
49:29
a good person. It's just arithmetic and biology.
49:33
And somebody did the arithmetic on purpose.
49:35
So essentially we're saying just like pick a thing and then finish it.
49:39
And then tell somebody that you finished it and take a nap.
49:44
And come back next week if if you can.
49:47
Right, and and come back next week.
49:48
But before you go, we're gonna do the thing Will said on the record so
49:51
we can be held to it. Here's ours.
49:54
By the end of this year, we think at least one more piece of what's currently being
49:59
described as inevitable will be dead in court,
50:02
the way birthright was. We don't know which one.
50:05
We think the the male voter order is the likeliest candidate given where
50:10
it was a couple days ago. So we're gonna come back and we're gonna check on that.
50:16
Out loud and tell you if we were wrong.
50:19
Which we might be.
50:20
Yeah, we we very well might be,
50:22
but that's kind of the point, right?
50:24
We're the overlap. Everything we cited is in the show notes and it's
50:27
all real and you can go and read it for yourself.
50:29
And and please do because you should not take our word for this either.
50:33
And take care of yourselves. That's not a sign off this week.
50:37
That's homework.
50:39
Yes. Make sure to do all of the liking things.
50:42
Give us five stars on your podcast app of choice,
50:44
Apple Spotify. Leave us a review.
50:46
Send us an email at admin at fof.foundation.
50:50
Leave us a message on Blue Sky.
50:52
Tag us in something you think we should cover.
50:55
Check out the website at FOF dot foundation.
50:58
Thank you so much for being here.
51:00
We hope to see you next week.
51:01
I
51:02
Bye.