Why We Left the US According to Nic - Part 1

It has been on Nic's radar for months that I was coming after him for this blog.  He finally felt ready and we forced a few hours to ourselves over the weekend to talk - yes, I said hours.  My transcription of our conversation is almost word for word, so it's quite lengthy and I'm going to break it down into his specific points.

PART 1

Alex:  So why did we leave the United States?

 

Nic:  Right… so, you have asked me to give kind of my take on the the political and systemic issues in the United States that made me not optimistic. I haven’t quite prepared this out, but I think it broke down into a few different issues.  First, you’ve got the breakdown of norms that underpin our system, and that is something I started noticing as far back as 2011 and really crystallized in maybe 2014 to 2016. Second, we have the systemic level imbalances in our political system that are on a trajectory to only worsen towards greater minority rule.  Third – and, to a large extent this stems from and it feeds back into both of those two problems – is we have the increasing antagonism within American society.  

 

I’m going to take that last point first.  I was actually thinking about it this morning when I was reflecting on el-Sisi and Morsi in Egypt.  Egypt's Arab Spring, where it appeared to be a successful transition to democracy when Mubarak moved out… we think about these things happening kind of all at once, but they definitely don't.   My thought this morning was that the problem in Egypt was that you had a majority of the population that didn't want a liberal democracy.  And so the Muslim Brotherhood faction won the election and tried passing the constitution – it would have been a democratic constitution, but not necessarily the way we think about a modern liberal democracy with the rights and protections and such that we in the West believe (accurately or otherwise) are essential for a stable, functioning democracy.  And ultimately, that's because the population didn't want it, and that was reflected in a free and fair election and the results there.  That's what struck me most, especially after the 2020 election in the United States and in 2016 when Trump won.  The biggest determining factor of whether or not someone supported Donald Trump was not their education, was not their ideology within the political spectrum.  Obviously, Democrat versus republican was predictive, but from within those factions, the biggest determinant was the individual voters’ preference for authoritarian style.  There was a study that measured it based on questions around parenting, so it's not just like “do you want an authoritarian in charge of your government?” but…

 

Alex:  … authoritarianism as a value, as an expectation.

 

Nic:  Yeah, as a cultural value, an individual, cultural, family right, and that was the biggest determinant of whether or not we're supporting Donald Trump.  And we saw this so, so increasingly during Trump's administration, like the whole concept of “own the libs” ultimately boils down, to a large extent, authoritarianism.  It is the exercise of political power of those in charge over a minority faction, either because they’re an actual minority or because they’re out of power.  That idea of strength begetting strength, strength justifying strength.  And the problem is a huge swath of the American public, maybe not 50% but a huge swath of the American public, want that.  That is what they voted for, right, so, you know, we would talk – my friends and I or whoever – we were talking about “Oh, well, you know, yes there are these neo-fascists, but we'll fight them at the ballot box and we'll fight them on the streets if we need to”.  And that was the point that I realized… I'm not fighting 5% of the country that's trying to launch a hostile takeover.  I look around my neighborhood and I realize it's my neighbors.  My friends and neighbors are the people who want a more authoritarian, less democratic United States.  Even if they wouldn't admit it directly, or…

 

Alex:  …they don’t even realize it.

 

Nic:  Right, or even realize it.  Yeah, it is what they want because it's what their votes are reflecting, given free and fair elections while we have them.  And so, that became a really fundamentally very different thing, and that then ties into the antagonism between Americans.  Poll after poll are showing an increasing number of Americans see other Americans not just as adversaries or opposition, but as enemies.  And it’s easy to look at all this and say “Oh, we're headed towards a civil war”, and I actually don't think that's most likely.  But, clearly, the stage is set and I think we've been seeing increasing political violence and political volatility because of this increase in antagonism between people who want a pluralistic, liberal democracy and people who want what they would think of as a democracy under a more authoritarian kind of system.  

 

Alex:  Before you move on to your second point, can you elaborate more for those who, on the left, would fit under your description of wanting an authoritarian government without them realizing it?  What does that mean, what does that look like, and why is that your conclusion?

 

Nic:  This is actually the perfect place to transition...