506: Wedged, How You Became a Tool of the Partisan Political Establishment & How to Start Thinking for Yourself Again by Erik Fogg

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Welcome to the Holistic Survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The Holistic Survival show is your family's insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently, to understand threats, and how to create the ultimate action plan. Sudden change or worst case scenario, you'll be ready. Welcome to Holistic Survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host, Jason Hartman.

It's my pleasure to welcome Eric Fogg to the show. He is author of how you become a tool for the partisan political establishment and how to start thinking for yourself. Eric, welcome. How are you?

I'm great, Jason. Thanks so much for having me. I've been a long time listener and a big fan.

Good to have you. Where are you located?

So right now I'm in the beautiful Bay Area, but I live in Boston, Massachusetts.

Oh, okay. So both sides of the country there.

Oh, yeah.

You know, this has long been a thing that I've thought and talked about of how the political. It's like a false narrative that we have these two sides, Right. In other countries, sometimes they have lots of sides. You know, it's not just two, Right. I don't know, maybe the American population has become so dumbed down that we can't handle more than two choices. I'm not sure what it is, but to me it seems like we ought to just have like these runoff style elections where we have a whole bunch of voices and people and philosophies and we do one round and cut a bunch out the way you do a beauty pageant, right? And then you do another round and cut a bunch out and then you're left with a couple and then one wins. Right. You know, that seems like a better, better system to me. It's like a fake thing. It's like a wrestling match, right? Everybody knows that it's fake, but they still watch it. What's going on here?

So what's really interesting is you pointed out exactly what is the structural underlying reason for why the United States has two parties, which is how we vote. So we have a first past the post system in which you vote once for one candidate. Whoever gets the most wins. And what I really like about your beauty pageant example there is that It's a good model for how some other countries with many parties vote where you have these runoffs. It changes the incentive structures and allows people to have either vote for multiple people in ranking or vote multiple times during a runoff, which allows third, fourth, fifth parties to bloom. And therefore you get more than two angles on something. And it's a little bit harder for candidates to just win by slagging their opposite candidate, because you can't win by slagging six or seven people. You actually have to show that you have some good ideas that are going to help people that are going to move the economy forward.

What is that word you're using? Slagging?

Oh, slagging just means ripping on or throwing mud at.

Oh, okay, got it, got it. Mud slinging. Yeah, okay, got it. Okay. Which is all too common in political discourse. So why does it make it so the best ideas win rather than mudslinging? Like, explain that dynamic to us. A little. Drill down on that, if you would.

Sure. It's a little bit of game theory and a little bit of human psychology. So humans can be very fear driven. Right. So a great way to get someone to come out to vote is to make them afraid of something great. Someone. You know, you get people to go to war and put their lives on the line and abandon their families, abandon their homes when they are afraid. Fear is a very powerful motivator to act when there are only two candidates. You can get people to vote by making them afraid of the other candidate.

Right.

The Democrat can make you afraid of the Republican, the Republican can make you afraid of the Democrat. And that becomes the narrative because it's such a powerful motivator. When you have six candidates, seven candidates, it's very hard to have a unified message around making someone afraid of six other groups. It's just too burdensome. And so you have to revert to a campaign strategy of putting forward something positive instead.

Okay, good. So the best ideas win. I think we'd all agree that that's a good thing, but let's kind of back up. We kind of got off on that tangent of how the election should be held. But let's talk about some of these tools of the political establishment. And that's the subtitle of your book, and why they want this this way. Maybe, you know, tell us your opinion of why it's this way, why they play it this way, and who benefits? What's to be gained by it, and then, you know, maybe some examples of it.

Absolutely.

Next we'll talk about how we can Start thinking more independently.

Absolutely. So yes, who benefits is the, is the key here. And what we need to think of the kind of political media complex as one big group with a lot of different players who are interdependent on each other. Right. Media depends on politicians, politicians depend on media. All of them depend on viewers and voters. And ultimately the same principle about getting you to vote, getting you to go to war, getting you to put up money driven by powerful emotions such as fear applies. And so there's a lot of literature on this, we cite it in the book that shows that people who are afraid or angry are much more likely to donate to a campaign. They're much more likely to vote. They're much more likely to go door knocking. They're much more likely to continue watching a television program if that television program is making them afraid and angry. They're much more likely to share an article on social media if that article has made them afraid or angry. And therefore, we just need to think about the incentives for each of the people or each of the parties, each of the groups in the system. So media wants, they're desperate to stay alive, right. They're falling apart as an industry. They have to play this game or else they die.

Right.

They have to get you to share stuff, get you to keep watching, get you to keep clicking.

So it's just, if it bleeds, it leads. That's it.

It's a little more complex than that. It's less about it being a sad story. If we think about how this ties into politics specifically. It's more about it being a story that plays into a narrative of fear and anger. There's a feedback loop going between the politicians and the media where politicians will say something, it will be outrageous because it's designed to get you afraid of the other side. Media will play that up because it's going to, you know, because they're in a competition to see who can get the most likes, who can get the most views, whatever. And that amplification of the most anger inducing and the most fear inducing messaging by politicians, it works for the media teams and therefore it's going to work for the politicians who get amplified by it and the politicians who have positive messages that don't create fear and anger, media's not gonna amplify them because it's not gonna pay off.

Okay. Okay. So it certainly seems like it benefits the media. Right? You sell more newspapers, you get more ratings, you click bait. If it bleeds, it leads. You know, the bubble headed bleach blonde comes on at 5, she can tell you about the plane crash with a gleam in her eyes. Old Don Henley song. Right. Which is great, we love Dirty laundry. But I don't know, it doesn't seem to have a direct benefit to politicians because, you know, maybe the guy that's. I see how the positive guy doesn't get amplified, but I don't know, why wouldn't you just be a positive guy? And I don't know.

So you're right, it doesn't benefit the politicians. And here's the. That's the real tragedy of it, is that we need to remember that politics is a zero sum game. Media, at least the media industry can expand its total revenue year over year. It can expand its market. So it has an upside and it can go get that upside if we think about it economically. So they can win through this. Whereas in politics there will at any time be 535people in Congress, there will be one president. And therefore for them, politicians can ultimately never win as a group because it is a zero sum game. It's a fixed game for them. What they want is to be in power. And therefore in this zero sum game, a group of 535 people can't win. It is who ends up in those seats, those are the folks that win. And therefore what we're seeing here is not that politicians as a group win over other people, but the politicians who happen to be elected, the ones who win the elections. Yeah, they stay in power. So it's those individuals who have won by using fear, anger as campaign tactics.

Yeah, we need term limits for sure. You know, the founding fathers never thought politics should be a career. They viewed it as just something you do. You go and serve and then you go back to your business. You know, but we're in this era where it's just a career, you know, it's ridiculous. So tell us about. You have some interesting graphics in your book. Tell us about the fog curve.

Sure.

Or the green fog curve.

Yeah, I gotta give a shout out to my co author Nat Green, who came up with the original notion of it on a whiteboard and then we refined it. Ultimately there are two curves on there. One of them is a normal curve, a bell curve, and then one of them is a bimodal curve where instead of a lump in the middle, you have lumps on the side. So if we think of that lump in the middle, that is how Americans in fact feel about most issues. So if we look at a given issue, let's say for example, tax rates, or let's say, for example, a particular economic proposal of how do we stimulate the economy, or how should we handle labor laws or unions. Americans actually have many, many different opinions that are all a little bit nuanced, sometimes internally contradictory, sometimes moderate, sometimes not. But it's very rarely the case. Or there are very few Americans for whom it's the case that they have really extreme views. Right. So very few people want to, for example, jack up taxes to, you know, 92% where they were in the 1950s because of the war. And very few people want to have, you know, low taxes or a flat tax. We can think of all these different issues where people have their own position that sometimes changes. That's not all that well formed, and that's how Americans actually feel. We see this over and over again when we poll them in the right way. But what gets amplified because of what we talked before are those extreme positions. So if you think of immigration, it's either open borders or deport everyone who's here without documentation. And there's a lot of options in between. Most Americans want those options in between. But because of the process we've talked about, those voices don't get heard. They don't get talked about in the narrative.

Okay, yeah, interesting. What else do you want people to know about this? Maybe any questions I haven't asked you or areas we haven't discussed?

I think the most important thing in particular for folks who are thinking not just about how they will vote, but how they're going to operate in the American economy, how they're going to invest their money, how they're going to use their time, is that if you can start to recognize some of the signs of a media group, of a politician trying to manipulate a group of people to pay attention to them, using fear and anger, you can then start to sort out the BS from truth.

Right?

Because the. The most dangerous thing for each of us individually is to get caught up in it, is to look at something, see something said, and let our emotional response drive our reaction. When we have, you know, a fear or anger response, we don't really think through what's being said. We believe it, we want to believe it. And it's ultimately, if you do start to believe it, it's not only going to change how you vote, it's going to change your own behavior and your own life to your detriment. So the book and a lot of other great literature out there is about how to spot when this manipulative behavior or when this manipulative messaging is being directed at you so that you can become more resistant to it.

Okay, good stuff. Give out your website and tell people where they can find out more about you and your blog.

Great. So you can come to reconsidermedia.com where we help you reconsider the false binary narrative. So reconsiderdita.com you can find our blog, our podcasts, and you can find the book there as well. Jason, it's been a lot of fun. Thanks for having me on the show.

Eric, thank you for joining us. And keep getting the word out about this. Folks. This is an important issue. It's not really just about two things. And if you want to think about it even from a more conspiratorial angle, you know, divide and conquer, right? That's how they do it. They keep everybody divided while they go run rough shot over whatever they want to do. So this is an important issue to understand. And there's lots of great graphics in the book as well. So Eric, thanks for joining us.

Thank you again, Jason.

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