Missing the Point: What the 2016 Election Says About Us...

The experience of the 2016 presidential election has led to a flurry of commentary and articles written, all citing every conceivable reason (or excuse) for its outcome. Assertions have been made that the biggest factor was the Democrat National Convention’s role in the primaries, while others claim that Russian involvement was the greatest influence. Still others claim that it was Donald Trump’s appeal to the forgotten white working class, or Hillary Clinton’s string of scandals. As well-thought out as these opinions may be, the biggest insight this election offers us isn’t about the election — instead, it’s what the election reveals about Americans, and our role in American democracy.

Broadly, the 2016 election leads us to conclude three related characteristics of American society: it is anti-intellectual, anti-rational, and addicted to cognitive ease. It’s important to remember that, simply because Americans have been called anti-intellectual before doesn’t mean that the term doesn’t have meaning, and isn’t, in all likelihood, true.

So what do these terms mean? Anti-intellectualism seems straightforward enough. Science fiction writer Isaac Asimov described it as “the false notion that democracy means ‘my ignorance is just as good as your knowledge.’” The United States is fortunate enough to be a liberal democracy, but part and parcel of this is the fact that the ignorant will have an equal voice as intellectuals — and whether they ought to be the case or not is outside of the scope of this article — but it does not mean that the content of what those voices say have equal value. Anti-intellectualism, as a concept, misinterprets the equal right to free speech as speech being of equal value.

Because American society is anti-intellectual, we are, as a result, anti-rational. If freedom of speech can be interpreted as meaning that any two opinions have equal value, then defending an ignorant opinion (and, automatically, one’s perceived right to free speech) requires one to suspend their rationality and to attack rationality in others. Ignorant opinions are criticized by rational people; if it is fundamentally ‘American’ to think that all opinions have equal value, then rationality is fundamentally un-American.

Finally, this is all made possible because of cognitive ease. Cognitive ease is simply the natural tendency for people to take the path of least resistance, which is to not expend time and energy thinking about things. This makes sense from an evolutionary perspective — when the majority of things are as they appear, why waste the energy questioning them? However, in modern life the human tendency towards cognitive ease means that we can be easily fooled by a message so long as it possesses what psychologists call “the illusion of truth.”
So how does this all manifest itself, and how are these characteristics wrapped up with the 2016 election? One example is the sudden exposure of the influence played by ‘fake news.’ As psychologist Daniel Kahneman put it, “People don’t believe facts, they believe experts.” So long as an article has the appearance of validity and conforms to our existing opinions (since anything that doesn’t is anti-American), cognitive easing encourages us to accept it as truth. While the concept may be somewhat abstract, the result is very real. Fake news in the 2016 election lead to misinformed and influential opinions, such as Hillary Clinton landing under sniper fire, Donald Trump not supporting the Iraq war, and Obama not knowing that Clinton had a private email server — all of which are not true.

Because of the anti-intellectualism, anti-rationalism, and susceptibility to cognitive ease in American society, these fake news stories shaped the narrative of the election. However, it is important to note that fake news is not the real problem — it’s our shared qualities as a people that make us particularly susceptible to fake news.
Now that the election has passed, many disappointed voters have taken to comparing President Trump to Hitler. We can see our three core characteristics at play here as well, although not in the way you might think. Let’s not talk about how President Trump is similar or dissimilar to Hitler. Much of this reaction to that comparison arises from the emotional and cognitively easy in any case, and the accuracy of the comparison is irrelevant for our purposes. Let’s instead look at the relevant elections of Trump and Hitler.

An often-repeated factoid is that Hitler was elected to power — technically true, although misleading. Hitler was elected to chancellorship, which, during the Weimer republic period, had little political power. He then later seized power through a series of acts and decrees, backed up by physical violence, that transformed the German government into a legal dictatorship. So, directly comparing Hitler’s election to power and Trump’s is impossible. What is comparable, however, are the federal votes that brought Hitler into the chancellorship and the Nazi party into power.

In the 1932, the last free and fair election in Germany before Hitler’s rise to power, saw voter turnout of 80.58%, with the Nazi party gaining roughly a 1/3rd of the vote. For those following the 2016 post-election coverage, or for any U.S. election in recent memory, one of those numbers might stick out to you. 80.58% is a staggering amount for voter turnout. In this election, 56% of Americans voted. In the primaries, this figure drops even further to 28.5%. There are a lot of explanations for low-voter turnout in this election: voters who don’t like either candidate, voter ID laws, and others. But the intuitive answer for why this happens in American elections is that we just don’t care, and can’t be bothered to learn why we should. Whether or not one could or should compare Trump to Hitler, there is at least one clear difference between the two: Hitler was voted into power by an engaged and involved populace, while Trump was voted in by an indifferent one.
While the average American may be too busy or too unconcerned to turn up to an election, the passionate always do. The problem is that passion doesn’t belong solely to the informed; voters who have been fed misinformation designed to shut down the rational part of their brain and evoke an emotional reaction are more likely to vote, because they care more. Why they care might be factually incorrect, but they are galvanized into action regardless.

If you consider yourself to be the average American, you might be wondering what to do about anti-intellectualism in our society. Broadly speaking, the best thing to do is to become more active, involved, and to educate yourself on the topics that matter to you. Here’s what I would do to truly send a message and drive change:

• Boycott the sponsors of mainstream media — Rupert Murdoch alone owns no less than 150 publications between TV and print/digital media. It is difficult to imagine that over 150 separate news entities that must answer to one individual could remain non-biased and objective. The Fairness Doctrine, which required broadcasters to air both sides of a controversial issue, was well-intentioned but failed to truly solve the issue of bias in the media. Watch for misleading statements, fake news, and out-and-out lies. Let it be known to the advertisers that support those networks that we will no longer buy their products so long as they support organizations that erode the role of journalism in our society
• Stop Wall Street — Money is both the motive and the means by which politicians and the media take advantage of the anti-intellectual culture in America. Transition all of your bank accounts to a credit union. The vast majority of those who do make this change, will experience almost no difference in how you bank, and you’ll be helping to reduce the influence of big banks and investment firms on politics.
• Give all Americans a voice in the primaries — Restricting primary elections to just registered voters encourages partisanship and an “us-versus-them” mentality. In protest, change your party affiliation to Independent. By cutting off access to fundraising and refusing to comply with the status quo, we can force the parties to host open primaries.
• DON’T contact your local politicians — While there are certainly exceptions, the majority of those in power have no interest in changing the structure that put them in power (even if their rhetoric suggests otherwise). If you want to help reshape the way in which the political system works, it’s best to do it elsewhere, and in other ways.
• Turn around the role anti-intellectualism plays in your life — Don’t just react to things you read or hear. You might end up finding that your reaction was correct, but by taking some extra time to think about what something really means and why you feel the way you do, you’ll be helping to reduce the stranglehold anti-intellectual culture has on American politics.

Signing petitions and tweeting to elected officials will simply not do the trick — we need to change who we are as a people if we want to see that change reflected in our government. If we continue to watch as anti-intellectualism weakens our educational system, allow anti-rationalism to stand taller than the facts, and allow cognitive ease to lull us into believing what we’re told, nothing about our system will change.