Since the inauguration, members of Congress have found themselves beset by angry constituents and protesters at town hall meetings, fund-raisers, and luncheons.  Republicans especially have found themselves the objects of anger in response to the president’s executive orders around immigration, the president’s alleged ties to Russia, and the movement to defund and repeal the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare).

At his recent town hall meeting in Salt Lake City, Rep. Jason Chaffetz received an angry reception from the audience. After leaving early he described it as a “paid attempt to bully and intimidate,” and insisted that audience members were brought in from out of state. White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer, Colorado Senator Cory Gardner, among others, have repeated the same allegation. All offer no evidence of this paid conspiracy.

There have been dozens of such confrontations, but lets take a look at the Chaffetz town hall in Salt Lake City since it’s been the most widely reported.  According to multiple reports there were “hundreds of people” outside the Chaffetz event. And, local news reports estimate the attendance inside the auditorium at 1,000. Reporters have been unable to identify anyone who was paid to protest or disrupt the event.

Look at the Numbers

If we assume that only half of the audience are paid agitators, and the entire protest delegation outside, and we assume there were only 200 protesters outside, that’s 700 paid protesters. Now we need to estimate the price of a paid protester. If the payment were $50 or $100, you’re not going to buy any loyalty with that. We’ve seen that happen before, and the individuals involved readily admit to reporters that they were hired to be there.  Also, you have to consider that these people didn’t just show up to a town hall to jeer. Many of them had spent time making signs to express their frustrations. That alone takes a few hours of work. To get this quality of actor – that’s who you would have to get – who can look engaged and enraged, put in the prep work for their sign and costume, and also refuse to admit to being paid to be there, it’s going to cost quite a lot of money. I’ll conservatively estimate it at $1,000.

700 protesters * $1000 = $700,000

And that $700k is just for this one town hall. And that doesn’t include all the associated expenses, lawyers to draft the non-disclosure agreements, transportation costs to bring in actors from outside the area.  And it would have to be done in cash to avoid the attention of the IRS and the FEC, so now you need security to protect all that cash. We’re well over a million dollars at this point.  One million dollars, conservatively, per town hall protest.  There have been dozens of them across the country: Iowa, Ohio, California, Utah, Colorado.

$1,000,000

Who is paying for all of this?  The Democratic National Committee doesn’t have the resources for this, and if they did, they would focus it on winning elections in 2018. They don’t care about getting existing Representatives to vote one way or another, and they’re certainly not going to waste that kind of money on deep red districts in red states they’ll never win. Not just to embarrass Jason Chaffetz, nobody knew who he was last month.  And despite what you may have heard from your conspiracy theorist friends, George Soros may throw some money at liberal non-profits, but he does not have a shadowy secret police force that could pull this off.

It’s not just probability. It’s reality.

There are millions of Americans who will lose their healthcare when the ACA is repealed, and more who oppose the executive orders put forth by this president or are suspicious of his fondness and praise for Vladimir Putin.  They are angry, and they are demanding that their elected congressional representatives provide the check on the presidency that is the constitutional duty. There is no secret army of spies funded by the Illuminati fomenting protests at last minute congressional town hall meetings. The only reason our elected representatives keep blaming “paid protesters” is because they don’t want to say “I don’t care about my constituents.” Don’t let them off the hook.

This weekend, while speaking (four years prematurely) at a campaign event, the president said “You look at what’s happening last night in Sweden.” Of course, nothing of note had happened in Sweden. The Bowling Green Massacre. The millions of illegal voters. The largest inauguration audience. Misstatements. Errors. Lies.

The inaccuracy of these assertions is brazen and obvious. His opponents repeat them with contempt and ridicule, but they have no good way to counter them. How do you fact check something that is obviously false? If he says the sky is green or the Earth is flat, countering that with a link to the New York Times or Wikipedia is pointless. Two people cannot debate or discuss solutions when they have fundamentally different understandings of the facts. It’s like having a debate about the best way to regulate domestic airlines with someone who believes that human flight is impossible. The cascade of falsity has already overwhelmed some of his opponents. Since opposition seems pointless, they close ranks with like-minded friends and avoid engaging with anyone operating under “alternative facts.”

With every successive untruth, the president and his spokespersons offer their supporters a choice between a world where there was no Bowling Green Massacre and one where the president they chose is both honest and credible. Most of these supporters dig in their heels. They come up with explanations and excuses and share them broadly. Some even choose to accept and believe the lies. Like hard liquor, every time you accept or rationalize a lie, the next one becomes easier to swallow, and you end up just as drunk.

Human beings naturally gather ourselves into groups. And, we are inclined to support, defend, and think well of those who are in our group and think badly of those who oppose our group. You see this illustrated when Red Sox fans decry the Yankees for their outlandish spending on free agents, but defend Boston taking the same actions. We don’t want to think that someone in our group is lying to us, whether our family or political party. It’s painful, so we act in a way to minimize that pain, by rationalizing, by making excuses, and by choosing to believe the lie. Cognitive dissonance is a hell of a drug.

I’m not saying it’s part of his evil plan, but it is very effective at driving a deeper wedge between Americans, and a deeply divided people is easier to control and to set against one another.

Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial, Washington D.C.

The current president and his advisors want us to be afraid. The president sends out ominous tweets about “bad dudes” and assigning blame if “something happens.”  He has portrayed American cities as “crime-infested,” filled with “carnage,” and “falling apart.” The president went on to claim – falsely –  that the murder rate has reached a 47 year high. Presidential Counselor Kellyanne Conway recently even invented a nonexistent terrorist attack in Kentucky. And Press Secretary Sean Spicer has claimed that the media are engaged in a cover-up of terrorist attacks.  Murders! Made-up terrorist attacks! Media cover-up! They want us to be afraid.

Together, all these things raise the question of why the president and his allies would want us to be full of fear. I don’t have the ability to look at what’s in the president’s heart. But, I can look at history: People who are afraid have been all too eager to increase government power and to restrict the civil liberties of others. In the 18th century, the British Parliament used a fear of protest and of economic losses to seize rights from American colonists. They granted direct control of the colony of Massachusetts to the crown and closed the port of Boston.  Sixty years later, the state of Virginia exploited the fear of slave rebellion to apply even greater restrictions upon a people already enslaved.  Virginia forbade African Americans, even those who were free, from freely practicing religion, or learning to read or write. And all of us are aware of how German nationalists exploited fear and hatred to commit the greatest atrocity of the 20th century.  Nazi leader Hermann Göring explained this strategy explicitly during the Nuremberg Trials:

Why, of course, the people don’t want war. … Naturally, the common people don’t want war; neither in Russia nor in England nor in America, nor for that matter in Germany. That is understood. But … the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same way in any country. – Hermann Göring, 1945

Fear is a powerful motivator, but a poor guide. When we allow fear to rule, we make poor decisions. We lash out at innocent people. We make mistakes. We even compromise our core values.

Throughout history and literature are warnings against being manipulated by fear and propaganda. The totalitarian government in George Orwell’s 1984 controls the population by manipulating their fear and hatred of arbitrary enemies. The central conflict in Dune, Frank Herbert’s science fiction epic, is a young man manipulating fears and prejudices to take leadership and to bring down an empire. Herbert calls fear “the mindkiller,” and that’s not wrong. When overcome by fear for our safety and our families, we’re all too eager to ignore evidence and reason. Letting fear choose our course can have tragic consequences not only where states and empires are concerned, but at the personal level as when Iago uses fear to manipulate Othello in Shakespeare’s play of the same name.

In 1941, before the entry of the United States into the Second World War, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt included this statement in his Four Freedoms speech before a join session of Congress:

Every realist knows that the democratic way of life is at this moment being directly assailed in every part of the world—assailed either by arms, or by secret spreading of poisonous propaganda by those who seek to destroy unity and promote discord in nations that are still at peace. – Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1941

To me, that seems as relevant here in the 21st century as on the eve of World War II. This administration is exploiting fear in order to divide us from each other and to give even more power to those who seek to curtail the liberties of the vulnerable and in doing so to render hollow the liberties enjoyed by the rest. There is nothing to fear. Don’t believe me? Look to your own life. How many people do you actually know who are victims of Muslim terrorists? Has there been any such attack in your town? Your state? Compare that to the number of car accidents you know of, or cases of domestic violence. No one is being killed by refugees. Our Muslim neighbors are not a danger to us. The murder rate is going down. You are not going to be killed by a terrorist and neither am I.

Don’t be manipulated by lies, propaganda, and fear.  If you won’t listen to me, listen to God:

Fear thou not; for I am with thee: be not dismayed; for I am thy God: I will strengthen thee; yea, I will help thee; yea, I will uphold thee with the right hand of my righteousness. – Isaiah 41:10

Or if you’re not interested in God, listen to Paul Atreides:

I must not fear.
Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear.
I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing.
Only I will remain. – Litany Against Fear

It really speaks to your privilege that you have time for a football game when people are fighting for their lives.

The president is causing a constitutional crisis and she’s worried about The Bachelor.

Have you read something like this on social media lately? Said it yourself?

I know I have. Once every day or so, one of my friends posts a heavily edited meme shaming people for being disengaged from politics, or a long text rant about how unimportant these mundane concerns are in this time of crisis. Let me offer you some advice: Don’t do this. Don’t shame people. It’s not helping them to be more involved. No one was ever shamed into political action. And it’s not even helping you. You don’t feel better. You just stew on your anger some more. You don’t know how involved others are. Maybe internet cat videos are all she posts, but she calls Congress every day.

And every one of us, no matter how political engaged needs a break – to read a book, to play with our kids, or yes to watch a football game. I find myself caring about the Super Bowl a lot less this year than most, but I’ll probably take a couple hours to watch some of it. The fight to preserve our rights and our way of life will be ongoing for years. It’s not going to be won or lost in the course of a weekend or an afternoon. But if we, each of us, do not take some time to disengage and relax, we’ll just end up burned out and with high blood pressure.

The new president’s chief strategist, Stephen Bannon, who until recently operated a Neo-Nazi propaganda outlet, told the New York Times “I want you to quote this. The media here is the opposition party.”  Throughout the campaign the spokespeople for the new administration railed against the media. The president has repeatedly called the media “dishonest.” And less than a week earlier, Press Secretary Sean Spicer presented obviously false information about the size of the inauguration crowd in an official statement.  This was later characterized by White House advisor Kellyanne Conway as “alternative facts.” Taken together these events have been called the “war on facts” by New York Magazine, Rolling Stone, and others. But the scale is much larger than that. The battle against facts is a single offensive in a greater campaign – a war on faith.

In this case, I’m not talking about faith in God. The faith in peril here is the faith in the social contract, the faith in equal justice, the faith we have in each other to maintain that justice. Even after the Watergate scandal, our society has operated on a basic trust that most of us are following the rules and that justice will be done. This is why we politely wait in line at Disneyland, why we stop at red lights when there are no police in sight, why we don’t go through the “10 items or fewer” lane with two dozen things.

They Told Us Themselves

Both the president and his chief strategist have both even said that the overthrow of social order is their goal. The new president on Fox News, and Bannon told the Daily Beast:

I want to bring everything crashing down, and destroy all of today’s establishment.

These aren’t statements about college football taken out of context with the intent to mislead. The president and his advisor are actually talking glowingly about the overthrow of American society.

If you view American culture and society positively, you probably wonder why these men would want such a thing. That’s because for you and me and the vast majority of Americans, our laws and conventions and customs protect us and work to our benefit. We work together to ensure fairness and opportunity for everyone, and we largely don’t let the powerful exploit that power to it’s full extent. If The Rock (who I’m sure is a great guy and would never do this) were to show up and shove me out of the line for Space Mountain, I have every confidence that the whole queue would turn on him and make a scene. But for the wealthy and powerful, they have everything to gain by this breakdown. Why wait in line when you can buy the first place in the queue or intimidate your way into it? Why preserve a public park, open to all, when you could privatize it and keep out the rabble? They already have money. They stand to gain even more and power along with it. Our new president was caught on tape admitting to this philosophy:

When you’re a star, they let you do it. You can do anything.

They don’t want to be constrained by our petty rules and conventions. They think they are superior to the rest of us and want to exercise that presumed superiority.

The Actions They Take

Take a look at the cabinet officials this administration is appointing. The choice for secretary of Housing and Urban Development has no experience in government or housing. Betsy DeVos who has been chosen for the Department of Education has made a career as an opponent of public education, advocating that public funds be diverted to private Christian schools. The man appointed to lead federal civil rights enforcement was deemed too racist to be confirmed as a federal judge.  Former Florida governor Rick Perry, who once wanted to abolish the Department of Energy, and didn’t even know its role, has been nominated to lead it.

The new president has even assaulted the credibility of the American intelligence community, usually well regarded by conservatives. He attacked the director of the CIA and compared the American intelligence apparatus to Nazis. The American public follows the rules and respects the government because we believe that more often than not, our government does right by us. What better way to destroy faith in government and “destroy the establishment” than to attack public servants, and to fill vital government functions with individuals who are openly and specifically hostile to those same functions.

Longtime conventions of the presidency have been broken.  For fifty years, presidential candidates have released their tax returns. Our current president offered delays and excuses before finally refusing completely. Instead of divesting himself of his business interests or placing them in a blind trust, he left them in the care of his children presenting a clear conflict of interest. He made his son-in-law an official advisor, defying presidential norms against nepotism and has included his daughter in official visits with foreign governments. The new First Lady has even maintained her residence in New York at great public expense. The public will come to understand that the presidency is just an ancillary office to his private business interests, directly undermining our highest public office.

The necessity of public trust is not limited to government itself. The public benefits of a trustworthy and open press was clear even at the beginning of the Republic. Constitutional protection for it is enshrined in the first amendment. Yet in recent years we’ve been told to hold it in contempt. Certain outlets deride the press as “the liberal media” and assure their audience that their brand alone delivers the truth, in spite of research to the contrary.  During the most recent election our social media sites were flooded with propaganda and misinformation that is being called “fake news.” Outlandishly false but oft-repeated stories like the one about the fictional pizza parlor child sex ring erodes the public trust in journalism. And misleading partisan clickbait does the same by consciously misinterpreting real events to evoke an emotional response from a particular audience. If the public are not collectively aware of events, or we have been trained to disbelieve anything we dislike, we’re not inclined to take the appropriate actions.

How to Respond

Unfortunately, the nature of an assault on our faith in our public institutions makes it difficult to counter. We cannot respond to an erosion of trust by simply trusting harder.  When there is a loss of trust, people have to work together to repair it. We must resist the urge to give in to lazy cynicism. There are actions we can take.  We must think critically about what we are told – who benefits from this idea, what facts support it.  We are told “All politicians are corrupt.”  Who does that benefit? The corrupt who are equated with those who are not.  We are told “Voting doesn’t matter.” That benefits the interests of the generally wealthier individuals who always turn out to vote.

On that same note, call your congressional representatives. It doesn’t matter whether they care about us personally. They do care about our votes. Buckets of cash from special interests do not directly elect them. American citizens do, and when we call and make demands, our officials are put on notice.

We must keep ourselves informed. That means reading – and paying for – a serious newspaper, the Washington Post, the New York Times, The LA Times.  It doesn’t matter. It also means turning off the stream of propaganda, clickbait, and sensationalism: US Uncut. New Century Times. The Drudge Report. The Daily Caller. Breitbart. None of these produce serious journalism. They’re propaganda designed to enrage and rally their side against the enemy. Block them all. Likewise turn off cable news. CNN is not part of some liberal crusade, but these days they are more likely to present a special about a funny looking bird than serious analysis. If there is a crisis unfolding live on television, your local broadcasters will be covering it. Otherwise, you’ll get more facts and more nuance from a newspaper.