I’ve noticed that political ‘discussion’ has often devolved down to shouted exchanges of rigid positions, all communicated using parasitic memes. It’s made most political discussions so frustrating and numbing that we don’t even try. That’s because, where ideas drive new ideas, memes are designed and evolved to limit clear thought. The whole point is to shut down longer discussions. And I call them parasitic memes because… well, I can’t call them symbiotes with a straight face. Finally, I call them Republican parasitic memes because they’re almost exclusively issued by the GOP. Democrats use them sometimes, but it’s mostly a Republican tool. And we need to understand that tool to get past the impasse.
Chockamo and I have mentioned memes a few times already, but I think focusing on how memes work as a tool helps explain why our discussions have hardened into so much concrete.
First, some background. I’m using the ‘meme’ derived from Memetics: the study of self-replicating units of culture. Merriam-Webster defines a meme as “an idea, behavior, style, or usage that spreads from person to person within a culture.” That works for me, too, although not as well. Like Mike Godwin, I see a meme as a kind of intellectual virus: an idea that infects you, the host, and uses the mechanisms inside your mind to propagate itself. You tell other people, and the idea infects them, too. Hence, parasitic memes. Like viruses, a meme has no concern for your well-being or the value of the idea itself. It’s all about surviving and the next host.
Like biological viruses, parasitic memes live in a kind of super-Darwinian, survival of the fittest environment. To continue, a meme has to survive, replicate, and propagate. Successful memes have common characteristics:
- It has to attract your attention (the infection vector).
- You need to remember it and think about the meme. A common way is for the meme to punch your buttons, rewarding you (in an endorphin sense) for thinking it.
- A meme has to be easy to pass to another person. Short phrases or images are common.
Memes aren’t necessarily bad. Mike Godwin used the “black hole” example:
When a meme catches on, it may crystallize whole schools of thought. Take the “black hole” meme, for instance. As physicist Brandon Carter has commented in Stephen Hawkings’s A Brief History of Time: A Reader’s Companion: “Things changed dramatically when John Wheeler invented the term [black hole]…Everybody adopted it, and from then on, people around the world, in Moscow, in America, in England, and elsewhere, could know they were speaking about the same thing.” Once the “black hole” meme became commonplace, it became a handy source of metaphors for everything from illiteracy to the deficit.
Mike Godwin, Wired, Oct 1, 1994, Meme, Counter-meme.
“Crystallize” is a great description (and creates its own meme, of course). Reducing complex ideas to short memes can make subsequent discussions easier where both sides agree. Unfortunately, but makes discussions were people don’t agree almost impossible. Push against the reward cycle as much as you want. People will keep jumping back to the comfortable, simpler meme. Memes are useful but inflexible.
Another example is “We support our troops,” a parasitic meme from the first Gulf war. When people challenged President George H. W. Bush about his foreign policy, Bush countered with “I support our troops.” It worked shockingly well, shutting down any dissent or discussion. Nobody wanted to speak “against” our troops.
And saying that phrase gave a subset of Americans a primal thrill. It was tribal, sure, but if you took it in and thought it or repeated it, you got that little endorphin rush every time. And “We support our troops” was as easy as a bumper sticker to propagate. It became a powerful, widely spread meme. And it crushed open discussion for years.
Before you ask, no, it doesn’t matter if the underlying idea is true or false. Not even a bit. The meme either survives and propagates based on other qualities (reward and propagation).
So, what does “We support our troops” really mean? Ask three people and get four answers. Was it “Higher pay?” Nope. Bush proposed no pay hikes. “Better hardware?” Not obviously. “Better benefits?” Nuh-uh. Biggest surprise: it did not mean, “Don’t send our troops into unnecessary combat.” It was just words. But even though the words didn’t mean anything, they worked anyway.
So, that was just background. I’m writing about Maureen Dowd’s annual article by her brother, Kevin. She explains it better in her preface:
Kevin Talks Turkey
No matter how bad your Thanksgiving is, mine will be worse, and I’ll tell you why. My sister thinks Jim Jordan is hot. Well, she didn’t say “hot” exactly, but the words “admire,” “forceful” and “fighter” have been thrown around. And then there’s Kevin. It has been a crazy year, even by Trump standards. So I asked my brother to tell us, in his annual Thanksgiving column, if he has any regrets.
New York Times, Nov. 28,2019, Kevin Talks Turkey.
Then the writing switches to Kevin. (I’m assuming he’s a real guy and not just a literary construct.)
ROCKVILLE, Md. — Over the last three years, Maureen has frequently sent me reader emails demanding to know how I can still support Donald Trump. My short answer is always the same: Have you looked at the alternative?
The liberals still sneer at religious conservatives….
Notice the little thrill he gets from saying that?
I wouldn’t let them come with me to the Knights of Columbus bar.
Wait, what? That’s just weird. “I wouldn’t let [the liberals] come with me to the KoC bar.” All of us? Or did he just create a strawman built from stereotypes? How tall are ‘the liberals’ anyway? Did we come in one car? Do we tip well?
It’s a meme, of course. Kevin wasn’t bothered by the weird image because he hadn’t actually created one in his head. He was just repeating a meme, bypassing the cognitive steps that might have limited replication. That’s how parasitic memes work.
In August, the D.N.C. passed a resolution saying “religiously unaffiliated Americans” are the largest “religious group” in the party and “overwhelmingly” share Democrats’ values.
He’s reprising the “Democrats hate us” meme for the religious conservatives. It doesn’t make much sense logically, but it doesn’t have to. Kevin got his reward by saying it, and he even ground out extra pleasure by using scare quotes.
Is that underlying thing true? Well, so far as the fact that the DNC passed a resolution, sure. But it was mostly factual data – polling – and not a declaration. The memo says (effectively), “When we ask people which religion they belong to, more of them answer ‘no church’ than other affiliation. The no-church people also vote Democratic a lot. We should treat them nicely.” Taken by itself, it seems almost banal. I don’t see how that’s subversive, personally, or how it insults and condemns the faithful. Democrats weren’t cutting religious people out of the party; they were simply acknowledging both groups.
But Republicans made their own uses of the resolution by simply creating new meaning out of thin air, then using it to trigger a conservative firestorm. I followed Kevin’s source, a Washington Examiner article, which quotes from a PDF on Secular.org. When I tried to Google the original source material, it was buried in a whirl of Republican conservative media outlets: American Humanist, Daily Signal, America Magazine, Fox News, Christian Headlines, OneNewsNow (DNC resolution champions faithless, condemns faithful), and more. Pages of the faithful up in arms about the horrible Democratic insult to religion and churches everywhere.
All because the DNC admitted that America has atheists? Doesn’t that seem like an overreaction? Republicans love it, and the people repeating the meme are willing to accept something they probably know isn’t exactly correct. But after that, it’s a parasitic meme; truth doesn’t matter.
And certain House chairmen are waiving the words “So help me God” from swearing-ins.
Yeah, that’s another meme punching his pleasure centers. The more nuanced version? If I’m an atheist, do you think it might be dishonest of me to swear an oath to a god who doesn’t exist? But shared persecution is another powerful building block for memes. That’s part of why this is such a strong Republican meme.
Kevin moved on to list Trump’s successes:
I support the president for his economy…
Trump loves hollering about ‘his economy’ at his rallies. It’s not true, and it’s not a complex meme, but repeating things Trump shouts seems to work anyway. Is it just the tribal marker part? However it works, it gives people that memetic thrill.
In reality, the economy hasn’t boomed under Trump. It hasn’t crashed, either. He’s had a few bumps, but mostly it’s been growing at this rate since the 2009 recovery. Presidents claim credit for every GDP jiggle, but the economy is big, slow, and heavy. Most Presidents are managing the economics their successors will inherit.
…His jobless rate…
Sorta? Unemployment shot up after President George W. Bush’s 2007 recession, but it’s been dropping steadily since 2010. Unemployment continued dropping under Trump, so that’s good, but it’s a straight-line for almost the last decade. No big changes from what Obama gave him, but Trump hasn’t mangled employment too badly yet, either.
…and the record numbers of the stock market that his deregulation fueled.
He’s echoing a Trumpian bellow and another Republican meme. It clearly works for Kevin.
Is it true? Only a little. This is the same as the GDP growth and jobs. Stocks are still following a straight growth line up from the 2008 recession. And it’s good (for me, at least) that the market is up. But it’s not anyone’s surprise. It’s supposed to rise over time. That’s the only reason people invest. Trump can claim that he hasn’t broken things too much, I suppose. If he did, though, remember that we wouldn’t notice for a couple of years.
Here’s a thought. Does that mean that when the markets do go down, Trump will accept blame? I can’t see that one.
Anyway, moving on.
I applaud [Trump’s] unconditional support of the police at a time when I worry we’re returning to a ’60s-style “police are pigs” mind-set.
“Unconditional” is certainly the keyword. No room for subtlety. I’m sure you can buy bumper stickers with “We support the police UNCONDITIONALLY!!” No room for questions or qualifications, because, as Kevin asserts, his support has no conditions or limits.
I wonder how consistent Kevin would be if he or a buddy got hassled by a racist cop who hated, oh, uh dunno, the Irish? Italians? Germans? Unequal treatment under the law isn’t a new practice. Still, there are no worries. The “White Lives Matter” counter-meme makes all that complex history just go away. We’re all better now!
I feel safe in my bed with the way the president is handling Iran and North Korea.
An odd counter-meme to the older “It’s 3 a.m. Who do you want answering the phone?” meme. But it seems to work for Kevin. Of course, [arasotoc memes are designed to be a roadblock against deeper questions.
Here’s an example of the subtleties we’re giving away. I think Trump’s North Korea talks were long overdue. We should have resumed some level of diplomatic talks ages ago. It’s like Cuba that way. I could support Trump with just a little more work and a decent focus on the goals. But without that, no, I don’t trust Trump isn’t acting in his own interests. And no, I don’t trust Trump not to be a patsy again. (Ref: Erdogan.)
Anyway, that’s too complex. “I feel safe in my bed…” means “Shut up with that other stuff.” It’s a parasitic meme.
Most of all, I support [Trump] for saving the Supreme Court from Hillary Clinton.
“Saving” is an odd word. I know it’s a core to the persecution/salvation meme, but really? When he was in office, Obama nominated Merrick Garland, who was dull and almost painfully centrist. Did Kevin worry Clinton would nominate far-left firebrands for confirmation through the Republican-controlled Senate?
Of course not. It’s another meme; no thinking required. But Kevin lists it as “Most of all….” That’s a telling addition.
The impeachment inquiry is a farce. Ukraine didn’t do the investigation and the aid was released. I think that all aid is quid pro quo.
It’s all meme, meme, and parasitic meme. We’re down in the repetition part. No discussion necessary; no worrisome qualifications or questions. And there’s no level of evidence that can override that certainty because nobody is listening. Again, that’s how memes work, especially the strong ones. And this persecution meme is one that Republicans have been working on for decades.
Anyway, all that said, I think people should read Kevin’s Op-Ed, Kevin Talks Turkey. It’s a useful primer for working around parasitic memes. And who knows? Maybe it’s a good counterexample to bloviating idiots like me.
Update: Trump loves Kevin, too!
Just read the best Maureen Dowd column, in the New York Times, EVER (although she treated me great before politics), but it was written by her brother, Kevin. Someone in the News Media should hire her wonderful, talented, and very smart brother! https://t.co/lO9s1qLK8A
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 5, 2019
I’m concluding that Trump was happy because Kevin was repeating his memes faithfully.
