Vice Signaling

The Guardian recently published an article addressing the degraded rhetoric ushered in by MAGA and employed non-stop by Trump.

We all are familiar with the concept of “virtue signaling”–-defined as publicly taking progressive positions that can seem performative–efforts to burnish one’s moral credentials, or demonstrate “right-thinking” (with a lower-case r.) As the article says, it can be easy to lampoon. (When I purchased my first Prius, a colleague suggested that driving a hybrid fell into that category.)

Trump, of course, has exhibited the opposite–what the article calls “vice signaling”–a penchant for dehumanisation that is the  opposite of decency. They’re not in the same rhetorical category. It began with his campaign launch, when he announced that he would build a wall between the US and Mexico in remarks the article described as ungrammatical with a vocabulary that was vague and repetitive. (The embarrassing third grade level characteristics of “Trump speech” that we have now come to expect.)

This is classic vice-signalling, breaking taboos in this case both general (against hate speech) and more specific (against falsely associating base or criminal traits with a race or ethnic group). He was signalling that he was prepared to go there –- say what the establishment would not allow, and assert himself as a politician who is authentic and courageous, who cannot be muzzled.

The recent video depicting the Obamas as apes was consistent with the racism he’s been signaling for decades. The linked article points out that such behaviors garner media attention and “break down established barriers to entry.”

What is far too infrequently discussed is what a society loses when civility of discourse is abandoned, and insults and hateful rhetoric displace respectful disagreement.

Research confirms that civil discourse leads to greater institutional trust– that tone strongly influences whether citizens view institutions as legitimate, even when they disagree with specific policies or outcomes. Without trust, compliance with the law declines and, as we are seeing, polarization deepens.

In “How Democracies Die,” Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt argued that democracy depends on “mutual toleration” and “forbearance”—both rooted in civility. Studies in social psychology show that civil environments increase people’s willingness to listen to each other and increase cross-ideological understanding—even when opinions don’t change.

Other research suggests that civility is economically consequential–high-trust, low-conflict environments attract investment, and reduce both transaction costs and regulatory friction. Social scientists like Robert Putnam have demonstrated that social capital–trust and reciprocity–leads to stronger economic growth.

There are also personal costs to marinating in an increasingly hateful and uncivil society. Medical scientists warn that chronic exposure to hostile rhetoric raises cortisol levels and increases anxiety; political science tells us that civility increases the likelihood of participation in civic life. Political science also tells us that rhetoric routinely delegitimizing elections, courts, journalists and civil servants leads to a greater tolerance of violations of important social norms, to institutional weakening, and ultimately, tolerance of violence.

As we’ve seen in our dysfunctional Congress, inflammatory rhetoric makes compromise difficult, if not impossible. It increases policy gridlock; worse, it creates a situation in which expertise is belittled and dismissed as partisan. (If you doubt that, just look at what RFK, Jr. has done to public health, or consider the consequences of Trump’s dismissal of climate change and embrace of coal mining.)

Civility isn’t silence. It isn’t the absence of protest or disagreement. It’s fundamentally a recognition of civic equality, in the sense that civil discourse implicitly recognizes that every citizen has a right to express an opinion. When discourse and even very strong disagreements are voiced in a civil and respectful manner, governments (and all institutions) benefit.

I’m not naive. I understand that individuals will often express themselves in dismissive or vulgar terms. (I am not exempt.) But when the people we have empowered–those we’ve elected to public office, or those whose celebrity means their comments will be widely shared–use demeaning and ugly rhetoric, “punching down” on those of lesser authority or status, the negative results don’t just fall on the people being demeaned. They are felt society-wide.

Every day, we learn of the profound, concrete damage this administration is doing. We learn of the corruption, the assaults on the rule of law, the efforts to reinstate Jim Crow…on and on. These assaults understandably consume our attention, but while we are compiling our lists of things we must correct once these horrible people have been ejected from our public life, we need to put “restoring civility” near the top.

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How To Disenfranchise A Population

Every American who paid even the least amount of attention in history class is familiar with the phrase “No taxation without representation.” It was a rallying cry during the war for independence, and it has re-entered our national conversation. As economists have pointed out, Trump’s insane tariffs are really taxes on American consumers, taxes that our elected Senators and Representatives did not impose, despite that pesky constitutional provision to the effect that taxation is exclusively within the legislature’s jurisdiction.

Lincoln Square has recently considered the issue from another perspective. The linked essay argues that–thanks to systemic flaws–We the People no longer have representation. Neither the tax burden nor policy decisions are guided by the votes of citizens.

The analysis is persuasive. The essay points out that gerrymandering has diluted representation, that establishment of a 435-member ceiling for the House of Representatives caused representation to continually thin as the population grew, and that the Electoral College allows Presidents to be elected by a minority of voters. Add to that the growing malapportionment of the Senate and a variety of what the essay calls “veto points”–very much including the filibuster–and we have structures that have–little by little– given popular minorities durable governing power without requiring explicit legal disenfranchisement.

I keep thinking of that “frog in boiling water” analogy…

Under Trump, these flaws are being further exploited to permit wildly unpopular and damaging policies (environmental, health, ICE), and what the essay calls “conditional provision of services.” The administration has withheld or delayed delivery of congressionally authorized funds to institutions and programs of which Trump disapproves, and especially to Blue states. Taxation without representation? “When residents of those states continue to pay federal taxes while services are delayed, conditioned, or withdrawn, the resemblance to the original colonial grievance becomes difficult to ignore.”

It’s hard to dispute the author’s assertion that these structural flaws, resulting in minority rule, vote dilution, and conditional governance—have created a legitimacy crisis, and represent “the most serious institutional stress test of the American political system since the Civil War.”

The claim is structural: the United States has long maintained systems capable of separating contribution from control. Minority rule through malapportioned institutions. Vote dilution through engineered districts and capped representation. And—most destabilizing in practice—governance that becomes conditional, where baseline services and administrative capacity are experienced as leverage rather than as citizenship guarantees.

In a weird way, our present situation mirrors that of the Revolution. As the author notes, those participating in the Boston Tea Party weren’t just objecting to a tax. They were objecting to a system in which “representation existed in theory but not in practice.” American victory in the Revolutionary War was followed by the establishment of a system that may have been democratic in aspiration, but was–as the essay asserts– oligarchic in structure, not to mention selectively enforced.

And as the essay reminds us, those undemocratic mechanisms are still with us, albeit in altered form. Gerrymandering has replaced the explicit disenfranchisement of disfavored populations with “engineered outcomes.” The cap on House membership has diluted representation. The Senate is the epitome of minority rule–states with some thirty percent of the population have the same number of Senators as states with seventy percent, while the Electoral College enables presidents to assume office despite losing a majority of the vote.

In other words, while voting has persisted, power no longer follows. As the essay concludes, real representation has become lost within “a dense architecture of veto points capable of absorbing popular dissatisfaction without producing institutional change. Elections became mechanisms of rotation rather than accountability.”

At this point, America’s election outcomes increasingly fail to direct or even influence national policy. We have formal “democratic” participation, but actual power continues to be exercised by a wealthy, entitled and entrenched minority.

When the Trump circus implodes (and thankfully, there are signs that that blessed day is coming), we need to elect true democrats–small d–who will address the structural and systemic flaws that have turned American governance by We the People into a charade, and have once again created a situation in which we have taxation–and policy–without representation.

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Religion, Common Sense–And Snark

Yesterday, I shared signs that the resistance to MAGA/Trump is gaining steam. Among those positive signs is the emergence of religious leaders who are now coming out in force to rebut the performative piety of the White “Christian” nationalists who make up a significant part of the MAGA cult.

The recent growth of participation by genuinely religious leaders is welcome, but we shouldn’t overlook clerics who have been addressing the evils of the administration and the hypocrisy of those “Christians” for quite some time. One of those brave souls is local Quaker pastor, Phil Gulley, who is also a noted humorist and author. (Phil now has a Substack, and if you don’t get it, you absolutely should.)

Phil is a friend, and has graciously allowed me to quote liberally from one recent essay, titled “Can I Get An Amen?”

He began by describing an incident where he was invited and subsequently dis-invited to address a Southern Baptist gathering, Gully noted that the Southern Baptist Convention “is to spirituality what Donald Trump is to education. Speaking of Donald Trump, seventy-two percent of Southern Baptists voted for him in the last election, which gives you some idea of their moral acumen.”

Gulley then turned to Trump’s “hour long dronefest” at the National Prayer Breakfast.

As rich a spiritual event as the National Day of Prayer breakfast was, I can’t help but wonder why Billy Graham, back in 1952, thought it a good idea to pray to a man who told his followers, “when thou prayest, enter into thy closet, and when thou hast shut thy door, pray to thy Father which is in secret…” Then again, religion can be a mysterious undertaking and maybe back in 1952 Jesus changed his mind and told Billy Graham to go ahead and rent out a hotel ballroom, fill it with big shots, invite the press, and have at it.

Gulley noted that Franklin Graham, Billy’s son, had skipped the event, and wondered whether

he and God might be on the outs since this past November when Graham said, “The Epstein files are nothing compared to God’s files.” I had no idea God, as Graham seems to suggest, is an even bigger pedophile than Jeffrey Epstein and I think Franklin Graham needs to tell us what he knows and when he knew it.

The essay’s conclusion is vintage Gulley.

As annoying as all these things are, what bothers me most is that the prayer breakfast was held on February 5th, my birthday, and I would have happily traveled to Washington D.C. to speak to those folks. There are things I’ve been wanting to say to Donald Trump and the Southern Baptists for some years now and it would have saved me a lot of trouble to only have to say it once, when they were all together. Since they didn’t afford me the opportunity, I’ll say it now. Do us all a favor and go into your closets, close the doors, and shut your pieholes. Leave the running of the country to those of us who still believe in the Constitution. Can I get an Amen!

I certainly say Amen!

I will also note that there is much to be said for employing humor in the face of looming disaster. (There’s a reason so many comedians are Jewish…we know a lot about disaster.) On the local level, a pundit who regularly serves up excellent–and informative–snark is Abdul Shabazz. Abdul is a lawyer; he publishes Indy Politics and serves up astute commentary with a penetrating wit as he surveys Indiana’s legislature and the Hoosier political environment.

A recent edition considered “Rino Season in Indiana.”

There’s a new sport in Indiana politics, and it’s not deer season or turkey season, or even rabbit season.

It’s RINO season.

No Quarter PAC has burst onto the scene with all the subtlety of a foghorn and the emotional range of a campaign mailer written entirely in bold. Their grievance is simple: twenty-one Indiana Republican state senators voted against a congressional map President Donald Trump wanted, and as a result, Indiana remains 7–2 instead of the allegedly holier 9–0.

Apparently, 78 percent Republican control is now considered a rounding error.

As Abdul points out, there’s nothing wrong with primaries. “If Republican voters want to replace incumbents over redistricting strategy, that’s their call. Parties have internal debates all the time…But this isn’t just a debate about maps. It’s about discipline… about turning every procedural disagreement into a loyalty test.”

As he notes, in Indiana politics, there’s apparently no shortage of hunting licenses.

If you want some excellent snark in which to marinate your daily political depression, subscribe to both of them.

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Good Stuff Is Happening Too

There’s a reason “doom scrolling” has entered our vocabularies. Every day, the news is filled with incomprehensibly stupid and damaging activities of Trump and his collection of clowns, creeps, weirdos and incompetents; it’s easy to become fixated on all the chaos and destruction.

But there are encouraging signs that We the People are rapidly awakening from our civic slumber. Some examples, in no particular order: 

A Grand Jury has refused to indict two Senators (including former astronaut Mark Kelly) and four Congresspersons who’d filmed a video in which they reminded members of the armed forces that they have a legal duty to refuse illegal orders. It’s an axiom in the legal community that prosecutors can get grand juries to indict a ham sandwich, but this recent–and entirely appropriate–result follows several others in which panels of ordinary American citizens have refused to go along with bogus charges lodged against people targeted by Trumpian pique.

Despite early incidents in which institutions of higher education have “bent the knee,” universities have begun pushing back. In Red Indiana, where the current President of Indiana University has cozied up to our MAGA governor and complied with the administration’s various assaults on academic freedom, the faculty has passed a resolution urging IU to remove the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, along with its Customs and Border Protection and Immigration and Customs Enforcement agencies, from the university’s list of approved employers who are allowed to advertise jobs on the IU Events calendar.  

The House of Representatives defied Trump for once, voting 217-214 against a rule that would have blocked members from voting on the president’s tariffs. The defeat means that members will be able to force up or down votes on the President’s insane, damaging global trade agenda. (The Senate had already voted against Trump’s tariffs with GOP senators siding with Democrats last year.)

ICE is leaving Minneapolis. Trump is steadily losing support on his signature issue of immigration. An NBC/SurveyMonkey poll found 49% of American adults strongly disapprove of the Trump administration’s handling of border security and immigration, compared with 34% who strongly disapproved in a similar poll last April.

An essay titled “Auspicious Omens and Excellent Insubordination” contains a lengthy list of other evidence that the resistance is making progress, and that an administration described as “weak, chaotic, and wildly unpopular” is continuing to do everything it can to make itself more so. 

There are also the slow-moving but inexorable revelations from the Epstein files, which–in addition to a reported million mentions of Trump–have ensnared people like Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, and debunked Trump’s assertions that he hadn’t known about Epstein’s sexual crimes. As the essay suggests, the continuing dribble of releases, along with the obvious efforts to suppress information about “who is being protected (powerful men) and who is not (abused children)” keeps fanning the flames.

The unhinged and increasingly overt racism that led Trump to portray the Obamas as apes has generated a backlash even among Republicans. As the author notes, Trump fails to understand “that we live in a world where causes have effects.” In this case, one effect was that thousands of people praised the Obamas as gracious, dignified, and beautiful while accurately describing Trump as gross, demented and repulsive.

J.D. Vance continues to be booed–in Vermont, at the Olympics…Trump skipped the Super Bowl because his staff warned that he too would be booed. (And despite his dissing of Bad Bunny, the Super Bowl halftime show was the most widely watched in history.)

Republicans see a bloodbath coming in the midterms, which the Trumpists are already frantically trying delegitimize–a clear sign they don’t think they can win fairly. Democrats have overperformed in every special election held in 2025. Most recently, a Democrat who was outspent by twenty to one won a state senate election in Texas by 14 points–in a district Trump had won by 17 points–a 31-point shift. (A GOP operative was quoted saying, “We watered down red districts to steal blue ones, and now the electorate hates us and our turnout is collapsing.”)

High school students across the country are staging walkouts to protest ICE–and the audience at a wrestling match shouted “Fuck ICE” before the main event.

And authentic Christians have finally been showing up to oppose the psuedo-Christian nationalists. The Catholic church is speaking out for immigrants, and so are Episcopalians, Methodists, and the United Church of Christ– along with rabbis, imams, and Buddhist monks. Across the country, churches are becoming meeting places, training grounds, and organizing networks for immigrant solidarity work.

There’s much more. MAGA has lost more than Marjorie Taylor Greene. It’s lost We the (Real American) People.

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Why I Keep Harping On Gerrymandering

I’m sure many of you are getting tired of my repeated posts about gerrymandering. Sorry, but it’s important to detail all the various, terrible effects of this practice. (I can promise you that, if and when the Democrats retake control of the federal government and pass the John Lewis Act–which would outlaw gerrymandering among other desperately needed reforms–you will get a reprieve.)

In most of my past posts on the subject, I’ve detailed numerous negative results of the practice. Gerrymandering is the antithesis of democracy, because it allows representatives to choose their voters, rather than the other way around. It suppresses the votes of whichever party is the “loser” in that state. It increases political polarization by turning primaries  into the actual elections, virtually ensuring that Republicans will move to protect their right flank and Democrats their left. Etc.

What those past posts haven’t adequately described, however, is how the practice of partisan redistricting affects the legislative performance of those who owe their positions to the practice.

In one of his daily letters, Robert Hubbell provided an excellent example: he focused on a California Congressman named Kevin Kiley. Kiley represents one of the districts that was targeted by California’s mid-decade redistricting. When that redistricting occurred, he found himself left with a district that is no longer safe for the GOP. And suddenly, Hubbell reports, “he has found the courage to stand up to Trump.” Hubbell also notes that Don Bacon, who represents a competitive Nebraska district, frequently breaks with Trump. As he observes, “Funny how representing a competitive district gives Republicans the backbone to stand up to Trump.”

It isn’t just Washington.

Indianapolis Star columnist James Briggs recently pointed to the effects of gerrymandering on the Indiana legislature, where Republicans from safe districts that they’ve drawn revel in their super-majority and have become increasingly arrogant and entitled. As Briggs notes, the Republican House speaker, Todd Huston, controls what happens at the Indiana Statehouse. “Want to pass a bill? You need Huston. Want to stop a bad bill? Good luck without him.”

And how does an “entitled” Speaker perform?

Briggs reports on a recent, particularly egregious example. During the current session, Democrat Mitch Gore sponsored a bill that would have kept state officials from using taxpayer money to buy luxury cars (think Secretary of State Diego Morales’ GMC Yukon Denali and Lt. Gov. Micah Beckwith’s $90,000 SUV.) The bill had passed out of committee unanimously and was ready for a floor vote. 

But Gore had evidently used his social media account to mock the Republicans who’d bought those luxury vehicles with Hoosiers’ tax dollars. As Briggs points out, the posts were well within “fair game” political territory–but Huston was evidently offended. He refused to bring the measure–which had substantial bipartisan support– to the floor for a vote.

So a good bill died.

As Briggs notes, this wasn’t the first time that Huston felt safe in jettisoning a bill for petty partisan reasons. As he writes, “Ideally, the Indiana House speaker would not be that petty. But if he is, that’s his prerogative, and Indiana Democrats need to figure out how to deal with a Statehouse kingpin who can strike them down at any time, for any reason.”

What Briggs (accurately) calls “pettiness” at the state level, is mirrored by what frustrated citizens call spinelessness at the federal level. These behaviors are all enabled by partisan redistricting–by gerrymandering. Representatives who believe they don’t have to worry about the approval or disapproval of their constituents feel free to ignore the common good in favor of  perceived personal political advantage, or just pique. They are less likely to hold town halls, or take the opportunity to find out what the folks they (theoretically) represent really think or want, and far–far–more likely to toe extremist partisan lines.

Good bills get deep-sixed. “Oversight” of corruption is limited to examination of members of the other party (see James Comer and the Epstein files.)

Without competition, good government takes a back seat to “what’s in it for me.” As Independent Indiana insists, competitive elections lead to better leaders and a stronger state.

The current crisis in America isn’t simply the result of electing terrible people. It’s a result of a practice–partisan redistricting aka gerrymandering– that virtually guarantees that terrible people will be the ones deciding who gets elected. You can call that systemic flaw many things, but democratic isn’t one of them.

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