We Need A Marshall Plan For West Virginia
TW: The following piece discusses and shows evidence of anti-Semitism, anti-blackness, white supremacy, and the insurgency 6th of January, 2021. Please take care of yourself during these tumultuous times.
The 2020 election cycle was one of the most divisive in American history. While the presidential election may have consumed most of my conversations, state and local elections were also at peak polarization. One state, in particular, became a crucial battleground for Democrats and Republicans: Georgia.
Over the weeks since November 3rd, 2020, Georgia’s runoff and special senatorial elections became, arguably, the second most important election of the cycle because of its role in determining which party controls the Senate. What made these elections especially unique was that they were practically a toss up in a state that has, historically, been a Republican stronghold.
As Georgians cast their votes last Tuesday, I began to reflect on some of the despicable tactics employed over the last election cycle.
Following President Trump’s electoral college loss and his subsequent misinformation campaign, the Georgia runoff elections were bound to be “Trumpians’’ last electoral stand, and the election sure met expectations. Both Republican incumbents, Kelly Loeffler and David Perdue, weaponized racial tropes and stereotypes against their opponents, Raphael Warnock and Jon Ossoff, for their own political advantage.
Senator Perdue’s campaign employed one of the oldest anti-Semitic tropes in the books by lengthening Jon Ossoff’s nose in a political advertisement.
Perdue’s team removed the Facebook ad, which was allegedly created by a third party vendor, after backlash and an apology followed suit. Nevertheless, the damage had already been done and Perdue’s campaign had shown their cards. They tried to hit the political kill switch: signal to Georgians, particularly far-right Georgians, that Jews were trying to “buy Georgia!”
Similarly, Senator Loeffler’s campaign ran a Facebook ad that darkened Reverend Raphael Warnock’s skin, piggy backing on research that finds that darker skin is associated with perceptions of evil.
To add insult to injury, another one of Loeffler’s ads referred to Rev. Warnock as “dangerous for Georgia,” which seems to be a signal to a historically anti-black argument about black criminality. News coverage around the ad was lackluster because it came on the heels of a picture of Senator Loeffler and Chester Dole, a white supremacist and former KKK imperial wizard, going viral on social media. Again, Loeffler apologized for both events, claimed ignorance, and condemned racism.
Both incumbents’ controversies were at best suspect and at worst deplorable. But, if you ask me, Loeffler and Perdue knew exactly what they were doing and so did their PR teams. Even if they weren’t privy to reviewing their own political ads (which, at a baseline, seems like a huge red flag), it still deeply troubles me that anyone connected to their campaigns would feel emboldened to do something so outrageous. And, if for some reason there was a misstep in terms of oversight, they should have taken full responsibility, vehemently denounced the actions, and fired everyone involved. Real atonement.
(You can read more about Loeffler’s controversy here and Perdue’s controversy here.)
I originally wrote this riff on the morning of January 6th with the intention of exclusively writing about the elections in Georgia, but I would be remissed if I did not connect these events to the attempted coup at our Congressional building, a building near which I frequently ran when I lived in DC.
Make no mistake: what we saw on that Wednesday was the Charlottesville “Unite the Right” Rally on steroids in our nation’s capital.
Let it not be forgotten that the birth of this nation was on the backs of slaves. We, as a nation, fought a civil war over the ownership of black people. We, as voters, crafted (and continue to craft) laws that thwart racial progress. And, to make matters worse, the racial animosity that has boiled in the darkest corners of our nation clearly haven’t been fully addressed.
As much as I would love to list every politician and every enabling statement that led to this moment (*cough cough* DJT & company literally less than an hour before the attack), I certainly am not the most qualified nor the best researched person to do so. However, I do think that one thing is evidently clear: Republicans have been stoking racial animosity for years and this was just another consequence of those actions.
Unfortunately, Senators Loeffler and Perdue’s controversies stink from the very same head that led to the insurrection at our nation’s capital on the same day that Warnock (a black pastor from Ebenezer Baptist Church) and Ossoff (a Jewish reporter) were projected to win both seats in their senatorial elections.
And, the worst part of the intimidation, violence, and attempted kidnappings we just witnessed is that none of it is new. There is a long history of white supremacists wreaking havoc on minorities, as well as the politicians who stood up for them. The Klu Klux Klan (KKK), in particular, has been a vehicle for white supremacy and domestic terrorism ever since its founding in 1865, the same year the Civil War ended.
White supremacists were never fringe individuals. They were our neighbors. They were our law enforcement. They were even our president.
Time may have elapsed, but our white supremacist reality has not changed. In fact, I can assure you that you can find a Klan chapter — or an associated organization — only miles from your house.
If you can’t find white hoods, you can find Hawaiian shirts or viking horns or the MAGA hat.
This problem is not unique to the South. This is America.
Republicans (and, historically, plenty of Democrats) have weaponized this racial outrage to win elections, and then they do close to nothing to address the material problems that led to the hatred in the first place.
President Lyndon B. Johnson spoke volumes on this subject nearly 60 years ago, “If you can convince the lowest white man he’s better than the best colored man, he won’t notice you’re picking his pocket. Hell, give him somebody to look down on, and he’ll empty his pockets for you.”
Evidently, Donald Trump was never the beginning of this hatred; he has always been a symptom of our systematic inability to eradicate white supremacy.
I’d like for you to think for a moment about how last Wednesday would have differed had it been Black Lives Matter protesters congregating in front of the capitol.
Better yet, what would have happened had another country invaded our capitol?
I’m not a fan of war, in general, but I am certain that those actions would have been declared an act of war and the possibility of nuclear war would circulate among certain hawkish circles.
I’m not saying that we should decimate those who stormed our capitol. What I am saying, however, is that something ought to be done. Justice ought to be served to those who broke into the capitol and threatened our legislators, and the same principle ought to be applied to those who incited that violence.
That said, time in prison, fines, and ineligibility to run for public office will not resolve the problems that led us here. As evidence, let me remind you of an all too bleak part of human history, courtesy of US Holocaust Memorial Museum:
“Hitler began writing Mein Kampf in 1924 in Landsberg prison, following his conviction for high treason for attempting to overthrow the German republic in November 1923 in the so-called Beer Hall Putsch. Although his coup failed, Hitler used his trial as a pulpit to spread Nazi propaganda. Largely unknown before this event, he gained immediate notoriety in the German and international press. The court sentenced him to five years imprisonment, of which he served less than 9 months. With his political career at an all-time low, he hoped that publishing the book would earn him some money and serve as a propaganda platform to air his radical views and attack those whom he accused of betraying him and Germany.”
When Hitler was released from prison, his political philosophy was even more salient, and he mounted yet another coup to take over the Reichstag. “Hitler capitalized on economic woes, popular discontent and political infighting to take absolute power in Germany.” Sound familiar?
Under Hitler’s reign, the Nazis expanded regional control to assert global dominance, committed one of the most atrocious human rights violations in history, and sucked the world into a war that cost millions of lives.
Now, I am not arguing that all Trump supporters are Nazis (although it is well documented that neo-Nazis are very supportive of President Trump and feel more emboldened because of his presidency). I merely wish for us to consider how far radicalization can go if we don’t address the underlying issues.
(But, also, doesn’t it feel like a massive red flag that half of our country aligns with a politician endorsed by neo-Nazis, the KKK, and other white supremacist organizations?)
After all the events we have witnessed, I’ve realized that our sensible demands for progress have always already been a never-ending game of whack-a-mole with bigotry.
Infographic representation of whack-a-mole. Image courtesy of Getty Images.
The main difference here, though, is that the stakes of this game are life and death, and we have been losing for decades. We cannot afford to just whack the bigots back into whatever hole they crawled out of because that continues to leave them to their own devices. We need to root out the problem in its entirety.
So, where do we go from here?
I’m not entirely sure, but here’s where I think we should start: our gridlocked government that has continuously fails to meet our material needs.
Last month, I was watching Max Brooks, senior fellow at the Modern War Institute at West Point and author of Devolution, talking to Bill Maher about de-radicalizing homegrown insurgencies (like the one we’ve just seen) on Real Time with Bill Maher, and I think Brooks explained our next steps perfectly.
“[This] is how you defeat an insurgency: you do not do it with street violence because, every insurgent you kill, you make another hundred. This is exactly what my dad did in World War II. He hunted what was called ‘werewolves,’ which were Nazis who fled when the Reich fell, went into the hills, and vowed to fight The Allies for 100 years.
And, you know how we defeated that insurgency?
We rebuilt Germany. Those guys came back out of the hills and we said, ‘Hey you, Fritz! I got a job for ya.’ If we want to diffuse this homegrown insurgency, we have to govern well. In fact, if you look at the US military’s counterinsurgency manual (peel away the tactical layers), it’s just a handbook for good government… We need a Marshall Plan for West Virginia.”
If you are unfamiliar with the Marshall Plan, let me briefly fill you in.
WWII left Europe in shambles: millions of Europeans were killed in the war while those who survived were on the brink of famine, major cities like London had been decimated by bombings, and Europe’s economy had collapsed.
America, on the other hand, had sustained comparatively little homeland damage during the war and soldiers returned to a reinvigorated, global economy. Recognizing the dire situation in Western Europe, Secretary of State George C. Marshall conceived of a four-year plan to reconstruct cities, industries, and infrastructure in the most damaged regions during the war to foster commerce between Western Europe and the US and rebuild those nations in America’s favor.
The Marshall Plan was enacted in 1948 and provided $15 billion to refinance the Soviet-free regions of the continent. The funds were not evenly distributed, however, and West Germany became a particular point of interest for America as the Cold War with the USSR kicked off. Despite its problems, the Marshall Plan was a raging success for America and most of Western Europe.
(You can read more about the Marshall Plan here.)
The heavy investment in Europe is very distinct from the approach politicians took after the Civil War. Reconstruction, which was the era that directly followed the Civil War, was a major effort to reintegrate Southern states in the (former) Confederacy into the Union. Radical Reconstruction, which started with the passage of the Reconstruction Act of 1867, enfranchised Black people and bolstered their voice for the first time in American history. The radical wing of the Republican Party of that day hoped to build on the progressive momentum of the Reconstruction Act and extend economic support to the former Confederates and — most notably — freed slaves. Unfortunately, reactionary forces — like the KKK — saw this period as moving too swiftly and plenty of the progress was erased. Our first experiment in healing the nation was thwarted before it even got off the ground, and we continue to live with the consequences.
(You can read more about the Reconstruction Era here.)
Thankfully, Brooks elaborated on the need for a new Marshall Plan during his conversation with Maher.
“This is what I have been talking about ever since I got on this show: globalization has ripped half the heart out of this country and automation is going to rip the other half out. If we don’t get a handle on this, if we don’t start to govern by what affects most Americans, then we [Democrats] will lose again in four years. The best way to do that is to understand, ‘How did Trump get elected?’ Every fanatic, no matter Nazis, communists, Taliban, they always started with a kernel of a legitimate concern.”
(You can watch the full discussion between Max Brooks and Bill Maher here.)
A few comments on Brooks’ statements.
First, I’d like to provide additional context on Brooks assertion about globalization and automation.
Globalization is defined by Oxford Dictionary as “the process by which businesses or other organizations develop international influence or start operating on an international scale.”
Brooks may have pointed to globalization as the root cause of radicalization, but it is not holistically bad. Mike Collins, a manufacturing and policy writer at Forbes, described the pros and cons of globalization in an article he wrote in 2015.
“There is no question that globalization has been a good thing for many developing countries who now have access to our markets and can export cheap goods. Globalization has also been good for multinational corporations and Wall Street. But globalization has not been good for working people (blue or white collar) and has led to the continuing deindustrialization of America.”
In other words, one of the main downsides of globalization is expedited off-shoring because human capital costs less in developing nations. That has been uniquely the case for the American middle class.
June Zaccone, professor of economics at Hofstra University, aggregated the evidence in her 2015 paper, “Has Globalization Destroyed the American Middle Class?”
“During the 1980s, job shares at the lowest skill levels were declining as those at skill levels above the median rose. In the next decade, this uniformity changed to polarization. Relative employment growth was most rapid at high skill levels, though it was also slightly positive at very low percentiles (10th percentile and down) and modestly negative at intermediate percentiles. During the last decade, the news gets worse: the growth of low-skill jobs dominates, with jobs heavily concentrated at the bottom. At middle skill levels, growth in employment shares was negative, with shares slightly negative even at the highest skill levels. So the disproportionate growth of low-skill, low-wage occupations accelerated in the last decade. This polarization has its counterpart in wages. During the 1974–1988 period, all wage levels except those above 50% of the median declined or stagnated relative to the median, so inequality worsened. In the more recent period, relative wages are rising slightly at the bottom, and those at the highest wage levels are pulling away from the median.”
She goes on to ask, “Who were the major beneficiaries of globalization? Clearly, the top — the top 1% of households claimed about 39% of pre-tax income gains from 1979 to 2007, a share larger than 36% for the bottom 90%. In 2010, the top 1% captured 93% of the income gains in the first year of recovery. Worsening income inequality is striking, and associated with the global era… The current share of our top 1% is larger than anywhere else in the industrial world. France, Japan, the Netherlands, Sweden, Switzerland have all managed globalization without serious loss of fairness. Their more equal income distributions suggest that there are acceptable tradeoffs between market forces and equity. Our challenge is to retain vitality and openness while providing rewarding employment opportunities and reasonable equity for all Americans.”
Now, let’s connect what we noticed last Wednesday to the trends related to globalization. The rioters were not multinational corporate executives; they weren’t even Wall Street bankers. The rioters were mostly working people who, in some cases, travelled hundreds of miles to attend a political rally in DC at 1pm on a Wednesday.
(For more evidence on the effects of globalization, I recommend starting here.)
On the topic of automation, researchers at Oxford University project that 47% of US jobs are at risk of being replaced by technology in the next 10 years. And, the process has already begun. Between 2000 and 2010, upward of 88% of factory jobs losses were due to automation. Factory workers and truck drivers aren’t the only jobs at risk, though; doctors, accountants, and also lawyers are at major risk over the next 50 years.
When Andrew Yang began his presidential run, he wrote an Op-Ed in the New York Times, in which he spelled this problem out best.
“Around five million manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000, with automation being a main factor. Many of those jobs were in Ohio, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Iowa — states that swung to Donald Trump in 2016. In 2000, manufacturing employment started to plummet, the same year disability applications began surging. Around the same time, about half of the Michigan workers who left the labor force may have filed for disability and many might never get off it, as the rate at which people come off disability benefits is extremely low. We then saw surges in suicides and drug overdoses to the point where life expectancy has either declined or stayed flat for three years in a row, something that hasn’t happened since the Spanish flu epidemic of 1918.”
It is not surprising that Americans turned to Trump-ism; it was the only thing that spoke to their grievances.
Now, obviously these grievances have been misguided — particularly against immigrants — but it is important to understand this reality when we think about rebuilding our nation. And, I think Andrew Yang’s relative success in the Democratic primary elections has paved the path for how we can approach these issues.
We should have a sensible conversation about universal basic income as means of addressing the automation and globalization crises. We should have a sensible conversation about the Green New Deal as a means of addressing the climate and employment crises. We should even have a sensible conversation about improving our trade policies and tax policies to bolster the American middle class, instead of placing the multinational corporation’s needs as paramount. (More on what sensible conversations look like in a moment.)
A moment like this — with all of its intersecting crises — deserves powerful, sweeping action.
To clear up a common misconception before continuing: I am not saying that the solutions I have mentioned are the solutions. I, much like many critics, have concerns about each of them, including limiting government overreach, raising the necessary capital to finance the projects, and ensuring corporations don’t get absolute power in crafting the policies via lobbying.
However, we cannot afford to turn another blind eye because some people have been convinced to believe the “boogie man” big government is coming to steal their freedom.
Most importantly, though, these efforts need to be executed collaboratively.
Muzafer Sherif, an American-Turkish social psychologist, argued that intergroup conflict occurs when two groups are in competition for limited resources. He supported this theory with evidence from his famous study called The Robbers Cave Experiment.
Sherif’s team conducted a field experiment with 22 11-year-old boys in Robbers Cave State Park. The boys were split into two groups: The Eagles and The Rattlers. Over the course of the first week, the boys developed an attachment to their groups. The attachment grew so strong, in fact, that, when the two groups were brought together for competitions, verbal and physical prejudice was rampant.
In order to relieve the intergroup tension, Sherif had the two groups work together to reach a common goal of fixing a water breakage and tension and prejudice subsided. It is important to note, however, that Sherif’s first attempt to resolve conflict was by increasing contact between the two groups. Not only did those attempts fail, but they actually worsened animosity.
(You can read more about The Robbers Cave Experiment here.)
Social psychologists Elliot Aronson and Diane Bridgeman built on Sherif’s logic by analyzing the effects of intergroup collaboration in the classroom on reducing racial resentment.
In the early 1970s, desegregation efforts were leading to serious problems.
“Ethnic minority children, most of whom had previously attended severely under-funded schools, found themselves in classrooms composed predominantly of more privileged White children. This created a situation in which students from affluent backgrounds often shone brilliantly while students from impoverished backgrounds often struggled. Of course, this difficult situation seemed to confirm age-old stereotypes: that Blacks and Latinos are stupid or lazy and that Whites are pushy and overly competitive. The end result was strained relations between children from different ethnic groups and widening gaps in the academic achievement of Whites and minorities.”
These problems were only magnified by the hyper competitive nature of the classroom. In response, Aronson and colleagues implemented the jigsaw technique in Austin, TX in 1971. The jigsaw technique is based on the idea that, when students are presented with a challenge, each student in the classroom should become an expert on one — and only one — aspect of that problem. As a result, the students will be forced to cooperate, filling in the “pieces of the puzzle.”
The results shouldn’t surprise you: students began to form cross-ethnic friendships, absenteeism decreased, and the researchers witnessed a significant increase in empathy.
Today, the Jigsaw Classroom, a learning technique that makes students dependent on each other to succeed, has a forty decade track record of improving race relations.
(You can read more about the Jigsaw Classroom here.)
Both of the aforementioned studies definitely have their flaws — particularly when it comes to generalizability — but the implication of these studies is crucial: collaboration is the single most effective means of intergroup de-escalation, and policy implementation should follow suit. In other words, the solution cannot be a unilateral operation by Democrats or Republicans. We need bipartisan action.
Back to Brooks comments, the conversation around domestic insurgencies is about far more than just winning elections in the future, let alone ensuring Democrats win more elections. If we do not take this problem seriously (as many haven’t thus far), our democracy will continue to erode and we may not have democratic elections to try to win in the first place.
Lastly, I’ll go one step further than Brooks and argue that we need a Marshall Plan for all the states where our parties have failed to rebuild the economy. We need to rebuild the breeding grounds of vitriol, just like we did with the Nazis after WWII. So, as I see it, this moment requires heavy, FDR-style investment in our own country — and especially in our fly over districts.
Beyond the macro level actions that this moment requires, I also believe that it’s time we pursue an ethics of depolarization, which I view as a “project to bring all people to the table to talk about their perspectives.”
Two years ago, my brother and I launched The Debate Without Debate Podcast with this idea in mind. We were tired of the fact that people on opposing sides of issues couldn’t have meaningful discourse. Instead of sitting around sulking about the problem, we created a platform for “depolarization through conversation.” We’ve had conversations with activists, entrepreneurs, academics, and everyday people from all walks of life, and I can without a doubt say that depolarization is still possible.
Back in February 2020, I wrote a riff on this issue, and I thought I would share it again today.
“Depolarization requires humility. It requires the outlook that there is a chance (even if only a slim chance) that we are wrong. In our experience, depolarization is most effective when talking to people from across the aisle. Whether it is on topics like the 2nd amendment, climate change, or income inequality, we encourage you to go out and just talk to someone you disagree with. Depolarization is about understanding why others have the opinions they have. It can be frustrating, especially today, when people disagree with us, but if there is anything we can take away from the debates we watch on the news its: inflammatory attacks typically derail productive dialogues. ‘Depolarization through conversation’ is about taking the mic back from all the smoke and mirrors you see on the news. We, the people, control the narrative and can bring healthy pluralism back to our seemingly broken world. And, it begins with a simple conversation!”
(You can read the full post here.)
Now, I am not arguing that you should go up to white supremacists and try to have a reasonable conversation with them on the spot. Those efforts would be futile and most certainly dangerous.
(Although, if you are curious about how to do that, I would recommend you listen to this conversation between R&B artist and author of Klan-destine Relationships: A Black Man’s Odyssey in the Ku Klux Klan Daryl Davis and Joe Rogan.)
That said, I’m certain that we all have relatives or friends that are partial to the beliefs that led to this moment. I’m not saying you should berate them with evidence. But, to put on our empathy hats for a moment: maybe they too have been sucked into a rabbit whole of Facebook posts and YouTube videos about QAnon. One of the greatest appeals of conspiracy theories like QAnon are that they make you feel like you are in on something. They give you a sense of community. And, they can even make our most rational citizens rethink their own reality. I’ve even found myself asking, “Am I missing something here?”
These people are not part of small factions in America. They are scattered throughout most, if not all, communities across America (and even the globe). Isolation plays an important role in how individuals fall prey to conspiracy theories and hate groups, and we need to remember that connection is an even more powerful counteracting force.
People do not have an innate desire to start a coup. Certainly there are genetic predispositions to more aggressive behavior (such as sociopathy), but the reality is that the domestic terrorists who stormed the capitol building last Wednesday were habituated into thinking they were entitled to such actions. Case in point: rioters did not shy away from taking pictures, posting to social media, and even live-streaming themselves as they literally broke the law. To make a quick comparison: that would be like robbing a bank, waiting for news reporters to arrive on the scene to cover it, and then giving them an account of your own crime to broadcast during the nightly news. There is only one logical explanation for the rioters actions: they sincerely believed that there would not be consequences for their actions.
There is still hope, however.
If the rioters learned these beliefs, they can unlearn those beliefs as well. Unfortunately, it won’t be easy. There is no “miracle pill” to this sickness, but we are in “try or die” territory and we definitely cannot afford to not try.
Now, part of the challenge is that many people believe our democracy is beyond saving or that it was never worth fixing in the first place.
First, I hear you.
And, I hope that everyone who has read this far will try to hear these people out as well, as hard as that may seem. We need to hear each other if we ever hope to solve our problems. And, when I say “our problems,” I’m not just referring to the problems that we have as Americans; I am also referring to all the problems we face as humans on this Earth, including (but not limited to) climate change, anti-blackness, anti-Semitism, sexism, homophobia, transphobia, nationalism, fascism, and all other forms of hatred and oppression.
Second, I fundamentally disagree.
The whole American experiment is based on the sole premise of self governance (ie: we are the government). Our system is certainly broken, but to give up entirely is not a proper response. Our nation was born broken but with the intention of growing and adapting to our needs, and we should not take that for granted. Far more humans than our 330 million Americans have not been afforded so many privileges.
To conclude this piece, I’d like to share my brother’s wisdom on this topic, excerpted from an email exchange he recently had with a teacher.
“All this madness has made me go back to the basic premise that WE ARE ALL HUMAN; looking past party lines, racial differences, and ethnic backgrounds, we all want to live meaningful lives, support our kin, and do good for the world. Although we share these basic values, we have our own unique interpretation on which government systems and economic avenues would best achieve these virtues. Looking past the pixels on our smartphone screens and the smoke and mirrors of the media, we are just people — brothers and sisters of the world.”
Even at our most polarized times, we are still more alike than we are different. We need each other — to hear each other and to work with each other — now more than ever.
I’d like to thank my brother, Joseph Bykov, for assisting in editing and contributing to this piece. A special thank you to my family and friends for listening to me rant on this subject as I’ve tried to develop my thoughts around it.
If you disagree with me, let’s talk.
Depolarization has become a guiding philosophy for my life, and I would be a mere charlatan if I didn’t abide by what I preach.
These are my developing thoughts on the issues at hand in America, and I am sure that they will develop over time (as they already have).
Please leave your thoughts in the comments below or reach out via Instagram.
