By Chris Satullo
Back in 2004, a wise man named George Lakoff wrote these words: “Facts bounce off frames.” Translation: Once we humans find a satisfying narrative to explain the world and our place in it, we cling to it stubbornly.
Usually this is because a) our chosen narrative positions us as righteous, underdog heroes and b) it saves us the trouble of thinking deeply about unfolding events. When facts emerge that are uncongenial to the narrative in which we’ve invested, we jam them somehow into our pet framework. Or, if that proves too difficult, we dismiss them.
Back when Lakoff wrote his slim masterpiece, Don’t Think of an Elephant, the sturdy media silos we know so well today were just forming. Today, those silos – constructed from cable channels, blogs, podcasts, social media accounts etc., all of them dedicated to alarmist propaganda – enable so many Americans to feel well-informed while having absolutely no clue about facts that might undermine their preconceptions.
Accordingly, let’s rework Lakoff’s axiom a bit: Few facts penetrate the silos we’ve built. The few that do bounce off.
The MAGA frame is just a siloed congealing of a narrative that American conservatives had been brewing for decades. In it, they styled themselves the doughty defenders of threatened American freedom, pride, might, values and entrepreneurial spirit. They saw themselves standing bravely astride the bridge to thwart selfish, atheistic liberals who sought to reduce the United States to a hedonistic, crime-ridden hellscape at home and a mewling weakling on the world stage.
In MAGA’s sour update of that narrative, the apocalyptic fears metastasize, and the once politely hidden racism brandishes its fangs. The fervor for freedom and the Constitution gets replaced by a fascination with autocracy.
But enough of that. I’m not really here today to talk about MAGA, or even the former fond faith of old Bill Buckley and Ronnie Reagan.
Instead, let me chat about what’s happening inside the progressive bubble at the other pole of our political spectrum, and the dangers it poses in the current campaign. Joe Biden and his re-election bid face many problems, a few of his own making, but most not. He’s plagued by what I call progressive depressive syndrome.
It’s a pervasively gloomy outlook that leads many progressives, particularly young ones, to grouse that Biden is so terrible, so captive to a corrupt, racist system, has done so little right, that they can’t vote for him. They see their options as a) not voting (such a noble protest!) b) throwing their vote away on a no-hope third party or independent candidate, or even c) casting a nihilistic, screw-you vote for Donald Trump.
All this, even though Biden has taken more action on more cherished progressive goals than any president in their lifetimes – with considerable success.
But progressive depressive syndrome will not take success for an answer. It’s a classic case of facts bouncing off frames. These frames leave many progressives more invested in their grievances and their gloomy take than in embracing signs of, well, progress.
Two frames strike me as most salient:
1) America is still so rife with systemic racism that nothing can get better for any Black people until a) everybody agrees that this is true and b) all the people now in power no longer are.
2) American society is so rigged by – and for the benefit of – rich corporations and rich people that everyone else is always and everywhere screwed.
Like most frames, these are based on a nugget of truth. Considerably more than one nugget, in fact. But progressives’ mental frameworks err and mislead in their absolute rejection of the idea that any progress can be made on these problems absent radical change that puts only people just like themselves in charge. (Which, in this diverse nation, will never happen.)
Systemic racism is real. It has had a profound impact on American society and has done lasting damage to those it targeted. (Fun fact: I’m the guy who co-wrote the first editorials in any major American newspaper calling for a national program of reparations for slavery, lynchings and segregation – and did so back in the early Aughts.)
But real does not equal exactly the same as it once was. Lasting does not equal permanent or impossible to heal.
While systemic racism endures today, it is nowhere near as embedded or overwhelming as it once was. Barack Obama was elected president; Kamala Harris was elected vice president. The percentage of Black representatives in the U.S. House (13.5) is slightly higher that the percentage of Americans who identified as Black in the 2020 census (12.4) while “multiracial” is the fastest-growing Census category.
None of that means racism is cured or that Blacks now have some kind of sweet deal. Still, none of those political facts above could possibly have been true in Booker T. Washington’s America, or Paul Robeson’s, or Bayard Rustin’s, or even a young Jesse Jackson’s.
Moreover, Black unemployment is at an all-time low. While median Black household income still lags far behind white incomes, it has increased 25% in the last decade (real and lasting harm, but not impossible to heal). The number of Black-owned businesses is up 33% since 2017, and their combined revenue is up 43%.
Yet progressives’ message to young Blacks tends to be: Don’t fool yourself. This nation is still a racist hellscape. Don’t get your hopes up.
How this relentless negativity is supposed to help anyone eludes me. People want a reason to believe; they seek positive signals to fuel their effort and their persistence. To find grounds for optimism is not to deny glaring inequities, nor to gloss over the truth of history. It is, stealing a phrase, to keep hope alive.
Some progressives, though, just can’t seem to acknowledge that progress could have occurred without the full, ritual shaming of white America they view as a prerequisite for any uptick in Black well-being. This is not a wise position, in no small part because it spawns recruits to Trumpism.
Similarly, many progressives seem unable to grasp, credit or celebrate the many forms of progress on their core issues now occurring on Biden’s watch: green energy production and sales of electric cars up, while emissions slow; unemployment down with wage growth outpacing inflation; manufacturing jobs booming.
Enlisted in the Eeyore Party, they don’t seem to notice that Biden midwifed this amazing U.S. recovery by following a daringly progressive course. He decided that the best way to beat the pandemic slump was government investment – and lots of it. When the global inflation trend hit America, he ignored the glum counsel of most economists, including Democratic ones, that the only way to tame rising prices was to court high unemployment. He said: Nah, let’s keep investing in working people and infrastructure.
And he was right.
But oh, he’s not Bernie.
So, to those afflicted with progressive depressive syndrome, he can’t possibly be right. You see, he doesn’t act as though the system is rigged beyond repair; he doesn’t fulminate endlessly about evil corporations. He does’’t cancel the Joe Manchins of Congress when they vote against him, he keeps talking and bargaining until they vote right the next time. He believes, quaintly, that getting things done is about relationships and compromise, not about acts of performative outrage.
Biden is getting progressive things done without buying into the “everything’s rigged and everyone else is evil” progressive script. Inside the Eeyore Party, that apparently is a deal-breaker.
Without noting the irony, many progressives have taken to:
- Extolling self-righteous theater over the hard work of actually passing laws that make a difference.
- Exiling former allies who fail purity tests.
- Describing as “rigged” elections that they lost fair, square and by a lot (looking at you, with appalled regret, Katie Porter).
In other words, acting pretty much like MAGA cultists.
That’s their right. It’s a free country. At least it will be until Donald Trump gets re-elected – an outcome that the durability of Progressive Depressive Syndrome makes more likely with each passing day.
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Chris Satullo, a civic engagement consultant, is a former editorial page editor/columnist at The Philadelphia Inquirer, and a former vice president/news at WHYY public media in Philadelphia