In Conclusion: Democracy on the Ropes

Part Ten of Blue City Warrior Visits Red America: In Search of Us

This is the tenth part of my series Blue City Warrior Visits Red America: In Search of Us. Go HERE to read the Blue City Warrior opening essay. Please subscribe to follow my journey!

Over the past year, I left my Blue City bubble to visit three communities that, to me, reflected various components of America’s conservative coalition. I visited Tulsa, Oklahoma, the traditional home of the oil industry and conservative business interests; Lynchburg, Virginia, home to Liberty University and a center of conservative Christian Nationalism; and The Villages, Florida, the MAGA hotbed and home of the fastest growing, most racially and ethnically segregated retirement community in the nation. I wanted to see how conservative local governments approached governing and living in community differently than blue cities do, to test the strength and veracity of our political bubbles, and to see what I might learn about myself, my city, and our country along the way. And I wanted to do it in 2024, during a monumental political year.

Every destination provided opportunities to expand my perspective and insight into our divided America. I was able to stand at the site of the most destructive race massacre in U.S. history and learn how the city is still grappling with its aftermath. I went into the belly of the beast, Moral Majority founder Rev. Jerry Falwell’s Thomas Road Baptist Church for Sunday services and learned a bit about the Bible and the meaning of faith. And ten days before the election, I attended a Harris rally in the middle of a Republican stronghold, and saw directly how Americans were living in different realities.

But mainly I saw how democracy is under pressure on multiple fronts. Oklahoma is consistently on the bottom of states in voter turnout, even leading many races to be decided on the filing deadline because only one person has filed to run. In Central Virginia, elections are won on fealty to a person over any thoughtful policy platform based on the community’s needs and the role of government in addressing those needs. And residents of The Villages willingly give up their right to privacy and democracy at the local level in the name of personal safety.

What follows are my thoughts on my year of travels and conversations with Americans of all kinds. What started as an idea to leave my blue bubble to experience life in red communities became more of an Alexis de Tocqueville-esque trip into America to reflect on the status of democracy in America in 2024.

TL/DR, it’s not great. Our collective commitment to democracy and being in this experiment with each other is at rock bottom. In many pockets of the country, civic engagement just isn’t a way of life. While voting itself might be encouraged, the broader understanding of how the United States government works and that it requires each of us to be active citizens to make it work is on the decline. Cultural identities are taking precedent in people’s voting decisions, rather than an identity as a secular citizen committed to decision-making with others. And most troubling is how filter bubbles and the fragmentation of news sources have us now living in different realities.

None of this portends well for our country’s future.

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Tattered Flags Everywhere

In December, while walking through my neighborhood, I came across a house with an American flag blowing in the wind. The flag appeared to have been there a long time, and was showing its wear and tear. It looked like it had been through a lot – and struck me as the perfect metaphor for the condition of our democracy at this time.

A flag flying on a home in South Minneapolis, December 2024

To be fair, it wasn’t just that flag on that house in that South Minneapolis neighborhood that gave me that impression. It was also experiencing the United States of America over the past year and learning lessons as a Blue City Warrior visiting Red America, with a smattering of doorknocking shifts into Minneapolis’s purple suburbs and Western Wisconsin.

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Lesson #1: Whither the engaged and informed citizenry?

From the very beginning of 2024, I was part of the news junkie community who watched the polls hovering around 50-50 regardless of disastrous debate performances, assassination attempts, and last minute shake ups of presidential tickets. But of course that’s my blue bubble. My local district is consistently one of the highest voting districts in the state (95% of registered voters in my precinct voted in last fall’s election). It’s not just the blue parts of the state that show up to vote. Minnesota consistently ranks the highest in voter turnout in the country in presidential election years. We work for it - red and blue communities alike.

The first lesson I learned on my trips into red America is that that is not the way it is in the rest of the country. In Tulsa, I was struck by the lack of visible markers of people’s beliefs. There were no bumper stickers on cars, lawn signs in yards, stickers on water bottles, t-shirts, etc. Public spaces, coffee shops, churchs, didn’t have signs or banners stating their beliefs (except All Souls Unitarian Church and its Black Lives Matter mural and gender inclusive flag). Even in a year with an open mayoral race. Indeed, statewide, Oklahoma hovers near the bottom of states in voter turnout. And the sense of voter engagement is so anemic, that last year half of the Oklahoma’s State House members seeking reelection won by default as early as April, simply because no one filed to challenge them.

Voter engagement is so anemic, that last year half of the Oklahoma’s State House members seeking reelection won by default as early as April, simply because no one filed to challenge them.

Even in our conversations with Tulsans, people were engaged in living their lives, rather than tracking the news and politics. To be fair, it was early in the campaign season (we visited in late May-early June). But in addition to just not paying attention, a more serious issue started to emerge from our conversations: people were concerned with the availability and veracity of the current news. Several people told us that they just didn’t feel like they could trust the news that they were getting, and they didn’t have time to investigate its truthfulness any further. At least they had enough of a spidey sense to question what they were seeing.

A more serious red flag was when our family friends told us that one of the local news stations - Sinclair-owed KTUL - pulled out their local reporters and would now be broadcasting only from Oklahoma City. In fact, the trend in declining local news outlets has been going on for a long time, and is often cited as a threat to democracy because it results in fewer reporters covering what’s happening at the local government level. Additionally, when local news sources leave, they are being replaced by national cable news, which amplifies partisan takes on current events.

Which gets me to lesson number two.

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Lesson #2: Everyone is a culture voter (no matter how much people say it was the economy)

In Lynchburg and Central Virginia the pressures on democracy were also on full display, but from a different angle. As I reported in part eight of this series, changes in the schedule for Lynchburg city elections inflamed the partisanship in City Hall. Pitched battles were taking place among Republicans across the region in a way that has shifted the tone and agendas more to the right over recent election cycles. On the Lynchburg City Council, a faction of newly elected members brought in an agenda full of culture war planks targeting things like drag queens, diversity and inclusion programs, and attacks on public education because of their COVID 19 policies. At the federal level, almost every two years for the past decade Central Virginia’s incumbent Republican Congressional Representative was challenged from the right for not being “sufficiently pure” to the Tea Party and MAGA philosophies. Debates within the local Republican Party were about who was the most MAGA, which often translated into cultural issues.

It’s a perfect case study of the problem with increasingly partisan bubbles - both red and blue ones. If you are only in proximity to people who think like you do, an insularity problem arises in which ideas become circular and reinforcing. Without an inner opposition, ideas get pushed further and further to the extremes. Some observers of the impact of increased partisanship in American politics warn that this trend causes more demonizing of the “other”. Additionally, democratic norms soften when it conflicts with partisanship, Democracy Fund researchers found. This certainly describes what I witnessed on my travels this past year.

So much campaigning on both sides has descended into name calling and amplifying the right buzzwords. One East Tennessee voter reported on the Republican US Senate candidate’s campaign ads calling her opponent a “dangerous Socialist” who is “in favor of the woke Socialist agenda.” Similarly, while exploring the suburbs of Tulsa, Laura and I came across a candidate who was vowing to “protect Oklahomans from the woke agenda.”

I’m not exactly sure what the Woke Agenda is, but it’s probably something about giving everyone the same rights regardless of race, religion, gender identity, and dietary preferences, just to name a few. Even up north in my own state, a GOP representative’s campaign billboard declared he was “Fighting for our way of life” – implying that his constituents’ very cultural identity was under attack. As the writer from East Tennessee explained it, this inflammatory approach “does not treat voters as individuals concerned with policy, who work real jobs and care about their communities. Instead, Blackburn’s messaging assumes the worst of her constituents, tapping into what she must view as an irrational hatred of the ‘other’.”

This inflammatory approach “does not treat voters as individuals concerned with policy, who work real jobs and care about their communities.”

Campaign rhetoric that amplifies the culture war language also makes it hard to have honest debates about the issues facing the country, as Barack Obama once observed about the discussions of how to address gun violence in our country. "[The policy discussion on how to address the prevalence of gun violence] has become sort of a proxy for arguments about our culture wars,” Obama said. "Instead of thinking about it in a very pragmatic way, we end up really arguing about identity, and emotion, and all kinds of stuff that does not have to do with keeping our children safe."

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve received my share of inflammatory political ads from my side of the aisle. But here’s my point: while there was a lot of talk about this last election being about the economy, elections are run and won on culture war issues. In that way, culture war issues are economic policy in the end. And not the kind of economic policy that Americans tell pollsters they want.

Indeed, polls show again and again that Americans support a long list of policies that would be considered progressive on the economy (“Poll shows GOP support for wealth tax, $17 minimum wage in swing states”; “An overwhelming majority of Americans support raising taxes on the wealthy and big corporations across partisanship”) and other social issues such as access to abortion care and gun safety measures. Yet, many voters adhere more to a cultural allegiance to their candidate than a policy one. So we get elected officials that vote for tax breaks for the wealthy and corporations, bans on abortion care, and lenient gun laws that lead to more American deaths, despite the number of Americans that prefer the alternatives.

As long as we don’t look beyond culture issues to see each other’s humanity, we are going to be stuck in cultural fights rather than discuss real policy solutions that a majority of Americans want.

But even wanting my fellow Americans to see the humanity of each person makes me a cultural voter. While I want my elected officials to share my belief that taxes are the price we pay for a civilized society and that everyone should pay their fair share including billionaires and corporations, I vote for candidates because they share my belief in the inherent dignity of all humans regardless of race, class, creed, and sexual preference.

Getting beyond campaigns run on issues and not culture wars will require Americans to understand how government and the economy works. And that might be asking a bit too much in this current era of media fragmentation and weaponized disinformation.

Which gets me to lesson number three.

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Lesson Number Three: We live in different realities

It’s hard to have honest debates about critical issues facing the country when we don’t even agree on facts and what is real. Back to Obama. During the health care debate during his first administration he famously raised the idea that people are entitled to their own opinions, but not their own facts. That seems quaint now, especially after this past campaign where the fragmented media environment and the increase of voters who report they get their news from social media, creates different realities between us.

In my bubble, I fall distinctly into the “people who are paying attention to the news are more likely to support Kamala Harris” camp. Over here, I was gobsmacked by the video of the young woman who said she was voting for Trump because he said he would not support a nationwide abortion ban. Yes, he did say that. But, really, people, please, understand the broader context. He also said the exact opposite. And he also waffled on the question in other settings, too. TBH, I suspect there was more to her decision.

Then there was the Black 7-11 cashier who was leaning towards Trump. He did not support Project 2025, but did state definitively that it can’t be that bad, because “the author is now supporting Harris. Google it”, he said. So I did and found that wasn’t true. But it didn’t matter, really. He liked Trump’s vibe. The disinformation he was citing just gave him what political pundits call a “permission structure” to vote for Trump. Even a friend of mine was leaning towards Trump because of the videos he’d seen of immigrant families receiving $20,000 a month and free housing as soon as they crossed the border illegally. “That’s just too much,” he said, adding that we should be supporting our own citizens first. I would have shared his perspective, if it had been true. But it wasn’t.

These anecdotes are just a few examples of how our bubbles are changing, from geographic ones to reality ones. Back in the early aughts, I patted myself on the back when I saw the Fairleigh Dickinson University study that found that listeners who get their news from National Public Radio (that’s me!) are the best informed – and that people who get their news from Fox News are even less informed than people who don’t track current affairs at all.

In the years since that study, the media environment has fragmented even more, perpetuating the proliferation of fake news – while also blocking out real news. In June 2023, a student researcher described how filter bubbles – the tendency for our online worlds to become uniquely individualized because of social media algorithms -- increase polarization, extremist viewpoints, and the proliferation of fake news. Of course most of the news stories passing in front of people’s eyes are easily fact checkable, but as an MIT study shows, false news travels six times faster on Twitter than truthful news. Very few people are taking the time to check the veracity of what they’re seeing, especially when it fits their world view.

Together these forces have shredded any common understanding of what is real and true. Of course it’s not the first time in American, even global, history, where changes in technology that disrupt how information flows through a society have caused political upheaval. But there is no way we can have a healthy democracy in this current information environment without a smart and sustained media literacy public education campaign to make us all better information consumers. But as the MIT researchers determined, “polarization is a great business model.”

As the MIT researchers determined, “polarization is a great business model.”

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In Conclusion:

Talking to many people in conservative spaces over the past year has made me more able to look at issues from an alternate perspective than my own. Nonetheless, I came back to Minneapolis more concerned than ever about the divisions between Americans and the health of our democracy. We have some real problems to solve as a society, and it feels like we’re getting further and further away from being able to work together to find real solutions.

The only approach that I know of to get through this low point of democracy in America is to go through. This means practicing good democracy hygiene and continuing to use our democratic muscles. To do this, I have four recommendations:

First, instead of retreating into your bubble, continue to expose yourself and your squad to people with different ideas and viewpoints than your own. This has long been shown to reduce prejudice and improve social cooperation. One resource to start with is Minnesota Public Radio’s Talking Sense series, which helps people have hard conversations, better. As one smart academic wrote, “it’s important that we get exposed to different ideas. We can reject them. We can do whatever we want. But it’s good to hear both sides.”

Second, related, work to honor the inherent dignity of each human being, and resist the temptation to demonize people who don’t see the world as you do. This will be hard, because, really, have you seen what some of those people are doing? It is possible to critique behaviors and disagree with policy approaches without labeling people and name calling that can lead to dehumanizing. (In the case of Trump, for example, instead of calling him an authoritarian, point out the behaviors that he’s engaging in.) And don’t forget to support your vulnerable friends, family members, and neighbors at the same time.

Third, be a smart news consumer by practicing – and encourage others to practice – good media literacy. This involves seeking a healthy media diet of different sources, recognizing the bias of your sources, and checking the facts before sharing information more broadly. Exercise these steps and you’ll be able to trust even the news you see on TikTok and Instagram (at least that’s what my son says). (Here are a couple of good methods for evaluating news sources.)

Four, continue to stay engaged in our democracy. This means attend candidate forums for races in your community, volunteer for a campaign, and vote every time you can. As battered as it is, as Winston Churchill famously paraphrased, “democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms.”

Indeed, despite it all, I continue to believe in the promise of this country, and democracy as the tool to get us towards that more perfect union. We may not be there, and maybe we have never been there. But as Langston Hughes wrote 90 years ago, we can continue to build toward that America that never has been yet.

Godspeed, America! I’m still rooting for you!

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This is the tenth part of my series Blue City Warrior Visits Red America: In Search of Us. Go HERE to read the Blue City Warrior opening essay. Please subscribe to follow my journey!