Nudge Nudge

When Nudge becomes Shove

We could spend months, even years, tracing the modern roots of authoritarianism in our American government and society. It’s been gradually oozing into our political mainstream over decades, first rejected and disdained, but then gaining mild endorsement among a few of the fringe “ists” - and then one day we awaken to the notion “this is how it’s always been”. Like the proverbial boiling frog, we can’t exactly define the point at which this was literally destroying us, but I’d say we’ve definitely awakened to the fact this water is damned hot!

Like most trends, there’s a particular point of inflection where we should have recognized the plot that was afoot. Not that there was initially a conspiring cabal of authoritarians engineering all this - that gives them a bit too much credit - though there absolutely is one today. No, the authoritarians’ early efforts were all about shifting the Overton Window - the term that describes what is politically acceptable. That was when they still worried about convincing us of their righteousness. Because it wasn’t that long ago that authoritarianism was decidedly not acceptable in America - among both the Left and the Right, in fact more so among America’s “liberal” community, formerly “the Left”. We even have a whole constitution dedicated to keeping the authoritarian beast in chains. Our Founders were extraordinarily fearful of authoritarianism, and they were liberal - believing in individual agency and liberty, as that term traditionally describes.

The point at which I believe we began tipping into authoritarianism, the inflection point I associate with this trend, is best associated with something described as The Nudge. Nudge Theory is premised on the belief that populations can be “adjusted” in their thinking, to comply with just about anything deemed “correct”. Now I don’t want to be labeled Godwinian (see Godwin’s Law), but authoritarians throughout history have always started with something resembling the Nudge. In fact, the whole premise of The Road to Serfdom, the seminal work by Friedrich von Hayek, is that society would never accept the objective goal of authoritarians - if that’s what they stated up front. That’s why authoritarians go at it asymmetrically, gradually introducing “mild” forms of aggression that are cloaked in terms that “nobody would disagree with”. Hitler spent over 20 years nudging and agitating, setting the stage - he didn’t burst onto the scene with his plans for European dominance and Final Solution in the 1920s. He plotted carefully, planning to seize power through legal and “democratic” means.

Modern Nudge Theory, the reincarnation of this incremental methodology, entered the modern political lexicon in 2008 with the publication of Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness, by Richard Thaler and Cass Sunstein. And this was just in time for the ultimate realization of Nudgism in political form with the inauguration of President Obama - whose administration would take nudging to a high form of art. It would in fact become the whole purpose of government under Obama, to nudge us and manipulate our behavior.

You’ll recall in the years leading up to Obama we had a term that described the Left’s best efforts to “nudge” us in their direction, referred to as political correctness. PC, as it was known from the mid 1990s through the early 2000s, was an attempt to shut down debate about what is right by simply presuming one’s own “correctness” in whatever policy or issue was under consideration. Using PC logic, the Left automatically puts conservatives on the defensive - as if saying “you don’t really support wrong, do you?” But conservatives weren’t easily fooled by this euphemistic Jedi Mind Trick - and since the Left can’t help themselves but to abuse a tactic they see as working, the term “PC” ultimately came to represent a pejorative. The American people recoiled at the term “PC” for what it was: trying to brainwash us into believing the Left was right about everything and the debate was over. That’s why we don’t see it in use today.

Thus was introduced The Nudge. The Left didn’t stop believing in the “correctness” of their views, they simply shifted their methodology. If they couldn’t shame the dull-witted, flat earthers living in flyover country into accepting their Utopian vision of right-thinking Americans, they could use the Power of Government to nudge us - to reinforce their narrative and control the Average into thinking their way.

Now I know what you’re thinking here “but don’t both parties engage in this sort of thing?” Indeed, they do, but this is a wholly different kind of animal we’re talking about. The president has always had the “Bully Pulpit” and the floor of the House and Senate has produced countless volumes of nudging laws. But the Democrats, always with the slimmest of majorities, would inculcate a new universe of values to the American people. For it’s one thing for the Surgeon General to promote healthy lifestyles, smoking cessation and exercise - we all value health, after all. It’s a completely different thing for the government to officially declare a “national right” to health care, or endorse, underwrite and promote a controversial theory of global warmism, or gay marriage, or transgender education of kindergarteners, or critical race theory. When your oratory includes such narcissistic platitudes as “the arc of history” you’ll presume you’re on the right side of everything. We weren’t invited to argue and debate, there was no referendum, there wasn’t even what could be described as a “mandate” election - we were simply directed to comply.

Take that last example, critical race theory. Critical theory is Marxist in its origins and yet during the Obama administration, the federal government adopted its underlying tenet of “historically underrepresented” minorities as eternal class victims of “white, male, paternalistic” aggression. The annual “EO training” became steeped in the Marxist ideology of white guilt and the presumption that white men were inherently wrong about everything in their worldviews - because they were born white and male. Who says so? When was the debate about this? Who argued the pros and cons of this policy? Who ran on a platform where this specific agenda was laid out? The answer is: nobody. Because nobody can run on such a dark and foreboding agenda, promising resentment, aggression and division - and win.

Nobody voted for this - and yet there are those who are quite pleased with the result.

Moving on to today, only briefly paused during the Trump administration, the Federal Register has become saturated with new requirements that simply presume white guilt is real, AGW is real and quantifiable, gay and transgendered people are everywhere discriminated against, and on and on. We didn’t “win” the PC wars - they simply took the fight to the Code of Federal Regulations, presuming they had won.

This “Nudging” tactic has evolved into an all-out shove. And it’s not just occurring in the elected political arena - in fact, that’s probably where it’s least defensible because it is most conspicuous. One need only observe the behavior of school administrators (complicit with school board mandates), mainline Protestant clergy, and the “news” and social media giants - to see this has moved far past Nudge and is now in full Shove mode. If your behavior does not comport with what we’ve deemed right then you’ll be removed from the arena. By force, as necessary. And if you dare to protest, to speak your mind in an open, democratic forum, the Biden DoJ will put you on a list of suspected terrorists.

The Left, empowered by an arguably rigged election and with the barest of majorities among the elected class, sees this time as their best chance to impose by administrative mandate a whole raft of frankly insane policies that very few would have voted for. They’re shoving us.

If you believe, as polls suggest most Americans do, that climate change ranks near the very bottom of our worries, you’d have to wonder why the Biden administration is laser focused on destroying America’s energy production capacity. Perhaps paying $4 or more for a gallon of gas or having your home heating bill or electric bill double is your idea of fighting an important issue - but you’d be a very small minority in that opinion. And “combatting climate change” is the central thesis of your federal government in operation today and these draconian energy policies are shoving that “fact” down our throats. You’ll pay more and like it!

You’d be hard stretched to find any American who knows of, or who has ever known or even met a bona fide white supremacist (yet they see them all the time on TV!). And yet we’re told white supremacists are the nation’s top security threat. This would be ahead of China, Russia, North Korea and Iran - nations formally committed to destroying America - as well as non-governmental actors and “lone wolf” terrorists. The next time you hear about how godawful racist this nation is, ask yourself the last time you can recall genuine violent action by white supremacists - disregarding the crazy schemes hatched by the FBI themselves. In a nation where actual hate crimes are so rare they have to be staged, we’re told this is our #1 security threat!

We’re no longer having an academic debate about school bullying and deplorable treatment of vulnerable young people - the Democrat party has adopted as official policy that this is the result of parents not instilling sexuality and questioning the sexual identity of 5-year old children. I missed the public debate personally, but perhaps someone could show me the scientific evidence that supports introducing very young children to lesbianism, gay sex, bisexuality, transgenderism and queer theory. I don’t recall any public discussion that resulted in we should go and do this. Do you? And yet - it’s now being shoved and if you’re not on board, you’re just transphobic, homophobic and queer-phobic. Merrick Garland is making a list!

I don’t know how to debate someone who considers my otherwise normal views as “literally violence”. I don’t know how we can legitimately trust a government going forward when that same government holds our views on such mundane policies as masking and vaccines to be all but criminal, and worthy of being banned, de-platformed, doxed, put on a list and silenced.

We’re no longer being nudged, let alone respected - we’re being shoved.