Yes, but a funny thing happened on the way to information abundance. We are not only surrounded by an abundance of facts, but also by countless ways to interpret all those facts. That abundance adds to the polarization, with each new fact driving more split interpretations that polarize us still more.

For example, witness these claims, which may sound familiar. The economy is in great shape; it’s in the tank. Immigrants drain the nation’s resources; they provide economic advantages. Israel is conducting responsible warfare against Hamas and Hezbollah terrorists; its military is killing civilians indiscriminately with designs for territorial expansion. And a lot of powerful people are investing a lot in media messages to encourage you to think with them on these issues and many more.

It’s enough to make your head spin. Listening to news these days is like driving through a crowded intersection with no traffic lights or signs and cars going every which way. Each trying to gain a little ground. And honking, lots of honking….

Actually, that would be a good name for the pitches used by people with wealth and power to persuade you to the views comfy for their interests. Next time you hear a pitch praising some policy—and trashing an opposing view—think of it as a car horn. Fancy words, slick delivery, but at bottom, a horn sounding off…. Honk…. Honk….

The Public Classroom offers a different way of dealing with the noise. At crowded news intersections, this project serves as a traffic cop, scrutinizing each march forward for what parts of the scene each shiny contender selects and which parts of the whole they overlook.

Stop! If they are making things up.

Go! For views that match the facts.

Look Both Ways to gain what you can from different views.

Proceed with Caution if they select relevant information but ignore still more.

The Public Classroom doesn’t remove the chaos on the media landscape. Even after browsing this website’s essays and podcasts, you’ll still hear the honks. But approaching the contrasting views equipped with contexts from history and culture can lead to traffic calming, at least in your own relation to the abundance. Public Classroom can help you sort through the facts and claims. It shows who’s selecting what for what purposes. Then you can make up your own mind—sailing right through the crowded news intersections. That will also put you in a better position to help solve some of our many problems rather than only adding to the honking noise.

Then go ahead, roll the windows down. You can finally get a welcome breeze—a little fresh air to clear your mind of all the traffic clutter.

Episode 1: Healing our Cultural Wounds

Candidates for our Volusia County Council presented voters with a clear choice on Amendment 3 at an information session that Braver Angels and Public Classroom organized.

The incumbent, Don Dempsey, said every home is that citizen’s castle. He supports the amendment for its tax savings and urges citizens to step up by contributing their time to address public purposes, presenting the example of volunteer firefighters. He highlighted the benefits of free markets and voluntarism, which can promote a lot of incentives for energetic action and good character.

His rival, Wendy Anderson, opposed the amendment saying she loves her castle, but she also loves having decent roads to get there and good EMT services if needed. She doesn’t trust that free enterprise will supply sports programs for kids and land protection to make sure the water is clean and plentiful. Also, voters without property, including the majority who are renters, won’t benefit from the savings but will be hurt by the loss of services.

That’s the choice in Volusia County, Florida. The view from here may resemble the choices at kitchen tables and in the hearts and minds of citizens across the US. You’ll see lots of ads singing the praises of one side or the other and slamming opposing candidates. At the ballot box, it’s your choice. Each outlook, like those of Dempsey and Anderson, are resources for steering social direction one way or the other. In one direction, you are voting for saving money and reliance on individual initiative to address public purposes; vote the other way to invest your tax dollars for structural support.

What’s it going to be, my fellow Americans, more tax savings or more public investment in goods and services?

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As of 250 years ago this month, there were many flags circulating among the Patriots, boldly claiming their independence from the British Empire, including some showing the itch to fight.

It was only in 1777 that the representatives of the American people chose the model that is familiar today. On June 14—the first Flag Day—the Second Continental Congress adopted the Stars and Stripes: “Resolved: that the flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field, representing a new constellation.”

The flag would not only symbolize this new constellation of a nation, with its new democratic republican form of government, but also feature an elegant design. It parted with the intricate seals and crests in the flags of aristocratic rulers. But it also avoided the spare simplicity of later flags with three solid colors still used widely around the world.

By contrast, the Red, White, and Blue tell brief stories without words: 13 stripes for the original states and an evolving number of stars. With this design, the flag points to an ever-growing future, with new states entering on equal terms. Early Americans at first thought to add both stars and stripes. That lasted up to the union of 15 states.

It was too complicated. And soon the national banner would have become even more cluttered. The flag design settled on the current pattern, with 13 stripes to honor the founding, while the stars kept increasing with the nation’s growth.

The American flag is very eye-catching with its bold color contrasts and its primal little stories told without words. No preaching, no fancy designs. Just display of a proud past and a path to the future. This has allowed the American banner to speak both to military might and to humane generosity. In its history, the Stars and Stripes have flown with American troops invading Mexico (twice) and the Philippines, and with soldiers ending slavery and liberating concentration camps. In that year, 1945, the US vaulted to undisputed world-power status. Yet since the nation’s founding, the flag has also beckoned beside the “golden door” of freedom and opportunity.

The flag’s elegantly simple design tells core stories for appeal to lots of different people. Without complications, the flag presents a flexible patriotism, taking on different accents for the diverse citizens in the US and the many people around the world who admire this nation. The Stars and Stripes fly over all our polarized disputes with a wordless call to figure out democratic ways to work together in hammering out what Abraham Lincoln called our “public sentiments.” Ain’t that democracy, with a flag that doesn’t push answers but lets the people speak? That’s in the US Constitution. Under this flag, you can speak out, you can petition any of your elected officials for “redress of grievances,” you can write in a free press, and you can “peaceably … assemble” to speak your mind, all guaranteed by the Bill of Rights of 1791.

No matter your politics, the flag quietly reminds us with each formal salute and with each red-white-and-blue patch on some tattered blue jeans that we’re all in this together.

This Short Take on America’s central symbol accompanies the exhibit on the flag at the Museum of Art – DeLand, “Our Flag in American Art: 1935–2026,” along with the museum’s panel, “Shared Symbols, Different Histories,” featuring four panelists, including PC’s PC. The other presenters will talk about their references to the flag in their artwork, and their experiences as veterans and as civilians, with the flag expressing their approaches to American patriotism. And see more events at the Museum this month:

These are ways that the Public Classroom and DeLand, USA, honor the 250th birthday of the US. What do you have in mind? Do you identify with the American flag of might or of peace? Maybe you support peace through strength, or peace through calls for justice? Or do you bring another way of viewing the Stars and Stripes? Please comment below.

And consider this puzzle question to earn a prize of historic significance: When were there as many people on planet earth living under the US flag who were not Americans as those who were Americans?

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Museum of Art – DeLand

“Shared Symbols, Different Histories”

Thursday July 23, 5-6pm, DeLand Public Library

Sponsored by Braver Angels West Volusia, braverangels.org, and the Public Classroom.

Good. Now add some listening to those with differences. That’s the Public Classroom way. Listening is not agreement. It doesn’t grant a permission slip to those other people. Listening is an act of respect for the person behind the views you don’t like. It’s a way to live out democracy, with free speech and free exchange of ideas. Listening is not a political act of compromise. It’s a simple way to work with fellow citizens. But that simple step gets a lot of blow-back.

There’s so much going on in the world and in ourselves. And there are lots of different people in the world. Each person experiences the world in their own way. Their very own experiences suggest ways to think in their very own ways. That’s not rocket science. It’s some basic psychology from one of the field’s founders, William James, who noticed the vast extent of any one person’s experience. Then multiply that by all the different people each with their own take on the world. James talked about each person’s experience being what they agree to attend to.

Now you may wonder why those other people are paying attention to some issues but ignoring the ones you care about. It’s like they are overlooking the elephant—or donkey—in our cultural living rooms. That thought of yours didn’t occur to them. In fact, they are likely wondering how you can ignore the issues that drive them. Ignoring people with different views or shouting at them won’t change their commitments—in fact, it will probably solidify them. That adds to the polarization which distracts us all from addressing so many important issues that impact people of all ideological commitments. But listening offers some possibilities for change.

First, listening earns respect. When people respect each other, some magic can happen including defenses getting lowered, which can open access to new ways of thinking. Listening doesn’t always change minds, but it offers a lot more possibilities for that than shouting. And then, for extra credit, listening to someone you disagree with might bring an upgrade of your own views, with new awareness about dimensions you hadn’t thought of before.

Many political actors are eager to convince you that listening is a middling act of compromise on principles and that listening means giving up the fight. That’s a way to keep us at war with each other without end. They are deep red or deep blue, and your purple looks like a white flag.

As with the color itself, there are lots of ways to be purple. One is to compromise. Another is to abandon your convictions. Still more include frustration with politics as usual, boredom about political debates, and finding funner things to do with your time and thoughts. But the most elegant purple position is holding strong to your own views while listening to someone who thinks differently. You can say to them,

You be you, and I’ll be me. And if you can hear me, I’ll hear you.

That’s a simple step, but as with the Purple Heart, getting started can take some courage.

There’s a great big world out there. With so much going on, those political fighters are asking you to focus on some narrow bands of experience—including some things that might favor their interests while neglecting yours. They are asking you to focus so intently on red and blue that you forget about all the other colors. Paraphrasing the Wizard of Oz, it’s like they are saying, “Pay no attention to the whole color palette.”

Maybe a lot of you out there in Polarized America Land are convinced about your red or blue ideology. Ok, but most people aren’t so sure. In fact, for most people, those offer a very narrow choice. The purple of listening opens you up to a range of colorful human experiences and views. Then you can listen to the reds and blues to sort out which positions will actually address problems in actual experience, which ones are good starts but still need tweaking, and which ones are just designed to get you mad. If so, time to try some other colors.

That’s the purple of listening. That’s the purple of empathy. That’s the purple you can wear with pride. And that’s a place between and above the fighting words. And with that purple, we might even steer toward improvements on problems.

Public Classroom Approach to Listening

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If this Substack is our reading room, the YouTube channel is our laboratory and our lounge. It is a space where we take the puzzlements of American life and look at them through a different lens, quite literally!

The Public Classroom Project’s YouTube channel is dedicated to bridging the world of ideas with the messy world where we actually live. I view these ideas as practical resources to help us steer through challenging experiences and downright jarring news, and to find an upgrade from the noise of our current media landscape.

On the channel, you’ll find our “Healing Our Cultural Wounds” series, where we move beyond the routines of politics as usual. Whether we are discussing the complexities of the Middle East, the intersections of psychology and religion, or the enduring pragmatism of William James, the goal remains the same: making the strange familiar and the familiar strange. You’ll see me hunting for hope in unexpected places (including TedX!) and using the tools of history, not as a dry academic exercise, but as a map for steering through our current political and social terrain. We even have a bit of music there, because sometimes a melody reaches the heart where a lecture might only reach the mind.

I often quote William James’s “meliorism” which also captures a lesson of history—that change often happens slowly and each one of us can lean in to enable changes to become improvements. Put us together and yes, the world is what we make of it. By watching and engaging with these videos, you are helping to make our public discourse just a little bit healthier.

So, I hope you’ll click over, hit that “Subscribe” button, and join our growing community of listeners and learners. Let’s turn those disagreements from obstacles into opportunities – one video at a time.

Check us out for listening across differences, video style on the Public Classroom Podcast YouTube Channel!

— Dr. Paul, aka, PC @ PC

People have tried to solve these challenges. The militant solution attempts to control, banish, or kill those with differences. Then there’s the political way, by having it out in debate, then taking a vote with majority rule over the resentful minority. By contrast, intellectuals offer the prospect of learning across differences, and some businesses use a similar approach with leaders seeking to manage contrasting and clashing employees to increase productivity.

I recently read a book on William James’s approach to diversity. With my deep dives into this father of American psychology and founder of pragmatism (and one of the inspirations for The Public Classroom), I was invited to review William James’s Pluralism for none other than the journal William James Studies. In my work to bridge intellectual insights with public concerns, the book offers another spot on that bridge.

Intellectuals talk about what is real, even as everyone’s experience of reality shapes how they look at everything else from relationships to the daily news. The author, psychologist and James expert Wayne Viney presents pluralism, supporting belief in “many different real things,” in contrast with monism with belief that “all things derive from one reality.”

Those theory labels hover over the views of a lot of ideological contenders. Pluralists value diversity in the social differences of gender, ethnicity, race, class, sexuality, and ability, and differences in beliefs and ways of thinking. Monists value particular parts of the social spectrum as norms or even hierarchy and are ready to select some worldviews for their truth, goodness, and beauty while calling other views less valuable or invalid. James called this choice a central philosophic problem, the question of “the One and the Many.”

Theory seems abstract because much of it is. Theories abstract or generalize from abundant experience to provide maps of different neighborhoods of the world. Maps are not the territory, but they offer guidance through that landscape. Then with those directions, we can steer through the “muchness” of experience, as James puts it. Theories about pluralism and monism show how different people feel at home in different neighborhoods of our ideological disagreements.

A challenge for monists is that they disagree over which one reality to serve as a guiding norm, ranging from one divine, to one philosophic insight, to one human authority. There is a pluralism of monisms. And a challenge for pluralists is whether to remain open to views that are not pluralist. That could undercut the very differences that pluralists value. Neither view is a perfect transcript of the abundance of reality.

Viney veers toward pluralism against monism, which he calls “audacious” for relying on any “single avenue to truth.” By contrast, James prefers the pluralism of openness to monism without endorsement of those views. Respecting diverse human temperaments, he recognizes the authority that monism “always will possess over some persons.” Rather than fighting them, he turns the problem of remaining open to differences, even strange ones, into learning opportunities.

This pluralism treats different ideologies less as contesting stances than as resources for addressing different parts of problems. That’s a step beyond only tolerating differences and a step toward listening to people with different views. That often is not tolerated in our power-oriented culture with its scrutinizing demand: “What side are you on?” Rather than following the politicians who choose one side and dismiss those other views and other citizens, this webpage, https://publicclassroom.substack.com/about, offers an alternative. This Substack offers pre-political ways of relating to our fellow human beings to provide leavens on our politics. The listening mode of this pluralism may not solve problems, but it can lay the groundwork for their improvement.

Want more? See the review essay on theories of pluralism and monism by clicking the button below.

Plural Approaches to Pluralism

Effective politicians can address practical issues that impact the full diversity of American citizens, and that combination could open opportunities for Democrats.

’24 Wave Red, ’25 Wave Blue. Enough with the Slurs Is What Politicians Should Do.

The previous essay in this two-part series included an evaluation of politics in terms of the ways our political parties have grasped public attention. Attention offers the power of mental sorting and selection, which is crucial to shaping each person’s experience of the world in general, as the founder of American psychology William James observes. Attention also shapes each person’s experience of the news in particular.

That essay included an assessment of the sentiments for toughness crucial to the appeal of recent Republican Party policies in the boxing match of American politics. This essay brings the historian’s next report, with potential for the Democratic Party to gain public attention with the upcoming November 2026 elections. While the politicians in the daily ring of contentious news fight it out, what trends are emerging that might favor Democrats? In recent elections, the appeal of attention to practical issues provides a clue.

Potential Democratic Appeal, Practicalities

Even with its limitations, the Republican reputation for toughness appeals to many voters—witness the red wave of November 2024. Republicans have been presenting the “story that the elites have betrayed us,” as journalist David Brooks observes. They then justify Trump’s aggressive attacks on liberals as the front line against claimed liberal attacks on average citizens.

This actually suggests an opening for Democrats to appeal to the growing number of Americans who do not feel secure with prices rising and elites gaining in wealth, including with the president and his cabinet of wealthy advisors. By speaking bluntly about interests dashed and fair play overlooked, they might even persuade many who voted for Trump or other Republicans, with a version of what James calls “moral equivalents.” In this case, appeals also in the key of tough practicality but in ways suited to Democratic Party values. This would include carefully noticing how Republicans appeal, then addressing that appeal by pointing to ways that the party of Trump has fallen short, then offering their own ways to address voters’ concerns.

This describes the approaches of Democrats recently elected, and by wide margins no less. While the party has a recent reputation for struggling with “a fundamental tension between fiery, progressive idealism and a more subdued, pragmatic centrism,” the winning candidates actually share a fiery emphasis on practical concerns in relation to progressive ideals. Republicans raised fears about a radical democratic socialist as mayor of New York, but Zohran Mamdani flipped the script with focus on bus fares, sky-high rents, and other radical challenges for average citizens. While Abigail Spanberger remained committed to “diverse communities,” she said she will “strengthen our public schools, make Virginia more affordable, and keep our communities safe” on her way to being elected governor in that state. By contrast, her Republican opponent Winsome Earle-Sears “made anti-trans rhetoric a centerpiece of her 2025 campaign.” Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, also spoke frankly about public benefits championed by Democrats, including “making school meals free for every student.” And she focused on “investing in affordable housing and … reducing healthcare and energy costs.” At a time when these everyday concerns fall prey to polarized debates, addressing practical problems becomes radical.

The November blue wave has continued with broad public backlash against the administration’s tough tactic tactics in Minnesota, and even with Democratic victories in recent Texas special elections. Christian Menefee won a Congressional seat by making “affordability [his] key issue,” and still more strikingly, Taylor Rehmet won a congressional seat by a wide margin in a district where Trump won by 17% in 2024.

Looking to the 2026 elections, Republican strategist Ari Fleischer relishes “Republicans running against socialism,” but continued emphasis on that abstract charge could actually reinforce opportunities for Democrats. They could let the slurs of their opponents on culture war issues and charges about “Commie Mandani” land with citizens as alarmist tactics, while they continue to “promote diversity,” allowing voters to notice that practical issues apply to all different citizens. This emphasis on practicality is a page taken from the playbook of Trump’s own appeal in his 2024 electoral victory. But Democrats can lay claim to their own focus on practicality in support of the working class. Avoiding Trump’s reliance on drama, they can present with both toughness and expansion of opportunities. Sherrill captured this theme in pledging to make “college affordable for all willing to work for it.”

Lessons from History

The practical approach of recent Democratic candidates taps the party’s tradition in contrast with Republicans ever since the election of William McKinley in 1896. Republicans have supported the working class, not through direct assistance, but through support for wealthy business people with the promise that their prosperity will bring more jobs. In short, they argue that good work is better than welfare.

Dismissing handouts as disincentive to hard work can appeal to the prosperous, the skilled, and the lucky. The Republican perspective has persisted with the Ronald Reagan-era phrase “trickle-down economics” and last year in the Trump-sponsored budget with tax breaks for the wealthy, and recently in cuts to Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) food benefits. But those tough messages overlook the people who need help and the structural changes that have reduced job opportunities despite individual initiative.

Democrats could deliver moral messages for support of the unlucky and acknowledge skilled workers laboring hard but still losing ground to the wealthy. For that large swathe of citizens, the social mobility often expressed as the American Dream is out of reach in an economy whose prosperity provides more support to the wealthy with little “trickle down” in improved jobs or benefits. Name calling with ideological labels has included the charge of “class warfare,” to which Democrats could counter that they are reversing practices with class hostility to workers.

And the Democratic party could go still further on the path of practicality. The deep driver of the affordability crisis for food and shelter, of the demand for migration to the US, and of a lot of costly warfare is the expectation for constant economic growth recently pumped up to enormous scales. Not ending growth but maintaining market dynamics while calming the impulse for constant and massive growth could reduce the need for costly and impersonal big organizations in government and business, and would prevent many expensive social and environmental problems. Dismissing these possibilities as “communism” or other slurs from other times will do nothing to address these practical issues. Constant growth has been supported by both parties. Disrupter Trump may have opened a path for a change in cultural habit. The party that notices the power of calming growth will have the greatest chance of appealing to the majority of Americans who have not been benefitting from an economy favoring a minority of American citizens with big costs trickling down to the rest. Growth calming offers practical ways to prevent a host of problems and to keep the paths of opportunities open all Americans.

Democrats directly attacking Republicans will likely encourage citizens to rally in defense of their tough talk. However, listening to ways Republicans have been appealing, but then scratching those itches with Democratic messages of toughness and of opportunities across differences, offers more potential. Republicans have been appealing with tough comments that sound practical but distract from addressing problems. Democrats could gain appeal with practical proposals in tough response to Republican alarms.

Paul J. Croce is author of Science and Religion in the Era of William James: Eclipse of Certainty, 1820-1880 (University of North Carolina Press, June 1995); and Young William James Thinking (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); author interview. He served as the 2013 Lecturer at the William James Center, Universität Potsdam, and as the 2020 History of Psychology Wallace A. Russell Memorial Lecture on Learning Across Differences at the American Psychological Association. After teaching History and American Studies in academic classrooms at Stetson University from 1988 to 2024, he now works to bridge the academic world and public life using history to encourage listening across differences in The Public Classroom, https://publicclassroom.substack.com/about.

In honor of President’s Day, historical lessons for politicians getting ready for the November Midterms, with the sitting president not on the ballot but on the minds of most voters.

’24 Wave Red, ’25 Wave Blue. The Appeal of Tough Talk is How One Party Grew

Does a little blue wave of Democratic Party election victories in November 2025 signal a bigger blue wave in the midterms this year? The public craving for practical responses to problems could benefit Democrats or either party ready to seize on this political trend.

President Donald Trump grasps public attention with immigration crackdowns, abrupt application of tariffs as tools of foreign policy, and military interventions threatened and ordered. Most news focuses on these actions with debates revolving around claims for buttressing strength and security versus charges of imposing tragedies and unprecedented concentrations of power.

The presidential “Master of Selective Attention” focuses on the appeal of toughness. Republicans supporting Trump are counting on voters rallying to policies of aggression. But before that can turn into a wave of support for their party in the November 2026 elections, they will have to contend with another wave recently surging, the hope for practical ways to address a host of problems. Which way will most voters turn?

Founder of American psychology William James offers a suggestion. He directs our attention to the ways each person’s experience is based on what they “agree to attend to.” Which narrative, for aggression or for practicality, will seize the attention of most citizens?

The wave supporting tangible results is less dramatic, but it has an opportunity to overwhelm the wave for tough stances. A craving for practicality has support from both recent history and further reaches into the American past. But it’s not a sure bet. As James would say, “it feels like a real fight.”

At this political boxing match, politicians are at ringside, rallying their partisans. In the next row sit the journalists tallying the scores on each side. Behind them, historians look for trends, some starting as ripples. Recent events suggest some lessons for both major parties about how they are appealing to voters and how that appeal could shrink or grow into the next wave.

My fellow Americans, let’s begin with the Republicans, the contenders in power in the White House, in both houses of Congress, with the sympathies of most Supreme Court Justices, and with control of 26 state governor’s offices, including in 23 states with a Republican trifecta of governorship and majorities in their legislatures.

The Republican Appeal, Toughness

Especially with Trump’s blunt style, a big part of voters’ support for Republican policies is through the party’s forceful approach to political questions. They sound practical. Many liberal critiques include charges about the impracticalities of Trump’s impulsive policy reversals and the potential for his concentrations of power to create long-term problems, including erosion of democratic norms. Yet those important points do little to address support for Republican policies because they sound no-nonsense. Trump’s critics ignore those sounds and sentiments beneath the policies at their peril.

For many voters, those critiques bounce right off precisely because of the policy bluntness. To reduce immigration, use military tactics in American cities. For trade deficits, impose high tariffs. With drugs smuggled into the US, bomb boats and kidnap Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro. These actions leave little room for asking particulars about the actual impact of immigrants, the potential damage from tariffs, or questions to address the legality and effectiveness of destruction without inquiry. And yet, criticisms using these nuances actually contribute to the appeal of claims for practicality with political promotion of forceful action readily set in contrast with what seem like the constraining details of further inquiry and moral concerns. Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls these examples of “tepid legality.”

These issues point to keynotes of Trump’s leadership. He takes leaps of boldness, with comments that for many politicians would be career-ending brutal gaffs, such as a video depicting Michelle and Barack Obama as apes and a comment that Somali people are “garbage.” Those outraged name such insults “racism,” but in focusing on what he says, they often overlook the power of his blunt tone, in the Somali case, generated as a slur to address some cases of alleged fraud. Clearly, the faults of a few individuals do not justify condemnation of the group, even as some may rally to his words with eagerness to draw a color line around “our country.” Trump not apologizing for either insult adds to his political appeal by presenting him showing that he stands up to critics. The medium of boldness is at the heart of his political brand. For his supporters, brash talk is a refreshing alternative to the indirect language of many politicians, with sweet talk cloaking favors to the powerful.

The boldness polarizes the enthusiastic from the outraged, and Trump shows little interest in persuading his opponents. He seeks enough support to win—in elections, in Congress, and in courts. His “only metric is winning,” as Ben Shapiro states, with close races still more appealing because their drama gains more attention. For this approach, the opposition is useful for supplying objects of ridicule to maintain endorsements from supporters. With avid risk taking and skills developed in business sales and entertainment, Trump remains perennially confident that the future will confirm his choices.

In the case of high tariffs starting in the spring of 2025, after a few months, the president can flaunt his defiance of elites with his policies not producing the worst predictions of most economists. Still, as Cambridge University and University of Pennsylvania economist Mohamed El-Erian points out, that reprieve is likely temporary. Trump’s leadership style includes management through such potential setbacks. He approaches each short-term gain with hope for a favorable future. But if the long term produces setbacks, he remains ready to enact another bold stroke gaining attention in that future moment.

Republican messages also reckon with some nuance and morality. Witness the funeral of Charlie Kirk, starting with the speech of his widow Erika. Through her overwhelming grief, she said of “that young man” who brutally murdered her husband, “I forgive him.” She spoke from the religious pillar of the conservative tradition, based upon the Christian principle to love one’s enemies. Then Donald Trump spoke from a more aggressive pillar of that political tradition, saying “I am sorry, Erika.” In place of forgiveness, he asserted “I hate my opponents. And I don’t want the best for them.” These starkly contrasting comments reflect both a gender difference and a division of spiritual labor characteristic of conservatives with sentimentality at the personal level and toughness on the structural level. Those leanings emerged side by side as symbolized by the embrace of the president and the widow at the funeral, with impulses for kindness rarely blocking assertions of power.

In his same speech, Trump further leaned in on toughness, citing a practical action of his administration. With the stationing of National Guard troops, he said, “You know, we stopped the crime in Washington. Took 12 days.” He did not mention prior falling rates of crime or that crime continued in the Nation’s Capital, albeit at a lower rate. Was that because of the troops or because of prior trends? Rather than address such nuance, he spoke bluntly with what appealed as a likely story: with crime, apply force against it, end crime. Trump also used his broad thinking and toughness to prod the Likud government in Israel and Hamas in Gaza to agree to a ceasefire. But many particular troubles have continued producing a “ceasefire” with unceasing gun and rocket fire.

As of now, Republicans are relying on blunt comments, short-term policy gains, and division of the electorate to continue gaining electoral wins and the dismantling of “the administrative state” with its “bureaucratic managerial … Left ideologues,” in the words of Kevin Roberts of the Heritage Foundation which produced Project 2025, a blueprint for policies in Trump’s second term. Over the last few years, Republicans have dominated. Will their current approaches continue to appeal? Will toughness really bring the practical results that most voters want? That might work, but their opposition has different plans.

While the political boxers fight it out every day over each polarizing issue, new trends may be emerging. Stay tuned for the next historian’s report from near the ringside in the next essay, “Potential Democratic Appeal, Practicalities.”

Part II of extended essay

Paul J. Croce is author of Science and Religion in the Era of William James: Eclipse of Certainty, 1820-1880 (University of North Carolina Press, June 1995); and Young William James Thinking (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); author interview. He served as the 2013 Lecturer at the William James Center, Universität Potsdam, and as the 2020 History of Psychology Wallace A. Russell Memorial Lecture on Learning Across Differences at the American Psychological Association. After teaching History and American Studies in academic classrooms at Stetson University from 1988 to 2024, he now works to bridge the academic world and public life using history to encourage listening across differences in The Public Classroom, https://publicclassroom.substack.com/about.

The theme of the recent Republican story has been the Unitary Executive Theory, with the proposition that a powerful president, with few checks from legislators or the courts, will bring practical benefits ranging from efficiency to national strength. Many Republican policies and actions revolve around this theory, ranging from the closing of government programs with workers fired to killing alleged drug smugglers in the Caribbean and Pacific. That’s leadership defined by toughness. By contrast, constraints on executive power, the details of further inquiry, and even moral concerns engage in what Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth calls “tepid legality.” That is a key to the Republican appeal, especially when the aggressive policies are amplified with tough talk, such as Trump referring to Somali people as “garbage.”

The conventional wisdom has been that such slurs so violate norms of decency that they have been regarded as at least gaffes calling for apology or even as ways to end a political career. Trump has issued many insults, and he does not apologize. In fact, at a time of distrust for authority with impatience about the muffled talk of so many politicians, Trump’s bluntness is part of his political brand. That has a lot of appeal, while the other half of the country is outraged, as the rallies for “No Kings” in America show. Without skipping a beat, the president slurred them too as “a joke” and delivered a video of a fighter jet, with Trump wearing a crown, dropping feces on those protesters. Republicans are relying on enough of the country accepting a strengthened presidency, with plenty of aggressive comments, to continue gaining electoral wins.

Democrats could actually find lessons from the practical parts of these appeals especially as that theme showed up in their electoral wins in November. They display a version of what the founder of American psychology William James calls “moral equivalents,” with appeals also in the key of tough practicality but in ways suited to Democratic Party values.

More important than the differences between democratic socialist Zohran Mamdani in New York City and moderates Abigail Spanberger in Virginia and Mikie Sherrill in New Jersey, was their common focus on practical issues-and their unexpectedly large margins of victory. They appealed with references to the cost of living and access to education and health care as practical challenges that apply to all different citizens. They endorsed demographic diversity as a key to practicality while Republicans called them radicals. The National Republican Congressional Committee blasted the New York State Assembly member as “Commie Mandani,” while Mandani himself focused on the cost of rent and bus fares. Spanberger talked about “attracting new investment” and “lowering costs,” while her opponent, Republican Winsome Earle-Sears, “made anti-trans rhetoric a centerpiece of her 2025 campaign.”

This could open a lane for Democratic appeal with practical proposals in tough response to Republican alarms and concentrations of power, with their versions of toughness veering toward insensitivity. This lane has been available to Democrats for generations, even as Republicans have granted power to the powerful as their way to boost the working class. Ever since the election of William McKinley to the presidency in 1896, Republicans have supported the working class, not through direct assistance, but with support for wealthy business people by offering the promise that their prosperity will increase employment. In short, they argue that a good job is better than welfare.

Valuing hard work and dismissing handouts as disincentives for work can appeal to the prosperous, the skilled, and the lucky. The Republican perspective has persisted with the Ronald Reagan-era phrase “trickle-down economics” and recently in the Trump-sponsored budget with tax breaks for the wealthy and cuts to the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP) for helping the hungry. The toughness in that message overlooks the people who need help and the structural changes that reduce job opportunities despite individual initiative.

The tough message of Republicans will attract many voters. But Democrats could gain appeal with practical proposals in tough responses to Republican alarms.

Part I of extended essay

Hey fellow grown ups! Halloween is a great way to learn about what the younger set is learning when not doing their English or math homework. I didn’t know half the popular culture characters from games, shows, and movies. Jose educated me about these digital worlds.

What’s it like on those screens? There is a lot of violence, like the 8 Michael Myers and the Bloody Ballerina, but also some spoofing of serious topics. Alexander Hamilton appeared, not as a founding father and not even as the musical character, but in steampunk style. And the playfulness continues as with the 16 Demon Hunters, fighting bad guys but also ready to bust into song. As with all our human folk traditions, kids see contests all around.

We were surprised to see how many folk characters appeared out of the darkness and stepping out from historical figures, natural critters, and family ways. More than two out of five outfits were the likes of Mexican artist Frida Kahlo, 7 butterflies, 3 members of sports teams, and even two bananas and corn. Little Red Riding Hood shows the ways of folk culture these days with just one of her but 4 Reds from Descendants. They and the 1 Grandma could all be relieved that there were no Wolves—except for 1 Werewolf. Beware, little red one, even when things seem safe, don’t let your guard down!

Now drumroll for the Most Popular Outfits of the Year!... Before Halloween night, I thought Skeletons would be the winners based on seeing so many of these bare-bones characters of all types gracing front lawns in DeLand.

But those bleached bones were not the most popular on the night itself. For those, first a judgment call. At 38, more people arrived as Unknowns or with No Costume than anyone else. Still, some played with that “outfit,” as with the “nudist on strike” or the shirt declaring “404 Costume Error.”

These folks were kind of like the agnostics amongst us. No shade on them as we turned to the true believers in dressing up for Halloween.

The winners show a mix of popular and folk outfits….

1-Ghostface from Scream, 35

2-Witches, 28

3-Clowns, 20

4-Skeletons, 19

5-Spidermen, 16

6-Vampires and Wednesdays from The Addams Family, 15 each

8-Dinosaurs and Cats, 14 each

10-Chuckys from Child’s Play, Zombies, Rumis from K-Pop Demon Hunters, and Police Officers, 12 each

For life after Halloween, when the world weighs you down, you can take heart from the kids. They turn away from cultural debates; for example, the number of people dressed as politicians: 0. There were 5 Angels but only 2 Devils—even if one of the winged ones was a Dark Angel. Those odds may be a good way to approach people different from us. They are not all bad, but don’t let your guard down.

Paul Croce taught history in academic classrooms at Stetson University from 1988 to 2024 and directed the American Studies Program. Now, as Professor Emeritus, he is lighting out for The Public Classroom, www.publicclassroom.substack.com. He and Jose Martinez, Stetson Class of 2028, talked with the kids of all ages at MegaHalloween, DeLand, USA.

Halloween is almost here, and people are looking for a good scare. Some folks will see the latest slasher movie. Others might visit a haunted house. But you just have to look at the news. Reality is so much worse than fiction.

That includes the reality of current politics right here in the U.S.A. So much anger and hatred, from both elected officials and their supporters. The anger encourages believing misinformation that “confirms” how bad the others are. The hatred for fellow citizens undercuts democracy. And now, the nation veers toward political violence.

In June, for example, Democratic Minnesota House Speaker Melissa Hortman and her husband Mark Hortman were killed in their home, and the murderer also attempted to kill State Senator John Hoffman and his wife Yvette Hoffman. In September, the conservative founder of Turning Point USA, Charlie Kirk was shot while speaking at Utah Valley University. And two assassination attempts on the president when running for a second term.

It’s dangerous out there and getting worse. A record number of Americans, politically left and right, support violence for spurring change, according to a PBS News/NPR/Marist poll. That’s a perilous path.

And before taking up political commentary on these political figures, first remember the personal tragedy. These were grotesque acts of violence, with the loss of fellow humans and with enormous blows to their families. That shows respect. And that goes for all victims. The murder rate in the US has been declining the last few years but the fact that there was a reduction from 19,232 killed in 2023 is brutal comfort. Each human being lost is a personal and family tragedy.

Yes, these are dark times. But there is still hope, especially from our children. Halloween provides us with lessons from the younger generation about how to deal with somber news. The children in their sinister costumes in the dark night show a remarkable ability to take the grim side of life seriously but not literally.

They remind us not to forget the dark side of life, but also to have a little fun and enjoy each other’s company. Angry and divided grown-ups could learn a thing or two from the younger set.

Check out the lighthearted crowds at Halloween, with children interacting with all kinds, rich and poor, all races and classes, princesses and zombies. Yes, lots of creepy characters. Who among us as adults would happily rub shoulders with vagabonds and criminals? But kids do. If those fates are not part of your lot in life, consider some empathy — consider sharing fragments of your fortune with those not as fortunate.

That’s not just with money — though it surely helps. Maybe donate to a nonprofit, like the Neighborhood Center, which is dedicated to feeding the hungry and housing the homeless in Volusia County. And pay attention to those who are hurting.

Does that sound like do-gooderism? Well, yes, those are good things to do. But also remember that hurts can lead to anger, confusion, and violence. Listening to people in pain can be a step toward stopping that slide, and that can set up paths to purposeful living, healing, and nonviolence.

Violence is bad. But listening can chip away at its dark stains. You can start by listening to people you disagree with. Then try listening to the victims. And for the advanced course, listen to potential perpetrators. The hurting stops when we start listening to people’s pain.

Cynthia Miller-Idriss of American University’s Polarization & Extremism Research & Innovation Lab (PERIL) points out that the best way to gain more security is not just with security forces but with personal support for those who might be veering toward violence. As she puts it, “if you hear someone, help someone.”

Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., talked about forceful nonviolence and suggested wielding the “sword that heals.” The sword is your fight for your cause. Wielding it without violence gets your message across without adding more destruction to the world’s problems. King expressed confidence that, although “the arc of the moral universe is long, … it bends toward justice.”

This Halloween, bring out your fears! And rub shoulders — and minds and hearts — with the kids, all different, many dressed as violent versions of themselves, but all getting along. Enjoy Halloween. Check out the kids at serious play. And see what lessons you find. If you dare.

Professor Emeritus Paul Croce taught History in academic classrooms at Stetson University from 1988 to 2024 and directed the American Studies Program. In retirement, he works to bridge the academic world and public life and advocates for listening across differences.

Video, learn from kids on Halloween!

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Murder is bad. I could stop there with the shortest of Short Takes. But since we have violence on our minds and way too much in our lives, I add a few more words, especially in the wake of the tragic death of Charlie Kirk. Since he was a political activist, his murder was also a political assassination, and that brought on a lot of heated discussion.

Experiences, even tragic ones, have many contexts. The immediate context for this or any murder is the grotesque violence, the personal loss of a fellow human, and the enormous blow to his family. That goes for all victims. The murder rate in the US has been declining the last few years but the reduction from 19,232 killed in 2023 is brutal comfort. Each of those was a personal and family tragedy.

People have this remarkable ability to respond to complex experiences with spontaneity, by contrast with nonhuman animals that are more routine. That human distinctive leads to impressive creativity. But that ability to develop imaginative and broad thoughts can also lead to a host of darkly “creative” feelings and wild ideas—including murderous plans.

Fortunately, not many people do that. But those that do get a lot of publicity and even support. A recent poll shows a record number of Americans, politically left and right, support violence for spurring change. That’s a dangerous path, with too many of the nonviolent 99% expressing intent to follow the less than 1% who are violent.

Each murder involves a weapon in hand, strained ideas in mind, and anger or despair in heart. People of different political leanings can add their passion and their politics to encourage American hands, minds, and hearts in less-violent directions. This cartoon by Dana Summers captures the choice we face.

Listening to people in pain can be a step toward that road of nonviolence—listening to the victims, to people we disagree with, and even to potential perpetrators. The hurting stops when we start listening to people’s pain.

Murder is bad. Showing respect for those experiencing tragedy can provide an upgrade on our political discussions. That’s not just a loverly courtesy; it prioritizes humanity. When listening to the pain of the living, they are more likely to listen to political points.

On Halloween 2024

On Halloween, Kids Lead the Way!

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Timothée Chalamet plays Dylan in the early 60s, with story focused on his emergence from obscurity to fame. True to the singer’s riveting personality, the actor plays him bold, dramatic, and ready to follow his own impulses wherever they would lead. So far, that sounds like Donald Trump.

To compare Dylan and Trump may sound irreverent to their very different supporters or may bring a welcome “coolifying” pop culture boost for the conservative president. Neither is the point here. The very different messages of these phenoms readily show their contrasts. Yet they resemble each other in style.

They are both outstanding performers, each with a commanding personal presence and each with magnetic power to attract or repel their audiences. Those similar qualities can shed light on political and cultural trends since the 1960s. Politicians and commentators ignore this power at their peril.

In politics, the unpredictable Trump brings to mind the “madman” approach to leadership honed by Charles De Gaulle in France and by Richard Nixon in the US; they hoped to gain political advantage by leaving people wondering what they would do—or what wouldn’t they dare? The “complete unknown” singer didn’t engage in politics, as madman or otherwise, but he has remained mysterious, leaving people guessing.

Dylan and Trump each show an ability to persuade not with reason, but as American psychologist William James would say, by appealing to the sentiments of their audiences.

Dylan Told Us: It Ain’t Me You’re Lookin’ For

Remaining only partially known, the brilliant singer was ready to follow his own creative sparks. As Dylan said in 1964, “I want to write from inside me,” no matter what others thought. That commitment to personal expression was a big part of the ‘60s. So too was striving for peace and social justice. But Dylan insisted, “I’m not part of no movement.” Trump too didn’t join existing movements but readily turned his campaigns into movements for his own brand of politics.

Dylan drew on the impulses of movement advocacy for his creativity. That launched his appeal to folk musicians who had made a tradition of advocacy for a better world, and the movie shows him with three famous folk singers. Dylan pays homage to Woodie Guthrie. He sang and coupled with Joan Baez. And Pete Seeger supported Dylan’s take off. Seeger uses the image of a see-saw to explain Dylan’s relation to folk music advocacy. The largely indifferent mainstream sat on one side as if weighed down by bricks, ignoring calls for peace and justice. On the other side, with their advocacy, folk singers like him added a little sand at a time. By contrast, Dylan brought a shovel.

Was Dylan good for the messages of folk singers or not? First, he delivered stern warnings from the heart to change agents: if they “can’t conceive of how others hurt…. I don’t think they’ll give birth to anything.” And because Dylan was channeling those transformational impulses for his creative purposes rather than immersing himself in them, he was ready to move on to other creative sparks, including electronic music and rock music, on the path to popular fame. This tension came to a head at the 1965 Newport Folk Festival, as Elijah Wald chronicles in Dylan Goes Electric! Powered by electronic sounds, he belted out his new rock music hit, “Like a Rolling Stone.” Sorting out this new Dylan, the audience split, some cheered him and some booed. His sheer popularity boosted attention to folk music causes, even as his appeal was in such a different key. Nina Silber points out that this split was a chapter in the challenges reformers faced trying to gain support for progressive causes, especially for opposition to the widening American war in Vietnam.

Dylan danced with the “paraphernalia of fame,” as Silber quotes her own father, Irwin Silber, co-founder of Sing Out! magazine, “the go-to magazine for countless folkies,” as his daughter reports. The emerging icon followed his own creative muse no matter where it would lead, including his celebrity status. His persona leaned toward ignoring or even dismissing fame. But that scornful stance was both an expression of his spark and part of his popularity. In 1965, he said, “I’m a trapeze artist.” He performed as an unknowable genius, which was also part of his creativity. When composing “Like a Rolling Stone,” he felt a “ghost picked me to write the song.” Whether the spectral Dylan enlisted his creative daemon or made an artful grasp at mass popularity, he acted in ways difficult to understand but easy for lots to love, with the singer not looking back on those not cheering.

Trump is Showing Us: Times They Are A-Changin´

Donald Trump rose to fame in real estate, at glitzy parties, and with appearances in movies and in 1988, on The Oprah Winfrey Show, toying with a run for president. He said, “I would never want to rule it out totally.” He parlayed his performer persona as master of “the art of the deal” into a role as the brash TV boss scrutinizing guests to choose as “The Apprentice” in his business ventures. With no political experience but with celebrity status, he stepped into politics with apparently outlandish claims that Barack Obama was not born in the US. This type of statement would become his political brand, so bold that the shock alone would gain him wide attention. Analyses by professionals and intellectuals disproving the facts of his claims have actually added to his popularity as a tribune of those out of power against the elites. Decades of the rich growing richer and more influential have been increasing the frustrations of those left behind. Even though Trump himself is an elite figure, many average citizens rally behind him as “our elite” in the contests of the powerful. Peter Turchin refers to Trump as an example of a “counter-elite,” with display of righteous strength enabling him to embody the resentments of millions, just as Dylan spoke for many about the mood of his time.

Trump’s persona of toughness had already gained him wide popularity when he announced, with dramatic descent from an escalator height, in June 2015, that he was running for president. Many among his followers have been willing to give him a pass for straying from truths because his expressions of their experiences have felt so compelling to them. This has enabled him to approach political talk as artistic production even as each dramatic statement has definite policy implications. His supporters readily call his sweeping if inaccurate comments spotlights on issues ignored by the powerful. Corrections by his detractors with fact checking do not feel as real as the experiences he gives voice to. Meanwhile, his general comments keep all guessing on what will emerge from his impulsive thinking. As a politician with few ideological commitments, Trump’s style is at the heart of his politics.

Like Dylan, Trump follows his inner drummer, with confidence adding to his appeal. And like Dylan, Trump has split his audience. His supporters show avid trust even as approximately the same number of Americans have been appalled with the way he has sought concentrations of power and threatened vengeance against all he calls his enemies. He faces controversies in legal charges and court challenges for his attempts to shape government, and his approval ratings are down, but he maintains support from about half the country. Trump polarizes his audiences, with stakes still higher than when Dylan alienated half his listeners. In his March 6 Speech to Congress, the president lamented that “there is absolutely nothing I can say to make [Democrats] happy.” By July 4, he amplified his animosity, saying about the opposition party, “I hate them. I cannot stand them.” Trump is also not looking back on those not cheering.

James Taught About Thinking from the Heart:

He´s Not Just Another One of Those Mongrel Dogs Who Teach

Dylan might want to take “a soldier’s stance, …aim[ing his] hand” at intellectual James even as the psychologist provides clues about the heart appeal of both charismatic leaders. The founder of American psychology evaluates the origins of our thoughts, from philosophies to hunches, in the sentiments of each person’s rationality. Feelings, traditions, interests, and tastes provide “at home” assumptions that make those first steps attractive or even seem like the only reasonable way to think.

Dylan and Trump, like everyone else, have their own sentiments and their own outlooks. Their talent has been for expression of their views in ways that resonate with a whole lot of people. Part of their appeal is like that of many leaders. They read the mood of their time. They express in tune with it. They present in persuasive ways. And they add an ability to be contrary, to say or do things outside of norms, until other people line up in their support. In fact, on holding their ground, their very forms of difference become their distinctives. As James puts it, “the most novel” statement seizes attention. With their audiences either craving or disliking them, the iconic singer and the polarizing politician gain attention by addressing people in their hearts. Without trying to be conventionally “good,” Dylan’s raspy voice made his words sound all the more honest. Similarly, Trump’s defiance of elites has encouraged his followers to think of him speaking truth to power, or even channeling higher powers.

The uncanny similarities of Dylan and Trump show how conservatives have often pulled 1960s messages toward their own purposes, for example, on liberal concern for minorities. Conservatives have presented themselves as minorities, accusing liberals of discrimination against them. It’s a difficult argument for liberals to manage. Comparing Trump and Dylan shows a conservative using the irreverent style of the 1960s as a vehicle for his conservative claims. Dylan has remained irreverent, tapping many musical standards but with virtually no overt political expression, and following his own drummer, now with well over 50 albums.

Conclusion with Some Clues about Public Patterns

Politicians of both parties need to reckon with the passions in politics forecast by Dylan and manifesting in Trump. Having found their rock star, Republicans may decide to bask in his glow, letting Trump’s brash style touch the hearts of half the country while the other half gags. The first months of 2025 have shown Administrative and Congressional Republicans using their base of support to make structural changes in tune with decades of conservative hopes. But hitching their wagon to the star of Trump’s style presents a risk. For example, his rollout of tariffs has been confusing with multiple rationales offered and many swift changes. Signs of chaos? Or maybe just confusion by plan in reflection of his long-standing ways to keep people guessing—or to seize attention. If his promises for increased manufacturing come true, Trump could benefit from defying experts predicting inflation and recession. But if those predictions prove correct, president and party will be blamed.

Democrats out of power face complicated choices but significant opportunities. Can they better improve their standing with advocacy or with persuasion? Finding candidates to serve as equal-and-opposite Trumps would offer a kind of counter advocacy. Perhaps their own boldness would sway voters. Yet this could lead to a political arms race with increasingly lurid charges back and forth. And voters might actually prefer The Donald over an imitation. Plus advocacy can inhibit persuasion. Politicians would do well to follow Dylan’s words suggesting they will become their own “enemy in the instant that [they] preach.” Democrats advocating can affirm their existing voters but with little hope for gaining wider support. However, an understanding of the riveting appeals of Dylan and Trump offers first steps in gaining support from those audiences.

Democrats could identify points that go to the heart of Trump’s heart-felt appeal, especially resentment against elites, and ask average citizens: Is “your elite,” who claims to be your spokesman, really working for you? If Democrats listen to his voters, they could present alternatives addressing those feelings but with attention to their own policies. James calls this “putting yourself at the other fellow[’]s point, then moving the point and him following.” Trump voters, first stirred to resentment of elites, but newly alienated by cuts to Medicaid or disaster relief might direct their heart-felt anger toward Trump himself. Democrats would be best able to rise to that populist surge if they would reduce their own ties with elites.

With the music and style of Bob Dylan providing previews about the challenges of appealing to people’s hearts, the choices of the parties will shape whether the politics of the future will be in the style of two-term Donald Trump or whether he becomes a two-hit wonder.

Paul Croce is the author of two books, most recently Young William James Thinking (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2018); author interview. He taught history at Stetson University from 1988 to 2024 and directed the American Studies Program. With retirement, he is applying his teaching and James’s insights to The Public Classroom, https://publicclassroom.substack.com/about, a platform for bridging the academic world and public life and for listening across differences.

With apologies to their very different supporters, consider the ways they interact with the public. When watching the movie, A Complete Unknown (James Mangold, Director, 2024), I first noticed similarities in style I had never thought of before. Then I tested my hunch by searching their history and their own words.

Both Dylan and Trump reveal what is to be known about them on their own terms, with utter confidence and without compromise. They are both dramatic performers on the public stage and masters at gaining attention. And they both largely ignore their critics.

The movie focuses on the early 1960s when Dylan catapulted from obscurity to fame, and in the last few years, Trump has translated his business power and celebrity status into enormous political influence. The Dylan-type path can shed light on the ways Trump rode the wave of entertainment into so many people’s hearts. We overlook this intersection of performance and politics at our peril.

Dylan said in 1964, “I want to write from inside me,” no matter what others thought, insisting, “I’m not part of no movement.” Trump too didn’t join existing movements but readily turned his campaigns into movements for his tough brand of populist politics.

Dylan delivered stern warnings from the heart to advocates for social change: if they “can’t conceive of how others hurt…. I don’t think they’ll give birth to anything.” Even when distorting facts, Trump speaks to the hearts of a large swathe of Americans who feel overlooked or hurt by professional elites. Trump, himself wealthy, presents himself as their tribune among the financial elite. That packs a powerful message to his supporters, effectively saying, “They hate me because they hate you.” Fact-checking criticism adds to his appeal: see how much those elites hate us! And Trump returns the sentiment. On the Fourth of July no less, he expressed his scorn for members of the Democratic Party: “I hate them. I cannot stand them.”

Both Dylan and Trump have an ability to say or do things outside of norms and hold their ground, maintaining stern expressions, until other people line up in their support.

What’s next? Having found their rock star, Republicans may decide to bask in Trump’s glow, letting his brash style touch the hearts of half the country while the other half gags. Democrats will be hard pressed to find candidates to serve as equal-and-opposite Trumps. But they could flip his script, asking, “Is `your elite,´ who claims to speak for you, really working for your interests?”

Keep enjoying the music of Bob Dylan, and while it speaks to the heart, consider its clues about the style of current American politics. Yeah, The Times They Are A-Changin’.

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For more on the uncanny connections between the styles of Dylan and Trump, see this essay

Connected at the Heart

Then, for more stories and explanations, see the extended article, “Bob Dylan—Donald Trump—William James… The Heart Connection,” under Essays: Political. Or click the button below!

Extended Article

What exactly is the “deep state”? Those words and related ones with similar power and allure have been used in different ways, most recently as a Republican slur on liberal Democrats and government workers. This second part follows the history of the phrase, with examination of ways to cope with the fears spurred by the “deep state.” The article concludes with suggestions challenging both parties to live up to their support for “we the people.”

End, Defend, or Mend Government Programs?

The Trump administration’s plan to target Democratic agents of the “deep state” may find some examples of partisan corruption. That civic purpose does not need the flamboyant promise of the new Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), Kash Patel, to “shut down the FBI Hoover Building … and reopen it … as a museum of the deep state.”

And the administration shows no impulse to direct its righteous goals in bipartisan ways, despite the original meaning of the “deep state” phrase. Even Democratic efforts to combat “deep state” conspiracies distract attention from the power of money overriding people power, just as Le Carré and Lofgren warned.

Trump administration policies, including moves to concentrate power, stem from absolute judgments against government programs, a wholesale hostility in keeping with their “deep state” thinking. And their speed and drama have prompted similar either-or responses from Democrats rushing to defend programs.

The Supreme Court has stepped beyond the political contest with focus on the very purpose of government programs. They asked the president to “clarify what obligations the government must fulfill.”

But in public, there is little discussion of government’s purposes, much less about the challenge of addressing those purposes within existing revenue streams—that is, how to square them with growing debt. The nation would benefit from some crucial questions for Republicans, now holding so much power:

Dear Republicans, are you against government methods for addressing the goals of its programs, and if so, how would you achieve those purposes through other means? Do you have alternative approaches in mind to achieve those goals?

Or are you against those public goals themselves, ranging from the oversight work of inspectors general to funding of foreign aid, and many more? With your hostility to government workers, are you also against those government purposes?

The nation would also benefit from a few key questions for Democrats:

Dear Democrats, your defense of particular government programs has been impressive, but then how would you deal with the expenses of government in total, especially with the large annual deficit spending of the last few years and projected to continue?

Would you consider reducing funds for programs in domestic life or for America’s global role; or would you consider raising more funds to pay for them? Or do you consider the national debt to be an insignificant or manageable problem?

Each polarized party shies away from these questions for fear of revealing weakness in their paths to power. Yet any versions of these questions circulating among citizens would prod the parties to serve as resources rather than only as citadels for fighting in polarized opposition.

Recent polarization through speed has left little room for consideration of potential ways to reduce the debt without loss of purpose or for scrutiny of potential problems in programs that could be improved.

Instead, the pace of change has produced a politics of Team Vanquish Deep State! lined up against Team Defend Government as It Has Been!

That amplified polarization draws citizens into joining one side, with dire visions of the other side (sometimes justified), but with little attention to the potentially valid questions that may circulate (even just in part) beneath the antagonisms.

With fights over big government, neither party is paying attention to problems with big money, the central warning behind earlier uses of the phrase, the “deep state.”

Could the dramatic if not chaotic actions of Republicans serve as a wakeup call for reform? Candidate Trump effectively diagnosed an impatience with government. Bill Clinton was adept at feeling the pain of voters; Trump is adept at feeling their anger.

But much of that anger comes from frustration with polarization, which has been keeping both parties in what Lee Drutman calls the “doom loop” of gridlock, preventing the tackling of many major problems.

President Trump has been implementing prescriptions with unprecedented harshness and destruction of many public purposes, and polls show that most Americans do not approve, even among his own constituents.

Long postponement of ways to break through polarized standoffs has effectively invited his extreme path. Perhaps these dire current conditions can prod both sides to own up to the role of money in politics and to mend government programs rather than ending them.

The backlash against the severity of DOGE indicates a groundswell of public outrage that could grow into support for action—by members of either party—both to gain support for vital government programs and to reduce the national debt.

A voice from one of the slashed programs, the Agency for International Development (USAID), points to possibilities in this direction.

For years at the agency, Sean Brooks dispensed aid and good will in Somalia, Sudan, and South Sudan, but also recognized “agency missteps.” Rather than simply issuing its “death blow,” he welcomes addressing those problems to improve “America’s role as a global humanitarian leader… serving America’s interest abroad.”

The current talk around the “deep state” has been dramatizing political fights but reducing abilities to achieve national goals and address problems effectively.

Ironically the fights over cuts have turned the whole political arena into Scenes of Divisions Over Polarized Inefficiencies (with an acronym to match, So DOPI). Michigan Democratic Senator Elissa Slotkin, responding to Trump’s speech in Congress, acknowledged his themes in saying, “America wants change,” and “we need more efficient government,” even adding, “I’ll help you do it.”

Can a critical mass of Republicans take up versions of her proposition that “change doesn’t need to be chaotic or make us less safe.” Democrats or Republicans can take first steps in this direction by connecting “deep state” worries to its earlier meaning.

Hey, Elected Representatives, Get to Work on the People’s Business

The temptation to use the democratic processes to justify limits on freedom lurks now, as it has in every era, whenever people feel afraid, with their security threatened. However, reclaiming the original meaning of the “deep state” can still appeal to the deep-seated American taste for freedom—in this case, freedom from money’s manipulations, with freedom for citizens to vote their consciences rather than as echoes of powerful interests.

The founder of American psychology, William James, would say that this can emerge if freedom can gain more attention than security. The key will be for the song of freedom to ring louder than the siren calls of fear.

To borrow from Ray Parker, Jr.’s Ghostbuster song, most American voters in 2024 decided that “there’s something [wrong in their national] neighborhood… something weird and it don’t look good.” A slim plurality voted for the party that most fully diagnosed that feeling.

The history of “deep state” thinking sheds light on how we’ve gotten to current enormous changes and can light our way about choices for next steps. The immediate future belongs to the Republicans in power and presenting a conspiracy version of the “deep state.”

The long-term future belongs to politicians who can address problems deeper than “deep state” stories without squelching freedom. There will be power in speaking out both for the eroding status of the working class and for the rights of those facing discrimination.

Freedom can best ring with reduction in reasons to be afraid and with increased reasons for citizens to believe that their votes are not being hijacked by big money.

Better than banishing “deep state” thinking and more powerful than ridicule of its literal tenets would be drying up reasons for people to feel the fears that make its worries plausible. Members of both parties could stand up to Beltway benefits for the wealthy that have been hemming in all those out of power.

Substantial support for American freedom is the best prescription to offset slides into short-term security. Then in place of worrying about the conspiratorial “deep state,” Americans can rally to support for deep reductions in the role of money shaping politics—and that applies to both parties.

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Suggested Readings

Blakely, Jason. We Built Reality: How Social Science Infiltrated Culture, Politics, and Power. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Department of State v. AIDS Vaccine Advocacy Coalition. Supreme Court of the United States. 24A831, 2024, https://www.scotusblog.com/cases/case-files/department-of-state-v-aids-vaccine-advocacy-coalition/.

Drutman, Lee. Breaking the Two-Party Doom Loop: The Case for Multiparty Democracy in America. Oxford University Press, 2020.

Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Farewell Address.” January 17, 1961. National Archives. Updated July 15, 2024, https://www.archives.gov/milestone-documents/president-dwight-d-eisenhowers-farewell-address.

Gerhard Peters and John T. Woolley, eds. “Executive Orders.” The American Presidency Project. Santa Barbara, CA, 1999-2025, https://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/node/323876.

Goldberg, Zach. “The Rise of College-Educated Democrats.” Manhattan Institute. February 2, 2023, https://manhattan.institute/article/the-rise-of-college-educated-democrats.

Good, Aaron and Peter Phillips. American Exception: Empire and the Deep State. Skyhorse, 2022.

Hiramoto, KJ. “Bill Aimed to Restrict ‘Activist Judges’ Awaits Senate Vote; Critics Call HR 1526 a Threat to Constitution.” Fox 11 Los Angeles. April 15, 2025, https://www.foxla.com/news/hr-1526-trump-bill-restrict-court-judge.

Hochschild, Arlie Russel. Stolen Pride: Loss, Shame, and the Rise of the Right. The New Press, 2024.

James, William. The Principles of Psychology, vol 1. Henry Holt and Company, 1918.

Joseph, Jamie. “‘Political Prosecutions’: Republican AGs Demand End to ‘Lawfare’ Prosecutions of President-Elect Trump. Fox News. November 15, 2024, https://www.foxnews.com/politics/political-prosecutions-republican-ags-demand-end-lawfare-prosecutions-president-elect-trump.

Le Carré, John. A Delicate Truth. Penguin Books, 2013.

Licon Gomez, Adriana. “Musk Waves a Chainsaw and Charms Conservatives Talking Up Trump’s Cost-Cutting Efforts.” AP. February 21, 2025, https://apnews.com/article/musk-chainsaw-trump-doge-6568e9e0cfc42ad6cdcfd58a409eb312.

Lofgren, Mike. The Deep State: The Fall of the Constitution and the Rise of a Shadow Government. Viking, 2016.

Ludwig, Gene, ed. The Vanishing American Dream: A Frank Look at the Economic Realities Facing Middle- and Lower-Income Americans. Disruption Books, 2020.

Marsden, Emma. “What Kash Patel Has Said About the FBI.” Newsweek. December 1, 2024, https://www.newsweek.com/what-kash-patel-has-said-about-fbi-1993764.

Morgenthau, Hans J. and George F. Kennan. “The Impact of the Loyalty-Security Measures on the State Department.” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, 11 no. 4 (April 1955): 134-140, https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/1955BuAtS..11d.134M/abstract.

Nelson, William E. “The Shutdown: Drowning Government in the Bathtub.” The Conversation. February 12, 2019, https://theconversation.com/the-shutdown-drowning-government-in-the-bathtub-111333.

Orlando, Joyce. “What is Trump’s Approval Rating Now? Polls Show a Decline as He Approaches 100-Day Mark.” USA Today. April 28, 2025, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2025/04/28/donald-trump-approval-rating-latest-polls-decline-100-days/83326990007/.

Ortega, Bob and Kyung Lah, Allison Gordon, and Nelli Black. “What Trump’s War on the ‘Deep State’ Could Mean: ‘An Army of Suck-Ups.’” CNN. April 27, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/04/27/politics/trump-federal-workers-2nd-term-invs.

Peterson-Withorn, Chase. “Forbes’ 39th Annual World’s Billionaires List: More Than 3,000 Worth $16 Trillion.” Forbes. April 1, 2025, https://www.forbes.com/sites/chasewithorn/2025/04/01/forbes-39th-annual-worlds-billionaires-list-more-than-3000-worth-16-trillion/.

“President Trump: Unelected Deep-State Operatives Threat to Democracy Itself.” CBS News Texas. September 7, 2018, https://www.cbsnews.com/texas/news/deep-state-operatives-threat-to-democracy/.

“Read the Full Transcript of Slotkin’s Democratic Response to Trump Speech to Congress.” CBS. March 5, 2025, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/transcript-slotkin-democratic-response-trump-2025/.

Samuels, Brett. “Trump Ramps Up Rhetoric on Media, Calls Press ‘the Enemy of the People.’” The Hill. April 5, 2019, https://thehill.com/homenews/administration/437610-trump-calls-press-the-enemy-of-the-people/.

Scott, Peter Dale. The Road to 9/11: Wealth, Empire, and the Future of America. University of California Press, 2007.

Schaeffer, Katherine. “6 facts About Economic Inequality in the U.S.” Pew Research Center. February 7, 2020, https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2020/02/07/6-facts-about-economic-inequality-in-the-u-s/.

Tankersley, Jim. The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of America’s Middle Class. Public Affairs, 2021.

Tierney, Abigail. “National Debt of the U.S.: Statistics and Facts.” Statista. July 29, 2024, https://www.statista.com/topics/836/national-debt-of-the-us/#topicOverview.

Wise, David and Thomas B. Ross. The Invisible Government. Random House, 1964.

Zanona, Melanie, Jonathan Allen, and Matt Dixon. “House Republicans Hit the Brakes on Town Halls After Blowback Over Trump’s Cuts.” NBC. February 25, 2025, https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/congress/house-republicans-town-halls-blowback-trump-cuts-rcna193766.

Complete article originally published in Origins: Current Events in Historical Perspective. July 18, 2025. https://origins.osu.edu/read/deeper-deep-state-follow-money

What exactly is the “deep state”? Those words have power and allure. Recently, in this democracy, some use the phrase as part of a rallying cry against secret powers while others dismiss those worries as unfounded conspiracies. This essay provides a history of the phrase, examining how fears of hidden powers, both real and imagined, have stirred liberals and conservatives, for national security claims and for politicians seizing political advantage, with a recent surge in concern for the power of money impacting both parties.

During his first hundred days in office, President Donald J. Trump issued over 140 Executive Orders. His Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), originally run by business executive Elon Musk, has been reshaping and reducing the government

A colleague in Germany wrote to me with puzzlement felt also by many in America: “What the hell is going on in the USA?” Yet these disruptions may be just what Republicans intended with 2024 campaign promises to “make liberals cry again.”

While critics raise alarms over the president’s bold moves and supporters think the critics are trying to hem in needed reforms of government, all parties would benefit from understanding the motivations for changes so drastic.

The theory that government has been operating as a “deep state” gone “rogue,” in the words of recent legislation seeking to limit judicial checks on the executive branch, has been motivating Republicans for years.

In 2001, activist Grover Norquist spoke for many conservatives in wanting to “drag … government … into the bathroom and drown it in the bathtub.”

Half a year into Trump’s second term, his own supporters have become suspicious that even his Justice Department has joined the conspiracy to distract public attention from the “deep state” charge that Jeffrey Epstein organized a ring of elite pedophiles.

Beyond Democratic ridicule of “deep state” conspiracies and Republican satisfaction with their claims to be diagnosing government’s problems, how did these ideas emerge? And what can history of the “deep state” reveal for citizens of either party seeking reform toward a more perfect union?

Fear or Money: Will the Real Deep State Please Stand Up?

Either as a literal subversive plot or as a general irritation with liberals and bureaucrats, recent worry about the “deep state” has strayed from the original meaning of the phrase. The idea of powerful, subversive operatives hidden from public view has included bold charges and shadowy associations, expressed in many variations.

The “deep state” first gained American public popularity in a 2013 novel about “non-government insiders” conspiring to use big money to fund a big arms shipment to big-time terrorists. John Le Carré uses his story-telling skills in his political thriller, A Delicate Truth, to tap fears that just maybe democracy is a sideshow while secretive moneyed interests direct our politics.

The fictional emergence of the phrase followed its use in policy circles to describe the military force used in 1990s Turkey to protect the state from external and internal threats. Similar phrases had circulated in the postwar United States. Understood broadly, these dark words apply to many intelligence operations, criminal organizations, and righteous politicians who skirt public and legal channels to gain power and influence.

In 1955, Hans Morgenthau and George Kennan referred to the American “dual state,” with the growing national security state using modern technology to monitor the public and elected officials. This was managed by what David Wise and Thomas Ross called in 1964 “the secret elite,” which Peter Dale Scott in 2007 showed to be in steady growth without democratic oversight, “outside and above … the public state.”

President Dwight Eisenhower added another similar phrase in 1961, the “military-industrial complex,” showing less concern about secrecy than about widespread acceptance of the large and growing “industrial and military machinery” despite its potential for “unwarranted influence” to overwhelm democratic goals for “compos[ing] difference, not with arms, but with intellect and decent purpose.” Eisenhower focused on the danger of acquiescence with popular acceptance of power outside of elected representation.

These extra-political forces have been enlisted during wars and other emergencies, with suppression of civil liberties—that includes the present with Trump describing immigration as an emergency. This use of force has been justified by claims that brief suspension of freedom would secure the survival of democracy.

But these forces erode democracy with “covert top-down rule,” in the words of Aaron Good. He observes that these militant measures first emerged when fear of Communism justified what he calls “exceptionism” with repeated exceptions to the rule of law.

All these variations on the “deep state” involved intrusions on democracy.

While working as a Congressional staffer, Mike Lofgren witnessed firsthand versions of what these phrases referred to, especially ways that well-funded interests so readily swayed lawmaking.

In 2016, he named his book The Deep State to describe the power of money to shape decisions by members of both political parties. Building on Eisenhower’s warning about normalizing democratic erosions, Lofgren noticed that “the state within a state” was not “a secret, conspiratorial cabal,” but teams of professional lobbyists, “hiding mostly in plain sight.”

Especially with electoral campaigns increasingly dependent on expensive advertising, the loop inside the Washington Beltway had come to include, he observed, candidates spending more and more of their time courting the donations of the wealthy, donors seeking returns on their dollars, and politicians using campaign cash to divert attention from subservience to donors.

Lofgren wrote: “The Deep State [is]…a corporate and private influence network with almost unlimited cash to enforce its will…. Fundamental policy continuity exists regardless of which party controls the levers of government.”

With “Beltwayland” flow of money into politics largely accepted by the public, and resistance marginalized, Lofgren wondered, “Do elections matter?”

The book received limited attention. But in recent years, one side of the Republican Party used the phrase “deep state” as a way to target Democrats, despite Lofgren’s having taken aim at both parties.

Building on generations of Republican antagonism to government, President Trump has sharpened this partisan hostility. He even recently called Democrats “forces of evil.”

He has been presenting the “deep state” not as a threat to the government but as the government itself, embodied in administrators, supported by the Democratic Party, motivated by liberal ideology, and with “radical … Marxist” foundations, showing a lumping of all leftists with the most extreme.

Previous critics of government had called the system bad; but with “deep state” thinking, government workers themselves are the enemy, along with political opponents.

Beneath the public worries about rogue bureaucrats tampering with cultural norms and the ideological hopes for shrinking government, the deep policy problem motivating “deep state” thinking is the national debt, now over $34 trillion, more than a fifth higher than the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP), with payments on the debt the fastest growing line item in the federal budget and those costs exceeding money spent on national defense, Medicare, or Medicaid. As a result, Moody’s credit rating agency downgraded the United States’s credit rating.

By contrast, supporters of government workers devote less attention to the debt while praising the good work of civil servants responding to social complexities with nonpartisan public problem solving.

While Republicans worry more about the debt, they rarely consider savings from government spending on the military. Neither party supports cutting Social Security, Medicare, or Medicaid, which make up half the budget, although the 2025 Republican budget bill includes significant cuts to those medical expendatures.

Lofgren himself maintains that “societies create bureaucratic structure to solve problems.” He critiques both Republican “deep state” thinking and Democrats opposing it without attention to spending soaring into large debt. Of course, in recent times these roles have changed, and the Congressional Budget Office estimates that the recent Republican “big, beautiful bill” will add $3.3 trillion to the national debt.

Both following and fighting the current use of the phrase have amplified polarized distraction from Lofgren’s concern about monied interests shaping public thinking and political policies.

During his first term, Trump portrayed the threats to be society-wide in declaring that “unelected deep-state operatives” have allies in the “Fake News Media,” his dismissive phrase for mainstream news sources.

Campaigning in 2024, he amplified his critique into a blunt promise: “We will demolish the deep state.” And in his first address to Congress on March 6, 2025, Trump declared, “The days of rule by unelected bureaucrats are over.”

“Deep state” thinking is a primary motivation for the enormous cuts in government programs embodied in Musk’s chainsaw. The speed and intensity of the changes has left Democrats scrambling to protect programs in the face of public impatience with government and institutions in general, sentiments also motivated by “deep state” thinking.

Cultural Resentments: Seeds of Vengeance

In his second administration, the president has adopted wartime footing with attempted legal justifications based on emergencies for his executive orders. As a candidate, he had already telegraphed his punches, as boxers say. He attacked the press as the “enemy of the people” and called Democrats an educated elite while paying little attention to the power of the nation’s financial elite.

This message rings true with many voters, and its populist appeal targets (some of) the upper class as culprits for explaining how the rich have gotten richer in the past few generations. In a reversal of decades of party identification, higher percentages of the wealthy and well educated now vote for Democrats while larger numbers of the working class with limited education now vote for Republicans.

And sure enough, since the 1970s, the well-off and the educated command a larger share of citizen net worth. For many in the working class, the prosperity of educated professionals is a larger irritant than the still-more-prosperous owners of businesses, even the richest among them.

There is little public critique of billionaires who mostly gain their wealth in business, even as their holdings increased by 14% last year, according to Forbes, up to $16.1 trillion. Four of them are members of the Trump administration—in addition to the president himself. But businesspeople provide jobs (or can take them away) for average citizens, while professionals engage in analysis without tangible production.

With power concentrated in the private sector, leading businesspeople have been dramatically impacting working-class lives with jobs lost to automation or with factories relocated overseas. As a result, many workers have been “rendered economically useless,” as Gene Ludwig observes in his research on low-income Americans, or their skills require upgrades with more professional training.

Those on the losing end of fewer opportunities are particularly irked by the “prevailing economic analysis” displaying that “the economy is humming” according to aggregate data about high national gross domestic product (GDP) and low unemployment statistics.

Yet as Ludwig found, this information reflects the successes of the well off but only “a sliver” of the experiences of those struggling. The unemployment figures do not capture the hurts and humiliations of those moving to lower-paying jobs or working part-time.

Ludwig suggests that “continued dependence on aggregate U.S. economic data is clouding our understanding of what’s happening on the ground.”

Political theorist Jason Blakely warns that this gap between analysis of markets and lived experience contributes to “runaway inequality” that threatens democracy.

He suggests that confidence in data stems from treating modern economics as “social physics.” Economic conclusions are given unquestioned social authority, with confidence, as Nobel-Prize winning economist Gary Becker insists, that the analysis provides a “framework for understanding all human behavior.”

The public faces of these scientific certainties are educated professionals, including many in government offices, generally working in a spirit of public service with a democratic ethos.

As Blakely points out, “we need the information generated by social scientists,” even as their work can be used with little attention to their own ideological assumptions or to the limits of their powers. He calls this “the problem of scientism,” involving an “unwarranted confidence in the power of science to explain all of human life.”

The resulting gap between the data of professional inquiries and the experiences of workers breeds resentment, especially when administrative policies support progressive causes that challenge traditional values. And professionals’ high level of education and use of intellectual discourse can seem patronizing to workers. This has contributed to anger and shame among the less educated, as Arlie Russell Hochschild observes.

While paying little attention to business complicity in reduced job opportunities, Republicans talking about the “deep state” speak to resentments directed at the educated elites as objects of suspicion.

With social opportunities shrinking for many in the working class and with many educated professionals not experiencing those problems, Trump argues, with limited evidence, that elitist Democrats have been using the tools of government to promote liberal goals and the tools of law enforcement as “lawfare” for “political prosecutions” of Republicans.

With the fictional and bipartisan origins of the “deep state” now largely forgotten by both parties, Republicans focus on what they call the government overreach of Democratic policies with little recognition of ways those policies have actually helped the working class.

Meanwhile, many Trump supporters show little worry about his own membership in the financial elite. His promise of angry retribution against his supporters’ enemies grants him a position for many voters as “our elite” among the powerful to serve as avenging tribune for their anger.

Meanwhile, few Republicans or Democrats acknowledge their own roles in the shadow government allowing big money to shape policies.

Next, stay tuned for ways to turn those fears about the “deep state” into upgrades on our public life, coming soon:

Deeper Than the “Deep State”: Part 2, “Deep State” or Public Purposes?

Part 2

Why are Republicans so eager to cut government programs? These policies will reduce the deficit by a little. But the budget, with what President Donald Trump calls the “big beautiful bill” (BBB), is actually digging the debt deeper (DDD) with increased spending for the military and immigration control and substantial tax reductions. The motivation to cut programs runs deeper.

When many Republicans look at the federal government, they see a cloaked “deep state.” Earlier versions of this idea included fear of national security infiltration and worries about external influence on government policies. Current Republican fears are about the government itself. They fear Democrats not just as a party in opposition, but as liberals staffing government offices with unelected bureaucrats to undermine US traditions and weaken its international power. Republicans have charged Democrats with being the party of DDD if not more nasty “deep state” machinations ranging from pulling this democracy toward socialism to organizing rings of pedophiles, with the extravagant and tragic Jeffrey Epstein representing those fears.

Fears about cloaked nefarious forces accelerated with the Cold War against Communism. To many conservatives, liberals and bureaucrats seemed to be taking steps toward that government-centered ideology—not Communist Reds but Pinkos—despite commitments among Democrats to American democratic capitalism. Even if some bureaucrats and moderate Democrats do not themselves conspire, according to “deep state” thinking, they do the bidding of the liberal elites corrupting America, hence the slur on former President Joe Biden as “Bidden,” doing the bidding of radical leftists.

Secret powers influencing politics and society? Elites supporting their own interests with average citizens ignored or distracted from these dangers?

While these hallmarks of “deep state Democrats” get a lot of buzz, they generate little evidence. But the charges actually fit another power in politics gaining little attention.

The big danger to democracy: not big government, but big money.

Frequent flyers to this page know about my inclination to listen to both sides. Now I’m challenging both conservatives and liberals. Lobbyists for the powerful, funded by undisclosed sources, effectively serve as a kind of normalized deep state, influencing members of both parties. Current “deep state” fears raise an important alert even as they could use a refocus of attention on the enormous and generally hidden power of money.

The surge of populism pushing Democrats and Republicans to claim support for average citizens has yet to address this de facto deep power hiding in plain sight. The future belongs to the party not just ready to talk the populist talk but also to walk away from the depths of influence from money on our politics … running deeper than the “deep state.”

Read more about it! Check out the next post on The Public Classroom, “Deeper Than the ‘Deep State’: Part 1, Follow the Money.”

See Part 1

The concept was so appealing that economists Gene Grossman and Alan Krueger then also applied the graph to the relation of growth and worsening environmental quality in steady decline until increasing growth would bring more capacities to pay for the damage. The thinking expressed in this curve became widely appealing not just to economists, but also to politicians and the public in general.

This concise graph captures an enthusiasm for growth based on faith in the future. From this perspective, the problems and the solutions to them come from the same place. And with the solutions arriving at no particular deadline, the mainstream economists who have been thinking with this curve resemble Evangelicals who believe in the soon return of Jesus. As with fallen believers waiting for redemption, so economic growth “falls” into problems. According to this type of faith, the future will “catch” society from any resulting damage by developing innovations, even those not yet imagined.

This thinking shows how even abundant facts about the social and environmental issues don’t gain much traction because those persuaded by the graph of Kuznets accept those problems, even dreadful ones. They even expect them while waiting for the saving grace of the turning point.

Critics of growth could use a different approach, starting with recognition that growth has provided benefits in the long run, including increased prosperity and reduced poverty. Good! Once entering that growth-endorsing territory, critics can find more opportunities to gain more of a hearing. Supporters of growth and its critics could gather around the first half of the curve with all parties agreeing that growth makes problems worse, especially at first. Critics of growth could affirm those hopes for the turning point to address problems. And they could add their own hopes to bring that day sooner.

The case for a sooner turning point can come from the shared attention to problems that the early curve already acknowledges. Those problems are not static. Environmental and social issues can quickly become large and overwhelming; devoting resources to them sooner can prevent that tide. And some people might simply get so used to the problems that they don’t even notice them; that’s another reason to reach for the turning point sooner.

After showing respect for what economic growth does well and joining with its supporters over problems it generates, critics of growth could gain solidarity with its supporters to address those problems sooner.

In a world with widespread assumptions favoring growth, the art of listening can be a first step toward gaining more attention to the problems in nature and society that come with growth. Then, instead of the Kuznets Curve distracting from those issues, its own acknowledgment of the problems can serve as a step toward gaining more and sooner support for addressing the problems of environmental damage and social inequality.

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Think of our many political debates—immigration, healthcare, war, environmental problems, race and gender issues…. Economic growth is a quiet driver of them all, but it’s rarely noticed.

Meanwhile, scientists and scholars report on steadily rising temperatures, resources consumed, mountains of waste, and toxins in the air and water—and our bodies. The next time you are out eating ice cream with a plastic spoon, eat the spoon. Too late! Inside the average person there are microplastics that add up to the mass of a spoon.

Also, our economics is so complicated that we rely on the most wealthy and most skilled to keep the system of production and consumption going. Impressive people, impressive system. But little room for the working class except as commodified resources like those in nature.

Big production? Check. Lots to consume? Check. Well, if you are wealthy enough and not suffering from war or environmental disaster. Low prices? That’s slipping away with constant pressure on supplies and competition for goods and services. What’s the end game of all this growth?

Doctors have a word for constant growth: Cancer.

Now what? Economic factors point to the value of growth, but environmental and social factors reveal serious problems. Political debates leave us in the same place as with part of a Simon and Garfunkel song, “laugh about it, shout about, when you’ve got to choose, every way you look at this you lose.”

There are more riches from listening to each side. Some growth is good, the kind that brings fun and lifts people out of poverty. But is more material stuff all there is? Instead, we could grow experiences and relationships. Try a spoonful of those and you can taste a better world. Pass it around.

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