The panic in her voice was evident. Elahe Izadi of The Washington Post podcast was asking — pleading really — with Congressman Jamie Raskin to explain why the January 6 hearings weren’t “working”.
By working, what Izadi meant was having the ”shocking details” disclosed in the hearing by credible witnesses like Cassidy Hutchins to make “Trump’s baseless election claims… go… away”.
It’s a lovely image. Rabid MAGA Republicans (or vaccine deniers, racists and misogynists) exposed to the incontrovertible truth that who and what they believe in was wrong, withering with embarrassment and slinking away.
But it won’t happen that way, because you can’t convince all the people all the time — not about the preferability of democracy over autocracy, or the safety and efficacy of vaccines, or the full humanity of women, or anything else.
There have always been autocratic-leaning people — hard numbers are elusive but let’s call it 30% of a given population — who like worshipping at the altar of the politically and/or religiously powerful. To feel as one, accepted as part of a group with no other obligations but to loyally obey.
Izadi surely knows this, so why the panic?
My guess is that she, like so many millennials, has been spooked by her feed. The one friend she thought was just like her — responsive to fact, truth, reason, logic and every other mode of persuasion those who believe in the peaceful resolution of disputes hold dear — had turned out to be not like her at all.
Surely, we tend to think, that friend can’t be alone. If she can’t be reasoned with, there must be many more.
Actually, no. The view of one person tells you nothing about how many others in your friendship circle or larger society feel the same way.
Without turning into a tedious research methods lecturer — which I am — the content of your feed is a totally useless indicator of the presence or absence of denialists in your life and in your social world. To know that, you need representative surveys.
Which, when it comes to changes in Donald Trump’s level of support after the January 6 hearings, shows good news. There’s been growth in the number of Americans who believe the MAGA movement is threatening America’s democratic foundations (58%, according to Reuters) and whose change in allegiance has meant a majority of the country no longer wants Republicans to dominate Congress, preferring Democrats to be in control instead.
What this means is that the repetition and demonstration of fact over falsehood does work to persuade the persuadable. That’s why those who want to preserve democracy, to reduce transmission of infectious diseases, end sexism and misogyny need to keep repeating those facts.
And rely on them — not the loud-mouthed outlier in our feeds — to measure success.
