Wag the Dog
NOTE: I began writing this article before the horrifying scenes of July 13th in Butler, Pennsylvania began to unfold, which (at the time of this writing) has left one man dead, two others badly wounded, and a nation in shock as we all bore witness to the first attempted assassination of a sitting or former United States President in over 40 years. I’d intended to publish this piece as we neared our November general election, but it seems a bit more timely now. So, while I’ve modified the article to include current events, much of it is intact and, I think, applicable to what many of us might be feeling…
“A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.” - Henry Brooks Adams
One of the most influential figures in my life was my high school economics, government, and U.S. history teacher. Mr. Wright, a tall slender man with thick glasses, a beard, and crown to frontal baldness, was a brutally honest, but unremittingly impartial teacher to his students. I always respected how unwavering his expectations for his students were, regardless of the GPA they brought into his classroom.
I credit Mr. Wright for far more than he’ll ever know, but one of the great passions that he instilled within me is related to U.S. history.
So I hope I am about to do Mr. Wright proud with this little nugget of our Americana which, ironically, is actually from Britain.
Who’s wagging who anyway?
All of us know that our 16th president, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated on April 15, 1865 by John Wilkes Booth (sidenote: for the sake of Mr. Wright, Lincoln was actually shot by on April 14, but perished on the 15th). Most of us know that President Lincoln was assassinated while watching a play at Ford’s Theater in Washington, D.C. What many people forget was the name of the play Lincoln was watching at the time when Booth shot him: Our American Cousin.
Cousin, written by English playwright Tom Taylor, debuted in 1858 in New York City and what few people know is that it was from this play that Americans were first introduced to what would become one of the more famously used political idioms: “Wag the Dog”.
Wag the dog, in politics, is a reference to creating a diversion from a potentially damaging issue. It’s first known use, however, was uttered by the character Lord Dundreary in Our American Cousin (non sequitur: Booth’s brother-in-law, John Sleeper Clarke, spent seven years in and out of legal trouble between 1858 and 1865, as he attempted to produce Cousin without purchasing the rights to do so…use that at your next cocktail party when you want to impress nobody).
Ok, now for my diatribe related to July 13th….
Our human brains are literally being rewired, and most of us have no idea that this is occurring. If you don’t believe me, watch Netflix’s “The Social Dilemma”, read Jonathan Haidt’s book “The Anxious Generation”, Anna Lembke’s book “Dopamine Nation”, or any of the recent studies performed about the change in our world since 2010, in large part due to the rise of our technology.
And if you think this technological trend is going to stop, or even slow down, you’ll be forced to think again if you read the book “The Singularity is Nearer” by Ray Kurzweil.
Welcome to 2024 and get ready to embrace “The Law of Accelerating Returns”.
Kurzweil is considered by many to be one of the most influential voices of what’s known as the singularity movement, which hypothesizes that somewhere around the year 2045, person and machine will be able to merge into one (if images of Morpheus and Neo are coming to mind, you wouldn’t be that far off). Kurzweil’s 2045 prediction is based on his theory known as the Law of Accelerating Returns, which is rooted in the more famous “Moore’s Law”. Moore’s Law is the observation that the number of transistors in an integrated circuit doubles about every two years. Assuming Moore’s Law holds true into the future, somewhere in the new 40’s, machines will become ultra-intelligent (if images of Arnold Schwarzenegger are coming to mind, you wouldn’t be far off) and capable of self-improving, resulting in an explosion of technology (hopefully only metaphorically) that dwarfs the already breakneck pace of advancement we are witnessing today.
While 2045 may still feel distant, many of you may have rightly observed that there has already been a recent technological revolution which only a few years ago seemed like science fiction. Most notably, because it’s something most of us use on a frequent basis, we’ve seem this quantum leap within our phones and the social media apps that clutter our home screens.
The rapid acceleration of predictive algorithms, which anticipate our actions as human beings, works for (or against) us, within our social media app of choice. Those prediction models deluge us with what we view on our timelines or feeds, believing its doing us a favor, and in many cases it is.
The danger comes when these algorithms begin producing more and more of the content you were once curious about, while simultaneously filtering out anything that might contradict the primary topic. This stream of consistent information, even if false, can produce a process known as the illusory truth effect, where repetition of information holds greater weight than new information, even if that new information is more accurate.
Have you ever bought a new car that you swore you rarely saw on the road, only to now notice that same car all over the place? Yeah, there’s a term for that: The Baader-Meinhof phenomenon, otherwise known as the frequency illusion. Now, have you ever wondered how your phone delivers to you the same topic, item, event, song, or other thing you were just talking about with a friend? Yeah, that’s not the frequency illusion, but rather the incredibly powerful algorithm of your device and possibly it’s audio software.
Now combine some of the exponentially advancing technology above with major global events (think: Ukraine, January 6th, Israel, Palestine, China, Russia, George Floyd, elections, Supreme Court, mass shootings, climate change, cancel culture, July 13th, and so on), and our increasing ability to consume these events in almost real time, often without filter. Then add a global pandemic, which drove all of us into the loving arms of isolation and further digital connection, from which we are still reemerging if we are being honest, and sprinkle in what is arguably the most politically divided period in our nation’s history since the 1960’s, and perhaps even the Civil War, and the result is…well we saw the result on the 13th of July in a rural town in the commonwealth of Pennsylvania.
Like any tragedy, there is almost never any one thing to blame, and yet herein lies the biggest problem we face as a society today…our inability to embrace dialectics, or more simply put our unwillingness to investigate or discuss the truth of opinions. In a soundbite driven world, we have no appetite for nuance.
One of my favorite radio programs is that of Michael Smerconish (which can be heard on the POTUS channel on SiriusXM at 9 a.m. EST, each weekday). I know that there will be some readers of this post who will instantly dismiss anything I am about to write because Michael is also a CNN personality, but I would challenge those who fall into this category to consider reading Rikki Schlott’s and Greg Lukianoff’s book titled “The Cancelling of the American Mind”, or at the very least gain better understanding of the Latin phrase “ad hominem”, which is thrown around a lot these days without a full grasp of the term. But I digress…
Michael is currently promoting an effort he calls “The Mingle Project”. The cliff’s notes, and clumsy explanation of this project is that due to a variety of reasons, and not the least of which is our ability to connect and work so freely in a digital age, Americans have been able to self-sort. Gone are the days where we were “forced” to interact with our neighbors, friends, colleagues, and even family members who look and think differently from us, requiring the need to understand our differing perspectives, and to, God forbid, even compromise with one another.
One of the more memorable themes from “The Social Dilemma” is that we live in a world in which each person is entitled to their own facts. If you believe the world is flat, there’s a group for you to confirm your bias. If you believe that you were actually born as an animal and not a human, there’s a group for that. And, yes, if you believe that Democrats eat children or that Republicans staged 9/11….yeah, you get the idea.
All of this is to say, the rapid expansion of our technosociety is here to stay. WE are the ones who need to change, and yet how is this achievable in a country so divided? Well there is some hope…
A recent poll conducted by the The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research found that despite what the national narrative would have you believe, Americans are actually predominantly aligned with core identity values.
In addition to the above, there are several polls that indicate an undeniable theme that our view of our nation differs significantly (in a negative way) from our perspectives of our state and local communities (in a positive way). In other words, when we see the world from a national point of view we think America is already in the 7th circle of hell, but when we open our front doors and talk to our neighbors, things don’t look all that bad.
So with all of the positive data above, why are we still just so irritable, if not outright angry with one another?
Could our national ailment possibly be traced to how we consume our news and information, the business model of which is reliant upon our addiction to scrolling, listening, or watching the very information they are feeding us? I would argue yes, and as a thought experiment I would urge each of you to try the following:
Journal your feelings on two dates:
Today: Journal about how you feel about your life. Your neighbor. Your family, and not just the ones you get along with. The political party opposite of yours. Gun rights. Abortion rights. The attempted assassination of former President Trump. The Supreme Court. Joe Biden (or rather Kamala Harris). Classmates. That friend or family member you love, but who always gets under your skin somehow. Your school board. Your local city council. Your governor. Your mayor. The person you get coffee from each morning. Maybe assign each of them a score from one to ten, with one being “loathe” and ten being “love”.
then journal and score the above people or topics again, without looking at your day one scores…
Thirty days from now: But here comes the the big ask...only do this thirty day journal entry if you can remove the format from which you most consume your news or information (be it Facebook, radio program, Fox News, MSNBC, X (Twitter), television, Instagram, or maybe it’s that group text chat). Just for thirty days. Could you do it?
I know you will feel a transformation between day one and thirty, and furthermore I know it’s possible to do this. How do I know both things?
Make it stop!
My rehab was completely voluntary. I could have walked out of the The Mountain recovery clinic at any point, if I chose to do so, but the one hard rule they had if I chose to stay was the total elimination of all electronics. For thirty days I had no access to live television or to my phone.
I’ll be honest, in addition to my anxiety about going to rehab with the aim of getting off of opioids, I had massive anxiety about not being “in communication” for thirty days. But, as a proud member of Generation X, I’m here to tell you that much like riding a bike my ability to adapt to this brave new world without checking my phone 144 times a day (yes, that’s the American average) came with remarkable ease.
If you are able to accomplish this, I think you’ll find, as I did, that your general mood and outlook will improve. In fact, I’d love to get comments from those who were able to pull this off.
If you think this experiment is extreme, I would ask you to consider what’s going on around the nation and the world, and then ask you to consider just how extreme putting down your tech is in comparison to these events.
To be clear, no one reading this is responsible for any of the chaos that has happened in recent history, but indirectly we can all contribute to the solution of it.
The term “upstream reciprocity” is literally a fancy way of saying “pay it forward”. I think the two minute Coke commercial titled “Kindness” illustrates the power of this concept perfectly.
Again, I’m of the belief that more than one thing can be true at the same time: it’s true that our nation needs a reset, but it’s also true that the only ones who have the ability to flip that switch is ourselves.
If you need an idea on how to fill your time away from your screen, let me offer the following….
Chewey and I walk a lot. Upwards of three times a day during the week, and maybe a half dozen times on Saturday’s and Sunday’s, which isn’t bad given that my leg still looks more or less like the map of a hiking trail as opposed to linear bone.
As beautiful as our area is in the high dessert country, I often find myself distracted while walking. Ok, maybe “distracted” is a gentle euphemism. During these moments of brain drift, my mind more closely resembles that of a dumpster fire. Distraction, however, is only half of the problem, as my distraction quickly turns into emotion as I conflate non-issues in my mind into massive perceived problems that quickly diminish my emotional well-being:
“One hour a day. That’s the plan. Why can’t I do this? (checks phone) It doesn’t need to be perfect. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be good. It’s just for me anyway, right? (checks phone) It won’t get viewed. So why am I doing this then? For my own sanity, I think. (checks phone) Or is it to help others? Or is it because of my hyper-inflated ego? Or is it because of my childhood being filled with commentary from teachers and parents alike using words like “potential”? (checks phone) Is it the church and the parable of the men with talents? It could also be because of my most recent self-diagnosis of Oppositional Defiance Disorder (ODD) which I’m certain prevents me from taking any substantive action in my life, like remarrying or buying another house, which seem like societal norms to obtain in order to really feel like I’m progressing in my life. (checks phone) Yeah, it’s probably the ODD that makes me want to write this piece for my blog and yet, ironically, is the exact reason I struggle to start it. (checks phone)”
Welcome to a thirty second glimpse into the mind of Chris Clarkson, which more closely resembles that of Disney’s Dug from the movie “Up”.
In a 2018 study conducted by Princeton and UC Berkeley, researchers determined that humans lose their focus upwards of four times per second. For the first time in my life I feel like an overachiever, because this seems a bit low for me.
So what brings me back to homeostasis? Something small. Something unexpected and yet completely unsurprising to me given the events of the last year. It’s actually Chewey’s tail. Seriously.
Like a skeletal metronome, I find that Chewey’s hypnotic wag is actually quite soothing to me. No matter where I am, no matter what I’m thinking, if I just take the time to lock in on that happy little tail, I find relief.
It’s a tiny little elixir for all of the emotional and mental noise that always seems to hang over, within, and around me, but I suppose therein lies the point…with all of these big things that are happening around all of us, each of them competing for our mental bandwidth, it might just require us to focus on these tiny things to remedy the undercurrent of our national discontent.
If you resonate with the Dug metaphor above, I am hopeful you find your version of Chewey’s tail to help ground you, if for only just a brief moment. In the process you might even successfully divert yourself from the potentially damaging issue of being lost in your own mind. So go out, unplug, and go find your tail to stare at…I think you’ll find tremendous peace in allowing the tail to wag the Dug.
