Jason Hartman hosts author Erik Fogg to discuss his latest book, Wedged: How You Became a Tool of the Partisan Political Establishment. Fogg also gives insights from his other book, How to Start Thinking for Yourself Again. He talks about his background as a Chief at ReConsider and as a co-host of the ReConsider podcast. Given the election year, there is a discussion on the two-party system and its influence on how we vote. Fogg warns of the most dangerous thing for us individually is to start letting our emotional response drive our reaction.
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Jason Hartman 0:11
Welcome to the holistic survival show with Jason Hartman. The economic storm brewing around the world is set to spill into all aspects of our lives. Are you prepared? Where are you going to turn for the critical life skills necessary to survive and prosper? The holistic survival show is your family’s insurance for a better life. Jason will teach you to think independently to understand threats and how to create the ultimate action plan. sudden change or worst case scenario. You’ll be ready. Welcome to ballistic survival, your key resource for protecting the people, places and profits you care about in uncertain times. Ladies and gentlemen, your host Jason Hartman It’s my pleasure to welcome Eric Fogg to the show. He is author of wedge how you become a tool for the partisan political establishment and how to start thinking for yourself, Eric, welcome. How are you? I’m great.
Erik Fogg 1:12
Jason, thanks so much for having me. I’ve been a longtime listener, big fan.
Jason Hartman 1:15
Good to have you. Where are you located?
Erik Fogg 1:17
So right now I’m in the beautiful Bay Area, but I live in Boston, Massachusetts.
Jason Hartman 1:22
Oh, okay. So both sides of the country there. You know, this has long been a thing that I’ve thought talked about of how the political, it’s like a false narrative that we have these two sides, right. In other countries, sometimes they have lots of sides. You know, it’s not just to write, I don’t know, maybe the American population has become so dumbed down that we can’t handle more than two choices. I’m not sure what it is. But to me, it seems like we just have like these run off style elections where we have a whole bunch of voices and people and philosophies and we do one round and Cut a bunch out the way you do a beauty pageant, right? And, and then you do another round cut a bunch out, and then you’re left with a couple and then one wins, right? You know, that’s like a better, better system. To me. It’s like a fake thing. It’s like a wrestling match. Right? Everybody knows that it’s fake, but they still watch it.
Erik Fogg 2:16
What’s going on here? So it’s really interesting, as you pointed out exactly what is the structural underlying reason for why the United States has two parties, which is how we focus. So we have a first past the post system in which you vote once for one candidate, whoever gets the most wins. And what I really like about your beauty pageant example there is that it’s a good model for how some other countries with many parties vote where you have these run offs. It changes the incentive structures, and allows people to have either vote for multiple people in ranking or vote multiple times during a runoff, which allows third, fourth, fifth parties to bloom and therefore you get more than two angles on something and it’s a little bit harder for candidates to Just when by slagging their opposite candidate because you can’t win by slagging six or seven people, you actually have to show that you have some good ideas. They’re going to help people that are going to move the economy forward. What is
Jason Hartman 3:12
that word? You’re using slagging
Erik Fogg 3:15
slightly just means ripping on or throwing mud at?
Jason Hartman 3:18
Oh, okay. Got it. Yeah, okay. Got it. Okay. Which is all too common in political discourse. So why does it make it so the best
Erik Fogg 3:27
ideas win rather than mudslinging? Like, explain that dynamic to us a little drill down on that if you would? Sure. It’s a little bit of game theory and a little bit of human psychology. So humans can be very fear driven, right. So a great way to get someone to come out to vote is to make them afraid of something great, someone you know, you get people to go to war and put their lives on the line and abandon their families abandon their homes when they are afraid. Fear is a very powerful motivator to act. When there are only two candidates. You can get people to vote by Making them afraid of the other candidate, right? The democrat can make you afraid of the Republican, the republican can make you afraid of a Democrat. And that becomes the narrative because it’s such a powerful motivator. When you have six candidates, seven candidates, it’s very hard to have a unified message around making someone afraid of six other groups. It’s just too burdensome. And so you have to revert to a campaign strategy of putting forward something positive instead.
Jason Hartman 4:28
Okay, good. So, so the best ideas when I think we’d all agree, that’s a good thing. But let’s kind of back up, we kind of got off on that tangent of how the election should be held. But let’s talk about some of these tools of the political establishment. And that’s the subtitle of your book, and why they want this this way. Maybe, you know, tell us your opinion of why it’s this way, why they play in this way, and who benefits What’s to be gained by it? And then, you know, maybe some things samples of it and absolutely x, we’ll talk about how we can start thinking more independently.
Erik Fogg 5:04
Absolutely say yes. Who benefits is that is the key here. And what we need to think of the kind of political media complexes is one big group with a lot of different players who are interdependent on each other, right? media depends on politicians, politicians depend on media, all of them depend on viewers and voters. And ultimately, the same principle about getting you to vote, getting you to go to war, getting you to put up money, driven by powerful emotions, such as fear applies. And so there’s a lot of literature on this. We cited in the book that shows that people who are afraid or angry are much more likely to donate to a campaign, they’re much more likely to vote, they’re much more likely to go door knocking, they’re much more likely to continue watching a television program. If that television program is making them afraid of anger. They’re much more likely to share an article on social media. If that article is made them afraid or angry. And therefore, we just need to think about the incentives for each of the people, or each of the parties, each of the groups in the system. So media, once they you know, they’re desperate to stay alive, right? They’re falling apart as an industry, they have to play this game or else they die. Right? They have to get you to share stuff gets you to keep watching get you to keep
Jason Hartman 6:20
clicking. So it’s just, if it bleeds, it leads, that’s it.
Erik Fogg 6:23
It’s a little more complex than that. It’s less about it being a sad story. If we think about how this ties into politics, specifically, it’s more about it being a story that plays into a narrative of fear and anger. There’s a feedback loop going between the politicians and the media where politicians say something, it will be outrageous because it’s designed to get you afraid of the other side. Media will play that up, because it’s going to you know, because they’re in a competition to see who can get the most likes, who can get the most views, whatever and that amplification of the most Anger inducing and the most fear inducing messaging by politicians, it works for the media teens, and therefore it’s going to work for the politicians who get amplified by it. And the politicians who have positive messages that don’t create fear and anger, media is not going to amplify them because it’s not going to pay off.
Jason Hartman 7:19
Okay? Okay. So it certainly seems like it benefits the media, right? You sell more newspapers, you get more ratings, you click bait, if it bleeds, it leads. You know, the bubble had bleached blonde comes on at five she can tell you about the plane crash with the gleam in her eyes. All Don Henley song, right. Which, which is great. We love dirty laundry. But I don’t know it doesn’t seem to have a direct benefit to politicians because, you know, maybe the guy that’s, I see how the positive guy doesn’t get amplified, but I don’t know. Why wouldn’t you just be a positive guy
Erik Fogg 7:56
and so you’re right. It doesn’t benefit the politicians. Here’s the that’s the real tragedy of it is that we need to remember that politics is a zero sum game media, at least the media industry can expand its total revenue year, every year, it can expand its market. So it has an upside, and it can go get that upside, if we think about it economically, so they can win through this. Whereas in politics, there will at any time be 535 people in Congress, there will be one president. And therefore, for them, politicians can ultimately never win as a group, because it is a zero sum game. It’s a fixed game for them, what they want is to be in power. And therefore, in this zero sum game, a group of 535 people can’t win. It is who ends up in those seats. Those are the folks that win. And therefore, what we’re seeing here is not that politicians as a group win over other people, but the politicians who happen to be elected the ones who win the elections. Paste on. Yeah, they stay in power. So it’s those individuals who have won by using fear, anger as
Jason Hartman 9:08
campaign tactics. Yeah, we we need term limits for sure. You know, the founding fathers never thought politics should be a career. They viewed it as just something you do you go and serve. And then you go back to your business, you know, but we’re in this era where it’s just a career, you know, it’s ridiculous. So tell us about you have some interesting graphics in your book. Tell us about the fog curve. Sure. Brain fog curve.
Erik Fogg 9:34
Yeah, I got to give a shout out to my co author, Nat green, who came up with the original notion of it on a whiteboard, and then we were find it. Ultimately, there are two curves on there. One of them is a normal curve, a bell curve, and then one of them is a buying modal curve, where instead of a lump in the middle, you have lumps on the side. So if we think of that, that lump in the middle, that is how Americans in fact, feel about Most issues. So if we look at a given issue, let’s say for example, tax rates, or let’s say, for example, you know, a particular economic proposal of, you know, how do we stimulate the economy? Or how should we handle labor laws or unions, Americans actually have many, many different opinions that are all a little bit nuanced, sometimes internally contradictory. Sometimes moderates, sometimes not. But it’s very rarely the case. Or there are very few Americans for whom it’s the case that they have really extreme views. Right. So very few people want to, for example, jack up taxes to, you know, 92%, where they were in the 1950s because of the war, and very few people want to have, you know, low taxes or a flat tax. We can think of all these different issues where people have their own position that sometimes changes that’s not all that well formed. That’s how Americans actually feel. We see this over and over again when we pull them in the right way. But what gets amplified Because of what we talked before, are those extreme positions, right? So if you think of immigration, it’s either open borders or you know, deport everyone who’s here without documentation. And there’s a lot of options in between. Most Americans want those options in between. But because of the process we’ve talked about, those voices don’t get heard. They don’t get talked about in the narrative.
Jason Hartman 11:21
Yeah, interesting. What else do you want people to know about this? Maybe any questions I haven’t asked you or areas we haven’t discussed.
Erik Fogg 11:27
I think the most important thing in particular for folks who are thinking not just about how they will vote, but how they’re going to operate in the American economy, how they’re going to invest their money, how they’re going to use their time, is that if you can start to recognize some of the signs of a media group of a politician, trying to manipulate a group of people to pay attention to them using fear and anger, you can then start to sort out the BS from truth right? Because The most dangerous thing for each of us individually is to get caught up in it is to look at something, see something said, and let our emotional response drive our reaction when we have, you know, a fear or anger response. We don’t really think through what’s being said, we believe it, we want to believe it. And it’s ultimately if you do start to believe it, it’s not only going to change how you vote, it’s going to change your own behavior in your own life to your detriment. So the book and a lot of other great literature out there is about how to spot when this manipulative behavior or when this manipulative messaging is being directed at you, so that you can become more resistant to
Jason Hartman 12:40
that stuff. give out your website and tell people where they can find out more about you and your blog.
Erik Fogg 12:45
Great, so you can come to reconsider media.com where we help you reconsider the false binary narrative, so reconsider data.com You can find our blog or podcasts and you can find the book there as well. Jason, it’s been a lot of fun. Thanks for
Jason Hartman 13:02
having me on the show. Eric, thank you for joining us and keep getting the word out about this, folks. This is an important issue. It’s not really just about two things. And if you want to think about it, even from a more conspiratorial angle, you know, divide and conquer, right? That’s how they do it. They keep everybody divided while they go run roughshod over whatever they want to do. So, this, this is an important issue to understand. And there’s lots of great graphics in the book as well. So Eric, thanks for joining us.
Erik Fogg 13:31
Thank you again, Jason.
Jason Hartman 13:33
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