A Nuanced Take on Statecraft and Political Gamesmanship

By avoiding reductive media narratives and acknowledging nuance, we can thrive in the face of complexity.

I find most of American political content to be nauseating. Politicians are seen as either saviors or devil incarnates. Conservatives naively believe that all members of the ownership class amassed their wealth and influence virtuously. Liberals absurdly deny the significant role biology has on outcomes.

Much of this is by design. In 1917, Woodrow Wilson commissioned the Committee on Public Information to garner public support for America’s entrance into WW1. Prior to this, Americans wanted no part of the carnage. Using insights into crowd psychology from Freud and Le Bon, the C.P.I. impressed a slew of distortions, half-truths, and embellishments onto the citizenry via a painstakingly crafted propaganda campaign. The committee was in awe at how remarkably their techniques reversed public sentiment on the war. It was then understood by the Establishment that these methods could be used to create a permanent, wanton consumer class. Riskier gambits to expand the American Empire could be made against the backdrop of a subservient, over-stimulated populace.

Following the war, two C.P.I. members, Walter Lippmann and Edward Bernays, openly shared their beliefs about inculcating and steering the American public. In their eyes, the notion of the “omnicompetent citizen” was a farce, and the average American was too myopic, impulsive, and/or intellectually limited to grasp the complexities of statecraft. It was up to a cognitive elite, a “specialized class whose interests reached beyond the locality” to preserve and cultivate the nation-state.

To some degree, these policies are understandable. If America is attempting to thwart an attack…

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