In this episode, the hosts talk with Dr. Anthony Fauci about the tensions between expertise and democratic decision-making during the pandemic, and his advice for navigating apathy and misinformation during the next major public health crisis.
This podcast episode originally appeared on The Democracy Group.
Over several decades, fringe ideas have grown in popularity to reach the crescendo of noise we have today. Truth and facts are routinely dismissed by half the country (progressive and conservative!) and societal trust is very low. We may be witnessing the decline of the American Empire, or on a more optimistic note it could be the clearing we need for the United States to live into the promise of the founders — a multiracial, pluralistic democratic republic.
At the heart of the matter there lies a disjointed group of savvy marketing people who have created a highly profitable business by dividing society against itself. This “business of breaking” was perfectly timed to take advantage of many societal-changing innovations like the internet, email, social media and most recently artificial intelligence. Ironically It is the democratization of information where discerning truth from lies became more difficult.
The business of breaking (us apart) first came into public view as a talk-radio phenomenon in the 1990s with entertaining rhetoric. It was then supercharged with email, social media and news platforms that shape our world view. With the arrival of the digital age, fringe believers and societal cynics who would otherwise have remained isolated from each other were connected, allowing them to amass formal power and change society. As a result, we have witnessed a growing community of misfits and malcontents become mainstream, while most community members are everyday Americans trying to get by with a little help from their friends. A few are the social influencers and content creators, which we will call conflict profiteers, who are shaping the stories we tell about ourselves and dividing us to “win” at a game of money and influence.
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Conflict profiteers have found willing followers for their messages of grievance, victimhood, blame and shame, righteous indignation, condescension, and flagrant disrespect for institutions like the government, police, corporations and social services. They are laughing all the way to the bank with their profits and influence. Most conflict profiteers share a pearl of truth in their storytelling, but their rhetoric is carefully crafted to attract and keep their audience’s attention through unsavory means. A 2009 expose from a talk show producer reveals the dark underbelly of what he learned in the 1990-2000s.
The First Amendment is often used as a shield from accountability with claims of “censorship” protecting content that would accurately be called disinformation or propaganda. Conflict profiteers are defending their right to lie to their audience. This perversion of our First Amendment is only now seeing accountability in civil cases against Alex Jones, Rudy Giuliani and Fox News. Despite these landmark awards to those harmed by disinformation, the business of breaking us apart is alive and growing in profitability. It’s time to disrupt their business model, using coordination, education and disincentives.
The business of breaking has interrelated components that are woven through our American lives. The primary three components are:
Together, these three proponents are weakening Americans' belief in democracy and willingness to participate in civic life. While we have spent a decade (or more) hand-wringing and building strategies to blunt the effects, we have not yet considered how to solve our shared challenge through economic means.
When considering the economics that have allowed the conflict profiteers and big tech to prosper, several points of impact are needed to change incentives and eliminate profiteering.
Who is working on these or other plans to disrupt the business of breaking? When asked a series of questions, Perplexity AI offered these answers:
Several organizations and initiatives are already working on implementing strategies to disrupt the business model of divisive content creators:
These initiatives demonstrate ongoing efforts to address the challenges posed by divisive content creation and promote more constructive online environments.
You can see thesources that Perplexity AI used to create a list of actively engaged entities working to disrupt the business of breaking. Upon reviewing the list, only one organization in strengthening democracy space, via Bridge Alliance and The Fulcrum, is listed: The Reunited States Project, a documentary film that references the bridging community and was filmed in 2018-2019 and released in 2021.
I end this essay with two questions, for which I’d love to hear from you.
Please be in touch, as our nation depends upon us. Email debilyn@AmericanFuture.us.
Molineaux is the lead catalyst for American Future, a research project that discovers what Americans prefer for their personal future lives. The research informs community planners with grassroots community preferences. Previously, Molineaux was the president/CEO of The Bridge Alliance.
A man treads on a picture of Syria's ousted president, Bashar al-Assad, as people enter his residence in Damascus on Dec. 8.
This was a long day coming, and frankly one I never thought I’d see.
Thirteen years ago, Syria’s Bashar Assad unleashed a reign of unmitigated terror on his own people, in response to protests of his inhumane Ba’athist government.
Over the course of the civil war, he unabashedly committed the worst atrocities imaginable — barrel bombing schools and hospitals, torturing children and the elderly, releasing sarin gas on toddlers and infants. His war on his own people is estimated to have killed 500,000 Syrians, 50,000 of them children. Upwards of 35,000 have been “disappeared” or imprisoned. Millions more have been displaced.
For 13 years, a small cohort of journalists, war reporters, aid groups, and lawmakers tried everything we could to not let these atrocities go unnoticed or forgotten. But it often felt like screaming into a void of indifference.
That indifference is the world’s burden to share, and will always be a tragedy on top of a tragedy — inexplicable, indefensible, unforgivable.
But now that Assad the Butcher is finally gone, we owe it to the Syrian people to correct our moral failures.
The unexpected fall of Assad has brought Syrians hope for the first time in more than 50 years, but it also opens the door to some potentially dangerous unknowns that must be addressed by world leaders. There are two immediate concerns: Assad’s chemical weapons and the state’s Captagon production.
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Assad used chemical weapons, including sarin and chlorine barrel bombs, against his own people on multiple occasions. The Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) has spent more than 10 years trying to determine exactly which ones the regime still possesses, with no luck. Now is the time to find them and hold Assad accountable for their use, and more importantly, dispose of them properly so they don’t end up in the hands of terrorist factions circling Syria.
Similarly, Captagon is a dangerous synthetic stimulant that’s been mass-produced and trafficked in Syria by the Assad regime since the war began and Syria’s economy imploded. The drug brought in billions for Assad. But Syria cannot rebuild as a narco-state, and containing Captagon is a national security and public safety must.
Then, Syria will need, well, everything — the rebuilding of schools, roads, and hospitals; a functioning government; the means by which to welcome back millions of refugees; protection from vulture groups looking to exploit the new vacuum.
We not only have a role to play in all of this; it’s in our own economic and national security interests to ensure Syria’s rebirth as a democratic partner in the region. And we have the leverage to do it.
In April 2011, the U.S. issued its first sanctions against Syria and many more followed. Eventually, the U.S. would prohibit any new investment in Syria, embargo its oil, impose travel bans, freeze the assets of a number of Syrian entities and persons, and prohibit the export of any U.S. goods and services. The European Union, Australia, the Arab League, Turkey, as well as multiple non-EU countries would follow suit, plunging Syria into economic darkness.
Along with our allies, we should engage in talks to lift these sanctions, and in fact pour resources back into Syria under a checklist of conditions. Syria must draft a new constitution. It must conduct democratic elections. It must release all prisoners of war. It must allow refugees to return home. It must allow outside agents to dispose of its chemical weapons and Captagon.
There is so much more that a new Syria will have to do to regain its stability and economic footholds, to rebuild its infrastructure, to heal its people. It has a long road ahead, after suffering down a long road of Assad’s terror.
We don’t need to send troops, nor do we need to envision our role as nation builders. This isn’t a heavy lift for the U.S., nor will it put incoming President Trump in a politically compromising or “interventionist” position. We have a golden opportunity to help give the Syrian people what they’ve long been demanding and deserve — a free and fair democracy. That’s good for Syria, and good for America and our allies.
We can’t go back and intervene when perhaps we should have. We can’t bring half a million innocent people back to life. We can’t undo the torture and horrors Bashar Assad brazenly unleashed on his people for years. And we can’t wash the stain of indifference off of our hands.
But we can help Syria rebuild. And after years of inaction and apathy, it’s quite simply the least we can do.
Cupp is the host of "S.E. Cupp Unfiltered" on CNN.
©2024 S.E. Cupp. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
More than 10,000 officials across the country run U.S. elections. This interview is part of a series highlighting the election heroes who are the faces of democracy.
Kim Wyman, a registered Republican, began her career in elections in Thurston County, Washington, more than 30 years ago as the election director. She went on to serve as the county’s auditor, as chief local election officials in most parts of Washington are known. Subsequently, she served as Washington’s secretary of state from 2013 to 2021. When she was elected, she was just the second woman to serve in that position in Washington.
During her extensive career in elections, Wyman has been consistently committed to improving election administration and upholding the accessibility, security and accuracy of election processes. As a result of her bipartisan leadership, Wyman was appointed by President Joe Biden to serve as senior election security advisor for the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency.
Wyman has been regularly recognized for her contributions to the field of election administration and cybersecurity, including being inducted as a member of the Election Center’s Hall of Fame in 2022. She is currently president of ESI Consulting, a senior fellow at the Bipartisan Policy Center, an advisory board member for States United Democracy Center and a member of the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections. Outside of her dedication to election administration, she is also a motorcycle enthusiast and proud grandmother.
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Since July 2024, Wyman has been part of Issue One’s bipartisan National Council on Election Integrity, a group of more than 40 government, political and civil leaders who are devoted to defending the legitimacy of free and fair elections in the United States.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Issue One: How did you end up in this profession?
Kim Wyman: I grew up in Southern California. My husband served in the Army. When we were first married, we spent two years in Germany, and we eventually ended up in Washington state. I applied for the assistant recording manager position in the auditor's office [in Thurston County, where the county seat is Olympia, the capital of Washington]. I ended up becoming the election director in 1993.
When you find the election field, you either love it and you spend your career in it or you get out within the first six months. I was in the former category, and I have never looked back from there.
IO: You started working in elections over 30 years ago, how have you personally seen public attitudes towards elections and day to day work of election offices change in that time?
KW: It's been transformative. When I started, I had to learn about election administration and become an election expert. I needed to understand all of the logistics, the ways that we counted ballots with punch cards and how we got results out and made sure that every eligible voter could register and vote. In 2000, there was a presidential election that kind of changed everything. Suddenly, with the Help America Vote Act [which was signed into law in 2002], I found myself needing to also become an IT expert. Public opinion all of a sudden focused on election administration down to the hanging chads on punch cards. The field really transformed in the early 2000s. By 2016, when Russia started trying to hack into our systems, I had to also become a cybersecurity expert, and then in 2020, we had to become public health experts and communications experts.
My journey is very similar to what election officials across the country have been going through. With all of the ups and downs of foreign interference to close elections, it has put a focus on the administrative part of elections. Sometimes that means that the public gets angry with the way we do our job, when their anger really has more to do with the outcome.
IO: After the 2020 election, we saw trust in election administration drop among sizable segments of the electorate, especially Trump voters. After this year’s election, some Kamala Harris supporters say they have concerns about the integrity of the election processes. Why is it important for people to have trust in elections regardless of whether their preferred candidate wins, and why should people have trust in the results of the 2024 election?
KW: Election officials spend most of their time not only doing their job well technically, but really focusing on building trustworthy elections, leaning into transparency and welcoming observation and oversight. What we've seen in the last four years is that when the losing side of an election starts making accusations of voter fraud or voter suppression, this undermines their base's confidence in the election.
I've lived through a few high-profile, close elections as an administrator. 2000 and 2020 on the presidential side, and, in Washington state, the closest governor's race in the country's history in 2004. Those types of claims are not really unique to either side. Both sides do it. Sometimes it's easier to say the election was rigged, that the referees threw the game, than it is to look at your own campaign and take ownership for maybe not doing the things you needed to do to get it across the line.
IO: During the 2024 general election, dozens of bomb threats were made to polling locations in states key to the Electoral College outcome, including threats from foreign actors. Can you speak to how election officials prepared for such scenarios? What are the implications of such threats on public confidence in elections? What should the United States do moving forward to address foreign interference and foreign malign influence?
KW: One of the things that election officials learned out of the 2016 election was that foreign and domestic adversaries are going to try to attack our election system to undermine confidence. In 2017 when elections were designated as critical infrastructure and [officials] could partner with the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, it really changed the way that election officials thought about their jobs. We've shifted from trying to prevent bad things from happening to preparing and asking “What are you going to do when it happens? What are you going to do to respond and recover?” That was a huge shift between 2018 and 2020 as election officials across the country started to prepare for the 2020 presidential election. They were doing it with a focus on foreign interference, both on the cyber side and in regard to foreign malign influence campaigns. All the preparation, incident response plans and tabletop exercises they conducted to prepare for things going wrong in an election ultimately prepared them for Covid and a global pandemic.
When you think back on the success of the 2020 election, there's certainly been a lot said about how people thought that it went, but the reality was election officials across the country conducted a secure election where every eligible voter had an opportunity to register and vote during a global pandemic. A lot of that success came from all of that incident response planning. In 2020, election officials were able to shift gears and redirect assets and resources to retool entire election systems in a matter of months. In the lead up to 2024, I think election officials, myself included, were completely caught off guard with the nonstop assault that we experienced both in the media and on social media about how the election was rigged and how election officials were traitors, for example.
I think the last four years have been taking that focus on preparedness to a new level, asking questions like, “How are we going to deal with it if the losing candidate doesn't accept the results? What are we going to do if people are rioting in front of the election office on election night? What are we going to do when foreign actors try to influence a campaign?” In the 2024 election, election officials focused on the mechanics. They focused on doing the basics well. We had an Election Day where the normal things that go wrong went wrong, people made mistakes, but they had plans to recover.
Finally, we saw activity from foreign malign influence campaigns, trying to undermine the credibility of elections. We saw what the intelligence community suspects were foreign actors behind the bomb threats that were called in and targeted individual polling places. That was something we expected to happen. And so, again, plans were in place and safety measures were taken to make sure voters and staff were safe. Foreign interference is not going to end with this election. It will continue and morph into different threats. Election officials have to be vigilant in how they move forward.
IO: What can be done to better support election officials?
KW: The shift since the 2020 election has been focusing on how to humanize the work that's done by people who run elections. Coming out of 2020, it was very easy to make election officials look like they were part of a deep state plan when, in fact, they were your neighbors, they were people that you worshiped with and people who your kids went to school with. A number of organizations over the last four years have stepped up to humanize the people doing the work. That includes Issue One. There’s also the Bipartisan Policy Center, Johns Hopkins University, the Election Center, the Committee for Safe and Secure Elections and States United, among other organizations, that have really helped to professionalize the election workforce.
This cumulative effort has really strengthened the resolve of the election officials that I've gotten to work with because it is too important to not do this job well. That's the thing that binds election officials together — the commitment to making sure that our representative form of government is going last way longer than we're doing this work.
IO: CISA has also provided training and expertise to election administrators. Based on your experience working as an election security advisor for CISA, can you speak to how CISA works to support the security of our election infrastructure? And how do you anticipate changes to the role of CISA under the new administration will impact election officials?
KW: CISA’s role has been that of a partner and a convener to connect state and local election officials with their federal partners at the FBI, in the intelligence community, and in the cybersecurity and physical security elements of the work that CISA does. There is a wide range of what CISA has done for election jurisdictions. One example is a tabletop exercise in a state or community where CISA brings in experts and gets local election officials to think about threats in a different way and prepare for them. Another example is having a physical security advisor come on site and do an assessment of the security for every threat you could imagine, from a bomb threat to an active shooter, and guide local election officials through additional security measures that would protect voters, workers and ballots.
It's going to be interesting to see how CISA moves forward in the new administration. We are not sure who the new director of CISA will be. The threats to our election systems are real and remain a national security threat as foreign actors try to interfere, but I also have confidence that once we get past political issues for Republicans in Congress, that cool heads will prevail. Once they start having conversations about the role of CISA in local elections, it's going to become very clear that we need to continue this work.
For example: Let’s look at Heidi Hunt, the auditor in Adams County, Washington, who has roughly 10,000 voters. She is fighting [Russian President] Vladimir Putin. She is dealing with threats from China and Iran. We have to level the playing field because small jurisdictions across the country don’t have the capacity to deal with nation-state actors who are trying to get into their systems.
IO: Many people are surprised to learn that the federal government doesn’t routinely fund the costs of running elections. Why do you think the federal government should routinely contribute to election administration costs?
KW: The challenge is that the federal government doesn't routinely contribute to the administration of elections, yet Congress sets very specific rules that are oftentimes very costly in how federal elections must be run.
I've been doing this work long enough that I remember before the 2000 election the disparity between even the 39 counties in my state of Washington. You had some very well-resourced counties, and you had some that were very under-resourced.
From my time as county auditor, I can tell you that when I went to my county commission — the main funders of my operation — to try and get an election deputy position approved, I was competing with the requests of the deputy sheriff and the court administrator. That's the reality on the ground for most election officials.
The Help America Vote Act provided a huge infusion of $3.2 billion to modernize elections across the nation. The problem is there hasn't been a backfill of those funds, so now we are kind of back to where we were in the pre-2000 election era in terms of resource gaps. You have a jurisdiction like Los Angeles County, California, or King County, Washington, where they are well-funded and have a purpose-built building and have technology to make their jobs efficient. The problem is that not every county has those resources.
Going back to Heidi Hunt of Adams County, Washington, who has one full-time staff member. In comparison, King County, Washington, has a few hundred full-time employees. Both counties have to follow the same laws and rules. I say all of this to localize it. Because that's happening in every state across the country. When we're talking about federal funding, we have to start with the baseline of what it takes to conduct an election and how to make sure that there’s a level playing field so every voter across the country has the same experience, the same access and the same level of security.
Now, the challenge with that is when you start talking about federal funding, it gets bogged down in politics. Some states don't want new, unfunded mandates, certainly from the federal government, so they'd rather not accept the money to take on a new responsibility or implement a new policy. I think we have to keep asking Congress and putting it on the front burner. But I think that we might want to shift the perspective to talking about the importance of cybersecurity, the aging systems that we have across the country, and the differences between the technology in well-resourced versus under-resourced counties. I think that type of conversation is less polarizing than other types of election-related policy. We need to have a true conversation about cybersecurity. I don't know too many people that have a 10-year-old cell phone. I don't know too many people that have a 10- or 15-year-old laptop. I think that's an area of election administration where we could start building common ground. And we have a national security interest in making sure the system in Adams County, Washington, is just as secure as King County, Washington.
And if we are able to find the things that we can agree on, maybe we could have a secondary conversation about how to get regular funding for technology replacement for all 50 states and build it out for the long haul so local governments are able to plan and budget and also get regular technological upgrades. My gut instinct is we have to start there before we start getting into the other policies, because they just get mired down with partisan politics.
IO: Outside of your advocating for safe and secure elections, what are some of your hobbies?
KW: The singular most fun in my life is that I have two new grandchildren. Getting to see them frequently is a high priority and probably the highlight of my life right now.
I also enjoy motorcycle riding. My husband is an avid motorcyclist, and I have a feeling that starting in 2025, I might ramp back up a little bit too. I love to travel, and that's one of the reasons why I love my job. I get to travel a lot with my job and see the whole country and see election officials in their native environments, which is a lot of fun.
IO: Which historical figure would you have most like to have had the opportunity to meet and why?
KW: There are a number of women leaders that I would have liked to have met. But if I had to pick one, I think it would be Margaret Thatcher. As prime minister [of the United Kingdom], she had to navigate many major world events, and she did so with a calm hand. The way she led was always inspiring to me when I was an elected official. I wish that I had had the opportunity to actually meet her because she was a woman in leadership at a time when that was not common. She blazed a trail for many women and made it easier for my generation to walk through the doors she kicked down.
Minkin is a research associate at Issue One. Clapp is the campaign manager for election protection at Issue One. Whaley is the director of election protection at Issue One.
Vivek Ramaswamy and Elon Musk, with his son X, depart the Capitol on Dec. 5.
This is the first entry in a series on the Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory board created by President-elect Donald Trump to recommend cuts in government spending and regulations. DOGE, which is spearheaded by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, has generated quite a bit of discussion in recent weeks.
The goal of making government efficient is certainly an enviable one indeed. However, the potential for personal biases or political agendas to interfere with the process must be monitored.
As DOGE suggests cuts to wasteful spending and ways to streamline government operations, potentially saving billions of dollars, The Fulcrum will focus on the pros and cons.
We will not shy away from DOGE’s most controversial proposals and will call attention to dangerous thinking that threatens our democracy when we see it. However, in doing so, we are committing to not employing accusations, innuendos or misinformation. We will advocate for intellectual honesty to inform and persuade effectively.
The new Department of Government Efficiency, an advisory board to be headed by Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy, is designed to cut resources and avoid waste — indeed to save money. Few can argue this isn't a laudable goal as most Americans have experienced the inefficiencies and waste of various government agencies.
However, any administration, whether Republican or Democrat, that wants to implement measures to improve federal efficiency needs some account of how efficiency is related to other moral values that are central to democracy and what the trade-offs are between different values and policies.
Efficiency is best regarded as an instrumental value, whereas liberty (and equality) are best regarded as intrinsic values. If the federal government strives to promote a particular view of economic liberty, then there are clearly more or less efficient ways to do so. Yet the public deserves to know what precise view of economic liberty is being promoted — and what concept of economic equality is also being promoted.
Given recent comments by Musk and Ramaswamy, it is difficult to not be skeptical about the personal bias and extremist view of economic liberty that is implicit in what they are proposing. In an interview with Maria Bartiromo last month, Ramaswamy said DOGE will pursue major reductions in the federal bureaucracy that could result in some agencies being shuttered. "We expect certain agencies to be deleted outright," Ramaswamy said. "We expect mass reductions in force in areas of the federal government that are bloated. We expect massive cuts among federal contractors and others who are over-billing the federal government."
Rather than starting with bold conclusions before the process has even started, the parties involved should acknowledge that different moral conceptions give different places to the value of efficiency. Moral conceptions do not all have the same structure, in the same way that houses do not all have the same structure. The public needs to know what moral values underlie the purpose of DOGE.
Some meat and potatoes political and economic theory would help the roll out.
Very conservative economic positions in the liberal tradition — classical liberalism and laissez-faire economics, Robert Nozick's political philosophy, and Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman's economic philosophy — put efficiency on a pedestal. That’s because free markets and basic economic liberty are promoted, and promoting these values relies heavily on efficiency.
Thus implementing a laissez-faire economy requires that the federal government plays a modest role in the economy overall. Above all, it ensures that contractual rights are upheld and individual political and civil liberties are not denied. For the economy to lead to full employment and economic growth, in this view, it is therefore necessary for wages and prices to be determined by the free market without intrusive government rules, regulations and a system of redistributing income and wealth.
The government needs to be efficient and so too do businesses in particular need to be efficient. Products need to be produced and services need to be rendered in efficient ways.
Liberal democratic views on the progressive side, on the other hand, hold that efficiency does not achieve the same level of importance and that the federal government should be called upon to intervene in the private sector. This intervention is necessary in order to redistribute income, wealth and power so that the least advantaged improve their economic position and those in the middle do also.
To the progressives — like John Rawls, whose 1971 book “A Theory of Justice” is a landmark statement of a broadly egalitarian democratic system of government — although civil and political liberties are to be promoted equally, economic goods are not. Social and economic inequalities, Rawls argued, would be "arranged so that they work to the greatest benefit of the least advantaged members of society" and also "attached to offices and positions open to all under conditions of fair equality of opportunity."
For the progressive, or even centrist, we must be watchful that efficiency doesn’t become the end of actions by the federal government. In truth, even Donald Trump and his team must regard efficiency as a means to an end. Still, the public, and presumably Congress and possibly the courts, needs to know what the end of the federal government is.
As DOGE moves forward, the architects should heed the words of management guru Peter Drucker: “I am not in favor of big government. I am not in favor of small government. I am in favor of effective government.”
Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework," has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016. Nevins is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and co-founder and board chairman of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
