The News Not Noise Letter: Extremists Take the Wheel in the House
Why are extremists so powerful right now? Plus: how to watch brown bears fatten up for winter, and ancient footprints spotlight a mystery.
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McCarthy’s Ouster and Perverse Incentives:
If I had the power to get TV shows made, first I’d commission way more romantic comedies. Then I’d make a show explaining the perverse incentives that are screwing up our lives, and what we can do to fix them. (Anyone have a sexy title for this or a way to make it a competition reality show?)
Here’s what I mean by perverse incentives. Basically, we have distorted reward systems that shape our economy, government, Hollywood, schools, media, food supply, how we farm, how we shop and so much more. These reward systems or incentives are perverse because they keep giving us undesirable outcomes and no easy fixes.
What happened in Congress this week is a great case in point. The majority of Americans (and elected members) don’t want Congress paralyzed by a fight about the speaker. But Congress is held hostage by a tiny group of extremists, and increasingly members are catering to the extremes. A strange confluence of forces has birthed a system that increasingly favors political noise and political noisemakers.
Here are just a few of the perverse incentives paralyzing our politics:
Political media elevates voices that drive outrage, shock, and fear while marginalizing moderates and consensus builders. The noisy ones are seen as more likely to keep audiences reading, watching and clicking. (Note: this community proves there’s an audience for something else).
Social media accelerates and rewards the loudest voices – giving their messages outsize reach, a growing audience, and undue influence.
Our culture often values attaining political and financial power over creating community, maintaining sustainable systems, and acting with integrity and compassion. Granted, this is a subjective view – but consider the attention Elon Musk, self-interested reality stars, and Jake Paul receive, compared to, say, the scientists, educators, and artists who generate the advances and discoveries we write about every week in News That Doesn’t Suck.
Dark money groups reward politicians and organizations for advancing very narrow interests, which are often unknown to the press and public.
Old, weird rules allow one member of the House to push out the Speaker.
As a result of many of these factors, extremists are emboldened now more than ever.
And among other elected officials, political cowardice runs rampant.
In politics, some of this comes down to decades of gerrymandering and the way our party-based system limits opportunities for reform.
There’s more but I’ll stop there.
Let’s talk about “political cowardice” for a minute. Why are so many elected officials unwilling to take principled stands? I think you know what gerrymandering means, but we don’t often tease out how it impacts our country every day.
In gerrymandered districts, a majority of voters are with one party – so the candidate from the majority party is on a glidepath to winning the not-very-competitive general election. The real competition comes in the primary. Here’s the key point: in these districts, incumbents risk losing their seats in the primary more than in the general.
Often, in our system, only registered members of each party can vote in its primary; it’s called a closed primary. In these cases, independent or swing voters aren’t allowed to vote in the primary; and when they are allowed, parties aren’t incentivized to drive them to turn out. As a result, the folks who do show up in the primary are the “base,” or the hardcore partisans. These hardcore partisans have a HUGE voice in the primary – much bigger than they do in the general.
The biggest threat incumbents face is often from hardliners who challenge them in the primary – accusing them of “ideological impurity” or “compromising” with the other side. To survive the primary, incumbents often decide they have to embrace some of the same positions the extremists espouse so they don’t lose the base. To preserve their seats, they cater to the hardliners because the polarizing structure of our system makes it a near-necessity.
Increasingly, the Republican base is aligning with the MAGA position: shut down the government, throw sand in the gears of the institutions, and create chaos. When that’s the ideology you have to appeal to, it makes governing hard.
Now Donald Trump has endorsed Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) to be Speaker of the House. Former Rep. Liz Cheney has said Jordan “knew more about what Donald Trump had planned for Jan. 6 than any other member of the House of Representatives,” and that if the GOP elects him Speaker, she lacks confidence that the House leadership would do the right thing if the election were challenged again.
We don’t know how this will resolve – though it’s helpful to remember that in the darkest times, our democracy has proven resilient. Change requires system reform. And to achieve that, it would help if more people understood the perverse incentives and felt empowered to defy them.
Finally, when it comes to the primary system there are some effective reforms:
Open primaries can reduce the sway of partisan extremists.
Ranked choice voting prioritizes consensus candidates over fringe candidates.
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Now, here’s today’s news that doesn’t suck:
Fat Bear Week: It’s Fat Bear Week at Katmai National Park and Preserve in Alaska. What does that mean? The national park has livestream footage following twelve brown bears in their quest to bulk up for winter hibernation. You can watch the bears gorge themselves on sockeye salmon from multiple different angles and locations, including an underwater salmon cam. These bears aren’t just fattening up — they’re also vying for votes online. Livestream viewers select the fattest bear of the year through a bracket system, and the winner will be announced on October 10, also known as Fat Bear Tuesday. Check out the contenders and vote for your fat bear of choice here. It’s a reminder that seasons change, and that impacts our behaviors. If you’re feeling a shift these days, it might be worthwhile to take a cue from the animal kingdom, pay attention to what your body is craving and adapt.
Ginger vs. Inflammation: We all have our go-to remedies when we’re feeling off and rundown. For lots of people, it’s ginger. One friend eats ginger candies to fight off nausea. I take it when I get rundown from migraines. Another friend serves ginger tea after dinner because he says it helps with digestion. Scientists have previously determined that ginger helps reduce inflammation. Now a new study published in JCI Insight explains the biological mechanism “that underlies ginger’s apparent anti-inflammatory properties in people.” Researchers studied the impact of ginger supplements on people with autoimmune conditions. They found that it reduced inflammation by helping to calm overactive neutrophils, a type of white blood cell involved in the inflammatory response. They also found that for people who are healthy, the ginger supplements made their neutrophils more resistant to becoming overactive in the first place. By preventing the neutrophils from becoming overactive, the ginger prevented new inflammation. A researcher on the study explains that there are not a lot of tools available to fight overactive neutrophils. And they are looking to do clinical studies using the supplements, next. Want to read more about ginger’s health benefits and ways to use it in your diet? Check this out from Johns Hopkins. Note: they prefer natural ginger to supplements.
Ancient Americans: Sometimes it takes a while for science to catch up with human lore. A set of footprints is proving that true, again. Fossilized footprints from White Sands National Park in New Mexico prove humans lived in North America up to 10,000 years earlier than previously assumed. Scientists used three different methods to confirm the age of the footprints: between 20,000-23,000 years old. These footprints were made during the peak of the last Ice Age, meaning humans made it as far south as New Mexico despite massive ice sheets covering much of the Northern hemisphere. One wary geoarchaeologist told the Washington Post that this new study could “upset everything we think we know” about when and how the first Indigenous Americans arrived on the continent, but many Native scholars believe the new dates are corroborating evidence of Indigenous knowledge passed down through oral tradition.
Hulking Up Your Health: You’ve probably heard about superbugs that cause infections resistant to antibiotics and other common medications. Now, you can read about a breakthrough treatment. Researchers at the University of Southern California have found a way to “put immune cells into ‘Incredible Hulk’ mode” to defeat “superbugs” like MRSA. Superbugs are antimicrobial-resistant pathogens commonly transmitted in hospitals and other healthcare settings. They’re extremely hard to treat with ordinary drugs, and infection can be life-threatening. Scientists at USC came up with a way to fight off (or even prevent) these infections using one treatment. Unlike traditional interventions, which teach the immune system to “recognize” one specific pathogen, this new drug sends a different sort of message to the immune system. It activates a category of white blood cells called macrophages, which surround and “eat” invading viruses, bacteria, and fungi. After a dose of this “Hulk” drug, the number of macrophages increases drastically within 24 hours and works for about a month, leading to improved patient outcomes. Scientists are now looking to the FDA for guidance to begin clinical trials, and they’re optimistic that one day this preventative treatment could be given to everyone admitted to an ICU to prevent superbugs.
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