Rejecting the bystander effect in American democracy

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Jared Holt
@jaredlholt
I’ve been thinking a lot about “bystander effect” and whether I think American politics is victim to it. Tried to put my thoughts together here

shtpost.substack.com
Rejecting the bystander effect in American democracy
If there ever was a time to promote civic engagement with our political systems, it's now. There are more of us than them.
6:32 AM · Jan 13, 2022

https://shtpost.substack.com/p/rejecting-the-bystander-effect-in

I worry about whether the United States political system is experiencing a type of bystander effect. The term is typically invoked in medical and psychological fields to describe why individuals are so less likely to assist others while part of a crowd. (In situations that don’t involve crowds, those same individuals will hesitate less before springing to action.) The general explanation as I understand it is that people will generally wait to see if someone else will do something first.

We can’t be content with bystander politics. Those who are seeking to undermine democracy at this moment sure aren’t. Leaders of homegrown anti-democratic movements have specifically instructed their followers to engage in the political process, achieve whatever modicum of power they can, and wield that power to weaken the basic functions of the U.S. election system. This participation in the granular mechanisms of democracy for explicitly anti-democratic ends is strategic; it is assumed (often correctly) that lower rank Party and public positions will be easier to obtain and then leverage against larger apparatuses toward their goals. The immediate victims of this corrosion will inevitably be non-white voters, who have seen their communities targeted with bogus “voter fraud” claims for decades.

High-level Republican politicians have invested their time since the Capitol attack in re-writing the history of the riot into something their base voters will accept as less nefarious and rational. Right-wing media kingmakers like Tucker Carlson are actively spreading extremist sentiments among Republican voters, nearly verbatim from hate groups. Extremist groups have evolved and adapted to their spaces in the post-January 6 world online and offline, and some have even made notable gains. Talks of a “national divorce” have received buy-in from conservative institutions like the Claremont Institute and leading right-wing media outlets. And the GOP figures who aren’t actively participating in this sprawl have largely remained silent as it has all played out.

None of this should be happening in a vacuum.

The best thing the Average Joe can do right now is something. Whether it is building communities of people who share positive and inclusive values, joining or organizing productive conversations and demonstrations, or even contesting for some of these offices the anti-democratic movement is vying for. If you have specific skills, look for places to apply them. Some efforts will inevitably flop, but it can at the very least act as friction on an otherwise icy slope. And if it works, you also get to use that power to try to make good things happen.

*snip*