CONTAINMENT 2.0 by Brian Michael Coyle

A domestic containment strategy is needed, in the face of conspiracy thinking that undermines governance.

The quality engineer Edward Deming wrote that businesses had to remember that half of their employees were below the mean, the average employee. Success can’t be based on only those above average. Applied to the general public, that’s a bit harsh. People are complicated. Quality is subjective. But some people understand reality more coherently than others. They appreciate, for example, how important it is that countries do not have World Wars, especially nuclear. They know that trade is mostly beneficial, because it lowers prices, increases export markets, keeps people seeing eye to eye. They know that having the dollar be the reserve currency gives the nation flexibility and sway. They respect traditions and embrace sensible change. They are concerned about the environment, pollution, disease.

Hardly anyone runs for office with this platform, even if a lot of people agree with it. Maybe half of the public thinks at least some of these items are nonsense, and plenty of them vote.

Some believe in conspiracy theories. These are spread horizontally, shreds of evidence tied together with assumptions. Without time spent thinking for oneself (not talking to a friend) and reading what responsible people recommend (not what a youtube personality said), you can believe anything. In a Gaussian distribution, about 15% are below one standard deviation below average. The Pareto principle holds that 20% of the population cause 80% of the consequences. That can mean 20% make important decisions, or 20% are sufficient to ruin things. It seems that 30%, or 1/3 of the population, believes in conspiracies, wants a dictator, engages in low-brow prejudices.

US Presidents have, until Trump, played to the lower half, third, fifth, or 15%, with rhetoric. One blundered into needless wars, but that was for geopolitical, not domestic reasons. There are people who vote for both major parties who can’t prioritize fundamental things, like war, trade, and education. But the Republican party has grabbed more of them. If 20% of the general public expresses ignorance with blissful certainty, that’s probably doubled in Republican ranks. It’s a strategy, to build an alliance with the “disenfranchised.”

This happened before, especially during the 1930s. Then came World War II, immensely painful, and many ordinary people saw unimaginable destruction. That subdued conspiracy theories, took the air out of foolish beliefs, and allowed government to advance the general good. Over time generations forget history, and those lessons wore off.

Trump will probably lose the 2020 election. He may not leave office immediately. A crisis could hamstring the next administration. But even if Democrats secure the Senate and Presidency, the Republican party remains a reservoir of ignorant discontent.

Facebook and Twitter, Breitbart and Fox News, will continue to pour gasoline on the fire of divisions, of weird, noxious beliefs that undermine good government.

Since this is largely an ethnic issue (though many conspiratorial adherents deny that, even to themselves), the gradual reduction of non-Hispanic white population in the US will eventually limit their power. Then they may return to fringe players, easily ignored. Unfortunately that may take 20 years or more.

There needs to be the domestic equivalence of containment, the post-WW II policy directed at the Soviet Union. Instead of protecting the world from communism, making the nation idiot-proof. Containment began with a clear-eyed definition of the problem, namely that war with the USSR was a terrible option, but peace would invite totalitarian expansion. Networked allies around the world were given support, and intervened in to offset Soviet efforts. The US established global trade as a bulwark against communist expansion. It set up the UN, World Bank, and other institutions to mediate conflict and fund development.

For the beginning containment was corrupted by the “military-industrial complex,” but benefits outweighed costs, and in 1991 the end came. This was what framers of containment predicted: by fostering global development while pushing back against Soviet aggression, the USSR would collapse because it could neither develop its own population nor exploit colonies.

Today we know that for at least the next 20 years the US will be hamstrung by dictatorial Republicans, who may not be the majority of the party, but are the majority of its activists. Responsible Democrats and Republicans need a domestic containment strategy to prevent these proto-totalitarians from derailing both foreign and domestic policies necessary for peace and prosperity.

Keenan's 1947 directive, the basis of containment, stated that Soviet pressure against Western institutions needed to be countered with “adroit and vigilant application of counter-force at a series of constantly shifting geographical and political points, corresponding to the shifts and maneuvers of Soviet policy.” Adroit and vigilant applications of counter force needs to be directed at constantly shifting social media propaganda, at the mouthpieces of ignorance on cable television.

Containment prioritized the global centers of industry, but was willing to face the Soviet’s agression anywhere they posed a risk of gaining power, and sometimes even where they didn’t. The domestic containment strategy needs to be as rigorous. Q Anon may seem too fringe to worry about, but it’s a danger that can’t be ignored. It’s the domestic version of North Korea vis-a-vis the USSR, an insane group with tacit Republican support. Capable of gaining control of state governments and blocking federal governance.

The risk in domestic containment will be a surveillance-industrial complex, which a clear-eyed plan can diminish. But cyber space is a major route of the domestic disablement. To prevent this, domestic containment will have to engage in the propaganda platforms, tit-for-tat. When there are dangerous lies spread, it will have to intervene in Facebook or Youtube business. Certain forms of misrepresentation must be criminalized, and prosecuted.

Domestic containment will not be perfect. There will be plenty of opposition from the left as well as right, from civil libertarians worried about free speech limitations. But if 20% or 30% of the population is fooled all the time, the majority isn’t. They will support reasonable strategies, if they’re presented with passion and logic.

It will last for a generation. Then this too shall pass.