Consider This from NPR - In A Divided America, Can The January 6 Hearing Change Hearts And Minds?

Episode Date: July 16, 2022

The televised probe into the mob attack on the Capitol has dropped plenty of bombshells as insider testimonies pull back the curtain on the efforts of former President Donald Trump and his allies to hold onto power after he lost his reelection bid. But at Tuesday's hearing, one of the most compelling witnesses was not a former staffer or official but Stephen Ayers. A staunch believer in Trump, Ayers came to D.C. on Trump's command and stormed the Capitol. After his arrest, he looked at the facts about the 2020 election and realized he was fed and had believed a lie.Polls, studies and surveys warn that Americans are deeply and bitterly divided by politics. Can the January 6 hearing help close that partisan gap? We speak with Didi Kuo, Associate Director for Research at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development and the Rule of Law. In participating regions, you'll also hear a local news segment to help you make sense of what's going on in your community.Email us at [e-mail] more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today. More at iu.edu. Do you swear or affirm under penalty of perjury that the testimony you're about to give is the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. So help you God. To this point, most of the witnesses testifying at the hearings into the January 6th mob attack on the Capitol have been White House insiders describing what they saw and heard as the former president tried to hold on to power. But last Tuesday was different.

When you heard from President Trump that the election was stolen, how did that make you feel? Oh, I was, you know, I was very upset, as were most of his supporters. You know, that's basically what got me to come down here. Stephen Ayers testified that he came to Washington, D.C. on January 6th because former President Trump told his followers to come. Ayers said he made his way to the Capitol and joined others in storming the building because the former president told supporters like him that it was up to them to quote-unquote stop this deal. He says he regrets

it now. People dive into the politics and for me I felt like I had you I had horse blinders on. I was locked in the whole time. Biggest thing for me is take the blinders off, make sure you step back and see what's going on before it's too late. Since he was arrested and charged for his role in the coup attempt, Ayers says he's changed. And do you still believe the election was stolen? Not so much now. I got away from all the social media when January 6th happened. Basically deleted it all. What may yet

come from the January 6th hearings, whether criminal prosecutions or simply a complete historical accounting, is yet to be decided. But one thing that has been made abundantly clear is that many Americans are bitterly divided by their politics, especially their political party. And some people are so deeply entrenched in their connection with their party, they're willing to do just about anything to help their partisans get or keep power. Those beliefs may be lies, they may be wrapped up in feelings of being dismissed or ignored or of superiority, of being part of something that others just don't get. So for a true believer like Ayers to publicly acknowledge that he was wrong, that's unexpected. Trump is really stoking these ideas of no matter what

anybody else tells you, I'm telling you you're a winner. And that feels great, right? That's just like the most primitive human instincts is to follow the good feelings, not the bad feelings. Professor Liliana Mason studies the partisan divide and says people's political beliefs can become so fused with how they see themselves in the world that breaking with a party or party line can actually feel like the loss of self. That's a devastating psychological harm. And people tend to react to that with a lot of not only anger, but really defensive mechanisms. Consider this. It's not news that there are deep divisions between Democrats and Republicans. But can the hearings into January 6th help repair the breach by helping the country renew its shared commitment to democratic principles and showing the consequences if it doesn't.

What would make a difference? That's coming up. From NPR, I'm Michelle Martin. It's Saturday, July 16th. This message comes from WISE, the app for doing things in other currencies. Send, spend, or receive money internationally, and always get the real-time mid-market exchange rate with no hidden fees. Download the Wise app today or visit wise.com.

T's and C's apply. It's Consider This from NPR. Even when I first started working at the Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law, we were really concerned with how democratization can successfully take place in countries that haven't had a long history of democracy. Didi Kuo is Associate Director for Research at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. When she started working there, she actually figured much of the focus would be on foreign countries. And the sort of working assumption in a lot of the scholarship is that the U.S. is the most longstanding democracy, that we've solved

a lot of the problems related to democratization, that we have, yeah, there are some issues here and there, but we can work within a regular policy framework to address them. I think it was really after the election of Donald Trump and the sort of resurgent right around the world that scholars of, you know, other democracies really started to look at the U.S. I asked Didi, quote, how America got to this point? How did Americans become so divided, especially by political party? So, you know, every other day seems to bring some new study or survey or data point that shows that Americans are so deeply divided by political parties, deeply divided as they've ever been. They don't even like members of the other party. They don't want their kids to marry somebody who doesn't belong to the same

political party. I was wondering, just to start with, was it always that way? Did political party loom so large in people's sense of themselves? So political polarization has been on the rise for about four decades now in the United States. And there are many different causes of polarization. Some of them have to do with voting patterns. For example, Southern Democrats, who are quite conservative, have shifted towards the Republican Party since the 1980s or so. Then in 1994, when Newt Gingrich and the Republican Revolution were able to retake in what's called the Republican Revolution, sorry, were able to retake the House of Representatives in Congress, you know, for 50

years, there have been stable Democratic majorities in the House of Congress. And since the 90s, there's been much more competition over the House majority. That has also furthered polarization. And there are other things that we could get into, for example, campaign finance and also the information environment, all of which contribute to more polarization between the parties. People have pretty strong divisions in this country, certainly over race. I mean, people, you know, race has loomed so large in this country, certainly over race. I mean, people, you know, race has loomed so large in this country, you know, to the point where people would disown their children for marrying someone of a different race or a different religion. Has political party replaced those

identity markers in some way? I mean, it sounds maybe like a ridiculous question, but has it? No, that's actually a fantastic question. There's research showing that as we have progressed as a society, this is potentially heartening, you know, you can't explicitly discriminate against people based on their being racially different than you or having a different religion than you. In fact, people have become a lot more tolerant on a lot of those metrics. But it is also true that party has now become a somewhat acceptable substitute for those kinds of social cleavages and social identities. A party label gives you an easy heuristic, probably, about what someone's values are or what their political leanings are, for sure. But you are not necessarily saying you disagree with them because they have a

racial or ethnic difference or a religious difference. Saying that it's based on partisan identity is still acceptable in ways that those previous divisions based on social identity are not. Is it your view that political party has in some ways become a proxy for those other divisions? Or is it its own thing? The research so far is mixed. It's not necessarily the case that we all really dislike each other, and now we've just found an acceptable way to label it. In other words, there seems to be evidence that partisan hostility is unique and different. But there's also been an interesting trend that deepening polarization in the United States has actually alienated many voters, even people who ascribe

to a partisan identity. So the number of independents has risen sharply over the past few years as polarization has widened. Now a plurality of voters, between 40 and 50 percent of voters, identify as independents. And the interesting thing is that independents may still vote for a political party on election day, but they tend to have very different political beliefs. There's evidence indicating that they are more cynical about politics overall, that they believe that elected officials are corrupt, that their vote doesn't really make a difference, and that they're less likely to participate in politics. On the other hand, there's evidence showing that people who self-identify as a partisan, especially if they do things like give money to a party or vote in a primary election,

which very few Americans do, turnout rates in primary elections are quite low, they tend to be more ideologically extreme than the average voter. So you get this trend where the party is increasingly driven by sort of more ideological voters within the party. And that has the effect of alienating people who don't feel like they have a home within either party. So let's just say the mob attack on the Capitol is kind of an extreme version of that. Are we seeing real world impacts of this kind of polarization in other ways? Yes. And I would distinguish between partisan polarization, which is having impacts. For example, there's the statistic you mentioned right at the top that people are increasingly saying they wouldn't want their children to marry a member of a different party. That is a kind of hostility or bias that you wouldn't expect a generation ago, for example.

And there's some experimental evidence showing that people may exhibit partisan biases in hiring people for jobs, in picking their friend groups. You know, people are now more likely to socialize with others who have very similar political viewpoints to them. There's also effects on information. You can now more easily find information that agrees with your worldview and sort of silo yourself because of social media and the wide array of different options available to people to provide news, for example. But I want to distinguish partisan polarization, which is problematic enough, from a trend that is explicitly anti-democratic. What we saw happen on January 6th and the kinds of strategies that Donald Trump was pursuing to stay in office have really nothing to do with polarization. It's not, you know, the mainstream

right becoming a little bit more conservative. It's instead something that we've seen happen outside the United States, which is that leaders are elected through a democratic process, but then once they are elected, they do what they can to manipulate the rules and to centralize power in the office of the executive in ways that really undermine democracy. To me, what's really dangerous about Donald Trump in January 6th is not necessarily what happened on that day, despite the fact that it is horrifying. And I think that the committee has done a really great job reminding us of everything that was at stake that day. But it's also that there are Republican candidates right now winning primaries who are

running on the big lie. There are state legislatures that are trying to politicize the administration of elections. And those are the kinds of things that are real warning signs for democracy itself and go far beyond polarization. Coming up, what will the January 6th hearings need to do to change hearts and minds? This message comes from Indiana University. Indiana University is committed to moving the world forward, working to tackle some of society's biggest challenges. Nine campuses, one purpose. Creating tomorrow, today.

More at iu.edu. Obviously, I don't know that he had to testify. The fact is he was arrested. The fact is that he is among the 800 people who are already being held to account by the criminal justice system for what they did. I'm curious, like, what you thought of his whole story, what brought him there? What did you see in it? What did you make of it? absolutely right that it was really different to have Stephen Ayers and Jason Van Tatenhoft, the former Oathkeeper, testify as to their own experience because it was so personal. I think Stephen Ayers said he described having horse blinders on because he was so deeply entrenched in a world of social media that he wasn't able to see any other evidence to the contrary of the big lie. And he also felt that there was a sense of purpose, that the president had summoned his followers to Washington, D.C. to help accomplish this coup. Jason Van Tatenhoff later said, you know, there's no debate in his mind that this was an organized insurrection attempt. So to see them be able to disavow the beliefs that they once held,

to say that, you know, we've gone too far, this is a clear line in the sand for democracy, I think is really powerful. Because we might debate what are the right policies, or even whether or not polarization is, you know, bad or not. But I think that really what the hearings are showing is there are bright lines and we cannot cross them, even if we completely disagree with one another politically. We need the peaceful transfer of power. We need presidents to accept the results of elections. And I'm hoping that at the very least, the big takeaway from the hearings among all political stripes is that there are lines we will just not cross in American democracy. And hearing, you know, Stephen Ayers didn't say, I'm progressive now. He just said,

I cannot support the big lie. And these actions made me go off the deep end, lose my job, lose my house. There are real life consequences to radicalization. And I think it's been hopefully informative for people who feel, you know, a little persuaded by the big lie. A lot of Republican voters, for example, hopefully it? Because one thing that I don't think you can avoid noticing at this point is that the conservative media and for certain people to vote? How do you say to people, you know what, that process is unfair and unhealthy, even if it's working in your favor and you like the outcome? I think there was a lot of damage done by the Trump presidency that will take a very long time to undo. In the very short term, there's polling indicating that Democrats are not really being persuaded by these hearings. You know, they were likely to make a connection between President Trump and January 6th, and they've just had that belief reinforced. But there's a lot of movement among independents, like double-digit movement in believing the big lie and then not believing it, or in thinking that President Trump is personally responsible. Now, among Republican voters, there is still, I think, overwhelming

majority still think that Biden was unfairly elected. They think that at the very least, there was some kind of election irregularity, if not the outright big lie. But I think that there are a few things that will happen that are hopefully signs to be optimistic. One is that it's going to be more and more difficult for the Republican Party to get behind a Trump nomination in 2024. If there is so much evidence, regardless of what happens on the legal side, you know, if the Department of Justice decides to pursue actual legal proceedings against Donald Trump or not, I think that there is enough evidence that even mainstream leaders of the Republican Party will feel comfortable saying Donald Trump cannot be the next commander-in-chief of the United States and he cannot win

the nomination of this party. That may just be optimism on my part, but I think that that would be a difficult position for the Republicans to be in. Second of all, at the state level, the January 6th hearings have been wrapped up every single time in the concluding remarks with like a civics lesson, something about a statement about what democracy is, what our values are, what our principles are, and what our tolerances are for the system. You know, like what can we withstand and what can we not withstand? And Liz Cheney, I think in the very first hearing, the one that was on primetime said the Trump era will end and all these Republican officials are going to have to decide where they want to stand in the history books. I think at the very least, this is a sort of

truth-telling fact-finding, and people will be asked to take a side in thinking about the sort of like long-term trajectory of both their reputations and the longevity of the party itself, the Republican Party. At the state level, it's going to take more of a civics lesson to try to develop messaging around the problematic state laws and the potential for Democratic subversion. I do think that there is the potential for that messaging to eventually resonate, but that, again, it's going to take time to sort of what social movements call like consciousness raising to make it clear to everyday Americans that election administration is something you should care about.

That was Didi Kuo. She is the Senior Research Scholar and Associate Director for Research at Stanford University's Center on Democracy, Development, and the Rule of Law. It's Consider This from NPR. I'm Michelle Martin.