Not between left and right but between thinking and believing

Last Saturday Kate Wells of Michigan Public had a segment on NPR’s Weekend Edition Saturday to talk about the impact of the work requirements recently added to Medicaid. Wells looked at what happened when work requirements were added under previous Michigan governor Rick Snyder. They didn’t go into effect while Snyder was in office and were left to Gretchen Whitmer to implement. She opposed the work requirements but had to implement them anyway. The work requirements came with an expansion of coverage. So Whitmer had to deal with 700,000 more people in Medicaid, way more than predicted. Medicaid became a big part of Michigan’s budget, crowding out teacher pay and roads, even requiring an increase in the income tax. Whitmer hired Robert Gordon to run the state health department. He had worked in the Obama White House. Gordon told Wells what had happened in Arkansas – 1 in 4 lost coverage, though many were working. Reasons included computers went down, forms weren’t clear, or they never heard about it. Gordon and his team got to work implementing the requirements for Michigan. The effort took more than a year and crowded out everything else the state health department is supposed to do, such as dealing with black infant mortality or overdoses. And when it was ready they estimated 80,000 would lose coverage (which is the population of Flint), but that was a lower rate than in Arkansas. Two months before people would start losing coverage a federal judge shut down work requirements, saying they violated the intent of Medicaid to provide health insurance to low-income people. The law has changed. Even so, going after the freeloaders is based on “fantasies and fictions, and that there is a lot of waste associated with those fictions.” Michigan spent over $30 million setting up the system. Now 40 states will have to do the same. Lobachevsky of the Daily Kos community discussed the book The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements by Eric Hoffer, published in 1951 (and I see reissued in 2010 and still available). Lobachevsky says Hoffer’s insights, written shortly after WWII, are relevant today. Here are components of mass movements described by Hoffer and brought up to date by Lobachevsky. My quotes are of Lobachevsky. The masses are frustrated. That’s different from starving. These are middle class people, promised a middle class life but finding that life has vanished. The movement is “an escape hatch from personal disappointment into collective purpose.” The MAGA movement is a “holy cause.” The masses need a sacred mission, a salvation. The nasty guy’s rallies operate as revival meetings. The masses need an infallible leader because to a true believer fallibility threatens the entire belief system. So they see inconsistency as strategic brilliance. Mass movements need not just opponents, but enemies. The nasty guy is able to provide an endless supply of villains. Hatred is a unifying agent.

When you're fighting existential evil, normal rules don't apply. Lying becomes strategy. Violence becomes defense. Democracy becomes expendable.

Mass movements attract people who want to escape individual choice and responsibility. If the leader says it, it’s true. Believers are immune to evidence. “Facts don't persuade; they threaten.” The danger is that “any of us can fall into these patterns when we're frustrated enough, scared enough, or desperate enough for meaning.”

Democracy depends on citizens who think for themselves, question authority, and accept uncomfortable truths. Mass movements offer the opposite: certainty, belonging, and the comfort of surrendering individual judgment. The choice isn't between left and right—it's between thinking and believing, between democracy and mass movement psychology.

In Monday’s pundit roundup for Kos Greg Dworkin quoted a Texas Tribune article about the Texas House Democrats leaving the state to prevent the passage of a more highly gerrymandered Congressional map to give Republicans a few more seats in the 2026 midterm election.

The maneuver, undertaken by most of the Texas House’s 62 Democrats, deprives the Republican-controlled chamber of a quorum — the number of lawmakers needed to function under House rules — ahead of a scheduled Monday vote on the draft map. The 150-member House can only conduct business if at least 100 members are present, meaning the absence of 51 or more Democrats can bring the Legislature’s ongoing special session to a halt. “This is not a decision we make lightly, but it is one we make with absolute moral clarity,” state Rep. Gene Wu, chair of the House Democratic Caucus, said in a statement, in which he accused Gov. Greg Abbott of “using an intentionally racist map to steal the voices of millions of Black and Latino Texans, all to execute a corrupt political deal.”

I’ve seen an article that described the new map. It takes seats away from black people, but it does give a couple more to Latinos because Latinos voted so strongly for the nasty guy. I wonder if the mass deportations have soured Latino voters and this gift will backfire on Republicans. In the comments are a lot of cartoons and memes about Epstein files and Ghislaine Maxwell. There is also a meme written by Christian Stendel and posted by exlrrp about the head of the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Trump didn’t fire Dr. Erika McEntarfer because she manipulated America’s jobs numbers. He fired her so he can find someone who WILL.

In today’s roundup Chitown Kev quoted Paul Krugman discussing the massive disapproval of the nasty guy.

So does this mean that Trump is done — that a weak economy will sap his political support, leading to big Democratic wins in this year’s gubernatorial elections and next year’s midterms? I wish I were sure of that. Unfortunately, one possible effect of the bad economic news may be to induce MAGA to put the real Project 2025 — the plot to destroy American democracy — on an accelerated schedule. Or as I think of it, I don’t think we’re in Hungary anymore.

In the comments exlrrp posted a meme:

Fact check: Texas Democrats aren’t “fleeing” anything. They’re breaking quorum to try and prevent a Republican power grab.

Further down in a section discussing the big scandal that won’t go away exlrrp posted a meme.

Move on him like the B*tch he is... Grab him by the Epstein files.

A week ago Bill in Portland, Maine, in his Cheers and Jeers column for Kos, included a few of the acceptance speeches at the Webby awards that recognize the best of the internet. These aren’t long speeches as one might see at the Tony or Oscar awards. These speeches are limited to five words.

“Only organized outrage overcomes oppression.” —Congresswoman Jasmine Crocket (D-TX), who received—to a standing ovation—the Webby Advocate of the Year Award to recognize “her use of platforms to drive national conversations, mobilize communities, and champion the rights of marginalized groups across the Internet and beyond. “Artificial intelligence must benefit humanity.” —Dr. Fei-Fei Li “AI’s cool. People are cooler.” —Robert Wong “Because the truth is golden.” —Ben, Brett, and Jordan Meiselas of The Meidas Touch, winners of the Best Podcast of the Year award for their “groundbreaking contributions to digital political commentary and cultural advocacy.”