“We are not really in solidarity with the people we claim to represent. They don’t pass our purity tests, and we don’t seem to like them.” — so many usable insights in your piece, but this might be my favorite.
I'd offer the push for "Latinx" as a useful synecdoche. Theory: we'll cement our solidarity with Hispanic Americans by:
1. renaming them
2. by correcting the one they use ("Latino")
3. on the grounds that it is sexist
This three-insults-in-one-letter tactic is self-defeating to the point of satire for the goal of creating cohesion with Latino Americans. So why do smart people double down on it? Perhaps it persists because they want to create cohesion with a different constituency.
I recently took a local leadership position with a national "Group" for one of the Dems core policy planks (speaking elliptically for obvious reasons). They are not the NAACP but have a similar image: old, respected, clearly Dem-aligned but not radical. That brand does not reflect the reality of how they operate. Rather than just *participate* in the Democratic coalition to advance their plank, its leadership often strives to *embody* that coalition and support all the Groups that have some claim to non-establishment left-ism. Each of (in alphabetical order) AAPI Americans, Black Americans, First Peoples, Greens, labor / unions, Latino Americans, socialists ... gets tended to. This dynamic leads to the organization under-serving its actual plank, but reinforces social solidarity among the elite left-wing "activists" who fill its ranks. They are cosplaying governance, which requires fending off actual representation.
Elites must understanding how most citizens see their own values and needs well enough to reflect that understanding in governance while simultaneously maintaining a dispassionate, long-term perspective that effectively compensates for majoritarian blind spots. The Groups reverse all of those terms: falsifying common views, nurturing a separate perspective defined by their own identity needs, and forcing it to the front of the agenda. Insofar as this line of reasoning is correct, we must displace the Groups with an elite worthy of the name.
Thank you for writing this. Few things in my life will break my heart the way leaving government did, after a clash between my ideals and the reality of plugging away at the federal bureaucracy and getting nowhere. I think of the quote inside your book, “to public servants everywhere - don’t give up.” I did give up (for now) and on Wednesday, the cognitive dissonance between my anger at the American public, setting aside those who are gleefully and unapologetically racist and sexist, an understanding that some parts of American government have utterly failed them, and despair for many brilliant and devoted public servants who do their best to push forward in the face of entrenched obstacles to progress on behalf of people living in both red and blue states, felt all consuming. I don’t know what to do about any of it but am grateful that you light the way.
The reality is that none of quite know what to do about it right now, but we will light the way for each other. Curiosity and conflict, if we have the courage for both. You will light the way for others as you navigate what's next.
WOW. This is so much what is needed to hear. As someone with a similar public service and gov tech background, I’ve dreamed of wielding the sledgehammer more than I’ve delighted in things working well. Thank you, Jen. The way forward needs to begin with introspection and curiosity but it ALSO needs to conclude with wise ACTION. Don’t stop ringing this bell!!!
@Jennifer Pahlka - I'm literally sending this to everyone I know. Your piece hits different because you actually GET IT from multiple angles - the frustration with bureaucracy ("paperwork favors the powerful" - YES), the party's failure to listen ("We are always selling, rarely listening"), and that brutal truth about why people want to take a sledgehammer to the system. Love how you bring both empathy AND real implementation experience to this conversation. That line "Don't show me the study that says the ceiling is fixed while the leak is dripping on my head" - yesss!!!! This is the kind of honest conversation we desperately need. Thank you for writing it.
Where are the on-ramps to the Grassroots that’ll move this forward? The elites are going to conduct an autopsy that will most likely tell them what they want to hear. You are calling for a revolution within the party. From my perch, far outside the party structure, it seems several elites agreed with you, asked for changes and when none were offered, they bailed to MAGA. Effectively covering their bets (and asses).
I am angry now, and terrified, that the median US voter is so clearly indifferent to the foundational concept of the rule of law that they have elevated someone who has total contempt for law to a position of supreme power. That seems to me worse and more likely damaging than any of the policy stuff including Schedule F.
And I do judge the voters for the irresponsibility of their indifference. I can't not. To do otherwise would be to infantilize them, to deny them the respect of seeing them as adults who should know better. This is all the more true in the case of the tech people you and I know who have convinced themselves that they can pull Trump's strings and so make him into a Mechanical Turk version of Lee Kuan Yew.
But I also know that the moral force of my judgment will not educate a single person or persuade them to do better. We of the liberal PMC have very little idea of what would. It is tempting to start rummaging through history and political theory and sociology and psychology and whatever else might have insights-- but perhaps even these fields are too academic by nature to have good answers.
My friends in DC, members of my Peace Corps cohort during the Obama administration, are at the levels of the people who “do the real work.” Hopefully they’ll be able to duck under Schedule F for awhile. (Unless I actually go to see them, they won’t want to transmit any reports by text or voice across the wires.)
In my tiny local government agency we used to just ignore stuff the execs wanted us to do. Execs who know nothing can generate a lot of busywork (hmmm — but now we have LLMs…) At the same time they only know what their underlings tell them. Who knows, maybe Musk will take up the Recoding banner and get himself back into some real and interesting technical challenges.
I have no idea what it’s like to work in the massive federal bureaucracies (except for the Peace Corps—and I had enough problems there.) I hope our civil servants are responding to panic and depression by finding clever ways to preserve the long term functioning and knowledge bases of their agencies. I wish you all the very best: I know you’re not only the brightest, but also the most dedicated to We The People that our nation has to offer. Keep the faith.
God bless our civil servants figure out how to navigate this moment. Let them direct the sledgehammers to where they're needed, and let them protect what we hold most dear.
Serving on my community board in NYC has given me language for curiosity and conflict that I didn't have before. I'll admit though that it's tricky for me to navigate how to learn more about someone else's perspective without them feeling interrogated. One thing that I've found that works is asking a question, sharing where that question comes from, and letting them know I'm also willing to answer the question for myself if they'd like to hear my perspective, but not pushing my opinion on them. It's not pretty or concise, but it's worked for me. Something like, "I'd be interested in learning more about your perspective on X. I ask because it seems different than how I think about it, but I could be wrong about that. And I'm happy to share my thoughts with you too. But I'm genuinely curious to learn more about why X is important to you and what your experience has been like."
Great read on the situation - I agree with pretty much all of it.
After my time at Code for America I spent a few years of my life trying to promote UBI with Andrew Yang, which was *very popular* with voters and we at least managed to get the conversation around it going. But we had pretty severe pushback from the Democratic Party itself, which basically killed any chances of it becoming policy any time soon. So the disillusioned ones either quit, or actually went independent (like me) or red, out of spite. There's something seriously wrong with the whole primary system we have here right now.
I spent the last 3 cycles supporting David Kim in Los Angeles who happens to live in my district. We gave Gomez a good scare when we got really close to beating him (unfortunately it didn't work out this cycle) but I think the secret is connecting progressive policies with *small business* coalitions, where the values are often in alignment. The reason why establish Dems become corrupt is because of corporate interests that turn leftist ideas basically into a parody of itself, since it's quite literally defending the status quo...
I largely gave up on the political system as this point and are turning to blockchain-based DAOs as a potential for doing public interest - the industry got a lot of flak for supporting memecoins and such over the last few years, but if used properly, I still believe it still has potential. (I'm part of an art collective doing some work on the Tezos chain atm.)
Yeah, many of them are not rich, but they do have some money, and more importantly, voting power, if they're properly organized. I really do believe that if blockchains were employed properly, it could really help people get organized in a way that could compete with bigger corporate interests.
It's kind of where I ended up after all my stuff in politics and tech. Still a long way to go, but it's where I'm hoping to make a dent this time. 😅
Can’t we employ Blockchain to allow voting? Ukraine has a totally digital government package and I haven’t read anything about the Russians ruining it. The Lithuanians too. I want that! I want nice things!
The technology itself is sound, but getting people to employ it in a way that doesn't expose it to loopholes or vulnerabilities is the real challenge - because there are always those who will try to cheat the system.
Bitcoin, for what it's worth, is decentralized - but is extremely slow and inaccessible due to its deflationary supply. Ethereum has gatekeepers that are problematic, which has lead to a lot of distrust and fragmentation in the ecosystem itself. Projects like Solana are just blatantly centralized but they rely on misinformation to keep the charade going so you have to be careful - there's actually a lot of projects like that where you're not even really sure if it runs on a blockchain or not. (IOTA got caught red handed a few years ago and basically tanked right after that.)
I've chosen Tezos as my platform of choice due to the fact that the protocol is actually decentralized (the validation community sets the agenda, not the foundation), and a relatively mature economic model that is most compatible with traditional government systems, at least in my opinion. The fact that it has a self-governing arts community I think says a lot in it of itself.
My attempts at getting Americans interested in this stuff was short-lived because the reality is that a lot of people who have the ability to make those sorts of decisions don't actually want transparency...which is why you end up with these half-assed projects that get funded but don't actually get anywhere. It's the same sort of problem that Jen talks about all the time in her writings, too. Sigh.
Thank you for being brave and clear. I got supremely annoyed at the flood of post-election emails with chipper messages about “just try harder!” I agree that “we” and I include myself are dangerously out of touch. I also think Trump voters knew exactly what/who they were voting for and at least in some cases aren’t just holding their noses but aligned with his racist, misogynistic, autocratic character. Write on, Jennifer, you are giving me hope.
In the shortest possible terms, I'd like to see government leaders: (1) hire better, (2) fire faster, (3) develop an intense focus on human-centered design, UX research, and digital capacity, and (4) adopt continuous improvement mindsets and methods for all of the above.
Excellent post! Everything resonates with me, and your list of other posts at the end has a lot of the same ones that’s I’ve thought were spot-on! Especially Josh Barro’s “Trump Didn't Deserve to Win, But We Deserved to Lose.”
I do strangely find myself in an optimistic state right now. I already made peace with the possibility of Trump winning months ago—but now seeing the size of the win and the fact that the swing was concentrated in big cities really has me hoping that this is the wake-up call that was long needed to get Dem governance in order, especially in places like New York and SF. They should be shining examples of what Dems can achieve! I guess time will tell—but the clock is ticking before the midterms.
I think liberals (and bureaucrats more generally) have a defensive tendency to circle the wagons when it comes to dialogues about reforming the administrative state. Some of it is rooted in self-interest, but it's also caused by the fact that one major party (and part of the other) has a rather hostile attitude toward public-sector workers (and government more generally) that ironically mirrors the Left's hostility to the police. Unfortunately, this tribalist posture prevents open and good-faith conversations from happening, thus reinforcing each side's priors and preserving the (unsatisfactory) status quo.
If effective government reform is to happen, it will require a shift in the nation's political economy. Public-sector unions will have to face greater accountability and have limits on their influence on the political process, but technocrats and small-govt types will also have to concede that public-sector unions have a right to exist and that pushing them in a corner is only going to make them less receptive to change and make things in general worse. Of course, none of this can happen if we're still stuck debating whether we should have a regulatory state at all, so we'll have to tackle this issue simultaneously.
Good to have your voice in the discussions. I hope your perspective is thoughtfully included by the Democrats. I’m noticing that it’s not necessarily comprehensive or objective - that you write from a worldview that you’ve held for a long long time, which is something akin to “customers know what they want so we should design to that vs let’s give them what they might not even know they need yet.” I’m not that well read on these topics but I do think I know the general conflict for the techies. Did American political customers just tell us what they need? Or did they just perpetuate all they know based on the media and messaging available to them? Or something else. Including this type of argument would make your position stronger and clearer. I guess you’ve probably had this kind of discussion with people over the years. I’d love to read your response.
“We are not really in solidarity with the people we claim to represent. They don’t pass our purity tests, and we don’t seem to like them.” — so many usable insights in your piece, but this might be my favorite.
Yeah, it stopped me in my tracks when she said it. Damn.
I'd offer the push for "Latinx" as a useful synecdoche. Theory: we'll cement our solidarity with Hispanic Americans by:
1. renaming them
2. by correcting the one they use ("Latino")
3. on the grounds that it is sexist
This three-insults-in-one-letter tactic is self-defeating to the point of satire for the goal of creating cohesion with Latino Americans. So why do smart people double down on it? Perhaps it persists because they want to create cohesion with a different constituency.
I recently took a local leadership position with a national "Group" for one of the Dems core policy planks (speaking elliptically for obvious reasons). They are not the NAACP but have a similar image: old, respected, clearly Dem-aligned but not radical. That brand does not reflect the reality of how they operate. Rather than just *participate* in the Democratic coalition to advance their plank, its leadership often strives to *embody* that coalition and support all the Groups that have some claim to non-establishment left-ism. Each of (in alphabetical order) AAPI Americans, Black Americans, First Peoples, Greens, labor / unions, Latino Americans, socialists ... gets tended to. This dynamic leads to the organization under-serving its actual plank, but reinforces social solidarity among the elite left-wing "activists" who fill its ranks. They are cosplaying governance, which requires fending off actual representation.
Elites must understanding how most citizens see their own values and needs well enough to reflect that understanding in governance while simultaneously maintaining a dispassionate, long-term perspective that effectively compensates for majoritarian blind spots. The Groups reverse all of those terms: falsifying common views, nurturing a separate perspective defined by their own identity needs, and forcing it to the front of the agenda. Insofar as this line of reasoning is correct, we must displace the Groups with an elite worthy of the name.
Thank you for writing this. Few things in my life will break my heart the way leaving government did, after a clash between my ideals and the reality of plugging away at the federal bureaucracy and getting nowhere. I think of the quote inside your book, “to public servants everywhere - don’t give up.” I did give up (for now) and on Wednesday, the cognitive dissonance between my anger at the American public, setting aside those who are gleefully and unapologetically racist and sexist, an understanding that some parts of American government have utterly failed them, and despair for many brilliant and devoted public servants who do their best to push forward in the face of entrenched obstacles to progress on behalf of people living in both red and blue states, felt all consuming. I don’t know what to do about any of it but am grateful that you light the way.
The reality is that none of quite know what to do about it right now, but we will light the way for each other. Curiosity and conflict, if we have the courage for both. You will light the way for others as you navigate what's next.
WOW. This is so much what is needed to hear. As someone with a similar public service and gov tech background, I’ve dreamed of wielding the sledgehammer more than I’ve delighted in things working well. Thank you, Jen. The way forward needs to begin with introspection and curiosity but it ALSO needs to conclude with wise ACTION. Don’t stop ringing this bell!!!
Wise action, indeed! You keep ringing that bell, too!
@Jennifer Pahlka - I'm literally sending this to everyone I know. Your piece hits different because you actually GET IT from multiple angles - the frustration with bureaucracy ("paperwork favors the powerful" - YES), the party's failure to listen ("We are always selling, rarely listening"), and that brutal truth about why people want to take a sledgehammer to the system. Love how you bring both empathy AND real implementation experience to this conversation. That line "Don't show me the study that says the ceiling is fixed while the leak is dripping on my head" - yesss!!!! This is the kind of honest conversation we desperately need. Thank you for writing it.
Glad to hear it resonates, Lexi. Though also, of course, sad that it resonates! I wish none of this were true.
Let's work together to get Silicon Valley to get this, yeah? And to be part of the solution?
Where are the on-ramps to the Grassroots that’ll move this forward? The elites are going to conduct an autopsy that will most likely tell them what they want to hear. You are calling for a revolution within the party. From my perch, far outside the party structure, it seems several elites agreed with you, asked for changes and when none were offered, they bailed to MAGA. Effectively covering their bets (and asses).
I might suggest adding this, from the great Jerusalem Demsas, to your reading list:
https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2024/10/trump-vance-malthusian-housing-views/680384/?utm_source=feed
I am angry now, and terrified, that the median US voter is so clearly indifferent to the foundational concept of the rule of law that they have elevated someone who has total contempt for law to a position of supreme power. That seems to me worse and more likely damaging than any of the policy stuff including Schedule F.
And I do judge the voters for the irresponsibility of their indifference. I can't not. To do otherwise would be to infantilize them, to deny them the respect of seeing them as adults who should know better. This is all the more true in the case of the tech people you and I know who have convinced themselves that they can pull Trump's strings and so make him into a Mechanical Turk version of Lee Kuan Yew.
But I also know that the moral force of my judgment will not educate a single person or persuade them to do better. We of the liberal PMC have very little idea of what would. It is tempting to start rummaging through history and political theory and sociology and psychology and whatever else might have insights-- but perhaps even these fields are too academic by nature to have good answers.
I deeply relate to all those feelings.
And I added Jerusalem's piece. Dumb of me not to have thought of it. I'm a huge fan of hers.
Thank you.
Something I've been saying for decades is that "If you don't eat you own lunch, someone else will."
Trump just ate the Democratic Party's lunch.
I needed this reminder, Jennifer. I’ve been quoting Bill Murray ever since I started working in the government and especially after last Tuesday.
“It just doesn’t matter.”
It does matter and I can help fix it.
Grateful for your voice and the ability to share your message.
It does. Thank you for having faith. Thank you for all you do. You CAN help fix it. You have a message to share too. Share it!
My friends in DC, members of my Peace Corps cohort during the Obama administration, are at the levels of the people who “do the real work.” Hopefully they’ll be able to duck under Schedule F for awhile. (Unless I actually go to see them, they won’t want to transmit any reports by text or voice across the wires.)
In my tiny local government agency we used to just ignore stuff the execs wanted us to do. Execs who know nothing can generate a lot of busywork (hmmm — but now we have LLMs…) At the same time they only know what their underlings tell them. Who knows, maybe Musk will take up the Recoding banner and get himself back into some real and interesting technical challenges.
I have no idea what it’s like to work in the massive federal bureaucracies (except for the Peace Corps—and I had enough problems there.) I hope our civil servants are responding to panic and depression by finding clever ways to preserve the long term functioning and knowledge bases of their agencies. I wish you all the very best: I know you’re not only the brightest, but also the most dedicated to We The People that our nation has to offer. Keep the faith.
God bless our civil servants figure out how to navigate this moment. Let them direct the sledgehammers to where they're needed, and let them protect what we hold most dear.
Serving on my community board in NYC has given me language for curiosity and conflict that I didn't have before. I'll admit though that it's tricky for me to navigate how to learn more about someone else's perspective without them feeling interrogated. One thing that I've found that works is asking a question, sharing where that question comes from, and letting them know I'm also willing to answer the question for myself if they'd like to hear my perspective, but not pushing my opinion on them. It's not pretty or concise, but it's worked for me. Something like, "I'd be interested in learning more about your perspective on X. I ask because it seems different than how I think about it, but I could be wrong about that. And I'm happy to share my thoughts with you too. But I'm genuinely curious to learn more about why X is important to you and what your experience has been like."
This approach sounds very wise and thoughtful. Thank you for sharing it.
Great read on the situation - I agree with pretty much all of it.
After my time at Code for America I spent a few years of my life trying to promote UBI with Andrew Yang, which was *very popular* with voters and we at least managed to get the conversation around it going. But we had pretty severe pushback from the Democratic Party itself, which basically killed any chances of it becoming policy any time soon. So the disillusioned ones either quit, or actually went independent (like me) or red, out of spite. There's something seriously wrong with the whole primary system we have here right now.
I spent the last 3 cycles supporting David Kim in Los Angeles who happens to live in my district. We gave Gomez a good scare when we got really close to beating him (unfortunately it didn't work out this cycle) but I think the secret is connecting progressive policies with *small business* coalitions, where the values are often in alignment. The reason why establish Dems become corrupt is because of corporate interests that turn leftist ideas basically into a parody of itself, since it's quite literally defending the status quo...
I largely gave up on the political system as this point and are turning to blockchain-based DAOs as a potential for doing public interest - the industry got a lot of flak for supporting memecoins and such over the last few years, but if used properly, I still believe it still has potential. (I'm part of an art collective doing some work on the Tezos chain atm.)
https://www.teia.cafe/theboard?board=teiadaotokenholders
There is a ton to be done with small businesses, definitely!
Yeah, many of them are not rich, but they do have some money, and more importantly, voting power, if they're properly organized. I really do believe that if blockchains were employed properly, it could really help people get organized in a way that could compete with bigger corporate interests.
It's kind of where I ended up after all my stuff in politics and tech. Still a long way to go, but it's where I'm hoping to make a dent this time. 😅
Can’t we employ Blockchain to allow voting? Ukraine has a totally digital government package and I haven’t read anything about the Russians ruining it. The Lithuanians too. I want that! I want nice things!
The technology itself is sound, but getting people to employ it in a way that doesn't expose it to loopholes or vulnerabilities is the real challenge - because there are always those who will try to cheat the system.
Bitcoin, for what it's worth, is decentralized - but is extremely slow and inaccessible due to its deflationary supply. Ethereum has gatekeepers that are problematic, which has lead to a lot of distrust and fragmentation in the ecosystem itself. Projects like Solana are just blatantly centralized but they rely on misinformation to keep the charade going so you have to be careful - there's actually a lot of projects like that where you're not even really sure if it runs on a blockchain or not. (IOTA got caught red handed a few years ago and basically tanked right after that.)
I've chosen Tezos as my platform of choice due to the fact that the protocol is actually decentralized (the validation community sets the agenda, not the foundation), and a relatively mature economic model that is most compatible with traditional government systems, at least in my opinion. The fact that it has a self-governing arts community I think says a lot in it of itself.
My attempts at getting Americans interested in this stuff was short-lived because the reality is that a lot of people who have the ability to make those sorts of decisions don't actually want transparency...which is why you end up with these half-assed projects that get funded but don't actually get anywhere. It's the same sort of problem that Jen talks about all the time in her writings, too. Sigh.
Thank you for being brave and clear. I got supremely annoyed at the flood of post-election emails with chipper messages about “just try harder!” I agree that “we” and I include myself are dangerously out of touch. I also think Trump voters knew exactly what/who they were voting for and at least in some cases aren’t just holding their noses but aligned with his racist, misogynistic, autocratic character. Write on, Jennifer, you are giving me hope.
In the shortest possible terms, I'd like to see government leaders: (1) hire better, (2) fire faster, (3) develop an intense focus on human-centered design, UX research, and digital capacity, and (4) adopt continuous improvement mindsets and methods for all of the above.
Appreciate your brevity here as it seems most readers are all on the same page.
Excellent post! Everything resonates with me, and your list of other posts at the end has a lot of the same ones that’s I’ve thought were spot-on! Especially Josh Barro’s “Trump Didn't Deserve to Win, But We Deserved to Lose.”
I do strangely find myself in an optimistic state right now. I already made peace with the possibility of Trump winning months ago—but now seeing the size of the win and the fact that the swing was concentrated in big cities really has me hoping that this is the wake-up call that was long needed to get Dem governance in order, especially in places like New York and SF. They should be shining examples of what Dems can achieve! I guess time will tell—but the clock is ticking before the midterms.
I think liberals (and bureaucrats more generally) have a defensive tendency to circle the wagons when it comes to dialogues about reforming the administrative state. Some of it is rooted in self-interest, but it's also caused by the fact that one major party (and part of the other) has a rather hostile attitude toward public-sector workers (and government more generally) that ironically mirrors the Left's hostility to the police. Unfortunately, this tribalist posture prevents open and good-faith conversations from happening, thus reinforcing each side's priors and preserving the (unsatisfactory) status quo.
If effective government reform is to happen, it will require a shift in the nation's political economy. Public-sector unions will have to face greater accountability and have limits on their influence on the political process, but technocrats and small-govt types will also have to concede that public-sector unions have a right to exist and that pushing them in a corner is only going to make them less receptive to change and make things in general worse. Of course, none of this can happen if we're still stuck debating whether we should have a regulatory state at all, so we'll have to tackle this issue simultaneously.
Brilliant!
Good to have your voice in the discussions. I hope your perspective is thoughtfully included by the Democrats. I’m noticing that it’s not necessarily comprehensive or objective - that you write from a worldview that you’ve held for a long long time, which is something akin to “customers know what they want so we should design to that vs let’s give them what they might not even know they need yet.” I’m not that well read on these topics but I do think I know the general conflict for the techies. Did American political customers just tell us what they need? Or did they just perpetuate all they know based on the media and messaging available to them? Or something else. Including this type of argument would make your position stronger and clearer. I guess you’ve probably had this kind of discussion with people over the years. I’d love to read your response.