During the Nuremberg trials, the phrase "just following orders" came to be the chilling refrain of those responsible for enacting one of the most large-scale systematic genocides in history. To test the legitimacy of these claims, Dr. Stanley Milgram designed an experiment. An administrator (the authority figure) would ask a teacher (the test subject) to test a learner (an actor) on a series of questions. Every time the learner got an answer wrong, the teacher was to administer an electric shock. With each wrong answer, the level of the shock would increase, until the teacher was administering a lethal dose of electric shock. The teacher received audio feedback of the screams of the learner (as this was an ethically-devised experiment, the screams were prerecorded, and nobody died, though it could be argued that the test subject certainly underwent psychological trauma regardless). Before conducting his experiments, Milgram polled experts to hypothesize on the outcome. Everyone he polled absolutely believed that all but a very small percentage of people would refuse to continue the experiment to its lethal conclusion. They were wrong. Across the board, across cultures and demographics, the studies found that roughly 60% of people would do the unthinkable. Against our conscience, and under considerable distress, most of us would administer a fatal shock rather than directly confront an authority.
There is a major cognitive dissonance that comes into play when confronted by such damning evidence of our behavioral patterns. We all operate under the belief that we are good people. So the immediate response is to identify ourselves with the 40% of people who did not see the orders through, even though the data directly refutes such claims. Even though the experiment never concluded that the 60% of people who were coerced into murder were bad people, we ascribe that judgment to them to protect ourselves from the actual conclusion, which is that good people can be used by authority to act against their conscience.
Even when we accept the evidence, our secondary response is to say that knowledge of this behavioral pattern is itself protection against that behavior. Much like a person suffering from depression, a diagnosis is not a cure. We cannot will ourselves to behave in ways that go against our nature, whether that be an individual's particular brain function or our species' need to trust in authority.
So what do we do with this information? Again, much like mental health, there are two main corrective approaches, both serving vital roles. Cognitive Behavioral Therapy is a process whereby you regularly address your patterns of thought and behavior, in an effort to maintain awareness of self-destructive loops, and learn techniques to interrupt those patterns. This is the role that education can serve. This is the legacy of American liberal education. In my experience, there are three tiers to our critical thinking pedagogy. The first is to critically analyze and examine information we are given. The second is to question and analyze the authority of that information. And the third is to question and analyze the authority of our instructors in giving us that information. Yet in our educational structure, few are encouraged or given the opportunity to pursue this pedagogy through the third tier, and the resulting hierarchy of intellectual accomplishment creates resentment in those that, for valid reasons, only ever reached the first tier.
The second approach to mental health is of course medication. It is no real wonder that this approach is more widely regarded with skepticism and often outright defiance. Being a subject of our mental faculties, using external methods to alter our brain chemistry flies in the face of our belief in self-determination. Yet anyone who has ever benefited from these drugs will tell you how life-saving they can be. What this sort of external correction looks like in regard to our broader social structures is the legal frameworks for protecting the populace from authoritative abuse. Again, it is no wonder that such measures are widely criticized. Especially in American culture, the idea of self-determination is at the core of our belief system. Legal measures to protect against discrimination are often regarded as unnecessary by those who do not directly benefit from them, because it directly contradicts our belief that what we get is what we earn.
But to bring it back to Milgram, we need these measures not simply to benefit others, but to protect ourselves from the probability that our structures of authority can be corrupted, at which point good people can be used by that authority to act against our conscience. And to add even more urgency, the likelihood of positions of power to corrupt other "good" people can be horrifically viewed through another study, somewhat less ethically-devised, known as the Stanford Prison Experiment.
But here we are. Donald Trump, a man who fails every ethical and moral standard we should demand of our authority figures, is the President-elect. His cabinet is being filled with people who represent the worst of his promises. And all of the studies in behavioral psychology point to disaster. Point to the abuse of that authority in bending the will of people of conscience to unconscionable acts. Yet our fear of destabilization, and our deep need to believe in our ability to confront authority, to believe that we are the 40%, not the 60%, makes efforts like court appeals on behalf of the popular vote seem extreme, or gauche. We trust in the system, even when the system has elected a man who goes against our conscience.
All of this is terrifying, but one of the things that truly frightens me is the aspect of Milgram's experiment whereby the test subject listened to the cries of their victims. With the democratizing of information made possible by the Internet, as well as the success of Fox News in separating our news into liberal and conservative, we now have a problem where half of the populace can choose not to hear the cries of the other half (this cuts both ways) or instead listen to explanations of why those cries are unjustified, or even worse, how they are actually threats against the listener. But my biggest fear is this: what happens when those cries are silenced, when the act of administering that lethal dose of electricity becomes no more difficult than pressing a button?
To most, this seems extreme, and unlikely. But even before actually assuming power, Trump has threatened and tried to silence his detractors. He has cut off the press. He approves of little but his own pronouncements on Twitter, and even then, he operates with a masterful level of double-think. When he contradicts himself, it is not a contradiction, because he has always held the same position. Oceania is at war with Eastasia. Oceania has always been at war with Eastasia. He rewrites his own history without a moment's hesitation. And we are willing, by force of habit, to allow him into the office that has the authority to write our nation's history for the next four years at least. Our impulse is always to remain on the defensive. To parry every falsehood with a fact-check. To say to the women who accused him of sexual assault that we will defend them if he decides to sue them for defamation. To say we will fight him when he does something worth fighting against.
I am in no way saying I'm not up for that fight. I am. But I do not think, given all of the evidence of the danger he poses--not just to the marginalized, but to the privileged who will not be prepared to confront the worst of his proposals when they come from the authority of the office he holds--I do not think it is extreme or gauche or petty or unwarranted to take every legal course possible to prevent his inauguration. Let Hillary file a lawsuit on behalf of 2.5 million voters. Let the people in the states call for a new Constitutional Congress to fix a system so broken it has endangered itself. Let us engage this threat with the full weight of the populist momentum this election has called forth. And if we fail, let us rally for impeachment with the same doggedness the Republicans had when they went after Bill Clinton, with the awareness that this is not about politics, but rather the soul of our nation, and that the evidence for impeachment is so strong that the question becomes which act to prosecute. Pence may be Trump's insurance policy, but let us not stall our efforts on his behalf. Let us take the offensive, because remaining on the defensive is to concede to a false defeat. The majority of people in this nation did not vote for Donald Trump. We should not treat that fact as consolation, but as a call to action. Before the silencing is complete. Before the authority is granted. Before we are demanded to act against our conscience.
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