Wake the Fork Up
The fire's on, the water's boiling, and people are starting to feel the heat. No one's coming to save us.
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What the fork!? It's only been a year? Most people do their year end wrap ups closer to January 1st, but we're doing things differently here. This feels more like a post-mortem on the American Experiment than a year-end review. Yes, we're celebrating the fact that we survived an entire year of the second Trump administration's assault on democracy, but we're also bracing for the next three.
Last year, we watched as USAID was decimated; domestic terrorists were pardoned; and truth was flipped on its head. This year, we're getting civically fit while embracing the reality that nobody is coming to save us. It's time to wake up, shake off our bias, weigh the facts, challenge authority, resist conformity, and demand accountability. It's time to go forth and do great things.
We're not just doing pep talks though. We're sharing tools that everyone can use to navigate this new information environment and build more resilient institutions. Let's start by putting a label on what's really been happening to American society for the last year. The term that came to define Germany in the 1930s, Gleichshaltung loosely translates to synchronization or coordination, but the English language does little to capture it's ambition. Nazi propagandist Joseph Goebbels' vision was synchronization "to the point where the whole nation will think in unison and there will be only one public opinion."
It sounds alarmist to describe 2025 with such similarity to German Nazification, but the parallels are undeniable. The reservation comes from the first bias we must address, if we wish to remain a free society. Normalcy bias is often described as a cognitive bias that manifests as a tendency to underestimate the possibility of disaster, believing life will continue as normal, even in the face of overwhelming threats.
Let's say it together. The threat is overwhelming. So, who's going to stop it?
This leads us to our next bias. The Bystander Effect is a type of cognitive dissonance resulting from the diffusion of responsibility, wherein the more people who are present for an emergency the less likely any one is to intervene. We are seeing this play out across the globe. It's happening on the individual level when law enforcement officers ignore their duty to intervene in the presence of ICE's unchecked abuse of power. It's also happening at the global scale as governments struggle to address the rapid normative shift.
Where do we start?
The key to challenging the normalization of deviance is learning to spot deception. Even bad lies can greatly disrupt social norms. Identifying techniques to spot deception can make it easier to move forward with confidence. Let's look at a few.
MOM: Does the individual have the Motive, Opportunity, and Means to deceive? Further, does the benefit of the deception outweigh the cost of being discovered, and do they have a mechanism to gather feedback on their success.
We need to raise the cost of deceit, and ensure our feedback is clear.
POP: Is the deception consistent with Past Opposition Practices? Does the individual have a history of deceit? Is there historical precedent for such deceit?
Check. Moving on...
MOSES: Is there a concern over the Manipulability of Sources? We can no longer rely on many traditional sources of information, and the proliferation of generative AI is only making things more challenging.
Look for the helpers.
EVE: What can we learn from the Evaluation of Evidence? What evidence is notably absent? How does that impact our assumptions?
When we're told to believe a thing to be true while only being allowed a small subset of facts provided by an administration with a history of deceit, we must proceed with caution. This is why we can no longer rely on documents like the 2025 National Security Strategy or congressional testimony from high ranking government officials.
If we can't rely on past sources of information, how can we build resilient institutions? We start by approaching the challenge from a different perspective called outside-in thinking. This technique forces us to consider factors outside of our normal realm of expertise and weigh them in our unique context.
There are many acronyms meant to capture the key factors, but we'll use STEMPLES+ to represent the Social, Technological, Economic, Military, Political, Legal, Environmental, and Security factors, plus additional Psychological, Demographic, Ethical, and Moral factors.
We're just skimming the wave tops. In addition to sharing the stories of those most closely affected by the administration's assault, we'll also be sharing more tips and practical examples of how we can all build resilience in the coming year. We hope you'll continue to join us.
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