Engage: Breaking the Cycle of Apathy and Extremism

Background:

By now the 2024 presidential election’s narrative is all too familiar: voters feel forced into choosing between the lesser of two evils, a soon-to-be convict and a career politician who should’ve checked into a senior living center years ago. The doom and gloom has led many to proclaim they won’t vote come November. According to a recent Pew Research poll, 49% of voters say they’d replace both Trump and Biden on the 2024 ballot with different candidates if they could. In the electorate’s minds, the candidates have lost their spark, and they’re burning out too. 

The pessimism surrounding this year’s election represents a continuing trend in modern American politics. Everybody knows the following staple of conversational best practices: “Never discuss politics (or religion) in polite company.” However, political privatization amplifies the divisive discourse it seeks to prevent by providing enhanced visibility to the radical minority at the silent majority's expense.  

Per a Pew Research survey from September of 2023, 65% of Americans say they always or often feel exhausted when thinking about politics. The same survey says only 35% of Americans are ‘highly engaged’ with politics. Congressional approval ratings are in the gutter at just 15%, and only one in five Americans say they trust the government or believe that it operates in their interest. These attitudes have led many citizens to disengage entirely, despite informed engagement being a vital prerequisite for a functioning democracy. After all, the degree to which government action represents the will of the people largely dictates its perceived success.  

This infectious trend of pessimism and indifference is particularly prevalent among youth. I find myself the odd one out amongst my peers as a politically engaged 18-year-old student. They often reflect their parents’ negative attitudes toward politics when condescendingly asking “Why do you care?” as they’ve been taught political efficacy doesn’t exist for everyday people, thus believing participation is naive. Those who do voice views often regurgitate those of their parents or the latest soundbite they saw on social media, failing to layer on any degree of personal analysis.   

It’s no secret that our polity is plagued by disillusionment, disaffection, fatigue, and polarization—especially on social issues—as we approach the 2024 election cycle, all of which ultimately evolve into apathy. Luckily, citizens retain the power to revamp and revitalize our democracy, but first, they must verse themselves in apathy’s detriments and the pillars of civil participation to act effectively. 

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Opinion:

Our polarized politics give society a semblance of widespread hostility, but most citizens are apathetic or centrist. Politicians and news anchors foment inflammatory claims and finger-point, but their rhetoric doesn’t accurately reflect most citizens’ views. They cater to their voters and viewers who, because so many ordinary people don’t participate in politics, comprise the most extreme voices of their respective bases. Thus the ‘pervasive’ polarization that apathetic citizens blame for their detachment exists on a drastically smaller scale than they realize. 

Beginning around 2016 with Trump’s rejection of traditional neoliberal economic policies, our populace has reached a shocking era of relative economic consensus favoring what New York Times columnist David Leonhardt has dubbed ‘neopopulism.’ Of course, there remain factions on both ends of the political spectrum with radical, divisive social views. Each side points to these views when decrying their opponent even though the party’s majority doesn’t espouse them. 

Take the following misconceptions about America’s two major political parties: Few Democrats want a completely open and unregulated border or a complete firearm ban. Few support Hamas, defunding the police, or enacting pronoun usage laws. Likewise, few Republicans endorse eradicating the IRS, an unconditional abortion ban (without exceptions for sexual abuse or life-threatening situations for the mother), racism, or instating Christianity as the national religion. 

Society is not at each other's throats. However, politics only reflects those who participate, leading to an egregious overrepresentation of extremist views and thus a semblance of polarization that deters the moderate masses, perpetuating the cycle. Everyday citizens blame political acrimony for remaining on the sidelines, yet if they all engaged, its causes wouldn’t exist in the first place; politics would accurately reflect society at large instead of the polarizing minority. Our dilemma is one simple, yet disastrous cycle. 

Part 1: Why Engage  

But let’s not oversimplify the situation. Widespread participation is vital to the democratic system of government, and its current lack has tangible consequences. Luckily, the resulting political polarization and government-citizen disconnect have solutions well within citizens’ locus of control. 

Systemic defects exposed by apathy bear partial responsibility for creating political polarization. As argued by former two-time Democratic presidential candidate Andrew Yang, primary elections force elected officials to adopt their base’s extreme views because so few voters participate. Primary elections at all levels garner less turnout than their general election counterparts, but the data is particularly abysmal regarding congressional primaries. Take the following numbers from the 2022 congressional primary elections according to a report published by the Bipartisan Policy Center: turnout of all eligible voters in the 2022 primaries was 21.3%. Breaking this number down by party shows that only 9.3% of registered Democrats voted in Democratic primaries nationwide and Republicans were seldom better, with a national primary turnout rate of 10.6%. Raising even greater concern, these pathetic turnouts represent the highest rates over the past 15 years. 

Such low turnout converts a party’s fringe voters into the majority for these elections, encouraging candidates to focus entirely on winning them over, which necessitates the adoption of their often polarizing views. Primary elections pit members of the same party against each other thus inherently favoring the more partisan, but when it comes to the general election, party moderates (and independents) end up feeling utterly disdained with the options their party’s minority factions have selected for them. This in turn compounds the citizen-politican fissure and deters future participation by less partisan voters.  

Remedying this disconnect depends on the broader electorate’s ability to recognize that they bear responsibility because candidates win elections by satisfying their voters. The vocal minority will always outshine the silent majority in politics, so the majority must break their silence and advocate their interests at the ballot box to ensure their elected officials understand their desires. Elected officials act based on constituent input—hopefully, at least—meaning providing input alone should significantly reduce the gap. With the critical participation of many less partisan voters, our elected officials will need to adopt more moderate views to win elections, restoring balance to our highly polarized institutional politics. As politics depolarize, more citizens should begin to engage, continuing the positive feedback loop but now in the favorable direction. 

It's evident that primary elections—by nature of favoring the most partisan candidates—worsen pessimism and apathy, but they’re particularly detrimental because so few voters participate. Therefore apathy itself is the true culprit, and because everyday citizens have a much greater capacity to change their attitudes and engagement levels than they do our electoral structure, this should instill optimism regarding prospects for a positive political shift in primary elections.  

Another systemic flaw furthering political apathy and disaffection is campaign finance. 

In the 1970s, Congress passed a series of bills collectively known as Sunshine Laws in response to decries of government opacity and lack of accountability. While intended to bring Congress closer to the people, moneyed special interest groups and corporate lobbyists exploited these democratic reforms. 

Many corporations help fund politicians’ campaigns in hopes that they’ll act favorably to their interests once elected. Before the Sunshine Laws, this system was trust-based, and elected officials lacked direct accountability to their donors. However, following the Sunshine Laws’ enactment, corporations and special interest groups began using the measure that made congressional voting records and hearings public to hire lobbyists or directly monitor elected officials whose campaigns they helped fund. Consequently, politicians become forced to prioritize their donors’ interests over their constituents’, or risk losing vital financial support. 

This could be prevented if citizens simultaneously monitored their elected officials with comparable assiduity to the donors, revoking electoral support—the more important form—from congressmen who abandon their proclaimed positions during votes. After all, winning candidates must receive the most votes, not donations. Yet in the words of CNN host and author Fareed Zakaria, the Sunshine Laws were ‘too much of a good thing’ for our citizenry, as our irresponsible dispassion enabled deep-pocketed groups and individuals to exploit democratization-oriented reforms for personal gains.

It wasn’t long before donors realized that these reforms made it all the more worthwhile to pour money into political campaigns since the increased visibility allowed them to threaten to pull funding from recipients that went back on their agreements. The 2010 Citizens United Supreme Court decision that created ‘independent expenditure-only’ funds—to which donors could contribute uncapped sums of cash, even anonymously—exacerbated the issue to newfound levels, rendering elected officials almost entirely accountable to their wealthiest campaign contributors. Of course, that’s a hyper-condensed rendition of campaign finance’s threat to our democracy; you can find my recently published peer-reviewed academic paper on the matter here for a comprehensive analysis, but I digress. 

To apply the apathy-disconnect cycle: voter apathy enables donors to buy out politicians, yet voters blame their apathy on the claim that Washington only represents the rich, so why participate? As with primary elections, it’s a convoluted cycle, but the solution lies at citizens’ fingertips. 

Of course, top-down campaign finance reform is crucially needed, but convincing politicians to change a system from which they personally benefit has proven challenging. Luckily, as previously stated, our elected officials ultimately earn their offices based on the number of votes they receive. Money has proven effective in aiding electoral victory—specifically, in the 2022 House races, the candidate who ran a more expensive campaign won just under 94% of the time—but our democracy prevents it from achieving omnipotence. Therefore, citizens could use the Sunshine Laws to hold politicians accountable to their campaign promises as do donors, but few people have time to sit around scrutinizing Congressional votes or hearings all day long. 

Thankfully organizations dedicated to preserving constituent accountability for Congressmen perform this time-consuming diligence on our behalves, and more citizens need to take advantage. Groups ranging from the Sierra Club to the NAACP and National Education Association issue legislative ‘scorecards’ or ‘report cards’ that summarize our elected officials voting records in one concise, digestible report for each legislative session. 

It’s as simple as this: say you’re a California environmentalist who voted a candidate into office because they promised to champion green policies during their campaign. At the end of the legislative session, you view the Sierra Club’s report card and find your representative earned an ‘F’ grade. You then quickly skim the Sierra Club’s table containing every environmental bill and how your representative voted for each to verify that the grade was justified. 

Next, you navigate to one of the many websites that summarize who funds our elected officials' campaigns, such as Open Secrets or, for a more nuanced breakdown, a local political news outlet. For example, the San Francisco Chronicle runs a project that details the largest individual and corporate contributors for every election in California by name and contribution amount. You discover that your supposedly pro-environment representative had a significant portion of their campaign funded by Exxon Mobil. This explains their voting record. Come the next election, you vote for a different candidate, and your former representative loses their job for subverting its fundamental purpose: representing the people. 

Yet again, rudimentary engagement could break the cycle, leading politics to reflect society at large instead of the most extreme or wealthy voices. Exercising the political agency that our system actively facilitates—be it through the ballot box, social media, the classroom, political events, or private conversations—could make all the difference.      

This principle extends beyond formal institutions such as primary elections or campaign finance. Any democratic forum will most accurately reflect societal sentiment when a majority of participants engage. Vigilance from the moderate masses can prevent the over-representation of ultra-partisans no matter the venue because an attentive majority will always trump radical minorities. However, the ongoing nationwide campus protests over the Israel-Hamas war underscore certain realities surrounding how to participate in a manner that’s respectful and effective in advancing progress. 

Part 2: How to Engage

According to the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project non-profit organization, an analysis of 533 pro-Palestinian campus protests from April 18 to May 3 found 97% to be non-violent. However, video footage of Columbia University protesters smashing windows and defacing property at Hamilton Hall or of protesters and counter-protestors brawling in the middle of the night at UCLA leaves no room for uncertainties. Not only are such actions illegal and not protected by the First Amendment, but they tarnish the movement far more than advance its cause. They also compound tensions within our polarized political climate that turn off already disaffected and disapproving observers.  

While I commend the protests’ public advocacy and engagement, I want to make an example of those that have deteriorated into anarchy to explain what respectful, effective political participation entails. 

Those who engaged in savagery during the protests felt justified their actions by seeing their victims only as adherents to the specific cause they vehemently opposed. They neglected their shared humanity, incurring the dehumanizing acts—dragging a pro-Palestinian protestor from the UCLA encampment into a ravenous pro-Israel mob to be beaten—and language—“Zionists don’t deserve to live!”—that followed. If only these individuals had paused to reflect on the many ways they’re similar to their ‘enemies’, such as the life experiences they’ve shared as students, children, siblings, employees, or passionate believers in a cause, they would’ve acted differently. But overwhelming emotions, dehumanization, deindividuation, group think caused some protestors to partake in barbarism. 

In the words of the revered bishop Desmond Tutu, “All of our humanity is dependent upon recognizing the humanity in others.” Despite the wildly diverse environments, beliefs, opinions, educations, experiences, and values that comprise the deeply nuanced human identity, at the most fundamental level, we’re all human. Regarding the pro-Palestine and pro-Israel protests, all participants are there to stand up for beliefs that reflect their equally human morals and values. Both sides have defendable and righteous intentions. In reality, the suffering endured by both parties during the conflict makes them much more similar than they realize. 

Dr. Keith Magee, visiting professor in cultural justice at University College London encapsulated this truth in a recent op-ed he authored for CNN: “The cries of a terrified Israeli child are indistinguishable from the cries of a terrified Palestinian child. The agony of a parent who loses a son or daughter is identical—anguish sounds like anguish. You don’t have to condone violence on either side to be able to imagine the pain of both Israelis and Palestinians.” This mutual suffering could serve as a common foundation to facilitate respectful, empathetic, and constructive dialogue between individuals with opposing views, potentially opening the door for cooperative solutions. In Dr. Magee’s words once again, such interactions can “help lead divided parties, if not change their minds, then at least to open their hearts.”  

To echo Magee’s idea, changing other individuals’ minds, or convincing them why they’re wrong—even if you believe your arguments to be based entirely on facts, logic, and rationality—should not be the goal of these confrontations. This approach naively neglects empathy, a key pillar of civil discourse, because all individuals see their argument as fact-based, logical, and rational resulting from their unique values and experiences. Trying to convince them they’re wrong invalidates these deeply personal aspects of their views. Unfortunately, this route is the most commonly traveled when it comes to interactions between individual members of profoundly divided groups, which explains the disheartening acts of hate unfolding across college campuses. 

One major roadblock to taking the right approach in confrontational situations is deindividuation, often caused by group think. As previously mentioned, it's much easier to attack someone you see only as a member of a group you hate than as an individual human being. Particularly in large group settings, like protests, it’s critical to recognize all participants as unique individuals. Not only will this mitigate dehumanizing behavior, but individuals are far more complex than any singular group they’re a part of, so it's impossible to judge if they're ‘deserving’ of the treatment we’ve witnessed across campuses based solely on their affiliation regarding a specific conflict or issue. Human identity is too multifaceted to be embodied by a singular viewpoint. 

Only after recognizing an opponent’s individuality are productive conversations possible. This process involves entering interactions with an eagerness to understand the other person’s rationale because we're all equal in our humanity and therefore equally capable of rational thinking; everybody's voice deserves to be heard. Many times one’s rationale for a particular belief is dictated by their unique experiences, a connection which requires empathy to discern and respect. Only after learning the distinctly individual aspects of one’s perspective is compromise possible. After all, people often equate all members of a group they ideologically oppose with ‘the devil’, and few wish to be seen as cutting deals or compromises with the devil. Thus compromise is only feasible once we learn to respect individuals’ equally human experiences, views, and thinking.       

Engaging in public forums with the pillars of civil participation—empathy, humility, and individuality—in mind fosters understanding, compromise, and ultimately, progress.

And it's easy to make this process sound complex or esoteric. However, these pillars amount to the most foundational principles of civic engagement and citizenship, or really, being a sensible human being. Democracy presumes its participants exhibit these virtues, which explains our contemporary political crisis given so many do not…

Rest assured, the lack of these virtues—particularly among the younger generations—isn’t entirely our fault. Colleges and universities historically delivered on their championed idea of a ‘liberal education for all’, which encompassed many pillars of citizenship. Today, largely due to the exorbitant cost of a college degree, students increasingly focus on career-related studies that generate maximum return on investment. Many times they study more than one at once. 

Colleges have morphed into vocational schools for the highest-paying white-collar positions, forcing cuts to general education requirements to ensure students can pursue their desired majors in a thorough and timely manner. In practice, this means omitting the historically highly valued liberal education that equipped students with skills to participate civilly in politics and society. Consequently, today’s graduates often leave college understanding how to build a nuclear device or code an intricate financial model but not how to engage properly with their communities or other individuals. Of course, it's hard to blame students for choosing the career-focused route given tuition prices. However, colleges also won’t be reducing tuition anytime soon. 

To ensure our citizenry remains equipped to handle the responsibility of democracy, current and future generations must embrace this shift in higher education and pursue the development of citizenship and social sensibility on their own accord. It's a shame that teaching such universal and integral capabilities is no longer baked into the system, but initiative embodies the American spirit. Just because ‘Citizenship 101’ is no longer served on a golden platter at fancy higher-learning institutions doesn’t mean we can’t and shouldn’t build these skills independently. Only 37.9% of Americans have a college degree. Those without degrees do this already; now college graduates must join them on the self-guided route to developing the pillars of citizenship and civic engagement that enable progress-driving interactions.  

Conclusion:

As the famous saying goes, “Democracy is not a spectator sport.” It's a responsibility that necessitates active engagement and when ignored, leads to minority rule and systemic exploitation. 

We must reverse the political and societal status quo regarding participation—dubbed ‘bowling alone’ by Harvard political scientist Robert Putnam—where citizens avoid engagement with their friends, families, communities, social institutions, and political parties, instead favoring privatization. We must re-popularize politics and civic engagement. Not only do people develop the pillars of citizenship through these highly social interactions, but the government can more accurately act in the interest of an engaged, collaborative, and dynamic citizenry. Bowling alone is inherently anti-democratic and drives political polarization, yet reversing it is merely a matter of effort and mentality.  

In the words of Suzanne Mettler of Cornell University, “Government-citizen disconnect frays the bonds of representative government and democracy.” While the issue predominantly manifests in our government, it’s wrong to point the finger at our system for the disconnect and polarization—as many disaffected or apathetic non-participants do—when citizens aren’t exercising their democratic duties to influence or change it. 

Our politics are highly polarized because only the fervent minority from both ends of the spectrum participate. The moderate masses foolishly turn a blind eye. The government then reflects its participants’ will, causing a drastic disconnect between it and the general population, leading to more distrust, pessimism, and apathy. It’s true that how well a government reflects the will of its people speaks volumes about its success, but it can’t do so accurately without widespread participation. Thus the remedy involves engaging with others to determine what input to solicit, then attentively monitoring the government’s assimilation and implementation to ensure accountability. 

But when participating politically, be cognizant of the citizenship pillars to ensure confrontations and conversations are respectful and constructive. I’ll leave you with the following from University of Pennsylvania professors Ezekiel Emanuel and Harun Küçük:

“Freedom of thought, critical reasoning, empathy for others, and respectful disagreement are paramount for a flourishing democratic society. Without them, we get the unreasoned condemnations so pervasive in today’s malignant public discourse. With them, we have a hope of furthering the shared governance that is vital to America’s pluralistic society.”