Monthly Archives: March 2025

Cook Your Frog Slowly

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In my last article I talked about How We Liberals Destroyed Democracy. I was not saying liberals were wrong to push for social change. But I was making the argument that we made the tactical error of miscalculating our pressure. Or, to put it in a more fanciful way, I have no problem with cooking the frog for dinner. But if you want to end up with tender, juicy frog legs you have to cook it slowly. Turn up the heat too high too quickly and the skittish jumpy frog bolts. You’re left holding only an empty pot, and that’s on you.

I wasn’t giving the normal advise we seem to hear from most every other pundit writing for major publications. In one form or another, their sage advise is essentially “give conservatives what they want and they’ll like you more.” Their wisdom is a little like advising frustrated parents that if you just tell your kids to eat McDonalds Happy Meals every day then they’ll finally listen to you.

I was rather saying, be smarter. Be more patient. Be more strategic, more methodical, more incremental. Cook your frog slowly so that it does not jump out of the pot. To illustrate this further I want to segue into another topic I love to talk about as well, and that is self-driving cars.

In Cars Have to Go, I argued that mankind simply cannot sustain our current system of private car ownership. If we are to survive, cars as we know them have to go. Short of reducing the need for private transportation, for example by redesigning our cities, our only hope is automated fleets of shared vehicles.

And beyond just saving energy and resources, try to think through of all the other advantages a complete self-driving fleet would provide. You would not have to own, maintain, and insure your own car. You could simply call for one anytime. Our driving infrastructure could be far more efficient and cost-effective. All traffic control could be dispensed with if self-driving cars coordinate traffic flow safely and efficiently amongst themselves. No more problems of compromised, drunk, or distracted drivers. No more speeding or running red lights. Automated cars don’t suffer from road rage. No more possibility for vehicles to be used as weapons of mass murder. The social benefits are incalculable and innumerable.

But rather than go on about the benefits reengineering private transportation, where I want to go is the strategic issue of how to get there. How do you boil this frog? If you promise all these dramatic changes, as I am doing here, you run the risk of causing your frog to bolt. My feeling is that Elon Musk, by overhyping self-driving cars, has done harm to the long-term goal I embrace. He made the frogs all panic and jump.

Far smarter and more effective still would have been to get to self-driving fleets quietly and systematically, by offering incremental benefits that anyone and everyone would welcome at every step.

Just to give you a flavor, you start with lane departure warnings. Keep your kids safe. We are all OK with that. Then Smart Cruise. What? The car will slow down and follow a slower vehicle, yes please!

Hmm, self-parking? OMG yes. I hate parking. I want that!!

Wait, my new car can also go off on it’s own to find an open space in a parking garage or at the airport so I can catch my flight and then come pick me up when I return? Where has that been all my life???

And I also have the option of unpacking my car in front of my house and then sending it off to find street parking all by itself? I want that too!

Now if only anyone in my extended family could summon my car if they need to use it too, that would be so cool… wait they can??? Hmm then maybe we should all just go in together on one shared car…

People would generally love and welcome every incremental improvement along the way and find themselves welcoming the natural progression to self-driving fleets. But if you try to pressure them into contemplating a radically different future with self-driving fleets, there can be no surprise when they panic and jump right out of that pot.

In my book, Pandemic of Delusion, I talk at great length about how we can gradually move people from any position A to any other position B. But you have to do it gradually. Push too hard too fast, and impenetrable defenses will arise to block your way.

Liberals should have learned that the hard way recently, and I truly hope that there is still a sure path for both for democracy and for self-driving fleets to accomplish dramatic change through patient, incremental steps.

And equally importantly, success requires restraint to recognize when your frog is optimally cooked and stop there. Too often advocacy groups become institutionalized and they lose any ability to turn down the heat even after the frog starts to fry and burn. But that’s another discussion!

How We Liberals Destroyed Democracy

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The title of this article is intentionally provocative. But for good reason. Democrats should at least consider their shared responsibility for destroying our democracy. I’m not trying to be fair and balanced and comprehensive here. I and others have opined ad nauseum about the flaws and dangers of conservative thinking. But in this article I wish to focus on the role of liberals.

Regardless of what we will admit to ourselves or to others, the Supreme Court immunity ruling and the subsequent reelection of Trump has effectively ended our long noble struggle to hold on to our democracy in America. I don’t believe it is hyperbole to acknowledge that we are now firmly, and probably intractably, marching along the path to becoming just like Russia, a brazen kleptocracy flaunting a thin facade of democracy.

And whether they will admit it in that way to themselves and others, half the country is effectively OK with that. It would not have been their first choice for our fate, but they would rather live in a dictatorship than continue to tolerate the excesses, real or perceived, of many democrats, at least of those driving the agenda. I predicted this based on game theory a while back (see here).

To be fair, conservatives have largely tolerated if not embraced a stunning amount of social change since the 1960’s and even before. The end of slavery was social change, women gaining the vote was social change, a sweeping host of equal rights practices was social change, interracial marriage was social change, women entering the workforce and arguably taking half the jobs in the country away from men was social change, the changing expectations of men in the home and in society was social change, accepting gay pride parades and gay marriage was social change. Those are just the broadest reminders of the incredible social change that conservatives tolerated if not always embraced.

But democrats weren’t satisfied. They pushed too hard, too aggressively, too gleefully on social, race, and gender issues mostly. I would suggest that the critical point at which their incessant pressure turned dark and counterproductive was the cancelling of Al Franken. It continued with a cancel culture that vilified everyone from Thomas Jefferson to Matt Damon. It took the form of policing gender pronouns, rallying behind gay wedding cakes, drag queen story hour, transgender surgery, bathrooms, and military service. The entire year leading up to Trumps election I watched liberal women on MSNBC fixate on women’s issues and overtly tell men they should support us or shut up. The list goes on and on and on.

So don’t tell me that democrats are purely the victims here and conservatives are the bad guys. I revile much or even most of what conservatives stand for, but democrats kept making more and more extreme demands until the point at which conservatives said, I’ve had enough of even trying to make this marriage work, I’m out.

One can continue to insist that all those demands were just and right. But even granting that, one must at least question the tactical wisdom of how we went about fighting for them. One can argue that regardless of the provocation and pressure, upending our democracy is a self-destructive and disproportionate response. True enough. But if liberals are capable of any self-examination they must consider their own hubris and lack of restraint in forcing this response.

In the media today there is a lot of coverage of democrats gleefully saying “I told you so” to conservatives in reference to the disastrous actions of Trump. But perhaps conservatives are also justified in saying “I told you so” to the democrats who have been so incessant and extreme in their long history of cattle-prodding conservatives into ever more unpalatable concessions without any apparent expectation of the extreme blowback that was virtually assured to come… and now has.