I have been following the Unity2020 Plan (#Unity2020 on Twitter and social media), originally known as the “DarkHorse Duo Plan,” since its first broadcasting on the 19th episode of Bret Weinstein’s DarkHorse Podcast earlier this year. Having following the Weinsteins (both Bret and Eric) for even longer, about as long as the first obvious signs of the IDW (“Intellectual Dark Web”) on YouTube appeared, I wanted to take a moment to address some obvious central questions around it:
What is it? Is it what it claims to be, essentially an alternative to the two-party system without itself being a third party? Should we care?
NOTE: “Unity2020” here refers to neither the Democratic party’s “Unity Plan,” the “Unity” (2020 or other) gaming engine, nor the Colorado “Unity Party” (which is eerie enough in having been established in my state of residence…). Any of you seeing one of the above, please check your search terms and know that the following will not likely interest you (unless you are at all concerned about the coming election — then you should definitely be paying attention).
Aware as I am that we are less than 90 days from the newly proposed voting date for the 2020 election, I intend to divulge in this post, as I did in the original YouTube playlist (above), as comprehensive a view of this movement as I can for the sake of those who (1) are wondering if it is the right option for them, (2) are obliged to know more about it if only to counter it as the number of its followers rises, and (3) have no clue at all what anyone’s talking about on this front. I’m sure I will unintentionally leave out a number of details (which I will try to include and update as they are brought to my attention), but in any case, it is for the sake of informed voters and decision makers that I’m choosing to give my take on it and help others more easily grasp what it’s about.
First, a disclaimer: I am not a political theorist or other political science professional. I am a freelance educator of philosophy, logic, mathematics, and language, and I am also a non-partisan independent thinker, which alone informs me a lot in these matters. Furthermore, the information provided in this article is not meant to be exhaustive. It is simply the best that I can produce at this time given what I’m currently aware of and have access to knowing, so please go easy in your expectations of what I’m offering.
At the same time, I hope that you find this informative and useful nonetheless. I’m breaking this down into seven simpler parts, but if you feel the need to cut right to the chase, you may choose to jump to the part that intrigues you most. In this post, I intend to cover:
- What is Unity2020?
- Who started Unity2020?
- Why are a growing number of people, liberals and conservatives alike, considering Unity2020?
- What are the basic ideas that prompted Unity2020?
- How does Unity2020 work?
- What are the strengths and possible weaknesses in Unity2020?
- What you can do to learn more about Unity2020?
What is Unity2020?
Let’s get started: what is Unity2020?
In my own words, we can think of Unity2020 as a radical alternative plan to the upcoming election by which the plan’s members are looking to acquire ballot access for a third option to the DNC and GOP. The option would take the form of a two-person candidacy: that is, not two separate candidates but a candidacy that’s comprised of someone who represents the center-left and center-right of the current American political spectrum. (We’ll talk later about who some of the proposed potential nominees are for that candidacy.)
In other words, Unity2020 is intended to usher in a new period of more stabilized political progress in the face of what we have seen as a demoralizing stalemate and even regress over the past few decades between the two parties in their current duopoly over the political domain.
We’ll cover in more depth the specific strengths and weaknesses inherent to this plan in the sixth section of this post, but one thing worth point out right away is that it is not to be confused with a third-party write-in as has been claimed in a number of counter-arguments against it.
For obvious reasons, this claim would insist in the liability in such a plan of a possible spoiler effect scenario (as we have seen before in circumstances like the 2000 election and Ralph Nader’s Green Party candidacy). It’s important to note that Weinstein and his supporters have claimed that the Unity2020 Plan was in part designed to prevent a possible spoiler effect (whether or not that would be true will be dealt with in a later section below).
What we should also discuss for a bit here is the plan’s current mission and goals as stated among its volunteers and its own PR. We should acknowledge that that volunteer base appears to be growing fairly rapidly, as in about the span of about two weeks it went from the idea of a single person (namely Weinstein) to over 1000 volunteers per involvement in its volunteer forums, let alone the number of people who are not necessarily volunteering but are giving consideration to it as a possibly viable option.
The movement in a way is not really about starting a new political party (so it’s not something likely to ever be added to a political polling or self-assessment site like ISideWith.com). It also does not talk about itself as a policy-based platform but rather as an option to a better choice (in the sense of a recognized third candidate in the election) based on shared values across the diverse number of political affiliations, including more moderate Dems and Reps, across the spectrum. Less of a party itself and more an aim toward a well-balanced version of our two-party system (and therefore a sort of radical alternative to the current duopoly of that system by the DNC and GOP).
To hear a brief description of how this plan might proceed on a state-by-state basis in Bret Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying’s own words, I recommend checking out the video clip called “Can #Unity2020 win all 50 states?” of their longer podcast on this topic.
Who started Unity2020?
Unity 2020 is the idea of Bret Weinstein, who I have been following since around 2017, the same year that the Evergreen College scandal (that he and his wife were the targets of) was taking place. He is best described as an evolutionary theorist by trade and more left-leaning libertarian in politics, whereby, as per his motto that he says he used to teach his students, his science always informs his politics. (Your politics, he states, should never inform your science.)
To whatever extent that that informs us of his political stance, we can see that he’s looking to apply his understanding of evolutionary theory and science to the political realm. This and having dealt with the academic politics at Evergreen that may deem this stance very appropriate.
In the article “Evergreen professor at center of protests resigns; college will pay $500,000,” we read that both Weinstein (a biology professor at the time) and his wife Heather Heying (an anthropology professor) resigned due to a scandal that was basically triggered when a proposal was made at Evergreen State College (ESU) for what Weinstein believed was a racist call to action against non-black students and faculty on campus. Now, Weinstein has a past history that’s actually been very difficult to find details of, but by his own account involved activism on behalf of women of color (specifically black
women) to be given higher pay in the industry he was in. That was a while back, however, and when the ESC scandal took off it was in the midst of a lot of social justice fervor. Weinstein has mentioned on many occasions that apparently he was targeted during the controversy for a time during this by students who may have intended to inflict harm on him for his stance against the proposal.
I’m not going to get into further detail than this on the matter, but this event really is influential to understanding where some of his thinking is coming from: the manner in which ESU was handled by its leadership at that time has a sort of microcosmic reflection of what things are looking like
at the national level here in American politics today. Let’s just say it didn’t go down well as the leadership was, in his opinion and seemingly many other people’s opinions as well, very lacking.
After resigning the college, Weinstein and Heying both decided to start other projects, but, in short, it is in my opinion worth learning more about this issue to inform you in part where this idea is coming from.
Another important detail about Bret Weinstein is that he is part of what has been called the “Intellectual Dark Web” (IDW), which is how I got to know him. (I was first aware of those like Sam Harris in the IDW and over time came to know of Bret’s brother Eric Weinstein, through whom I was introduced to Bret in turn.)
The term “IDW,” according to Wikipedia and the New York Times op-ed titled “Meet the Renegades of the Intellectual Dark Web,” is meant to refer to “a group of academics and media personalities who publish outside of the mainstream media.” I would go beyond that, though, to say that the IDW also has some very specific principles that that characterize the people within it because it is comprised of people from all over the political spectrum, not just academics.
All IDW members are against the abuse of identity politics and social justice — not social justice outright, but any parts of these widespread movements that function as causes for promoting censorship, imposing restriction on freedom of speech, or relying on common logical fallacies in their arguments (which as a tutor of logic I can say are pretty prominent). Not least of these fallacies is the renowned straw man fallacy, which basically goes about making an argument look worse than it actually is so that it’s easier to attack; other fallacies commonly deployed by these groups are appeals to pity and/or ad hominem attacks. The use of these and other ploys to progress any one of these movements’ agendas is something those comprising the IDW feel is, to say the least, not really appropriate in today’s modernized world.
Eric Weinstein in particular (who we will talk a bit more about below) has expressed being very against a system of what he calls the “Gated Institutional Narrative” (GIN), a concept his brother Bret has committed to running with in his work here. It refers to something borderline conspiracy-like in the sense that there is wall of sorts to independent thinking or unpopular ventures, a level of corruption that has invaded the mainstream media and that has further invaded a lot of academic spheres.
Now, something oddly not mentioned in many reports on the Unity2020 plan’s proposal was that it was in fact first announced on Weinstein’s DarkHorse Podcast hosted by Weinstein and his wife Heather Heying. At the time of this writing the two are up to their 40th episode, but it was their 19th live stream, “Descent into Madness” (at about the 40-minute mark) where we find him introducing what he called the “DarkHorse Duo Plan.” This episode went live back in the last days of May, then in the following month he announced it again in a much wider setting (where the majority of the public who has heard of it at all first heard it) on 1494th episode of Joe Rogan’s podcast where he outlined the plan more briefly (and still prior to the renaming of it to “Unity2020”).
In consecutive weeks and months, Weinstein continued to appear in interviews regarding the Unity2020 idea, most notably with Tucker Carlson and on The Hill’s Rising with Krystal and Saagar . Since the time of the making of the video above, Weinstein has also done more extensive interviews around this subject, including on the popular YouTube channel Charlie & Ben Podcast, already showing over 35,000 views as of the day of this article. Of all of them, the most powerful and fascinating may well be his interview with Tom Bilyeu, with over 135,000 views to date.)
Why Unity2020?
Let’s dive into why Unity2020 is being considered such an important idea by a growing number of people.
A lot of where we’ll be going here later regarding Bret Weinstein’s work as it seems to have influenced the project’s conception will clarify some aspects of the project (such as its secrecy around the most vital elements of the plan involved), but we’ll first want to take a look at maybe why so many people are getting behind it.
I’m assuming that if you’re here it’s probably because you don’t just want to know about Unity2020 for its own sake but in order to know more about Unity2020 as a potential alternative to the current two-party regime. We have seen terrible times with Trump and some of us are predicting the prospect of terrible times with Biden. While you should be aware of the possible good points to both of these candidates, I’m only going to talk about what specifically people are reacting negatively to. In fact, I’m going to do more than that by laying out not so much the details of character of each candidate but what sort of scenarios we can anticipate going down with one or the other in office.
Trump
With Trump, I think one very telling sign was clearly illumined by his recent interview with Chris Wallace from Fox News Sunday. This interview was very unsettling, even if nothing particularly new on Trump’s end, as we saw him attempt hold the President’s feet to the fire to get some basic and candid questions answered. We watch the President of the United States on camera rely on sources of information that are literally handed to him by his on-call aides, sources of information that demonstrate that they are, if not downright inaccurate, missing key pieces of information that Wallace then tries to point out. In my opinion, he did a terrific job (as terrific a job as anyone in that seat can do) and asked more than a few of the right questions. Ultimately, the biggest takeaway, however, seemed to be that Trump’s sources of information are catered in such ways as to leave out distinct (and often distinctly important) data relevant to the issues at stake.
Beyond that if we look to Trump’s environmental policy we see the same general baseless skepticism about climate change, which he called a “hoax” before taking office and has naturally continued to question during his incumbency. He still intends to complete the withdrawal process from the Paris climate accord and boost fossil fuel development as much as possible following the election, assuming he wins.
Another potent feature to his campaign in the current atmosphere of social politics is the MAGA brand (which you might notice it is no longer featured on his current website in this form). The very concept of “Make America Great Again,” and its newer aftertaste of “Keep America Great,” is controversial if only for blatantly assuming that America has ever been truly great before for all its people. In what sense can we claim, say some, to ever be making america great “again” unless we mean making it great again for a small minority of Americans who benefited from the likes of wealth disparities and misconduct that often enough fell heaviest on the working classes, immigrants, women, and blacks. Such a time period of greatness appears conjured up in some collective benefactors’ imagination but is hard to demonstrate ever having been true for all Americans in the past.
To further push that things have therefore become greater during the time of presidency such that we ought to push to “keep” them great seems to add insult to injury. This isn’t to say that some industries didn’t make a turn for the better under Trump’s influence in economic policy (with growth showing particularly in manufacturing jobs while slashing regulations in other sectors was argued for on the same basis). However, it has long been understood that his defenses that the economy is in its greatest moments now than ever before in the history of the U.S. are demonstrably false, especially those concerning the unemployment rate, labor force participation rates, and the GDP.
The economic boost under Trump’s administration is still likely to be a primary factor nonetheless for why people are still vouching for his re-election even if they are not fully in alignment or in agreement with other of his policies. However, as a last point to the backlash of his presidency that has influenced both economic measures and his predicted voter turnout for 2020 is nothing less than the issue of racism and white supremacy support, which is a pretty big blemish on his public face to most people when we look at his reactions to events like the Charleston Riots.
Biden
As someone from the left myself, I found it difficult at first to really grasp what about the option of Biden for president was so unappealing to many of the folks I was listening to, until I stopped looking at Biden and started looking at what he essentially stood for: the Democratic National Committee.
In a segment titled “Previewing the hellish future of a Biden administration,” Krystal Ball (a former democratic nominee herself for Virginia’s 1st congressional district in 2010) uses The Hill’s Rising platform to offer an insightful synopsis of why Biden’s potential future administration can be seen as the choice of investment on the part of the Democratic Party for the sake of the DNC and its affiliates, and not for those (such as working class citizens) the campaign claims to triumph:
Even with Biden’s vaunted middle-class Joe persona, he is on pace right now to perform even worse with the white working-class in 2020 than Hillary Clinton did back in 2016. And while the black and brown working class remain in the Democratic Party tent, it’s primarily on the basis of a cultural appeal and the strong push factor of a blatantly racist and unwelcoming GOP. In other words, if Joe Biden becomes president, it will be with the very same coalition and affinities as the Democratic Party in Virginia. As such, Virgina offers a dire warning for those of us who care about workers rights and dignity. […] Virgina is 51st out of a possible 51 [according to an Oxfam ranking of states on the basis of workers issues]. Lowest possible minimal wage. No collective bargaining for employees, so-called right to work, and on and on and on. […] Dems, after campaigning on significant advancements in these areas of Virginia, ultimately at the behest of their corporate donors, decided to focus their political capital on things like passing the ERA [Equal Rights Amendment] and dealing with Confederate monuments rather than really fighting for the economic interests of working people. Cultural and tokenist issues ruled the day. […] Virginia is run 100% by Democrats, and it remains dead last in the nation for issues of concern to working people. (1:47)
In other words, the level of performative measure in paying lip service to a number of definite (and very real) social issues that are at the mainstream media’s forefront by those like the Virginia Dems while nonetheless bypassing functional measures of support that are likely roots to those issues would appear to indicate by affiliation how the DNC is likewise incentivized to support Biden’s nomination with the precondition of his platform speaking to the hottest sociopolitical issues today. This appears most particularly the case with regard to the racism / anti-racism issue whose movement has generated a substantial audience and potential Democratic following, all while lacking any demonstration of commitment to the sort of policies that stand the best chance of actually changing the pieces of the system still bearing the structural echoes of past oppression.
Of course, the signs that Biden was a likely lousy choice date back early in the year by even those who could be considered pro-Biden as far as they were themselves aligned with the Democratic Party and against Trump, even if one could clearly see the corruption problem that he embodies. The perception on this front (as well as that of those who are Democrats but are even less sure about Biden as a candidate) is that “Middle Class Joe” has really
[P]erfected the art of taking big contributions, then representing his corporate donors at the cost of middle- and working-class Americans. Converting campaign contributions into legislative favors and policy positions isn’t being “moderate”. It is the kind of transactional politics Americans have come to loathe. (The Guardian)
Neoliberal corruption of this sort in general has been a source of backlash from the public against the DNC from both sides of the spectrum before, but it would seem that a liberal public still deeply defiant of and disgusted with Trump’s cabinet has been the target audience liable to overlook the underhanded dealings that would otherwise expose the DNC’s true motives. They are certainly the sort of audience willing to ignore (or be led to ignore) the ways pro-worker policies continue to get prolonged and unresolved given the red herring of such topics as dismantling national monuments, calling out white supremacy, and Black Lives Matter issues that the DNC promotes supporting.
Whether you agree with this take on the DNC and Biden’s candidacy or not, keep in mind that this is, if nothing else, just one of the perceptions that we are currently entertaining as we look closer at what upsets many Americans about Biden’s platform. To add to this the questioning of Biden’s mental condition constitutes the essential blend of doubt and despair that even people on the left are experiencing at the thought of his inauguration.
If we’re thinking in terms of scenario and not just the individual candidates themselves, the concern for Biden’s mental condition means for some that the result of his winning the election invites just as much the potential incumbency of the Democratic vice president in the event that he must step down anytime prior to the end of his term as president. As I write this article, we are all now aware that the running mate alluded to here is Kamala Harris, herself highly suspicious of maverick policy decisions and big-tech corporate favoritism.
The very reason why it would be Harris, however, demonstrates more of the sort of pandering that many searching for alternatives like Unity2020 are flustered with. Where the Democrats strike a bargain with the public by appealing to both the black vote and liberals as conscious supporters of the Black Lives Matter movement is in ushering in a black female running mate, narrowing the selection for vice president based on skin color and sex. This is what those like Ball mean by “tokenist issues” as the response to movements of anti-racism can also easily be seen as exemplifying the manner of virtue signaling that the DNC has come to typify in its campaign tactics.
So the push for the black vote in congruence with the anti-racism movement we’re seeing lately may represent a majority of the tokenist efforts Ball is alluding to, but were has this been apparent in Biden’s campaign?
Biden has actually gotten into trouble around this before, one easily visible one being the (potentially unintended if you reach a bit) slip of the tongue, that may just as likely have been a true tipping of his hand under the time pressure that stimulated it, in an interview not so long ago with Charlemagne the God on the Breakfast Club. In it he tells Charlemagne the God, who pushes to ask a few more questions on behalf of his community despite Biden’s realization that he has to leave due to time constraints, “I tell you if you have a problem figuring out whether you’re for me or Trump, then you ain’t black!”
For good reasons this blew up in the media for a short time, but if we back up for a minute, we can see that Biden is not the first DNC representative to so blatantly reveal the true aim of being interviewed on as widely syndicated, highly rated a radio show as The Breakfast Club, being as immensely popular as it is particularly to its black followers.
Case in point: in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Charlemagne the God and three other hosts similar interviewed Clinton on the show. Near the end, perhaps as a fun way to wrap things up, one of the other hosts asked Clinton what’s something she always carries around with her. Innocently seeming enough, Clinton responds “hot sauce.” Now, there is a line in a song by Beyoncé about “hot sauce in my bag, swag” that was immediately recalled by Charlemagne the God, who went on to banter with her and elicit the following reaction by Clinton.
Charlemagne: People are going to see this [show] and say, ‘Okay, she’s pandering to black people,’ you know?
Clinton: (Pauses) Okay… Is it working? (24:54)
Obviously the mention of hot sauce matching terms with the lyric of a popular black representative artist like Beyoncé is more likely than not to be an innocent coincidence. However, there is very little innocence to be drawn from the response by Clinton after bringing it to awareness (assuming she didn’t know about it ahead of time).
It is precisely this attitude presented here towards the black voting demographic that many who already find the DNC (if not the elitist parts of both parties) distasteful are finding equally repulsive in ways to the likes of Trump’s Archie Bunker-esque racism, with the additional expectation that the black majority can in fact be relied to carry the Democratic vote else “you ain’t black.”
Reaching farther back, we can see the potential for others to call out hypocrisy in light of the proposals Biden made back in the day for anti-busing policy while a Senate member in the 70’s, actions that spurred resentment by the NAACP and others. As described by Eric Levitz in the March issue of Intelligencer in 2019:
The NAACP called Biden’s proposal “an anti-black amendment.” The Senate’s sole African-American member, Ed Brooke, called it “the greatest symbolic defeat for civil rights since 1964.” (2019 NY Mag)
Regardless of the actual justification for this resentment, as well as the legitimacy of Biden’s move against forced integration in schools and buses, the fact that he now seems willing to concede to a number of popular demands for black representation in the White House is hard not to read as contradicting his previous stances, stances that the DNC likely recognized both black and liberal voters would be unable to tolerate were they to surface again. It certainly recasts the way appeals made anywhere to organizations like Black Lives Matter as a type of pandering more than a sign of genuine moral concern.
Despite prior inconsistency with current affairs, the choosing of a black woman running mate nonetheless in response to the bid “for black women to serve in this top role after decades of loyalty to the Democratic Party” has clearly prioritized in the eyes of many voters left and right of center the party’s willingness to appeal to public opinion rather than give due substantial weight to the matter through the meritocratic lens of what form of leadership a nation like the U.S. actually needs in order operate and be run effectively. (It also unfortunately hints at the potential willingness for the DNC, and possibly the Democratic party at large, to not only condone but possibly even see it in its best interest to partner with institutions with questionable agendas such as the BLM organization, as Weinstein himself has several times pointed out.)
For the record, I would love to see a black woman president (in fact any color woman president, for that matter), and I honestly think most of us in the country would. That goes as much for a black woman vice president. However, the crux of it is that the attribute of skin color isn’t inherently even in the ball park of the sort of criterion that entails good leadership skills, difficult as it may be for some people to imagine otherwise at this stage of things. That being black and a woman is what citizens would be presumed to choose over a candidate’s expertise and professional background betrays both a deep misunderstanding of government and leadership as well as a shallowness of what qualities of human beings are most important to pay attention to, specifically race. All the more does the DNC deserve scrutiny for apparently taking advantage of this misalignment in good judgment by the people in its indulgence of their shallower (and off-point) characterizations of appropriate leaders for the country. Just to get the Dem nominee in office.
The last thing worth mentioning about Biden in order to understand the opposition to his taking office even by those on the left interested in what Unity2020 has to offer is the fact of his being a veteran politician. Prior to his nomination, it is telling that even the liberal-inclined Vox described Biden as “the Hillary Clinton of 2020”:
A more sober assessment would have begun with the observation that since the founding generation passed away, voters have tended not to want to put veteran politicians in the White House. With only a handful of exceptions, the voters choose to elevate an “outsider” who’s going to “fix the mess in Washington” (or drain the swamp) rather than an inside player who’s mastered the system. (2019 Vox)
People outside the fringes of party lines who are looking for change, for something new, while also avoiding the disasters that Trump represents to those same people don’t necessarily see it in Biden. Rather, the corruption in both the DNC and GOP runs too deep in the eyes of many to be reassured that that change is what either party actually intends to offer us.
A Curse on Both Houses
Returning one final time to Krystal Ball, in reaction to a Biden corruption report back in January this year, the dominating causes for concern in those less confident in the nominees of either party would seem to ring crystal clear in the following summary:
The fact that this [kind of behavior] is commonplace in D.C., which it is, is not an excuse, because people are just done with it. They are done with the appearance of corruption, they’re done with lawmakers who parlay their positions into cashing in on boards or with healthcare companies, in the financial industry, etc., etc. […] So the fact that this is standard operating procedure, which is essentially the Democratic position on all this — like “nothing to see here, everybody does that” — that’s not an excuse. That’s exactly why it is such a problem. […] Trump is just as bad if not worse. In my view, he is worse and more blatant. But he’s not running on making a moral case. Biden is running on his values: “Let’s restore the Biden values. Let’s bring back this civility. Let’s bring back this good government” — and this [manner of corruption] is really damaging when that’s what you’re basing your campaign on. (“Krystal and Saagar react to new Biden corruption report” at 3:20)
Keep in mind that the majority of everything cited above was published prior to George Floyd and the call for anti-racism movement to which both parties responded so differently.
Regardless, the truth is that since around the time I first became eligible to vote, people have been growing more distraught election year after election year about the choice in candidates as the mechanisms behind polarization have continued to widen the gap between them. The matter of this run between Trump and Biden is far from the first we’ve seen before: we had the same problem in 2016, the same problem for decades now.
So from the perspective of someone joining Unity2020, the DNC and GOP candidates are not alone the sole issue to the election but are rather an echo of the question of how much longer we tolerate the pendulum swing and its stark contrast in players. Writing in response to the growing popularity of the movement, Stephen Johnson writes:
Americans are rigidly divided on many issues, but the idea that national politics is corrupt is not one of them. In recent years, surveys on Americans’ views on political corruption and their trust in the federal government reveal that cynicism stretches across both parties, even though diagnoses may differ. (2020 The Big Think)
What are the Basic Ideas Behind Unity2020?
Let’s get back to Bret Weinstein for a moment. Some of Weinstein’s older background ideas are very important (or at least insightful), I think, to understanding why this proposal is being made the way it is.
First, something you may have heard him say before, if you’ve given him a listen, is the term “rent seeking elite” or “rent seekers.” This is a term that I believe he first derived from his brother Eric Weinstein; in fact, “Eric Weinstein’s Four Quadrant Model” by Rosa Laura Junco on the Medium is probably the best detailed synopsis of this idea, complete with his favorite two-dimensional diagram of it.
Rent seekers, according to Eric Weinstein, are “people or companies who have a vested-interest in the x-axis [that is, degree of demonstrated support or opposition] of the policy because they profit from it, but do not produce much or anything of value in return.” As such, they occupy the bottom right quadrant of his diagram where there is an overlap between clear moral vice (in the sense of corruption) yet expressed support for policy initiatives from which they most likely to benefit. They’re a sort of “undercover” demographic, in the sense that, in order to get the most gain, they have zero interest in sharing spotlight or public visibility with demonstrators, politicians, or the like. Nonetheless, they derive financial benefit from their investments in these policies while simultaneously not producing comparable value in return for their profits.
It is debatable to only a small degree that such common institutions as major popular media sources fall into this category for those who adopt this mapping, based on their catering to mass appeal while looking the other way on important issues that might counter the given narrative hottest on the market at the time of broadcast. (See the last section for examples of what kind of important issues they may be claimed to be overlooking in particular.) Note that it is those in charge of the ventures behind the minimally fact-checking portions of these media agencies who are what’s under scrutiny in this model, and not necessarily those working within the agencies themselves (at least at lower tiers).
All right, so maybe you’ve heard that one before, but what you may not have heard Bret Weinstein bring up before are two salient ideas (to use his words) that he actually developed during his time as a PhD candidate decades ago, namely, indirect reciprocity and stability dependent cooperation.
Among the sources I highly recommend looking into on these, “The better angels of our nature: Group stability and the evolution of moral tensions” was an Evolution and Human Behavior 2005 journal article that he and David Lahti published independently and later ended up being a part of his 2009 dissertation, “Evolutionary Trade-offs: Emerging Constraints and Their Adaptive Consequences,” both of which you can find free online. It talks in depth (as one would expect from a dissertation-caliber paper) about the evolutionary theory that Weinstein built and, we can probably concur, he has more recently relied on in part in interpreting the current predicament of social movements and politics.
Firstly, in Weinstein’s words, “indirect reciprocity may be able to account for part of the facultative or inconstant nature of human commitment to moral norms. Indirect reciprocity is a system in which one’s reputation, built on others’ observations of one’s behavior in the past, affects one’s prospects” (Weinstein, pp. 69-70, my emphasis). Indirect reciprocity here is part of the answer to the question of why people may view and communicate some moral norms as superior to others or as strictly absolute altogether. It purports that people are to some extent game theoretically aware of their own reputation in the context of a group such that a dynamic is struck between one’s own behavior and the behavior of others such as to increase benefits within the group.
Indirect reciprocity provides the means for individuals to gain information about the dedication of others to the group, act to minimize parasitism by freeloaders or cheats, and allocate benefits to individuals in proportion to their level of commitment. […] In short, the dynamics of indirect reciprocity are expected to covary with dynamics of group stability because (1) individuals benefit by assessing others in different ways depending on group stability, and (2) as these assessments change, individuals will benefit by accommodating their own behavior to those changes. (Weinstein, pp. 75-76, my italics)
In other words, depending on the apparent stability of the group, individuals will either share judgement and assessment (such as moral condemnation) in the event of stable conditions, and otherwise change their own behavior to fit the perceived norm in the case of unstable conditions.
As you can probably guess, we can see the latter of the two playing a vital role in understanding Weinstein’s interpretation of current circumstances in society and politics. We are seeing a mass wave of conformity to norms that may be honorable in intention but inconsistent and even irrational in their execution (such as when rioters start stealing cell phones and other goods in the midst of otherwise admirable forms of protest in the name of police brutality, Black Lives Matter, or Antifa).
Drawing specifically from the dissertation paper (as I did), we are introduced to these concepts, and their relationship to “dynamic moral tension,” partly by way of an analogy to a boat race. (I’ll spare you most of the details of the evolutionary theory by relating the analogy instead, with the understanding that a critique of it by anyone would require them to take the time to read it in full, as well, for fuller comprehension.)
Weinstein tells it accordingly:
Consider a boat race in which a number of multi-rower craft race against each other over a predetermined course. Prize money is divided such that the first boat receives 50% of the total, the second boat receives 50% of the remainder, and so on down the standings. Within each boat, the position of each rower dictates what fraction of the boat’s total winnings are his, such that the person in the first seat gets 50% of the boat’s total, the person in the second seat gets 50% of what remains, and so on down the boat. (Astute readers will recognize that the prize allotment scheme leaves a small sum un-awarded, which we would argue is best spent on imaginary beer for all participants). The rules permit individuals, alone or in collaboration, to dislodge boatmates from superior seats, but, as a practical matter, this cannot be accomplished while rowing.
In such a race, one can easily imagine that as boats fall behind they will be overcome by a sense of shared fate and the need to cooperate intensely so that they will have something substantial to divide. As any boat pulls ahead, individuals in the back of that boat (who stand to gain little from the win) will reasonably conclude that bettering their own standing within the boat is the best use of their efforts. Cooperation between competitors in the back of the boat is likely to arise, and breakdown of such alliances is increasingly probable as they move closer to the front of the boat and more prize money is at stake. (Weinstein, pp. 76-77)
In other words, those who are in the back of the boat want to get to the front of the boat in cases where that boat is at the front of the race; and those who are in boats farther back are just looking to maintain the current order of rowers as the focus on pushing as hard as they can to race forward and get closer to the front.
Now, in this analogy, Weinstein is making the case that we rely on stability dependent cooperation, as he calls it, in order to help stabilize the group dynamics, and we do that in part through this moral tension of what to do depending on which boat we’re in and where that boat is placed in the water. The moral tension speaks to the questioning in ourselves and others of whether we uphold certain morals or we worry about how we can conquer the “race” or aggregate the most amount of dividends from it.
On that same note, Weinstein speaks to another fundamental concept of group collapse:
One exception to the trend of stability-dependent cooperation follows from the fact that humans, although highly dependent on their groups, are not absolutely so. When stability is so low that the group might be doomed to dissolution, group members may consider the benefits of leaving the group to be greater than the benefits of serving it. Moreover, as individuals cease striving for the group when they believe the cause is lost, they will be accelerating the collapse of the group both by their withdrawal of aid, and by the effects of that withdrawal on the assessments of others. This consideration indicates a threshold effect, with a sharp decline in cooperation and thus self-fulfilling group dissolution, once hopelessness of group persistence begins to spread. The existence of this tendency, however, depends on a perceived probability of successfully integrating into new groups following past group failures. Where there is no such hope, individuals would be expected to go down with the ship, continuing to employ the only strategy with any apparent chance of success. (Weinstein, p. 77)
Notice that in the paper, he points out that he is thinking about these ideas under the premise of a zero-sum game version of dynamics, whereby one party wins and the other party loses…such as in (dare we say it?) presidential elections. (In this case, we simply get the policy measures and the cabinets or administrations of the winning party, only one or the other.)
Group collapse is just as important to understand here as he’s saying that that, given circumstances where people are within the boats toward the front of the race, we can bet that those that are in a position to lose the most are going to be promoting the idea that we have group stability, that things are great — and we ought to keep them “great” (hence the campaign slogan).
Meanwhile, the actual issues involved that are causing group instability, such as recent events with the anti-racist movement’s rioting and call-out culture, not to mention its predecessor COVID-19 pandemic, are bringing us to a head. We either have to believe in the current instantiation of leadership (or really that lack thereof) of President Trump and the scenario that he would usher in were he elected again, or we have to believe Biden, who is of course going to be offering an entirely different rhetoric, not just because his party is not in the White House but because he’s also on the side where power is most likely attainable provided they get that seat, therefore pushing in their rhetoric the obviousness of the instability of the system at hand.
Election period after election period, we see similar if not the same rhetoric precisely because this is how group stability works, in a sense, for humans.
How Does Unity2020 Work?
Looking at the “About” page of Unity2020’s website, Articles of Unity (at least at the time of this writing), we read the following:
We the people draft two candidates: one from the center-left, one from the center-right. Once elected, they agree to govern as a team. All decisions and appointments will be made jointly in the interests of the American public. Only when they cannot reach agreement, or when a decision does not allow for consultation, does the President decide independently. A coin flip determines which candidate runs at the top of the ticket.
Candidates must meet these three criteria:
1. They must be patriotic
2. They must be highly capable
3. They must be courageous
After four years in office, the order reverses for the next election. This continues until the American public chooses an alternative administration or one of the members of the team cannot run for re-election, at which point a new patriot would replace them. (Articles of Unity)
Obviously, how we determine the measures of those criteria, patriotism, capability, and courage, is not entirely objective and perhaps something we may want to address later on in the “strengths and weaknesses” section of this plan. However, I think it’s fair to say that there are a great many people who would vote for almost anyone outside of the current candidates who appear to uphold at least any one of these three criteria (thought that’s not necessarily across the board).
After four years in office, the order of hierarchy reverses for the next election between the two incumbents, and this continues until the American public either chooses an alternative executive branch leader or one of the members of the team cannot run for re-election by reaching their terms limit, at which point a new elected candidate would take their place.
As we were saying before, this is a plan that is meant to entirely (radically, even) replace the current instantiation of our government as a two-party (what Unity2020 members regularly call a “duopoly”) system, one that is basically full of pandering corrupt elites and a one-person presidency, with a two-person presidency.
Assuming this were to go through and work, the very first candidates considered were originally Andrew Yang and William H. McRaven, a former US navy admiral. They are not at all the only candidates under consideration, however. (UPDATE: At the time of this writing, in fact, the number of potential candidates have been narrowed down to six: Yang, McRaven, Gabbard, Crenshaw, Ventura, and Willink.) The team leaders of the Unity2020 project have made it very clear that they are unable to promise specific candidates given that the first priority is to get enough backing behind the the plan itself by the public. (That said, a petition has been notably set up on Change.org calling for the drafting of Andrew Yang and Admiral McRaven specifically, nearing its 5,000 signatures goal at the time of this writing.)
The critical factor, as no one on the volunteer site or leadership teams is hesitant to remind folks, is ultimately the presence of a “groundswell,” a sheer uprising by popular demand for ballot access, in order for this to work. One of the primary means of doing so has been through social media (especially Twitter) in addition to other communication and marketing strategies.
What’s oddly interesting about the social media approach, one might notice, is that it could be argued that a lot of the extremeness of the duopoly’s obvious polarity, at least in the recent years of social media’s effects on the national social sphere, has probably been in large part exacerbated by those like Facebook and Twitter. It would be very interesting, to say the least, to see social media despite its past damage now possibly become one of the very things that actually makes such a movement like Unity2020 possible, even in such a noticeably short timeline to achieve its aims.
It’s finicky stuff, to be certain, but the internet has proven to be one of the primary ways that, in such short amounts of time, large movements are born. After all, who knew that only a couple of short months ago, such rampant explosions of protests and corona virus media coverage would become so prevalent to this moment in time? Or that just a few weeks later, one man would share and spark an idea that thousands of people would come to believe may indeed be possible toward overturning the likeness of our corrupt, albeit normalized, forms of political control of government, all due to the upward trending and virality of select threads on social media channels?
What are the Strengths and Weaknesses of Unity2020?
I think it’s fair to say that there are several points both for and against Unity2020. Let’s look at both.
Strengths
First, this is honestly an attractive alternative to the corruption and other points outlined above concerning the DNC and GOP.
That being said, it also distinguishes itself from third-party write-ins, which are renowned for their potential spoiler effects on elections. It is also more specifically an action plan (as opposed to just another additional party to the long list), and so far the only alternative plan I’ve ever heard of before that claims in its design that it is meant to prevent a spoiler effect in the election, i.e. a built-in “failsafe.” (We’ll talk about the veracity of that claim in a moment.) Rather, Unity2020 claims to avoid that consequence by demanding instead ballot access directly by way of a plan that has, as of yet, remained unveiled to the public.
Unity2020 boasts polling a nearly 50-50 equal distribution between Dem and Rep party voters who have preferred the idea of an alternative like this one to either presidential nominee; that is, people who would have voted Trump or Biden but heard about Unity2020 and decided to investigate it as a potential option instead. The movement demonstrates in this way a strong non-partisan affiliation in not catering to the left or right specifically, but by instead targeting a larger audience of people who are dismayed by the choices currently available to them between the conventional parties. As such, it has further attracted many of the so-called “Exhausted Majority” and a more recent report included a large number of the non-voter demographic (that is, people formerly disenchanted with the system and therefore most inclined not to vote at all) coming out of the woodwork to support its cause.
The outcome Unity2020 is aiming for would appear to be one most likely result in the current situation to result in greater stability in policy and decision-making, as well as a better role-model for the kind of leadership that has been generally lacking in these spheres. (The age and apparent mental conditions alone of the current two-party candidates, being in their later years as they are and not impossibly on the brink of death for all we know, don’t warrant many votes for confidence in the ability for the sort of leadership required to effectively guide the nation through such overarching issues as the pandemic, anti-racism, trade wars with China, and who knows what else in the coming four to eight years.)
Weaknesses
Some common critiques that need to be taken into account include items like the polling stats referenced above. The polling that delivered these are based on members and volunteers entering the movement, which obviously renders the nature of its sample questionable. That is, it appears to be comprised of those who are actually signing up to learn more about the plan (or at least looking into it for curiosity’s sake). We may therefore be getting an inaccurate portrayal of the wider scope of Americans’ likely attitudes toward this idea and its movement.
The timing of this plan has also understandably concerned many people. The common complaint is why Unity2020 didn’t get this ball rolling back in January or even earlier.
(Countering this critique for a moment, however, we obviously didn’t know yet who the candidates were that far back in the year, and this may arguably have been an entirely different story had Yang or Sanders or Warren been the nominees. As to whether or not this is the right time versus waiting four to eight years to implement the plan, we have to think again in terms of Bret Weinstein’s thought process around this is as an evolutionary beast that the people are attempting to overtake: the evolution of the mechanism that has resulted in the two-party duopoly has, from this perspective, given us a centralized government and an election procedure that has an incredible immune system to radical alternatives. As it were, the attempt to implement the plan too early or too late, regardless of which year, stands to, in a sense, vaccinate the beast by giving it an awareness of such an alternative that it can be more prepared for by the following election season. More drastic measures could be guaranteed to be taken in that preparation for the possible upheaval of a system in the eyes of the established parties. The argument goes, then, that the timing may only work for such a plan implemented now and for this election as opposed to a future one while the GOP and DNC are still not in the know of its workings under the radar.)
Another important downside to the Unity2020 project, and one I myself was particularly concerned with at an earlier points of its development, is the possibility of affecting the resulting number of voters in the event that, despite the promise of a fail-safe, Unity2020 as a third-party write-in was still mistakenly assumed to be an option, in a way speaking to a spoiler effect after all (though of a much weaker kind). There is certainly some logical consistency to the idea that if people are being drawn from both sides and the plan were to execute its purported fail-safe — that is, that the project would pull the plug in the even that 270 electoral votes aren’t reached in this running — that all the volunteers and interested members that have trickled in over time could simply go back to voting Trump or Biden based on their original preferences.However, the other possibility is that many of those who would have voted based on party lines but decided instead to join the Unity2020 project would be dismayed by the fall-out of the project were it to pull the plug and decide to either ineffectively write in “Unity2020” as a third party option or simply not vote at all in the end.
That said, we should remember that the project and many of its members see the results of either party getting elected as ultimately catastrophic (albeit in very different ways) for the nation, and therefore the fallback to voting for the “lesser evil” again or not in the event of the fail-safe being executed doesn’t really pose a logical threat to the deemed high-risk situation of anything other than an alternative to a Trump- or Biden-presidency. So while having gotten very emotionally involved in an alternative to the madness could end in a lack of incentive anymore to follow through with original plans for voting (if there were plans to begin with), the real question is, is the consequence of a smaller (or less effective) voter turnout for one or the other candidate a matter of higher priority concern? Should such a consequence be avoided at the cost of not having tried something different?
If we are looking to appeal to people’s sense of right and wrong — for many, the cashing in on the duopoly versus the trials of a non-duopoly option — one wouldn’t be irrational at all for thinking “what does it matter?” Regardless of which of the two candidates actually makes it into the office, assuming Unity2020 falls through, a worse voter turnout doesn’t necessarily plead a case for not doing anything in the way of creating a viable trajectory orthogonal to the presently given timeline of catastrophic events on the horizon.
What Can I Do to Learn More About Unity2020?
If you’ve made it this far, you obviously care about the national level urgency and importance of this issue concerning the two-party system and its nominees for 2020.
One thing that I chose not to clarify at the beginning of this is that neither this article nor the videos here are necessarily meant to persuade you to join the Unity2020 movement. While I do think that we’re seeing a larger and larger number of people jump on board as the weeks go by, it is ultimately the responsibility of the person reading this to discern whether the reasons considered (both here and elsewhere) are legit enough to warrant attention to it.
As such, at this point of your reading, you more than likely fall into one of three camps:
- You like something in what you’re reading here and are curious to explore it in light of a potential better option than what everyone else you know appears presently aware of.
- You firmly resonate with the ideas presented here and are biting at the bit to discover more of what you’ve been missing on this subject of the movement.
- You can’t see any good in this option and yet can tell that it is something that you and perhaps others in your party should call into attention given the rise in popularity of the idea against the contenders of your party.
Regardless of which of these categories you align with, you have to recognize that if it’s a good idea then we all ought to be moving to make it a reality, and that if this is ultimately a terrible idea then it behooves you as a voting citizes to know the full arguments and their implications to be able to communicate with wither about why. After all, the likeliness is increasing that you already know someone who’s heard of or even already part of Unity2020, leading to the possibility that you could be caught off guard having not invested in entertaining a more informed perspective for the conversation liable to ensue.
Whatever your reasons, if you wish to learn more, as I obviously think you should, the most relevant starting place is ArticlesofUnity.com, where you’ll find among other thing videos of Weinstein’s unveiling of the plan to those like Joe Rogan and Saagar from Rising. The site is under constant revising so it may not look the same the day you visit as at the time of this writing, but you are certain to find more of the information you need to get a preliminary understanding.
You may also want to connect with (or at least follow) others through the project’s Facebook page and its private group (currently showing nearly 8000 members as of this writing), as well as its Twitter (25K followers) and Reddit channels.
One thing’s for certain: this is a very time-sensitive project on our hands.As such, if you are even moderately interested in the project, I hope you manage to take a shorter length of time than I did jumping in and getting your hands dirty. Nothing less will further the efforts of Unity2020, whatever its numbers.
I want to close with what prompted the creation of this article and the video series before it. Initially, it was all meant to be a comprehensive but open-ended explanation in response to a friend’s question about the project. I began delving into get a better look with no intention beyond simply being an informed observer. I sat on the fence around the idea of getting more involved for some time, despite having a longer history of following Weinstein and his ideas, before recognizing it as the only option I felt morally compelled to respond to.
What I can say in the end is that, although a bit of a cultural (and certainly a political) pessimist by nature, I sense the reality with both my head and heart of the evolutionary monster Weinstein speaks to as well as the ideals inherited from past moments of enlightenment such as the civil rights movement and even (dare I say?) the founding of the nation itself. The notion of losing something remarkable here, something I could not recognize in my youth but have come to see as a rare thing in a world with a dark history, brings me chills. While it may indeed be cliche to read into it the analogy of a David-and-Goliath-type of framing, it seems nonetheless perfectly fitting. At the end of the day, we all need to sleep, and I know that I at least sleep at night with the understanding that, however grim things may ultimately turn out to be, I and others will have tried to make something meaningful of it. Do you?
I’d like to think that if I was the one reading this article or watching these videos about Unity2020 just prior to November’s election, with little or no previous knowledge of it, and I saw it on the ballot, chances would be high that I would select it. I think I’d be very happy to consider an alternative to the pendulum swing of the two-party drama show we’re seeing.
No matter what, I invite you to think about your responsibilities and consider what part you play in this unfolding of a very critical time in our country. Having considered all viewpoints and their best reasons, may we all do what we believe to be truly right .