The Lives In Reality Caucus

Hanania, Destiny, Yglesias, and Klein may differ politically, but they have something in common

Recently, I watched one Steven Bonnell—a streamer (for the people over 40 reading this, that’s a person who records themselves yapping all day as their job) commonly known as Destiny (not the name given to him by his parents)—have a conversation with friend of the blog Richard Hanania about politics. Hanania is on the right, but spends most of his time remarking on the jaw-dropping stupidity of the right; Destiny is on the left, but spends most of his time remarking on the jaw-dropping stupidity of the left, so it was really a match made in heaven.

One might expect a right-winger and a left-winger not to get along well when discussing politics, especially ones as chaotic and explosive as Hanania—who has been smeared as a virulent racist by half of left-wing newspapers—and Destiny who recently attracted controversy after mocking the firefighter who was killed at the Trump rally.

The conversation, however, was quite friendly and amicable. Both parties seemed to like and respect the other. When they occasionally disagreed about, for example, the desirability of unions, their disagreement was relatively calm and not discussed much. There was a sense of comraderie—that the two were really, fundamentally on the same team.

Why did these two polarizing figures on opposite ends of the political spectrum get along? Why was Destiny friendlier with Hanania than most left-wingers and Hanania friendlier with Destiny than most right-wingers? I think the answer is pretty simple: both of them live in reality, and are not delusional crazy people.

Hanania and Destiny agree that, for example, vaccines work, the 2020 election wasn’t stolen, and Trump made a serious effort to overturn the election. They agree that masking went on for too long, that school closures were disastrous, and that Hamas aren’t a bunch of aggrieved moderates who love peace.

In other words, they comprise parts of the lives in reality caucus. Rather than believing bogus narratives spoon-fed to them from deranged Twitter extremists, they generally see events how they are. They’re not the only members of the reality caucus—I imagine Hanania or Destiny would be similarly friendly with Matt Yglesias, Ezra Klein, Scott Alexander, or even a less well-known figure like Dan Williams of the blog conspicuous cognition. But they represent prime examples of this group.

Politics is mostly treated as a war of ideas—of both sides trying to use arguments to vindicate themselves and debunk their enemies. In a war of ideas, you can either come to a nuanced conclusion based on how reality is, or you can distort reality in a way that’s conducive to your political agenda.

According to the narrative of Bret Weinstein and Alex Jones, reality isn’t complicated. There aren’t tradeoffs between Trump and Harris—there is instead a nefarious cabal of elites working to turn everything to shit. If you listen to David Pakman—though he’s far more serious than the others I named—you won’t see any nuance, just endless attacks on Republicans, and examples of their allegedly disastrous interviews. This does generate some hilarious video titles, with perhaps the best being “Jesse Lee Peterson Confronted, COLLAPSES, Confirms Celibacy,” a title surpassed in greatness only by the article “RFK Jr. denies eating a dog while sidestepping sexual assault allegations.” This delightfully ambiguous headline on Trump’s health was also pretty good:

Suppose you’re opposed to the war on Gaza. If you’re a member of the lives in reality caucus, you’ll carefully consider the facts, and argue that the huge number of people dying isn’t worth a relatively ineffective campaign to eradicate Hamas. You’ll think hard about the costs and the benefits, and argue that the war isn’t worth it.

In contrast if, like most people, you’re a partisan hack, you’ll argue that there is not a shred of nuance. You’ll claim that actually the war will radicalize Gaza and help Hamas (a fact apparently not understood by Hamas, who has requested ceasefires). You’ll argue the war isn’t complicated but is instead a textbook example of a genocide—of a violent Israeli war machine eradicating all life in Gaza—while sharing the most extreme numbers of deaths you can find. You can find such views expressed on substack, as in most places; propaganda is the norm.

It’s all too easy to be a propagandist—to warp reality to fit your political agenda, rather than basing your political views on what you think reality is. Humans easily fall prey to motivated reasoning that turns us into propagandists for our cause. I may have recently made this error in my article predicting that Biden would be the nominee—scrounging up every argument for the conclusion I accepted rather than adequately engaging with the counterarguments.

But while members of the reality caucus veer into this occasionally, it is ubiquitous among propagandists. Making a concerted effort to see reality how it is, rather than how you’d like it to be, is rare. A sure sign someone is a propagandist is if all of their political views are on the same side—they’re either a left-winger across the board or a right-winger across the board—and if they rarely think that contested political issues involve tradeoffs.

I think the concept I’m describing here of the lives in reality caucus is similar to Hanania’s description of enlightened centrists. They’re not necessarily centrists in the sense that they’re genuinely apolitical—the people who Hanania names aren’t that way—but in the sense that they see reality in a relatively non-partisan way, that their conceptions of reality aren’t unduly warped by partisan bias.

Many of these people have other extreme views. Both Destiny and Hanania have said things that are extremely controversial, and would be regarded as extremists by most people. Both of them have publicly affirmed views that many would find crazy and that are quite far outside the overton window. But they don’t have warped views of reality.

Enlightened centrists are more likely to hold to very controversial moral views. This is for the simple reason that those who think hard about things are more likely to think extreme things—for consistency often demands extremism. You can’t, for example, hold on to the commonsense view that it’s bad when animals suffer without being seriously opposed to meat eating—a position many regard as extreme.

It’s no surprise that these members of the reality caucus are disproportionately opposed to factory farming. Jesse Singal is a vegetarian, Hanania has written about the horrors of factory farming, Ezra Klein is a vegan, Yglesias has raised concerns about our current meat-eating (the only exception to this trend is Destiny who has psychopathically suggested that it’s okay to skin animals alive and it would be okay to genocide entire civilizations if those civilizations couldn’t benefit you). Even Destiny, who is perfectly fine with meat-eating takes an extreme but consistent position—because he lives in reality, he’ll affirm the genuinely crazy and abhorrent things that any meat-eater is committed to.

These folks were also disproportionately willing to admit that Biden was failing cognitively. Klein acknowledged this long before most people did, Singal was quick to join the bandwagon after the debate, Scott Alexander wrote an article about how he got Biden’s brain quality wrong (namely, by failing to realize that Biden had only 10 working neurons, only one of which was working at any given moment to allow Biden to say words). Even Destiny, who advocated keeping Biden as the nominee acknowledged his significant decline and disastrous debate performance.

If you’re a propagandist who supports Biden, your response to Biden’s evident decline will be two-fold. First, you’ll claim that the debate night was just a bad night, that Biden isn’t really cognitively feeble, and that he’s actually very vibrant behind the scenes. He recently beat the shit out of Mike Tyson, before having sex with Tyson’s wife, a source close to the president revealed. Second, you’ll claim that the real one who’s mental decline we should worry about is Trump, and point to news stories of a few rogue doctors saying it seems like Trump has dementia. A propagandist sees every issue with their position not as a potential truth to be explored, but as a talking point to be flipped. Whatever you think of Norman Finkelstein, it’s undeniable that he is not a dispassionate observer, but sees every argument against Israel as a weapon to be used and every argument for Israel as a talking point to be disproved.

Only those who live in reality will be remotely willing to admit that though Biden has experienced significant cognitive decline, he’s still a better candidate. Those who get their views on reality from what’s politically convenient will refuse to acknowledge this unfortunate reality. Inconvenient truths will be acknowledged by those who live in reality; ignored by those who don’t.

Members of the reality caucus are also especially likely to acknowledge politically inconvenient facts. Hanania restacked my article about crazy Ron Desantis’s plan to ban lab meat, admitting that it’s a good reason to vote for Democrats, even though he’s not convinced by it. The left-wing members of the reality caucus are willing to admit that the crazy wokesters on their side are, in fact, crazy—rather than go to bat for them because they’re on your team.

Most importantly, members of the reality caucus read things that aren’t very interesting. They don’t get their news from sensational Twitter stories. While Destiny seemed slightly psychotic in this recent debate, one can’t deny that he was informed. Destiny spends a lot of time reading reliable sources—newspaper articles and detailed reports about the fake electors plot, books about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and Wikipedia which is, in fact, highly reliable. While many people made fun of Destiny for reading Wikipedia, it’s much better than getting your news from reading Twitter.

Hanania reads books and research articles about the topics he discusses. Spend time reading Yglesias or Klein and it’s clear that they actually reading boring research from smart people. They’ll often cite research papers or high-ranking economists in a way that, say, Vaush (a representative propagandist) would never do.

Seeing reality for how it is requires reading reliable sources. Those reliable sources rarely come with entertaining or seductive infographics. As Jeff Maurer says, in an article decrying the far left’s love of infographics:

God that’s great. The entire Israel-Palestine conflict succinctly and inaccurately explained in just 42 words. I especially love how the second woman’s text gets smaller as she speaks — it’s like they were trying visually represent everyone tuning her out as she devolves into inane leftist patter. But this is only one panel of several — on Instagram, the conversation continues (even though in real life, the first woman would say “Okay, neat. Hey, I think I left the milk out — gotta go!”).

This conclusive explanation of the motives of both sides of the conflict — though only 21 words long — was too verbose for one Instagram user. That person wrote:

Yeah, cut to the chase, Tolstoy! People don’t have time to sit around all day poring over a 21-word Instagram cartoon! Thankfully, Sarkeesian did, indeed, put certain words in color. And if you read only those words, then the dialogue becomes simply: “Israel oppressor, Palestine oppressed”. And what else do you need to know!?! I can’t think of a better illustration of our dog-dick stupid dialogue than a 21-word cartoon that labels Palestine “good” and Israel “bad” and knows that even linking verbs might be too much for its audience to handle.

Most people—and I’m certainly guilty of this to some extent—don’t read reliable sources but instead receive their news as entertainment. Nuanced articles discussing the work of serious scholars are less entertaining than 21 word infographics, so no one reads Benny Morris, and millions of people see this braindead infographic (or at least the highlighted words comprising part of it).

The lives in reality caucus spends time and effort figuring out what reality is really like! This involves reading boring sources, rather than propaganda pieces. This is quite rare, and provides an important differentiating features of the LIRC.

I think the concept of the LIRC is helpful for thinking about politics. People are generally able to get along with others, even those they disagree with greatly, if they both live in reality. Hanania has more disdain for Weinstein than Destiny or Klein because Weinstein is a crazy person—and being right about a few political issues doesn’t make up for being insane.

Living in reality, of course, comes in degrees. None of us are perfect at it, we all fall prey to partisan bias, we all get things wrong and are often unduly lazy. But it’s something worth consciously aspiring to, and judging people based on. We should all make very serious efforts to live in reality, to believe what is true rather than what’s convenient, and to dispense with the odious propaganda that is ubiquitous in politics.

Questions? Objections? Way this article could be replaced by a bolded infographic? Leave a comment!