Many of us can conjure moments when politics made us feel sad. But how often do those feelings translate into more serious forms of depression or other mental health issues? And if politics does make us depressed, what do we do about it?
Christopher Ojeda has spent the past few years exploring these questions and joins us this week to talk about the relationship between depression and democracy. Ojeda is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California Merced and author of the forthcoming book "The Sad Citizen: How Politics Makes Us Depressed."
He visited Penn State in early February to give us a sneak preview of this important work on the relationship between democratic engagement and individual mental health. We discuss how to meet the demands that democracy places on us without sacrificing our mental health in the process.
Episode Transcript
Chris Beem
From the McCartney Institute for Democracy at Penn State University, I'm Chris Beem.
Candis Watts Smith
I'm Candis Watts Smith.
Jenna Spinelle
I'm Jenna Spinelle, and welcome to Democracy Works. This week, our guest is Christopher Ojeda, who is an assistant professor of political science at the University of California Merced, the author of the forthcoming book, The Sad Citizen,: How Politics Makes Us Depressed, and an alum of Penn State, he received his PhD here a few years ago, and we brought him back to campus recently, at the request of the McCourtney Institute Student Advisory Board who had been asking us to do some programming around mental health and democracy, it is a topic that is very much on their minds. And Christopher, as it turned out, was the perfect person to bring in to have that conversation.
Chris Beem
Yeah, that's why we have the student advisory committee, we wanted to know, what students were thinking about and what they were concerned about. And this issue of mental health in general, and depression, specifically, is something that's really significant within this population. And, and I looked up a, you know, tried to look up some, some numbers. And I mean, this is from the Walton Family Foundation in a survey they they paid for, and it said that Gen Z is about twice as likely as Americans over 25 to battled depression, and the number is 42%. Coming up on half of all Gen Z Americans. And, you know, there's there's a lot of reasons for why that is. That's where we are, right? Their whole civic lives, they've seen some really disturbing things happen. They've seen politics, apparently, prove unable democratic politics prove unable to, to address some problems as they saw COVID They saw issues associated with climate change a variety of other issues. And and Kansas, as you mentioned, gun violence and school shootings, too, right.
Candis Watts Smith
Yeah. I mean, this is a group of people who asked fourth and fifth graders, you know, we did fire drills or tornado drills. They're doing active shooter drills. And, you know, I think I'm really glad that we're having this discussion, because we tend to think primarily about politics and policy as perhaps addressing the issue of health, mental health, physical health, health care, reproductive health, you know, that we hope that we have the politics and good governance to produce outcomes that are better for the public. But what Christopher does is kind of spin this on its head and say, Yeah, but look at what happens when you when you are not doing your part when you're not doing like when we don't have good governance, when we are not feeling constrained by the norms of losers consent, when we are expected to kind of watch the news on this kind of 24 hour loop, and just kind of a mass, you know, aggregate these really often sad, anger inducing anxiety inducing pieces of news, right, that that in itself, can produce depression and sadness. And so I'm really, I'm, I'm pleased that we brought Christopher along for me, as an educator to just kind of think about how I talk and teach around a topic that can do harm to my students to be to be quite frank.
Chris Beem
Well, and that does harm to our democracy as well. And that's kind of Christopher's point. I don't, I don't want to leave listeners with the impression that this is simply a problem for young Americans, right. It's documented all over the world. And I just went to for my physical last week, and my physician is kind of McCourtney is to group and he asked me what we're doing. I told him and, and I just said, I asked him, Are you? Are you seeing more depression and anxiety and he's a family physician, and he just gravely shook his head. Yes. The other thing that you were saying I think is, is is right. And it's really I think, at the core of why Christopher's work is so importantly, it does have this kind of Zeitgeist kind of feel to it, what's going on now, but it's also true that he's asking questions about democracy per se right now. Because democracy is going to be, it's going to inevitably involve wins and losses, you know, you're going to have candidates that you really want to win who don't, and or policies that you really want to pass that don't. And you're going to feel bad. And that's just part of what you sign up for. But Christopher's asking the question, when does it become so bad? That it undermines our feeling of empowerment or desire to be to kind of shake it off and get on to the next battle? And do we do enough of us feel so overwhelmed by depression, that it becomes harder to sustain a democracy? And more importantly, how do we know when that's happening?
Candis Watts Smith
I'm glad that Christopher is thinking about this, because I think you know, when I told other people, yeah, we're doing this podcast today on the sad citizen, and everybody that I talked to is like, yes, that part. So you're right. It's totally in the zeitgeist. And the good thing about students is that they have words for their feelings. And they are able to articulate what some of us older folks cannot articulate, which is, we really need to be thinking about what these questions of mental health and emotional intelligence mean, for the way that we engage with politics and democracy more generally.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. And I think you'll hear in this conversation that Christopher is very thoughtful about how he thinks about this work. And he also, in addition to the quantitative research, he did interviews with mental health professionals and therapists about some of the ways that they are working with patients who come in with depression that is related to politics, or their engagement with the news and these sorts of things. So we talked about that. So lots to get to in this one. Let's go now to the interview with Christopher Ojeda.
Jenna Spinelle
Christopher, Ojeda welcome to Democracy Works. Thanks for joining us.
Christopher Ojeda
Thank you so much for having me.
Jenna Spinelle
So there's lots to dive into in your work about the relationship between mental health and political engagement. I'd like to start with just a little bit about how you became interested in this this area of study, and maybe to the extent that that relates to your own experience, which you also have written about.
Christopher Ojeda
Yeah, absolutely. Thank you for the question. So I first came to the topic of depression, when I was working at Penn State, I was doing research in a developmental psychology lab, and a lot of the researchers there were studying depression. And I began to wonder what political scientists might have to say about the subject matter. And at the time, I was writing my dissertation on why it is that the rich participate in politics more than the poor. And I started to think perhaps, depression is an important part of answering that question. Because we know that people who live in poverty experience depression more often than then people who are in middle class or upper class. And so I started to investigate. How does depression shaped the way we engage with politics, and I found that it has this really profoundly D mobilizing effect, you're less likely to participate, you're, you're less trustee and you're less engaged, or efficacious in so that's how we came to the topic. But after 2016, that's when I began to think about the topic in reverse. So rather than how does depression shaped the way we engage with politics, I began to think, how does politics shaped the way we feel? Can politics makes us make us depressed? And I came to this topic after the election of former President Trump, because I was doing a postdoc at Stanford at the time. And the day after the election, I noticed a lot of people were very upset, visibly upset on campus. And it was clear that they were having a really difficult time processing the outcome of the selection. And it got me thinking, Can politics make us make us feel depressed? And that's how I started. I was when I really thought there's a book here. I should write about this.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah. And so is it fair to say it kind of combining those two ideas you were just talking about that there is kind of a vicious cycle here, politics makes us feel depressed, and then we're less likely to be engaged and then we become more depressed or more anxious, and it kind of spirals from there. Yeah, absolutely.
Christopher Ojeda
I think these things feed off of each other for sure. And there's a couple of ways Is that that happens, but one of which is that if politics is making us, if politics can make us feel depressed, and that depression, D mobilizes us makes us disengaged from the political process, then one possibility is that depression becomes a becomes a tool of political actors who want to restrict the scope of conflict, if they want to keep people out, you know, say they're in the dominant position, and they want to maintain that position, then perhaps sort of making people feel depressed, keeping them out of the political process is something that's in their interest. And so that's one potential implication. But another is that if people who are depressed by politics don't participate, and then they sort of think, well, the political process doesn't benefit me, then that might leave them feeling even more depressed, and that makes them even less engaged. And so that becomes another way in which these things feed off each other.
Jenna Spinelle
And before we get too far here, we should probably just set set a definition here, I know that there's the kind of the psychological definition of of depression. And so how did how did you take that and apply it to the realm of politics?
Christopher Ojeda
That's a great question. Depression means so many things to so many different people, I really think of there being three different ways of defining depression, there is the clinical definition of depression. And I think that's what a lot of people think about when they hear the word and that's major depressive disorder is sort of defined by the American Psychiatric Association, they have very clear criteria for when someone is depressed and someone is not depressed. At the same time, there is a there's sort of a vernacular, meaning it's how we use the word in everyday language. You know, we we use the term depressed, depressing to refer to anything that's sort of sad or pathetic, like I say, like, my salad is depressing, right? If it's, like, wilted or doesn't look so good. And then I think there's like a third meaning of the term, which is what I call the affective meaning, and that is this feeling of sunken pneus, right that like there was a weight on your existence, in this meaning, I think bridges the clinical and the vernacular meanings, and that's how I think about depression. And so I think of depression as sort of a feeling of families that capture this sense of having this weight on your shoulders. And that can be anything from disappointment, which is perhaps the mildest member of the Depression family, to something like despair, which would be one of the more intense members of the family.
Jenna Spinelle
And yeah, there is, I think, kind of this continuum, especially when we think about like, the the candidate or the party that we support, not winning an election, there's like, oh, yeah, it's unfortunate that we lost all the way to yeah, having more serious feelings, or this Yeah, that kind of weight on your shoulders. You were you were talking about before. So if I, if I recall correctly from from reading your work, there's this this question, and this Avenue has not really been explored that much before within the realm of political science. So how did you go about assessing that continuum and getting the information? You know, especially because it's only I feel like been recently that we're even talking openly about mental health and and these kinds of things?
Christopher Ojeda
Yeah, so definitely, you're right in saying that it hasn't. The topic of depression has not been explored in political science very much. I mean, we've talked about a little bit my research on how depression can be demobilizing. But no one is really written about how politics can be depressing. And I think that we want to, you know, as I approached this topic, and it's very new, and it's very fresh, I want to be thinking about the range of feelings that politics can make us have, whether it's disappointed, or whether it's despairing. And so I'm exploring all of these different members of the Depression family in the book. And so you know, you might have you might recall, for example, in the early Biden presidency, people were so hopeful after he was elected Democrats were so hopeful. But you know, within a year, Democrats were feeling very disappointed. There was this sort of botched out withdrawal from Afghanistan, there were problems getting some of the bills passed through Congress that the Biden administration had introduced, and Democrats were feeling very disappointed. And what that means is they they felt like there was a lost opportunity, they were sort of let down by this leader they had trusted. And I think that sense of disappointment is fairly common in politics. On the other end of it, you can imagine cases where politics evokes a more significant feeling of depression. So one example I think about is, is this photographer, this photo journalist, Kevin Carter, he was South African and he was working in the 80s and 90s in South Africa during apartheid and then he was also covering the feminine I'm in the Sudan, and he eventually committed suicide, because in any road in his suicide note about the despair, he felt at witnessing all this political violence and trauma, and really being helpless to do anything about it. And so I think, in other ways, politics can make us feel very intensely depressed. And I want to cover that full range of feelings. So that we can see the very different ways politics can can either let us down make us disappointed or make us feel despair.
Jenna Spinelle
I mean, you mentioned before, ways that politicians can play on on these, and how do you think about the role that the media plays here, we just did an episode of the show recently all about the concept of news avoidance. And I, you know, I hear from my students that they're choosing not to consume news because they feel that it can be damaging to their mental health to be reading about politics. And you know, like some of the things you were saying before, so you know, how much of what we're seeing now is just a function of the media landscape and changes there, and how we access and process information.
Christopher Ojeda
I think the media landscape plays a really big role. I mean, most of our experiences with politics are indirect, they're mediated through the media, right? Like none of us. Most of us did not go to the inauguration of President Biden, or the inauguration of former President Trump. But we all sort of saw it occur on the media. And that's true of most of our political experiences. So the media has a really important role. And I think one of the challenges is in the modern media now works in this attention, economy space. And what that means is that their success depends on our continual engagement with media. And I think it's this continual engagement, that can be really depressing. So any one story might make us feel anxious, or might make us angry. But when we consume that sort of intense emotional story over and over and over again, it becomes depressing, because we start to think there are too many problems. There are so many problems that even if we solved one of them, a million other problems would exist. How could we possibly tackle all these issues? And so I think it's the totality of media that we consume, that can be really depressing, rather than any one story. Now, of course, any one story can itself be depressing. We, you know, war, natural disasters, like these kinds of things. Make us feel sad, but but I think it is that sort of nonstop news cycle that really gets to our psyche.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and it it also brings up I think, a bigger theme in your book, I'm just gonna gonna read a line here, you're sort of answering the question of, what do we do when democratic values and personal well being come into conflict, I think that kind of gets to how, what media we choose to consume or not how much we choose to engage or not. And so people are, you know, obviously, taking their own courses of action to decide what this balance looks like for them.
Christopher Ojeda
One theme that has emerged in this book is the is the potential is the tension between democratic values in our personal well being. And let me give you an example of that, which is, with the news, which we were just discussing, the Democratic citizen is one who is engaged in their inform, right, so they're keeping up with what's going on, they know, you know, who are the major actors? What are the what are the political processes, you know, there's Congress, there's legislatures, there's the judiciary, all these things, but what if, at the same time, being informed means being overwhelmed? And how do we reconcile those two things the the need to have a citizenry that's informed but also the need to have a citizenry that has a sound mental health. Another example is the case of echo chambers, right? So there's a lot of discussion about how echo chambers are not good for democracy because we want people talking to people who think differently from them, we want people to be exposed to different ideas and engaging in informed debate with other people. But what happens if that in debate is really stressful in damaging to our mental health in what is actually good for our mental health is being around people who are like us. And so these are serious conflicts that I think we need to think about as we think about how to make democracy work.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, and and to bring in this this idea of individuals seeking mental health counseling and, and therapy you mentioned listening to podcasts that have ads for better help and all of these These kinds of things. So it's certainly something that that's on the rise. And I feel like it's only grown even since the pandemic era people seeking out these services. But um, talk about, you know, the, what you've learned about the landscape for mental health professionals to be able to engage some of these questions with their clients.
Christopher Ojeda
So I think so I've been doing interviews of mental health professionals around the country over the past year. And I'm asking them, what kinds of problems are your clients talking about? Do they talk about politics with you? And if they do, what do they say? But I'm also asking them, how do you respond to your client? You know, what do you say when they talk about politics? What advice do you give them? I also went to a lot of popular psychology websites to try and read. Alright, what advice is there online? You know, not everyone sees a therapist, not everyone sees a mental health professional, but a lot of people visit psychology websites to figure out, I'm going through a hard time, what should I do? And so I want to know what advice is out there. And I think that the field of psychology and psychiatry is starting to recognize that people are increasingly stressed by politics in that they need to be able to tell people how to cope with the challenges politics presents, a lot of therapist I talked to, you know, told me that they never received any training about how to deal with conversations about politics. And so they end up applying rules that they learned about in in their training in graduate school, that may or may not be applicable to politics. So one of them is the rule of neutrality. So a lot of therapists think that they're supposed to be neutral. And this is especially true when it comes to politics, they shouldn't be taking one side or another. And that makes sense. But oftentimes, because neutrality is can be a contested idea in the political arena, it's almost easier if the therapist just shuts down any conversation about politics, rather than engage in a conversation about politics. Because if they engage, then they risk violating this rule of neutrality. But if they don't engage with a conversation about politics, and they can ensure that they remain neutral, and that may not be what's best for the client, even if it is ensuring the neutrality of the therapist.
Jenna Spinelle
Yeah, how much of this what we've just been talking about is unique to the US and our system of two parties, single member districts, we talk a lot on this show about different political reforms, whether it is you know, proportional representation, or rank choice voting or exploring multi party systems, like how much would would any of those reforms help with this, this picture would do you think that there would be maybe a positive impact on you know, depression, and some of these these mental health issues we've been talking about?
Christopher Ojeda
I definitely think there is. There are ways we can design political institutions like our electoral system, for example, to be less depressing when politics does not work out the way we want it to. And in the book, I primarily focus on the United States. But I do analyze some data from Great Britain in the Netherlands, and then also a survey called the European social survey that spans lots of countries in Europe. And one of the things I find, for example, with respect to the Netherlands is the electoral loss in the Netherlands doesn't have the same kind of impact as it does in the United States. The Netherlands is a multi party system, it does not have those same single member districts that we have in the United States. And I think what this does is it sort of doubles the impact of losing when, when because there's not one winning party, there's a majority party, but then they have to build a ruling coalition, which means they have to work with other parties. And so you can see how there's a way in which electoral loss doesn't mean being, you know, in the minority for four years before the next election. And so what I found actually in another lens is that winning an election can reduce feelings of depression, but that losing an election doesn't amplify them as much as it does in the United States. If that makes sense.
Jenna Spinelle
One more question about depression before we move to maybe some of the more virtuous aspects of this work. So you also write about the the connection to the idea of the losers consent, which as we know, from you know, the 2020 election into January sixth is very, very important in a democracy that walk us through that how are these feelings of depression around politics connected to the idea of the losers consent?
Christopher Ojeda
That's a great question in political Science, we have this idea that elections work not because of the winners, but because of the losers, that the losers recognize the game is over, and they stop playing. And they allow the winning team to assume the position of power. And so the losers consent is really important. And I think the, in the book, I talk about the possibility that feeling disappointed is an important part of securing the losers consent in the aftermath of an election. And there's a lot of rituals around securing the losers consent, you know, the losing candidate gives a concession concession speech in which they tell their supporters, the election is over, I've lost, we now have to recognize that this other person won, you know, we're going to do what we can to support them, we're also going to continue to fight in other ways, there are future elections, the losing candidate goes to the inauguration of the winning candidate, so on and so forth. And these things signal to the losing side that that it's over. And that can induce a sense of disappointment, which then sort of propels them to sort of de mobilize step away from the political process, let the winners come to power. And I think we actually saw that these rituals were disrupted in 2020, because former President Trump was unwilling to concede the election and even suggested that the election didn't result in his loss, that in fact, the his supporters, the election have been stolen, and his supporters were sort of unjustly, um, cheated out of his win. And so actually, that evokes feelings of anger, right? We feel angry when someone has someone has done something to us, that's unfair. And we feel disappointed or depressed when there's some kind of loss. That's a deep loss and sort of a loss that we can't overturn or undo in some way. And so I think we saw how important depression can be to securing the losers consent, not through all the elections in which we observed people being depressed, but through an election in which we observed people not being depressed.
Jenna Spinelle
So we've we've been talking about depression and kind of negative feelings. But there are also ways that feeling somewhere on that depression spectrum you articulate it can actually be a motivator for political action, and kind of a way to maybe cope with it is to become more involved in politics, as opposed to what we were talking about earlier with, with avoiding it or tuning it out.
Christopher Ojeda
Yeah, absolutely. Oftentimes, feelings of depression come from a sense that we don't have any control over a bad situation. And one way to try and combat that those feelings of depression is by finding ways in which we can exert some influence or find our agency in politics. And so getting involved has the potential to help us feel less depressed about politics, right, we can see the impact we have on what's going on.
Jenna Spinelle
Right. And this is often I think, talked about, you could have the most impact at the local level, right? And you maybe can't do anything about what's happening in Washington. But you can, you know, go to your local city council or your your local school board meeting, I guess, how do you think about that, like the level of impact that someone can have does it? Does it I guess, from a mental health perspective, does it matter as much what the substantive outcome is versus like, whether people feel they're making an impact? If that makes sense?
Christopher Ojeda
It does make sense. And I think it's, you make a really good point, the local level is potentially a really great way to develop a sense of agency in politics. The national level is so complex, and there are so many people involved, that it's really hard to feel like you can make a difference. But at the local level, where you know, the issues are really about what's going on in your neighborhood, you can see that you have an impact and that you make a difference in that will give you a sense of control that I think will help you overcome any sense of helplessness you might have about how politics works. The other thing I would add to is that politics is always going to be a little disappointing. You know, it doesn't always go our way we sometimes get less than we want sometimes the issues we care about aren't put on the agenda. That is a natural. I mean, it's an inherent part of the political process. And so learning that feeling disappointed is is part of the political process. I think that's okay. Right like and what that signals to us is perhaps we need to use different tactics or we need to change the our approach to achieving our goal. Whatever we're doing isn't working. What is more concerning is when we start to feel depressed, like really intensely depressed by what's going on in politics. Because that can really change the way we think about politics, we depression can lead to a negative thought spiral, it can make us even more depressed, it can make us sort of think that everything's hopeless, no change is possible, the system doesn't work. And that's not, that's not helpful for you. It's not helpful for democracy. And so I think drawing the distinction there between, you know, politics is sometimes disappointing, and we need to work through that disappointment in politics can be depressing. Those are useful distinctions to make, I think one thing educators can do is, is help students learn to engage in politics in a healthy way. So not, you know, getting their news from sources that are going to sensationalized the news or bombard them with, you know, click bait, that's not really helpful. So getting getting news from more tempered, even handed sources I think is important. Another thing educators can do is, as we talked about, encouraging students to become involved at the local level, you know, even if a lot of the education is about national politics, you know, how Congress works, and how the Electoral College works. The local level is where you can find some sense of agency. And so, you know, finding that right balance, I think, is something that educators can help students do.
Jenna Spinelle
Well, I think your your forthcoming book will be a great place to start that that conversation and get our listeners thinking. So it won't be out for a little while, we got a sneak peak here on the show, but we'll certainly keep everybody in the loop when it comes out. So Christopher, thanks so much for your time today.
Christopher Ojeda
Thank you for having me.
Chris Beem
So, I think it's interesting how Christopher kind of talks about the concept of depression, right. And, you know, my wife has, you know, was a psychiatric psychiatric nurse for decades. And she, you know, has a very clear clinical definition of what depression means, and, and how, when you can legitimately make that diagnosis. And then, you know, we all have this, you know, I mean, Christopher talks about it, right, that, Oh, my God, this salad is depressing, or, you know, this, or whatever it is this movie, this, this, this podcast, whatever it is, it's depressing. But I think it's, I think he kind of does a pretty good job of leaving off those extremes, but still kind of like having a workable definition. And the idea that we have this weight on us, you know, I don't know, if there's a human being who's who doesn't understand what that means. I don't know who they are. And I don't, I don't know if they're really human being right. I mean, it's just kind of, it's just a natural part of all of our lives. And it is relevant for politics, when it becomes such a way that it closes us off from civic and political action, I guess.
Candis Watts Smith
Yeah, I think he does. I mean, for us, non doctor, doctors, I think he does a good job of kind of using this word depression to refer leads of feelings related to sadness. And I, you know, he makes an effort to kind of combined our every way, our everyday way of talking about this, and like, putting it in conversation with the clinical literature. So I mean, for me, the way the word is used here is legible. To me, as a reader who is concerned with these issues, I think other people would say the same. Again, like I mentioned before, this book, to me is really helpful in thinking about the ways that I'm asking my students to, you know, engage with the news every day before we come to class. And what he's talking about is what happens when we expose ourselves over time, to a series of news stories that when aggregated, can produce a sense of despair, sadness, and depression. So just, you know, I was just, I know that your wife is lovely, and she is right. Chris is great, in a different way.
Chris Beem
No, I think that's I agree with that. And, and certainly, you know, I agree with all the other stuff you said, because I'm not a fool. But I think you he is right, to take people's own perception. Seriously, right. So when it's not that 43% of Gen Z errs, you know, Merit hospitalization, or you know, some kind of drug therapy or something like that. But the idea that they feel depressed, and they, they feel this in a as a weight on them as they go through life, we, we and I had a student tell me I'm like, you know, every election I've ever known democracy has been on the ballot. And I'm like, Yeah, I can't argue with you. You know, I can't tell you, you're wrong. I can't tell you that that doesn't stink. Right? You know, that, that there's something just overall, emotionally draining about the idea that, you know, well, here's another one, you know, we just went through it, we dodged a bullet, you know, but now, here's another one every every two years, this is where we're going to be. And it's, it's hard not to see, you know, this idea that the election is a battle and the stakes are that high. Yeah. And that if you lose, you have good reason to despair. All of that makes our politics not just worse, but it makes democracy harder to sustain over the long run.
Candis Watts Smith
Yeah, so just to remind our, our listeners that our students, most of them, nearly all of them, were born in the 21st century. So, you know, they may have remembered like, Obama might be their first election that they remember. And it's now really kind of interesting to romanticize and be nostalgic about that kind of 2008 moment, and that it was historic for Obama to be the first black president. If he hadn't one. I'm not sure that, you know, people would have been disappointed around the politics. Yes. The history certainly, yes. But not, not because they felt that democracy would be at risk,
Chris Beem
Right, or the nation as a whole. Right, I completely agree with that.
Candis Watts Smith
The thing about what you're what you're saying about this kind of moderation, is that democracy depends in part on the idea that if you lose, it's okay, because maybe you don't agree with what the other team and I mean, that probably is kind of a relatively new way to think about politics, the other group team, whatever cares about the same issues that you care about, but just may go about executing them differently? Well, I think that we kind of are at a point where our most prominent political leaders and candidates have actually very different values around core ideas. And so like you said, the stakes are high. The other thing that I think is important to mention is that a high quality democracy is characterized by a sense of uncertainty. So this kind of idea that, okay, we lost this time, but there's a chance that we can win next time, and that we can't prepare for the next iteration of the game, because we're not going to be sure who the winners and losers are going to be. But if we are in a situation as we are, as many Americans are, where politicians are picking their constituents, and thus picking winners or losers, then there there can be a sense of despair. And that wouldn't be unreasonable, because there's not a sense that maybe next time, things could be different. So you know, the kind of larger context of where we are around the kind of the way our institutions are shaped the way our our our districts are shaped the extent to which our political leaders are abiding by political norms, forbearance. All of that matters so much here. And if we're responding to politics with depression, then we're probably responding to a bad situation, that our emotions in this case are a symptom of a deeper root cause around the quality of democracy.
Chris Beem
No, I think I yeah, I think we're, you know, of one mind on this, right, that, that, that depression is simply a manifestation of pathological politics. And there's a number of reasons to account for that. I mean, I'm gonna just say that, you know, if you think I mean, let's put it both ways, or you think Trump is a malignant narcissist. And, you know, having him come into power is an app and let alone coming into power again, would be an abject disaster for our nation and the world. Then you're gonna you're gonna see this as very stressful and if you think that he was, he's a distinctively unique gift of from God to save the nation, then you're going to have, so one of us is going to be fiercely depressed on one side, automatically. And, and that is not, that's not great. That's not how, how democratic politics works best. And, and so it, it's no wonder that people are reacting this way.
Candis Watts Smith
So I'm just I was just gonna slow us down here for a second channel my colleague Kristen Goss, who does study gun violence. And she was in The Washington Post a couple of months ago, saying that it drives her nuts when people say that nothing has happened. And I think what we mean when we say nothing is different is that nothing that we want done has been done, and nothing that we can see. We can't see what has been done. And she just kind of points to the same issue that I'm pointing to. And then I think Christopher is pointing to that there are groups in local spaces that have mobilized to oust people out of certain offices and to make change in policy at the local level. And so again, you know, I don't discount I mean, I don't discount the fact that just yesterday, there was a mass shooting at Michigan State. I don't discount the losses of life that we see, period. There are people who are mobilizing, and who could benefit from more citizens joining them. If and I think that might be bolstered by a media landscape that shares these opportunities for agency and shares. success as a antidote is what I'm looking for. of this kind of see the for the feelings that we get that we typically get when we are just kind of rained upon with terrible news.
Chris Beem
Well, so we have laid out Christopher's argument pretty well, I think and and both of us think that there's a all three of us think that there is something important that he's that he's after here, and both, you know, in a right now, what do we do sort of way and also in how do we you know, what is the relationship between depression and a well functioning democracy as well. So, lots to chew on and we're very grateful for gender for the for the interview and for Christopher for coming back for old home week. I'm Chris Beem.
Candis Watts Smith
And I'm Candis Watts Smith For Democracy Works, thanks for listening.