Spencer and Jeff revisit wedge issues—emotionally charged topics like guns or abortion—after a failed attempt six weeks prior, debating whether they’re tools to attack rivals (Spencer’s "sword" thesis) or suppress engagement via fear-mongering (Jeff’s argument), citing 2016’s Clinton wedge and Canada’s symbolic anthem shift. Both agree these tactics thrive on irrational voter reactions, urging listeners to ignore them and prioritize rational discourse, though Jeff jokes their disagreement was already contentious enough. [Automatically generated summary]
And we're back with Truth Unrestricted, the podcast that would have a better name if they weren't all taken.
I'm Spencer, your host.
I'm back this time with Jeff.
How are you doing, Jeff?
Not too bad, buddy.
How about you?
Pretty good.
Just a reminder at the top, if anyone wants to let us know what they think of whatever we're saying here, especially if you disagree with what we're saying here, send that email to truthunrestricted at gmail.com.
So today we're going to talk about wedge issues.
Now, full disclosure, about six weeks ago, we tried to have this conversation.
We had a couple technical difficulties, which were going to be a minor problem, but more than that, we got wedged by the wedge issue at hand.
And since then, that wedge issue has gotten worse.
Yeah.
So I probably should have just put that out.
That's on me.
No, I was just as guilty, buddy.
Way, way too invested in arguing about trees to see the forest last try.
So yeah, let's try and keep it more philosophical this time.
Sure, yeah.
We'll try.
No, no promises.
We are talking about wedge issues after all.
So what are wedge issues really?
I mean, these are topics that we have very strong feelings about as people, always.
And the idea being that they tend to divide groups.
That's, you know, they call them wedge issues because they're getting wedged into a group and they're dividing it.
It's pretty obvious for most people, but some people don't really use these terms very much.
Last time that I didn't put out, I defined a thing I call political engineers.
We call them political scientists usually, but I refuse to call them that because they're not doing science.
They're not discovering anything about politics.
They're not forming hypotheses and then testing them.
That's not what they're doing.
They're figuring out how to efficiently exploit it like any good engineer.
That's right.
They're using politics as a way to manufacture an end goal, and that's what engineering is.
So they are political engineers.
So political engineers are using wedge issues to divide up different political blocks.
In my opinion, what is really happening here is that wedge issues and tribalism are working hand in hand for an effective block of political engineers in this way.
Let's say that you have your voters and you know what how your voters feel about a lot of different issues, and then you know who's going to vote for the other guy and you know a lot about how they feel about everything as well, most things.
And then you discover that if you start bringing up topic X, then your side will be all in favor of topic X, but the other side will be divided on topic X and you can wedge them.
And what they'll often be trying to do in this situation isn't so much to encourage some of the opposing block to vote for their side, but to discourage the opposing block from voting at all.
Sorry.
What?
Back that thought up again and run it out a second time.
Okay.
So what political engineers, I feel, are often trying to do by bringing these up, they're on one side of a political battle and they bring up a wedge issue that would defide the other side's political block.
And often the goal isn't so much to try to convince people from the opposing block to vote for your guy, but rather to discourage people from the other block from voting at all, if that makes sense.
It's about discouraging votes.
Your thesis makes sense, but I don't know if I agree with it.
Okay, well.
Please continue and I'll offer my counter.
Sure, yes.
So I feel that tribalism is wrapped in tightly with this thing as a as a I call it that the wedge issue is the sword and the tribalism is the shield.
If you can get the political block that would vote for your side extremely tribal about all the issues, all the very strong strongly emotional issues that your side is going for, all as a block, then your side is less likely to get wedged by one of those issues.
It's less likely to be divided by one of those issues if you're very strongly and ferociously defending all of the issues all at once.
I mean, this is something we talked about in tribalism.
It didn't, you know, I brought up this specific example of it.
It didn't make a lot of sense to me that people who are pro-gun should necessarily also be anti-abortion, except that they almost always are those two things together.
And usually also several other key things that are all strongly connected to the issues left or do you vote right?
Right.
And like typically in North American culture, anyways, and even I would say a lot of European culture, you can ask a person's opinion on like three topics and know which political party they're going to vote for based on their answers.
That's wedge issues at play, 100%.
Well, it's also tribalism at play.
Yeah.
So what do you think?
I mean, I guess I brought up two points there.
One is the idea that these wedge issues are being used to discourage voters for the opposing side, but also that this is being used as a sort of metaphorical sword and shield, that you're beating the drum to increase the tribalism on your own side to protect your voting block from a wedge issue.
And then you're at the same time attempting to bring up a wedge issue that would wedge the other side.
I think that wedge issues are used more defensively.
Like if we're going with the sword and shield theme, I would see wedge issues as more of a shield.
Generally, how we see it play out in like the United States is it's used in conjunction with gerrymandering because American electoral law allows a great deal of latitude with the drawing of the borders of electoral districts.
And you can look up any number of, I can't remember what they call them now, their counties, I guess, writings is what we call them here, where like the border just does not appear to make any friggin sense at all.
Not geographically.
Like it doesn't follow any real geography.
It's just, no, we figured out that these are the people that vote red.
So they're the ones that are in this writing.
And we figured out they vote red because they're all like fundamentalist Christians.
And so we tell them that we're pro-life and they vote for us.
Or they're like hardcore gun total and NRA maniacs.
So we tell them we're pro-gun and they vote for us.
That is a defensive wedge issue play.
That is a lazy politician saying, what is the absolute least thing I have to do to win votes?
I need to find an emotionally charged issue and convince enough people that I am the only one on the ballot who's going to handle it the way they who not even going to handle it.
Because that's the other funny thing with wedge issues is a lot of times, you know, they talk about gun control, they talk about abortion.
And up until recently, of course, we've been proven grievously and tragically wrong.
Typically, the politicians don't actually do anything about it.
It's just a topic of conversation that they use to inflame opinion.
Every time there's another high school shooting in the States, every time social media erupts with wedge issue banter on both sides.
And there's meme factories, you know, taking pot shots at the other side of the aisle on social media for two weeks to a month, and then it simmers down until the next issue comes around.
And I apologize if that sounds excessively jaded when discussing a topic as specifically tragic as high school shootings.
But one of the most commonly touched wedge issues in North America, especially in the U.S., is gun control, obviously.
So I see wedge issues more as a politician's, a lazy, specifically a lazy politician's play to get the votes to get his job with the least amount of effort required on his part.
I agree, like you say, sometimes they're used tactically in battles over particularly hard-fought writings where what they're trying to do is like split votes off the other guy.
And we don't care if they fall our way or not, just as long as they don't get cast for the other guy, because unfortunately, that's how democracy works.
A majority is a majority, even if all you manage to do is just suppress votes that would be cast for your opponent rather than actually winning them over for yourself.
If voting were mandatory, that would be not a useful strategy.
Yeah, exactly.
That seems to be a really simple solution to that problem, which I imagine is probably why we've never done it.
Yeah, sounds right.
Kind of the same thing as proportional representation.
Sounds incredibly reasonable.
I guess that's why we're not doing it.
Or rank choice voting or any number of other things that we're not here to discuss.
Oh, yeah, yeah, that's not here to discuss.
Future topic.
Yeah, yeah, wedge issues.
I'm not sure I necessarily agree with your premise that wedge issues are the sword and tribalism is the shield.
I think it's more like wedge issues are the tactic and tribalism is the product.
Like we create tribes with wedge issues when we create overly simplified binary choices over emotionally charged issues to boil something down to you're either for this and on my side or against this and my enemy.
That's not effective politics.
I mean, it's effective if your only objective is getting voted in so you can collect a salary, but there's no pursuit of policy there.
There's no platform, no meaningful platforms under wedge issues.
It just, it stokes this furnace of tribalism and fear-mongering.
And, oh, you better vote for us because the other guys believe X.
Yeah.
And it's unfortunately specifically tragic, like I said before, that like this recent overturning of Roe v. Wade in the States is doing a great job of being the exception to the rule that I'm trying to make the case on.
Because, like I said before, like they very, very rarely do politicians do anything meaningful about wedge issues.
It's just something they talk about and they use the threat of their opponent making progress on the position that is the antithesis to the position that we hold.
They use that threat of, oh, you better vote for us because, you know, the other guys are fucking pro-gun, or you better vote for us because the other guys are pro-choice.
Even though those other guys being in power frequently never results in any meaningful change in the policy at hand.
Right.
Obama never came for, never went for anyone's guns.
Exactly.
He famously made a speech one day where he said that I think he was in his second term and he wasn't even allowed to have the CDC look at the data.
And the CDC is not a political entity.
It's literally meant to hold on to statistics about different forms of things that reduce life expectancy.
That's really their stated goal.
And they're not there because they're interested in pushing one agenda or another.
They're just a bunch of scientists.
When you read into logic and you study logic, there are lists, entire lists of what they call logical fallacies.
And one of the simplest ones is called bifurcation.
It's the idea that a problem or a crossroads is presented as having only two possible solutions or routes that lead away from it.
Like the trolley truck.
Like there's only there's only two choices.
Yeah, there's only two choices.
Yeah.
And that's this is done many times by many people to try to demonstrate that one thing has to be the case.
I mean, I use the example when I say this of a vacuum cleaner salesman who comes to your house, he gets you to vacuum your floor, and then he vacuums your floor.
And there's dirt in his vacuum after you vacuumed with your vacuum.
And he says, this vacuum is better than your vacuum.
And he says simply, you can buy this vacuum or you can have a dirty floor.
And that's he presents it as if these are the only two options.
Whereas quite often he's used sleight of hand to put more dust on the floor and then vacuum that up.
I mean, that's a common trick that happens.
Or there are other solutions or a different vacuum that's different than those.
Or maybe it's still clean enough with your current vacuum, even though there was a little bit more that came out.
I mean.
Yeah.
And wedge issues, what it frequently boils down to is, well, no, what it pretty much exclusively boils down to is you're either my ally on this topic or you're my enemy.
And there is no middle ground.
There is no compromise.
There is no discourse or debate.
You're either for it or you're against it.
And that's it.
Yeah, that's absolutist thinking.
And that has no fucking place in politics.
Sorry, language.
I'd like to make another pass at my thesis about the sword and shield, if you don't mind.
Yeah, sure.
So here's why I think that that's the case, that tribalism is about the defense from wedge issues and that the wedge issue is about the attack.
I think what I've seen in the last 20 years or so in the US mostly, because they still produce so much media in the US that it overwhelms many of our channels here, and we have no choice but to catch at least some of it, is that on the right side of the spectrum, on the far right side of the spectrum, they have done such an efficient job of being aligned with each other on all of the key points.
I think if you went to look at them, they're probably five or six.
I don't know exactly, and I off the top of my head, I can't remember exactly what they all are, but definitely top of the list is abortion and gun control in the US.
And they have done such a thorough job of just daily drumbeat, beating that into the heads of the listeners.
And they include them all with each other as often as possible.
They don't do separate stories on each one and treat each one like its own story that people should come up with.
They're also not treating it like a thing that people should come up with their own conclusion about also, which.
Well, like you, you also, sorry to interrupt, but this circles back well, I think, to your point on bifurcation, because I've seen like a trend in memes online on specifically on the subject of abortion and gun control, where like one of the prime rapier strikes made by a person on either side of the aisle and in these memes that are produced to sort of reinforce the base on how we feel about this subject.
Right.
Is to point out the logical fallacy of how can you be pro-life and also be into owning things that kill people, you know, like on and on the on that side of the aisle, like all kinds of memes, all kinds of content, all kinds of discourse along the theme of, well, like you say, you love kids, but you know, you have no problem with kids getting shot at schools.
Yeah, like, like, it's a great zinger, don't get me wrong, but like, it's not, I don't consider it to be, you know, fair play as far as debate goes because you're conflating two issues.
Yeah.
And basically bait and switching the argument.
And then you see the other thing happen on the other side is like, you know, the righties will say, well, how can you be pro-choice for pro-a woman's choice, but not pro-choice for the freedom of an individual to own a firearm?
Because they see them as like, you know, philosophically the same thing.
Yeah.
If you, if you advocate for choice on one topic, you should advocate for choice about all topics because isn't it about choice?
Absent of all of the context in this thing.
Yeah.
But I've seen this drumbeat happen so thoroughly and the tribalism that's increased because of it, especially on the right.
There's a lot of tribalism on the left, don't get me wrong.
But if you went to people who were on the left and you asked them about the things that they cared most about, you would get a lot greater variety of thing there than you would on the right.
If you went to the people who were right in the stronghold on the right and you asked any one of them, my guess is they would list all the things and not in the same order, but all of the things that are the most important, because I think that they have been fed and they've been willingly partaking in that media diet to the exclusion of almost all others.
And that media diet has been relentless on those topics.
And I don't really feel bad that on the left they can't come up with the wedge issue that divides the right because I don't really think wedge issues, I'm with you on that.
I think they're philosophically lazy.
They treat the electorate like an uneducated audience.
And I don't think people should be treated that way in general.
And I also don't think it's good to treat the people that you'd like to vote for you that way.
I think I would get offended if anyone of the politicians in Canada actually felt that I was stupid enough to go along with that.
And I think a lot of other Canadians feel that way too.
We look at that in the States and we go, why does that convince anyone?
Even the people on the right in Canada kind of look at it that way, even though they don't say it as loud.
And I wonder why that's even a thing.
I mean, I know quite a few people in the United States and I talk to them as much as I can about whichever of these things they're comfortable talking about.
And they're not stupid people, but they are reacting to their media in a way that they just nod their head and go along.
Yeah.
And I don't understand that at all.
That's that's not a, you know, that doesn't make any sense to me personally and to most people I know in Canada.
But I think that that alone is what I'm seeing is a big part of this.
I think because of that, the right side of this, the political spectrum in the U.S. has more wedge issues at their disposal.
I think what happened in the 2016 presidential election was awful.
But from one standpoint, I have to admire its brilliance.
They made Hillary Clinton into her own wedge issue, like quite literally.
And that, you know, because it was the actual candidate, she was inseparable from her own candidacy, her own campaign.
Yeah.
From a from a Machiavellian point of view, you have to kind of admire that.
Yeah.
Arguably it was just more of like just a straight up effective smear campaign than it was a wedge issue.
But well, yeah, but they made it so effectively about her and her personality and all of her actions.
And she was the reason why, you know, when you, when they ask people why they, you know, there was a lot of people who who didn't vote that could have.
And when they asked them, that was the reason they gave.
They felt she was not a very good candidate.
And, you know, I have to think that that was the model was not to try to use one of the topics as a wedge issue, but to make her into the wedge issue.
And they did it.
Well, they did it very well.
It worked.
Yeah.
Is there anything else I want to make a pass on?
You want to?
Well, I think we touched on it the last time we took a run at this was the idea that a wedge issue is a lever.
Right.
Right.
Like it gives philosophical mechanical advantage to exerting pressure on your voting populace.
The biggest problem with wedge issues, as I've touched on a couple of times, is that they're frequently based around topics where, at least in our recent memory, no political party is going to make any move of significance in any direction on the issue at hand.
It's just our party has this opinion on topic X and your party has that opinion on topic X.
And star belly sneaches have stars upon theirs, but plain belly sneaches have none upon theirs, right?
Like it's, it's just, it's a label by which you divide your voter base so that you can put a bunch of votes in your pocket in a particular writing confidently and you don't have to do anything.
Right.
And again, it's unfortunately off-putting that inside of our lifetime, we're actually seeing great, big, meaningful strides on these wedge issues taking place in supposedly first world countries.
Supposedly, these are the first world countries.
That's how they list them.
Right up until it happened.
I didn't believe that the U.S. Supreme Court would actually overturn Roe v. Wade.
I didn't believe it.
I thought this is bullshit red meat.
This is them creating media, creating buzz, creating a topic, creating something to steer discourse towards domestically.
So we don't have to talk about Ukraine and the dumpster fire that's going on over there or for whatever reason.
But I just, I didn't have any real faith in it.
I thought it was just like red meat, wedge issue, political theater, and nothing was going to happen on it.
Even when the whatever letter that was that got leaked, that was basically the warning shot came out.
The memo, yeah.
Yeah, the memo.
Again, I was like, it's nothing.
It's not real.
They'd never go there.
And yet, inexplicably they went there.
Yeah, I mean, one thing to note maybe is That judges on the Supreme Court aren't politicians.
They probably have, you know, like one moment of politics in their life during which they're vetted for the Supreme Court and they go through that process, but they don't have a campaign there.
They don't have votes for it.
They just need to prove that they're worthy of the job.
And once they're there, they're appointed for life.
They're there till they're unable to do the job anymore, which usually means death lately.
I think in the past there were some who grew old enough that they retired, but that hasn't happened lately because everyone for 50 years now has been so incensed about Roe v. Wade, especially that they all wanted to hang on to the last possible moment so that they could have a say in the next time this comes around.
I think this is a useful moment to mention one of the wedge issues from Canada that I can think of in the last while, because you mentioned that it's just sort of political theater.
People from the States probably don't realize that a couple of years back, Canada changed its national anthem.
Didn't change it significantly, but changed, I think, two words.
Yeah, from all thy sons command to all of our command.
All of us command, yeah.
And of course, this is a piece of political theater that our prime minister has essentially perpetrated.
The idea being that you have an all of thy son's command is sort of a male-centric view, and all of us command is less so.
But of course, I point out, and I've done so in other conversations many times, that if the idea is to sort of move the needle for women's rights or for pay gap or whatever, this does exactly none of that work.
Yeah, exactly.
It does almost nothing in the grand scheme of things to change anything.
It's not real change at all, but it does exactly what you're saying.
It does inflame people and it makes people riled up and it makes some people think one thing or another.
And it doesn't really change anything at all.
It's a very cheap, I guess he'd probably call it a win at some point, right?
He'd probably call that a political win.
It's yeah, it's it's a me.
Well, we guess some crossover on topics and content is inevitable, but like specifically using the change up of the national anthem, it was a piece of political theater.
So Trudeau could virtue signal that he supported women's rights and equality for women in lieu of actually doing anything meaningful to bolster those rights or improve the situation of women in Canada.
Right.
It was, like you say, a wedge issue play that took sweet F all for actual effort and time and sort of political will.
Like, you know, we're not writing new law that we have to push through Parliament.
We're changing two words to more reasonable words in a national anthem so that it evolves with our society.
Like, what reasonable politician sitting in the house would have voted against that?
Nothing.
Like they didn't need to do anything.
Table a piece of legislation, voted.
Everyone's like, yeah, that's fair.
Okay.
And through it goes.
And look, we did something.
Yeah, we did something.
Now, every time you sing the national anthem, you'll think about how liberal the Liberal Party is.
Yeah.
But did they actually do anything?
No.
If anyone can think of anything we're not thinking of as far as things they actually did to, you know, change the gender pay gap or any of those things, let us know.
Let me know.
If I missed it, I'll definitely correct myself.
But I don't know of any other moment that he made any other move to actually move the needle on women's rights about anything.
Just the one thing, just the anthem, and that's all.
Yeah, it's stuff like that that allows them to talk left and rule right.
Yeah.
Which they've grown increasingly talented at doing.
But again, I'm arguing about species of trees and we're supposed to be talking about the forest.
Right.
Well, it's also why they won't ever let us interview the prime minister.
Yeah, that's why.
Yeah, that's why.
Yeah.
So maybe we'll wrap up here.
I think that's a good spot stuff.
I just want to make a note here that wedge issues only work, really, if you let them work.
You see that someone, a politician or a political party, is bringing something up.
You don't have to let it distract you.
You don't have to be triggered.
You don't have to dig in.
You don't have to get involved in conversations about that thing.
You can stay focused on the things that are important to you.
And being a smarter voter is the best way to improve your democracy.
In all democracies, at all points in history, that's always been true and it will always continue to be true.
So please just always stay calm, focused.
Don't be distracted by all the wedge issues that they're going to bring up.
They're going to happen.
Don't worry about those.
Focus on the things that are important to you.
And notice that I'm not naming the things that are important to me when I say that.
Whatever is important to you should be important to you and talk about those things intellectually and calmly without arguing, preferably.
And maybe I'd like to have you on the podcast to talk about those things that are different from the things I think.
That'd be great.
I hate when we have too much agreement.
It makes me sad.
Well, we did have a bit of a disagreement on sword versus shield.
No, yeah, we did disagree okay today.
That was pretty good.
I'm glad my disagreement reached your minimum standard.
Yeah, yeah.
I will try and be more surly and argumentative in our next encounter.