Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. He also holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Preserving American democracy and the rule of law motivates me every day. I feel compelled to reach across the divide to those in my world who, wittingly or unwittingly, would undermine or even throw these foundations of our republic overboard. So of course I want to persuade them. But I’ve learned the hard way that my preferred mode of persuasion—facts, reason, and values—very rarely works.

Then what does?

Which led me to read David McRaney’s 2022 book How Minds Change: The Surprising Science of Belief, Opinion, and Persuasion. Here are my takeaways, first what I’ll call “Findings” and then practical “Dos and Don’ts”:

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. He also holds a law degree from the University of California, Berkeley.

Donald Trump and MAGA are tearing down the rule of law, and most Americans don’t understand this threat or its gravity. The Declaration of Independence grounds our entire system of government:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

This system, which America pioneered for the world, depends on everyone being treated equally. No royal, aristocrat, wealthy person, property owner, white person, male, straight person, Christian, or anyone is more equal. We each carry the same weight, and responsibility, in our democracy.

But how does that work? What makes it real? The rule of law.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

Character once counted in Iowa Republican politics. We could take pride in Governor Bob Ray, U.S. Representative Jim Leach, and the early U.S. Senator Chuck Grassley. They led with integrity. They willingly crossed the aisle to achieve bipartisan goals. They served as role models for our children, standing up for democracy, truth, and accountability. Our state enjoyed a reputation in public administration circles as a “good government” jurisdiction.

Donald Trump has upended all this. He is the antithesis of character. He’s the skunk at the church picnic. He lies incessantly, bullies, commits fraud and adultery, sexually assaults women, mocks wounded veterans, and cheats contractors. He’s a racist. He puts his attempt to overthrow a free and fair election at the center of his campaign. Donald Trump is everything we don’t want our children to be.

In this historic moment, Iowa’s representatives in Washington—Chuck Grassley, Joni Ernst, Ashley Hinson, Mariannette Miller-Meeks, Zach Nunn, and Randy Feenstra—are failing the character test.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

Some of my social media friends wonder why I’m so focused and adamant in my advocacy for democracy and the rule of law. Why can’t you just post cute memes, memories, and family events like we do? I come by it honestly.

For three years my wife, Liz, and I lived in communist Czechoslovakia where I served as a U.S. diplomat. We experienced a country with no democracy and no rule of law. We saw the impact of communism on lives, society, and government. Then we witnessed the country’s liberation in the (thankfully bloodless) Velvet Revolution in the fall of 1989.

Liz likes to quote Václav Havel, the dissident playwright turned president of newly-democratic Czechoslovakia. He called communism the slow and insidious murder of the human spirit. He was right.

Republicans yell “communism” anytime a government does something they don’t like. Do they even know what communism is? FYI, “communism” is the Leninist political system overlaying the Marxist economic system of socialism during the Soviet era.

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

Florida Republicans just whitewashed their history curriculum. Slavery wasn’t so bad. Look away from the rape, torture, and selling children like livestock. Did you know that enslaved people learned skills from which they benefited (slavery was a jobs training program)? Create a false equivalence by saying that both sides committed violence during the civil rights era (spoiler: sometimes Blacks shot back).  

Florida Republicans aren’t acting alone. Republicans across the country have been and continue to march history back to the time when white, male, Christian, straight, native-born men wrote the textbooks, centering themselves. That’s the history I learned in school. 

Jim Chrisinger reviews The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williamson (2012).  

In a backlash to President Barack Obama’s election and Democrats gaining control of the U.S. House and Senate, the Tea Party movement yanked the Republican Party to the right and paved the way for Donald Trump and Trumpism.  

During Obama’s first term, from 2009 through 2012, three forces reinforced each other: Tea Party grassroots activism, billionaire-funded national advocacy organizations pushing ultra-free-market policies (tax cuts for the wealthy, deregulation, and deep cuts to federal spending), and right-wing media, primarily Fox “News.”  

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

When we retired back to Iowa from Seattle in 2018, Iowa was trending purple. The Des Moines metro was a hot destination for young professionals and families. No more.

MAGA has displaced the pragmatic and welcoming conservatism that Governor Bob Ray and U.S. Representative Jim Leach personified and so many of us admired.

How does this development sit with business Republicans now cohabiting with their new MAGA partners? It can’t be comfortable. MAGA folks aren’t even conservative, not at least the way most of us knew conservative.

Jim Chrisinger: Cheating by violating the spirit (though not the letter) of the law corrupts our democracy and alienates us from each other.  

Fair play is a bedrock American value. Fair play follows from our egalitarian origins: all persons are created equal and endowed with rights. Fair play means we all play by the rules. Treat others as you want to be treated. Play by the spirit as well as the letter of the rules.  

We feel strongly about fair play because it springs from emotion as much as logic.  

The opposite of fair play is cheating. Cheating shows a lack of integrity and a total failure of character. No one likes a cheater.  

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

I hate door knocking. I’m not an extrovert; bothering people in their homes isn’t my thing. But our democracy is dear to me and I know I need to do everything I can to preserve it.  

So Sunday afternoon, door knock I did. My list consisted of 26 Democratic doors (households) with 39 voters. No one answered at fifteen of those doors, so I left Democratic campaign literature and my flyer describing ways to vote and offering my help. I’ll follow up with texts where I have a number.  

I asked those with whom I did speak what their most important issue was for November. The plurality answer was some form of abortion/Roe/women’s rights. 

Schools was second: “Don’t defund our schools.” “Reynolds is mutilating public schools.”  

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere. 

As if their strings had been yanked, Donald Trump’s enablers and minions leap to trash the FBI and Department of Justice after the court-authorized search of Mar-a-Lago. They say DOJ and the FBI have been “weaponized,” maybe the searchers “planted evidence,” the FBI is “the enemy of the people” and should be defunded, this may lead to civil war, and we will sic the FBI and DOJ on them when we’re back in power.    

This is a full-on assault on the rule of law.  

Jim Chrisinger flies the flag pictured here at his house, and not just on Flag Day.

The MAGA right doesn’t own the flag. The right doesn’t own patriotism. The right’s version of America isn’t even true to America’s founding, to its principles and values, or to the Constitution.  

America is a democracy, where every vote counts and every vote should be counted fairly. Gerrymandering, voter suppression, and election nullification have no place here.  

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere.

American democracy is on the ballot. Electing people who support and will defend our democracy tops my priorities.  

I voted for Senator Chuck Grassley, multiple times. Unfortunately, Grassley no long supports democracy.  He condones Donald Trump’s Big Lie about the 2020 election, supports voter suppression, opposes the renewal of the Voting Rights Act (which he previously voted for), voted twice to acquit Trump, and opposed a bipartisan January 6 commission. When Grassley chaired the Senate Judiciary Committee in 2016, he refused to give U.S. Supreme Court nominee Merrick Garland a hearing.  

Jim Chrisinger: We shouldn’t solve our hyper-partisanship problem the way we did after the Civil War.  

How can we ever reverse the toxic polarization and partisanship that have broken our politics? How can we regain civility and bipartisanship? 

History provides an example, but it’s not a good one. Bear with me.

Jim Chrisinger: Today, as in 1965 and in every Voting Rights Act reauthorization vote, Republican senators have to choose.

For more than five decades, voting rights in America enjoyed strong, bipartisan support. Now Republicans have turned their backs.  

The Voting Rights Act originally passed in 1965, led by President Lyndon Johnson, who had built his political career as a get-along go-along ally of Southern segregationists.  

The final vote in the House was 328–74 (Democrats 217–54, Republicans 111–20). The Senate passed it 79–18 (Democrats 49–17, Republicans 30–1). Much of the opposition came from Southern Democrats.  

Bipartisan majorities in Congress reauthorized the act five times, most recently in 2006. The votes were not close. Even Senator Strom Thurmond, famous segregationist and 1948 Dixiecrat presidential candidate, came to support the Voting Rights Act.  

Jim Chrisinger: These asymmetries reinforce each other, tilting the playing field against democracy.  

Traditionally, both major political parties competed with policies aimed at their core constituencies and persuadable voters. The policy platforms differed markedly, but a symmetry framed the fight. 

No more. Nine asymmetries now define our politics and hand the advantage to Republicans.  

Jim Chrisinger is a retired public servant living in Ankeny. He served in both Republican and Democratic administrations, in Iowa and elsewhere.

Republicans now enjoy an inherent advantage in messaging, another asymmetry in our politics. Republicans present a mostly negative agenda: they want to reverse social progress and tear down government, media, and truth. To do that, they scare people.  

In contrast, mainstream Democrats want to build; they want to use public policy and resources to advance a broad, progress-based agenda. Republican arguments are simple, blunt, and visceral. Democratic arguments are complex, nuanced, and moral.  

For example:  

Jim Chrisinger sounds the alarm about the Republican Party’s efforts in at least fourteen states to rig elections in their favor. -promoted by Laura Belin

The thing is, we who believe in democracy have to win every election. The Trumpers, who don’t believe in democracy, only have to win once. Here’s why.    

Take Georgia for example, a red state trending purple. Democracy held in 2020 because of people like Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger, his staff, and local election officials across the state, most of whom are Republican. They did the right thing.  

But now, juiced by Trump’s Big Lie, the wheels are in motion for a new reality. The Georgia GOP passed a new round of voter suppression against minorities and other Democratic-leaning groups. They are preparing to gerrymander for 2022 and the coming decade. They recently enacted authority for the legislature’s appointees to overturn local election results. Raffensperger, the state’s chief election official, and other officials who faithfully fulfilled their duties in 2020, are being challenged in 2022 by Trumpers who believe the Big Lie.  

Jim Chrisinger: The bottom line from a new law’s whitewash of history appears to be protecting the feelings of white people, particularly white men. -promoted by Laura Belin

Add Iowa to the growing list of GOP-dominated states trying to prevent an honest historical reckoning on race and sex. While attention has focused on race, sex gets equal billing in House File 802, which Governor Kim Reynolds signed into law on June 8.  

A BAN ON “SCAPEGOATING” AND “STEREOTYPING”

Along with definitions, the law adds three new sections to Iowa code: one for state and local governments, one for public universities, and one for school districts.  

Training in state and local governments and school districts cannot teach or advocate “race or sex scapegoating” or “race or sex stereotyping.”  

Jim Chrisinger: Democracy is the reason the United States of America exists. How is it that so many people don’t find it to be worth defending? -promoted by Laura Belin

Those of us who are hair-on-fire upset about attacks on our democracy are having trouble understanding why others aren’t.  

No question, our democracy is under attack. See voter suppression, gerrymandering, and incoming governors robbed of authority by lame duck legislators. Donald Trump endlessly repeats his Big Lie about the 2020 election to undermine our free and fair elections. To my knowledge, no elected Iowa Republican has pushed back. Nearly 70 percent of Republicans nationally believe Joe Biden did not win legitimately.  

Jim Chrisinger: “Polarized” sounds like both sides becoming more extreme. That’s not what’s happening. One party is jeopardizing America’s 245-year grand experiment in self-government. -promoted by Laura Belin

We continually hear that our country is polarized. That implies symmetry; it gives the impression that Americans are moving farther apart on a left-right axis. The left and right each become more extreme while the middle thins.  We keep hearing politicians, pundits, and journalists claim “both sides” are responsible for this polarization.  

That’s not what’s happening, people!      

Yes, each party has extremists; that’s nothing new. What’s new is that one party, the Republican party, has veered off the political continuum. They’ve sailed off a cliff.  

Jim Chrisinger: Government employees are just as smart, creative, and hard working as their private sector counterparts; they just have to work in a system with lousy organizational DNA. -promoted by Laura Belin

When we moved back to Iowa three years ago, our state was up and coming, a place that attracted young families, entrepreneurs, and the tech industry, as well as retirees like us. But now Iowa’s elected leaders seem intent on taking Iowa backwards: suppressing the vote, waging culture wars, and threatening public education.  

Imagine what Iowa’s elected leaders could do if they put their energies into governing to move us forward again.  

Jim Chrisinger: When elected officials act in bad faith, they poison the well of democracy in many ways. -promoted by Laura Belin

We now know that democracy is more fragile than we thought; democracy requires more than laws and institutions.  For example, elected officials need to speak and act in good faith.  

Acting in good faith may not seem like the most important thing right now.  What makes bad faith so bad?  

Bad faith is insidious because people are by definition not honest about what they are doing and why they are doing it.  Dishonesty is corrosive, to relationships and to democracy.  For example, Iowa Republicans have just passed a voter suppression bill without admitting why they did it.  

Jim Chrisinger: Republicans’ disrespect for government and democracy makes it easier for them to suppress votes. And harder for Democrats to fight back. -promoted by Laura Belin

Our current political battles are asymmetrical because Democrats essentially respect democracy and government and too many Republicans do not.

At some point — with Newt Gingrich? — the GOP morphed from “too much government is a problem” to “government is the enemy.” In the last couple of decades, Iowa Republicans drove out of the party those following in the footsteps of Bob Ray, Jim Leach, and even an earlier version of Chuck Grassley, all of whom believed in the value of good government, albeit smaller government.

So “polarization” may not best describe our current dilemma.  Polarization implies both sides moving to extremes.  Here, one side steered over the edge.

A reality check courtesy of Jim Chrisinger. -promoted by Laura Belin

There are some true socialists on the left fringes of the Democratic Party, just like there are some true fascists on the right fringes of the Republican Party. It’s offensive, however, that people who should know better accuse Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Nancy Pelosi of being socialists, or even communists.

My wife and I lived in a socialist and communist Czechoslovakia from 1987 to 1990. We saw socialism and communism up close.

Let’s get real.