Leo's latest blog post featured a video about the realities political messaging. It's quite disturbing in some ways, and I wanted to lay down some thoughts about it. First, let's start by acknowledging the obvious truth that Rick Wilson is right. Politics is largely about optics and messaging, not policy and truthfulness. Just watching the ads for The Lincoln Project is like a masterclass in how to persuade voters. It works.  Second, it's great that Rick is using his skills of messaging and persuasion to help democrats push back against right-wing bullshit. I agree that's what is definitely needed, and democrats tend to be bad at this. But at what cost? What is the cost of this "they go low, we go low" strategy? For example, Rick argues that if Republicans start accusing you of supporting something crazy like critical race theory, then you should punch back by accusing them of being racist. Don't go into the facts. Don't stick to the issue. Just score points. Again, this does work. And when you're dealing with someone like Trump, that is probably the best strategy. But at the same time, this constantly manipulation of people's perspective in many ways IS the deeper problem. Deeper than any single political position or policy. It's the degradation of the epistemic commons. Our shared, collective sense-making Even when you degrade the commons for the "good guys", you're still degrading the commons. People become dumber and less able to make sense of the world in an accurate way. How can we possibly ever expect to have intelligent political discourse as a society when people act this way? How can we expect to have conscious leaders when what is incentivized is manipulation? I suppose in my fantasy world, I would love for people to be able to just talk like mature adults about policy without having to resort to flinging mud at each other. I would love if being the best politician wasn't about who could manipulate the best but who was actually able to best lead. But obviously we are not mature, developed or intelligent enough for that. So here we are.