Status Quo Bias: The Assumption that is Destroying the Foundation of All of Our Futures

“Just sit back and relax, it will all work out well in the end – It always does!” The Orange Caricature posted on social media last week about the negotiations to end his excursion into war crimes in Iran.

The line really stuck with me for two reasons. First, sit back and relax used to be the advice some men would give women about dealing with sexual assault. As the Man with the Feculent Touch fucks us over again, he’s giving us the same advice he gave to E. Jean Carroll, allegedly.

The second reason is that it isn’t the first time he’s used this phrase with regard to attacking Iran. I recall hearing him use similar phrasing in reporting from March or April about the administration’s internal debate about initiating the attack. Trump reputedly replied to objections with something like, “It will be okay. It always works out in the end.”

Works Out For Who? The Biases That Keep Us Going

His optimistic assessment buggers the question, works out for who? It hasn’t worked out for a lot of folks around the world especially for those who have already met their end because of his idiotic war crimes.

Status Quo Bias: How Six Casinos Were Bankrupted

The eternal sunshine of his spotted mind is based on a lot of things, including status quo bias. Essentially, status quo bias is the cognitive tendency to assume that tomorrow will be very similar to today. We tend to favor maintaining things as they are even when a change would result in a better future. In this case, because El Gran Jefe Estúpido is doing okay right now, he assumes he’ll do okay in the future. It is how he bankrupted six casinos.

Optimism Bias: Drowning in Positivity

It is especially crippling when coupled with optimism bias, the belief that we are unlikely to have negative experiences. It is that rah! Rah! Rah! You’ll succeed if you try hard enough, it is meant to be, and follow your bliss — like Jeffrey Dahmer did and now our very own Grifter-in-Chief is doing. It is the Little Orphan Annie endless positivity, but clinging to it until it becomes toxic and erases your pupils and irises.

The Future is Now Bias: Prologue is Prediction

All of these biases are wrapped up in the future is now bias in which we overestimate the likelihood that whatever is happening now will continue into the future. In short, people have evolved to stink at making predictions about our future and as such, we are doomed to repeat past mistakes, like re-electing short-fingered vulgarians even though they’ve thoroughly proven themselves to be short-fingered and vulgar.

How is the status quo bias helpful in understanding this particular moment in American politics? It helps us make sense of why the Orange Oaf, the Republican Congress, and their Seventy-Seven Million voters are doing so much to threaten the future of our country and our democracy.

Okay, but whose status quo, exactly? That’s the question that unlocks this particular psychological clusterfuck. Because the future is now bias is doing very different work for each of the three groups most responsible for our current national death spiral — and understanding how it’s different tells us something genuinely useful about why we’re so thoroughly screwed while rooting it all in human nature.

Whose Status Quo?

Trump’s Status Quo: Endless Riches To Grift Off Of

The Orange Caricature is particularly vulnerable to these biases because he is a narcissist and assumes (a) he’s always right, (b) he’s never wrong, and (c) exceptions to the rules and laws will be made for him. Why wouldn’t he earnestly believe that his particular future is eternally rosy and whatever happens to the rest of us in pursuit of that future is a sacrifice he’s willing to make because we all love him oh so so much.

It is worse than that, though. His endless grift and corruption assumes that the US status and economy will continue largely unchanged. He behaves as if he believes that the US will continue being a super power both militarily and economically. Yet, his destruction of our institutions, social fabric, economy, our alliances, and the worldˋs climate are all undermining our ability to sustain shuffling billions from the middle class to him and the oligarchs. Eventually, he system will give out just like it does for all corrupt tyrants. He will bleed us dry and be astonished that he has.

And, like all corrupt tyrants, he can’t do it all alone. He has had a huge helping hand from the Republican Congress that was elected along with him in 2024.

The Republican Congress Status Quo: Grifting Without Personal Responsibility

The Republican Party, especially its members in Congress and, now, state legislatures, also seems to believe that the US will persist unchanged. But, their upending misplaced optimism that our future will be much like our present is complemented by the bystander effect. While they may harbor private reservations about the direction we’re going in — at least that’s what their Democratic colleagues consistently reassure us of — they seem to operate out of a sense, of “What can I do? I’m only one lowly member of Congress? What difference would it make if I Thomas Massied or Adam Kinzingered myself?” They feel no personal responsibility for driving the country off of a cliff even though, if they acted together, they could avert the disaster that we are assuredly heading for.

This lesson of learned helplessness is reinforced by the motivation of insider trading, PAC money, and lobbyist percs. Their pupils and irises haven’t been erased by their optimism, they’ve been perverted into dollar signs like common cartoon villains. As long as they can’t do anything to change the direction of the country, they may as well profit from it. After all, if they’re primaried out of their seat, whoever replaces them will be. Somebody’s got to grift up all of that money; it’d be ashame if it weren’t them, right?

With all of the corruption in the Executive and Legislative Branches of our government happening right in front of them, how does the status quo bias help explain the MAGA base and electorate?

The Seventy-Seven Million’s Status Quo: Maintaining the Dream of White Supremacy

The Seventy-Seven Million who voted for Trump suffer from a similar form of the future is now bias. Three broad segments of America will always be there for them. First, they cannot imagine that the US won’t be the most dominate politically and economically in the world. Second, we will always be a democracy, and they will always be able to vote. And third, America will always be a majority white and Christian country. These three things will continue into our future indefinitely succoured at the teat of the status quo bias.

When they are threatened, they become extremely risk averse, meaning they are willing to make big changes rather than risk a near certain loss. The demographic changes in the US threaten the whiteness and Christianity of the country. The risk of being treated by the new majority in the same way as they’ve treated various minorities is too much for them. Going from a white majority country to minority majority is a near certain loss, triggering their willingness to gamble on making big changes to our democracy, like creating a single-party minority-rule white Christian autocracy rather than having a multi-party majority-rule multiracial democracy.

Status Quo Bias and the Lack of Urgency

The status quo bias family of cognitive shortcuts and tendencies doesn’t explain all of our politics, but it does help explain why we are not treating things like the threat to our democracy, civil liberties, civil rights, world order, and climate with more urgency. As a species, we just aren’t designed for it. But, for some of us, like our marginalized communities, they’ve lived through worse times and experienced worse times. They can imagine what is coming for the broader white community. However, breaking the status quo bias is difficult. It takes real cognitive effort, and, as regular readers know, thinking is hard, so we, as a species, avoid it.

For Trump, the future is now bias dovetails with and complements his narcissism. It makes it nearly impossible for him to believe that his nice cushy life will never be supported. For Republican politicians especially the electeds, it means that they are free to diffuse any and all responsibility for any of the bad things that are happening in our country away from themselves and still justify their corruption and grift. And, for the Seventy-Seven Million they can continue living their fantasy of a white supremacist state.

So, who is it all working out for? Trump, Republicans, MAGA, anyone? At this rate we’re all going to be maintaining the status quo of LBJ’s highest Black person if we’re lucky. While optimistically selling a future of maintaining some mythical status quo of some past greatness, they are destroying whatever foundation we have to build our future on. Great.

Image Attribution

This image was found on White Shovel Landscape and has a Creative Commons license.