If everything eventually evolves into crabs, do Kansas politicians? Sure looks that way | Opinion

Eventually, everything turns into a crab.

This particular type of convergent evolution — when animals develop similar traits despite coming from different families — has even been given a special name by scientists: carcinization. We know that crustaceans have independently evolved into crablike forms at least five different times. Something about the shape and traits of a crab benefit little scuttling creatures.

The trend has given rise to memes suggesting that all of us in this grand Earth will eventually develop a tough shell and giant pinchers.

Biologists don’t see that as likely. But I see the process happening in another way. As the internet and its demented offspring social media have spread throughout human society, we have all changed. A pluralistic society consisting of people with varied beliefs and approaches has found itself evolving into a giant mass of snapping crabs, all angry and ready to fight, all without much interest of stepping back and taking stock of what we’re doing.

We have grown shells that protect us from the harsh words of others. We expect that those we encounter online will not only insult us and our intelligence, but that they will call us names besides. They might likewise target our family and friends or give out our addresses, a practice known as doxxing. We gird ourselves against such attacks because we have seen them happen elsewhere and we know to expect the worse.

We also have extruded giant, sharp claws. Coaches and generals claim the best defense is a good offense, so we use cutting language and aggressive rhetoric toward those who would threaten us. We know, and not without reason, that doing so gives us the best opportunity of escaping a confrontation unscathed.

Of course this goes for our shared political life.

Bob Beatty, political science professor at Washburn University in Topeka, said that discourse has worsened in recent decades — although he has seen ups and downs.

“There seems to be two factors that are important in terms of those peaks and valleys: Technologies enabling people to be anonymous or part of a ‘crowd’ and individual cue-setters who break the norms of civil behavior, whether they are in the media, politicians, or elsewhere,” Beatty said. “These two things seem to energize each other and then can increase the acceptance of politicians to be mean, rude, and sometimes just plain cruel!”

Virulent and violent rhetoric

Former President Donald Trump, first on Twitter and now on his Truth Social account, has let loose with a string of virulent and violent rhetoric that has destabilized our country.

Late last month, Trump called for the government to “come down hard” on liberal network MSNBC, suggested he would use the Justice Department to prosecute political enemies, spread the work of a conspiracy theorist and attacked primary opponent Nikki Haley.

He’s successfully turned into a crab.

Even Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and owner of the platform formerly known as Twitter, embraces antisemitic posts on the website while telling advertisers to, ahem, enjoy carnal relations with themselves. Carcinization complete.

You don’t have to look far to see this kind of approach taking root in Kansas. We all enjoyed badmouthing the state’s latest license plate design, but Republican officials seized the opportunity to attack Gov. Laura Kelly as an out-of-state threat. Yes, the now-withdrawn plate design looked like an old New York state tag, but come on, guys. Kelly moved to Kansas in 1986. You just couldn’t help but become crabs.

Perhaps I should note here that the brain of a crab is smaller than the point of a pencil, according to researchers from the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Likewise, House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson beat the drum about Medicaid expansion being some sort of monstrous plot, not to mention a new “welfare” program. In an earlier age, they might have negotiated in good faith with Kelly and tried to make the best deal possible for Kansans.

Now they scuttle along a sandy beach and snap their claws aggressively at their competitors.

The two leaders might think they have no other choice. But they can resist evolutionary pressures.

Musician Louie Zong wrote a surprisingly catchy tune on the subject: “Mother Nature tries to make you wider than you’re long. Reject carcinization now: Mother Nature’s got it wrong.”

Evolutionary paths

As humans in the short term, these trends appear alarming. Read Robert Kagan’s piece, “A Trump dictatorship is increasingly inevitable. We should stop pretending,” in the Washington Post if you want a stomach ache this morning.

Yet the example of crabs and crab-like creatures on the evolutionary timescale offers an alternative.

While carcinazation has occurred multiple times, with various critters becoming crabs, so has decarcinazation, with other critters losing their crabby qualities. That means we can, with enough effort, give up the full-body armor and sharpened grippers.

Beatty notes that Americans have stepped back from the edge before.

“There was a big spike in meanness in political discourse with the advent of talk radio in the 1990s and especially Rush Limbaugh,” he said. “Many examples, but of course him equating feminists with Nazis is a good example. And of course with the advent of the internet it then became possible for people to post comments anonymously that were awful and nasty. Politicians took their cues from this change in norms. It should also be noted that shows like ‘Crossfire’ contributed to the heating up of the rhetoric, which previously might have been only in stump speeches.”

The tone changed with George W. Bush coming to the fore, Beatty said. And while Fox News inveighed against Obama, his opponents John McCain and Mitt Romney kept things generally civil.

Being a crab offers many advantages. You can protect yourself and attack your opponents without thinking about it too much. Yet the wholesale carcinization of our politics threatens both our shared democratic experiment and the capacity of state government to help everyday Kansans.

No one wants to step back or shed out crabby exteriors. But if we don’t, what use is a future full of nothing but snapping claws?

Clay Wirestone is opinion editor of the nonprofit Kansas Reflector.