On October 15, 2025, the phrase “Game of chicken...poop” feels less like a local quip than a national diagnosis. When politics devolves into brinkmanship and spectacle, democracies expose a core vulnerability: the ease with which charisma and outrage eclipse competence and deliberation. A recent North Carolina commentary captured that mood with its blunt headline, a reminder that governance too often resembles a dare on a crowded highway rather than a sober negotiation at a well-run table [5]. When the incentives of direct electoral politics reward emotive appeals over demonstrated capacity to govern, the results can be comic in the headline and catastrophic in practice. The question is not whether voters should choose their representatives—it’s whether a system built on applause meters can still produce the boring, careful adults who keep a republic humming.
The “Game of chicken...poop” metaphor matters because it names a democratic pitfall: when politics prizes nerve over knowledge, the loudest dare becomes the de facto policy [1]. Democracies live by public judgment, but when judgment becomes a referendum on vibes and vendettas, we have traded the craft of governing for the show of it. In that swap, deliberation shrinks, expertise is mocked, and institutional ballast is treated as ballast only in the nautical sense—something heavy to be tossed overboard. Meanwhile, the civic commons where we argue toward better laws becomes a stage where the most performative flourish wins the day.
The romantic ideal of direct election imagines a straight line between people and power; the reality often bends toward populism and the selection of charismatic novices. In politics, unlike in business, there is rarely a rigorous audition for managing a bureaucracy, drafting a statute that can survive judicial review, or running a complex coalition. Enough votes is enough, and the threshold honors emotion as much as evidence. Systems that filter candidates through party deliberation can be maddeningly slow or clubby, but they at least embed a culture of vetting that asks whether the would-be tribune can govern as well as campaign.
Our discourse mirrors the problem. Slogans substitute for policy, and ever-more-provocative branding becomes its own political currency. One conservative blog recently ran a piece titled “MAGA: Make Animals Great Again,” a wink that works because it leans on a ubiquitous slogan rather than an argument [2]. The headline may be playful, but it exemplifies how our politics has become a contest of catchphrases, where fluency in meme culture counts more than fluency in budgetary baselines or administrative law.
When discourse is gamified, governance is gamed. The marketplace of ideas falters further when speech becomes a weapon of intimidation rather than a catalyst for persuasion. A recent essay argued that the most acute threat to free expression in America today comes from the right, an assertion that, even if debated, points to a real anxiety: the shrinking space for dissent as pressure tactics escalate [3]. Another outlet asked whether masked pro-Trump agitators constitute a twenty-first century echo of earlier vigilante campaigns, a comparison that underscores the fear that coercion is replacing argument in public life [4].
However one assesses those claims, the democratic danger is the same: when citizens self-censor out of fear and officials reward provocateurs, the policy pipeline fills with noise rather than knowledge. The rot is not confined to rallies; institutions sometimes validate it. According to court documents cited in a news report, a Long Island town hired a self-described “bigot” to oppose a local mosque expansion, a choice that speaks volumes about the standards—or lack thereof—governing public contracts and counsel [5]. That is not merely a lapse in taste; it is a failure of vetting with constitutional implications, signaling that prejudice can be subcontracted when it flatters a base.
When public bodies mirror the worst incentives of populist politics, they teach citizens that brute provocation is a qualification, not a disqualification, for influence. The message to aspiring leaders is perverse: be outrageous first, be competent later. The “chicken” dynamic compounds these failures by rewarding brinkmanship over coalition-building. The North Carolina commentary’s blunt title resonates because too many leaders run toward standoffs they cannot responsibly manage, confident that the public will blame “the other side” for the wreckage [1].
Yet brinkmanship increases the premium on technical skill—knowing when to blink, how to structure a fallback, which statutory levers to pull—skills least abundant among performative novices elevated for their talent at grievance rather than governance. When amateurs drive the car toward the cliff, everyone becomes a hostage to their learning curve. So what would it mean to break the cycle? First, to treat elections not as talent shows but as hiring processes, where the “interview” includes demonstrated knowledge of institutions, budgets, and the rule of law.
Parties, even in candidate-centric systems, can set baselines for competence by conditioning their endorsements and resources on real preparation rather than viral appeal. Media can help by covering the mundane work of governing with the same intensity devoted to controversy, forcing would-be representatives to talk like legislators rather than influencers. None of this curtails democracy; it disciplines it. Second, we need to rebuild a culture of speech that distinguishes criticism from coercion.
The remedy for bad ideas is better ideas, debated in public without threat, a norm undermined when intimidation is laundered as activism or when officials indulge provocateurs for short-term advantage [3][4]. Institutions must refuse to outsource prejudice, as the Long Island case starkly warns, and recommit to constitutional equal treatment as a hard boundary, not a negotiable tactic [5]. And we should retire the “game of chicken” as a governing philosophy, recognizing that the mess it leaves behind—fiscal, legal, and civic—is not clever strategy but, as one headline put it, political poop [1]. When democracies hire adults and reward argument over antics, the cliff recedes and the road widens.
Sources
- Game of chicken...poop (Ncspin.com, 2025-10-10T03:01:53Z)
- MAGA: Make Animals Great Again (Americanthinker.com, 2025-10-12T04:00:00Z)
- The Real Threat to Free Speech in America is From the Right, Not the Left—Stop Pretending Otherwise (Lithub.com, 2025-10-09T08:59:27Z)
- Are Trump's masked thugs the new Ku Klux Klan? (Raw Story, 2025-10-08T16:12:26Z)
- Long Island town hired self-described ‘bigot’ to fight local mosque expansion in federal discrimination case: court docs (New York Post, 2025-10-09T00:09:09Z)
