Devil’s Tricks: Politics as a Zero-Sum Game

Bottom Line Up Front

1. Zero-sum politics is a trap—we all lose that game
2. Red and blue states need each other more than they admit
3. Outrage media sells; truth gets buried
4. Foreign psychological operations thrive on our division.
5. When the future feels bleak, blame gets loud

I have a running list of greatest tricks the devil ever pulled. Here's one of them:

He convinced the United States that politics was a zero-sum game. Right now there is a single reality all Americans confront: There are two parties. You must choose one. The other party is evil and wants you to die.

This is a belief that is as harmful as it is foolish—and it only helps our adversaries.

In zero-sum games, you can only win if the other side loses. While this might be fun for chess, it’s deadly for political systems. Effective governance is all about matching collective strength and ingenuity to the needs and desires of a population. 

We have to want us to win. 

But the machine breaks down when half of the population is seen as a competitor and not a collaborator. The line of scrimmage is drawn across cultural ephemera: red vs. blue, heartland vs. coasts, gas stoves vs. induction cooktops, whatever the new thing is vs. whatever the old thing is. 

Tariff policy is the thing du jour. One side rushes plays defense hoping that the naysayers will suck sour grapes when the economy inevitably booms. The other laments the end of American economic supremacy while secretly reveling in the downfall of wealthy entrenched power.

The harder we play the game, the more we are certain to lose. Zero-sum games don't work when you're on the same team.

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While red states might fantasize about the coasts breaking off and falling into the ocean, they’d be the first to feel the pain. According to the Rockefeller Institute of Government, many red states receive more in federal aid than they contribute in taxes. Without the blue state tax base, critical services like healthcare, infrastructure, and education would collapse.

Meanwhile, metropolitan elites might scorn the iron-age values of America’s flyover states, but without their agriculture, manufacturing, and raw labor, the artisanal oat milk doesn’t make it to the Brooklyn coffee shop. In 2022, the USDA reported that rural states produced over 80% of the nation’s agricultural output.

The illusion that one side could function without the other is just that—an illusion. 

So why does this illusion that one side could thrive without the other persist?

Reason One: The Media (new and old)

Once upon a time, media gatekeepers shaped a somewhat shared narrative. The Fairness Doctrine which existed from 1949 to 1987 ensured that broadcasters on federal airwaves used their platforms to share unbiased critical information with the American public. 

Baby boomers often echo a similar refrain of having three news channels all reporting the same thing. This was possible until the repeal of the act in 1987. Suddenly, news broadcasters became beholden to the tastes of their viewers and the pocketbook of their advertisers. 

As broadcasters made more money they needed to fill more hours with programming in spite of a finite number of events happening in a 24 hour period. Punditry was born out of desire to maintain viewership long after the news has been reported. Journalism is costly and sometimes dull, opinions are cheap and outrageous. Now, the legacy media is a non-stop slugfest between left and right over an ever diminishing space of shared facts.

Cable news networks learned long ago that fear and outrage outperform nuance and context. Social media took that insight and made it addictive. Every hot take, viral video and outrage cycle reinforces the idea that you are under attack.

Interaction does not optimize for fact finding, in fact it does the opposite. We click what enrages and share what confirms biases. We block, mute, and curate ourselves into ideological villages and there are digital enemies at the gate.

We’re not just watching the news—we’re mainlining identity.

Reason Two: Psychological Operations (Psyops)
Divide and conquer is way easier when it's an email instead of a decisive battle.

Russian, Chinese, and Iranian disinformation campaigns have exploited our fractures with brutal precision (This is my current research topic). The Mueller Report confirmed that Russian trolls posed as both Black Lives Matter activists and Blue Lives Matter defenders, intentionally inflaming racial and political tensions. In 2016, accounts linked to the Internet Research Agency staged both pro-Muslim and anti-Muslim rallies—on the same day, in the same city.

China has taken a slightly different tack, boosting conspiracies about government attacks during natural disasters. TikTok, owned by ByteDance, has faced scrutiny for quietly surfacing divisive or demoralizing content to American users, while showcasing nationalism and unity on Chinese platforms. The grass is always greener on the side of the platform owner.

These aren’t just foreign meddling efforts—they’re modern psychological operations. Their goal isn’t to make you vote for one party or another. It’s to make you stop believing in the idea of unity at all.

Reason Three: The Economy and the Future Tense

Nothing is more personal than faith in the future.

Shoshana Zuboff coined the phrase “the right to the future tense.” It means people need a reasonable belief that they will be healthier, wealthier, and more secure in the near future. When that belief evaporates, people stop investing in reality and start chasing fantasies.

When wages stagnate, housing becomes unaffordable, and recessions loom like a sword of Damocles, people begin to cling to whatever narrative gives them hope—or at least gives them someone to blame. They don’t need the truth. They need meaning. And if that meaning comes in the form of conspiracy theories, political cults, or grievance-fueled echo chambers, so be it.

The zero-sum narrative feeds this desperation. It tells you that your suffering is someone else’s fault—and that you can’t win until they lose. It’s a devil’s trick. A rigged game that we're all losing.

Here’s the inconvenient truth: our futures are tied together.

There’s no victory in watching the other side burn when your house is made of the same wood. The devil may whisper that compromise is weakness, that unity is betrayal and that politics is war by other means. But in the end, it is us versus the challenges of a complex world and we need every player on the field.

It’s time to reject the zero-sum game before the devil shuffles the deck once more.