A Magician Never Tells

On Making Change in American Agriculture, and elsewhere

I was at a magic show once, and I don’t think I’ve ever seen a crowd lose it over a card trick quite like this one. The trick went like this: A little girl came up, drew a card, and put it back in the stack. The magician looked through the deck, picking out a card here or there, asking her, “is this your card?” each time. After two or three giggly “nos,” the magician started to get exasperated. There was a heavy pause where we all wondered if he had messed up the trick, or worse, if the little girl had forgotten her card altogether. But then the magician seemed to figure it out.

“Ah!” he cried. “I see what’s happened. This man has stolen your card, young lady.” He pointed wildly at a bewildered-looking man in the second row. The man half turned to look at the person behind him, who responded with a clear “he means you” gesture.

“Yes you, sir,” the magician confirmed, tapping his hand over his chest, indicating the man’s frocket. “Please, give this young lady her card back.” Sure enough, the man reached into his breast pocket and withdrew a playing card, laughing with consternation as he handed it over. Now the girl was positively giddy, because this was not her card either.

“I see!” the magician cried again, turning back to the audience. “You ma’am,” he singled out a woman on the aisle. “Perhaps you could show us the card you have in your shoe.” But this woman had her wits about her.

“I don’t have a card in my shoe,” she shouted back. The magician's voice was red velvet as he prompted her to check and be sure. And then, from the sole of her left loafer, she pulled a playing card, and handed it over sheepishly.

The tension in the room reached a boiling point when the girl revealed this card was also not the right one. She was barely holding it together, and the audience was wrapt and gleeful to see the magician seemingly at his wits end. He paced up the stage, then down, up, down, and half way up again, he stopped, his head jolting upward, finger pointed to the sky.

“Wait,” he cried again, “is this your card?” He’d plunged his hand into his pants pocket and presented it to the girl with a flourish. She was already shaking her head, but she didn’t say “no” right away.

“Well then who’s card is it?” the magician asked, voice dripping in mock consternation.

“It’s my daddy’s,” she said confidently. The magician turned the card to the audience, and we all saw at a glance that it was a driver’s license.

“Where’s your daddy?” the magician asked his giggly little assistant, and she pointed unhelpfully into the audience. The house lights went up, and a man near the back stood. “Sir,” the magician said, raising his hand to shield his eyes from the lights. “Are you missing your driver’s license?”

“No,” the man called back, brandishing his wallet.

“Are you sure?” the magician asked coyly, and the man flipped open his wallet to prove he had his property.

“I’ve got it right–” he stopped, and we all knew why.

“Here,” the magician handed the card to the little girl, and gently shepherded her off the stage. “Go give this back to your daddy.” The little girl sped down the aisle and to the seat where her dad still stood, visibly rummaging through his wallet. Then, he stopped, and he withdrew something that looked suspiciously like a playing card. By the time his daughter arrived at his side, holding the driver’s license victoriously over her head, the place was deadly silent.

“Is that your card, sir?” the magician called earnestly. As the man took the card from the girl, he handed something similar back to her.

“It’s my card!” the little girl yelled across the room to the magician. “My daddy had it all along.”

And we, the audience, lost our goddamn minds.

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People hate to be told things. I think it’s a fact of human psychology, not specific to any particular population. But in my experience, Americans in particular don’t like to be told things. I’ve come by this conclusion honestly. People have stopped me, scolded me, outright berated me for having the audacity to tell them things I’ve learned to be true about the world (and especially, ahem, about agriculture).

I get it. Nobody likes to be lectured. Nobody likes to hear a favorite idea made to look tired, out of date, or wrong. Nobody likes to have it pointed out that they don’t know it all, that they haven’t been paying attention, or that their opinions are no longer relevant. People like to be offered information gently, in a way that invites them to share their own thoughts and anecdotes on the matter and then, ideally, take or leave any conclusions as they see fit. In other words, we all like to feel in control, worldly, well-informed, and smart. And smart people don’t get told. Smart people do the telling.

In my experience, when people are in the process of being told things, all their defenses go up. Even if the topic is something they neither know nor care about, suddenly, they disagree, or they’ve thought of something you must not have considered. Then comes the detailing of some anecdote (or a hand-me-down, indirect shred of an anecdote) around which they fortify their own expertise. Wrapping themselves in this story, the person says, “you don’t have to tell me about X, I know, because I/my family member/my colleague/my daughter’s ex-boyfriend’s babysitter had Y experience, so I know all about X, and here’s my conclusion.” Eventually, after an often embarrassing list of additional defensive postures, the tell-ee will simply stop listening and disengage.

I’ve found that it’s hard to get to explaining that things could get better when people refuse to hear that anything is wrong in the first place.

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When I think about change in this country– be it social, cultural, economic, or political– it’s hard to think of an instance where a good hard telling-off is what motivated the change. The vaunted American cowboy might be known for “straight talk” (or “straight shooting,” as it were), but Americans don’t actually like to be told straight, and they don’t like to act in straight-forward ways either. Change in America usually happens not for good reasons, but for kind of crooked, sideways, backwards reasons.

Take emancipation (a topic on which I know just enough to be dangerous). There were definitely anti-slavery advocates in America in the years before the Emancipation Proclamation, and its signer, Abraham Lincoln, was even swayed, at times, by their arguments. But American’s didn’t end slavery because it was the right thing to do. The Emancipation Proclamation was signed because half the states had already seceded from the union, and emancipating the slaves owned by rebels would hobble their fighting force. It was not a brave accent to the moral high ground, it was an act of war, revenge, and frankly, spite. It was not meant to be good, to restore legal personhood and dignity to a kidnapped and terrorized people, it was meant to throw a culture and economy into chaos so it could be defeated.

Obviously this example is much more complicated than a single paragraph can do justice. This is an oversimplification. But I think there’s a valuable lesson there about the relationship between a century of anti-slavery advocacy (of telling people slavery was bad) and how change more often gets made in this country.

Consider an example that involves agriculture instead. Did you know there’s only been one major piece of legislation in decades that has imposed significant regulation on the oil and gas industry? Despite all the environmental battles, all the advocacy and protests, only one group has gone toe-to-toe with fossil fuels recently and come out on top. You know who it was? American agriculture.

The Renewable Fuel Standard gets a lot of flack. And I get it. 5 billion bushels of corn every year go to making ethanol because in 2005 (and then again in 2007) Congress told the oil and gas industry they have to blend ethanol into their fuel. I don’t think people appreciate what a coup it was to pass this law during what was arguably the peak of the fossil fuel industry’s power.

How did they do it? Well first, the agricultural community crafted this wild argument about the environmental harm of gasoline, the national security implications of foreign oil dependence, and about the need to support farmers– “the backbone of the American economy.” They assembled a rag-tag coalition of environmental groups who called ethanol a “renewable fuel,” star-spangled war hawks eager to “buy American,” and the public’s loyalty to men in overalls. And then they wielded the power of this coalition with laser precision to get congress to intervene in the energy market, to the oil and gas industry’s detriment, in a way they never had before. The American government told the fossil industry– “you will blend ethanol. And here, we’ll build this artificial market so you can trade credits amongst yourself to meet this obligation.” They basically set up a mandatory carbon offset market for the oil industry, but instead of requiring companies to sequester carbon, they required companies to buy corn ethanol.

The funny thing about the RFS, and what few people ever say about it, is that it worked. Oil companies blinked. They do blend ethanol (10%, 15%, sometimes 85%), and it didn’t put them out of business or have some huge impact on the affordability of American fuel. I can see a gas station from where I’m writing this, and unleaded is $2.99 a gallon today, cheaper than it was in 2007.

Think of how many people, how many activists, environmentalists, and climate scientists have argued and begged for action like this, and spent their lives telling lawmakers and the public that we need to regulate the fossil fuel industry. Yet here’s an example of a group achieving change at the scale and in the direction that all those activists have been telling us we’ve needed for years. They didn’t achieve it by making a high road moral argument about the responsibilities of the oil and gas sector to the planet, people, and environment. American agriculture didn’t touch any of that. They barely talked about the fossil industry at all. They told their own story, a new story, and frankly, a self-serving story. They got their hands and boots dirty, did some horsetrading, lined up the incentives of this diverse coalition, and in the end, they got what they wanted, and however we feel about it now, what they wanted was good for all of us (if you want to know why, I have a podcast to recommend to you*).

The oil and gas industry did not suffer this blow at the hands of people with the moral high ground. They succumb to the people who wanted to get somewhere, and who were willing to take any road, over any level of ground, to get there.

There are countless examples like this in American history, where the ideal outcome was obvious, and there was a straightforward way to achieve it, but when it finally came about, it wasn’t for the obvious reasons, but for some backhanded, devious, almost crooked ones.

I think that America’s inability to do the right thing for the right reason, and our dislike of being “told,” are related. I think sometimes, people are so repulsed by the prospect of doing what they’ve been told to do that they simply cannot do it, even when they want to. So instead we have to wait around for an opportunistic wrong reason, a kind of sideways, backdoor entrance to get where we want to go without anyone noticing that we ended up right where a lot of smart people told us we should be all along.

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I wasn’t very old when I saw this magic show, but even so, I was confident that this was not real magic. It seemed obvious that the magician must have put the cards in the man’s pocket, the woman’s shoe, and taken the man’s driver’s license and replaced it with a playing card earlier in the night.

This is the thing about sleight of hand and magic tricks– they often involve some low-grade theft. I’m certainly not the first to notice that good magicians also make good pickpockets. I mean if you want to be really cynical, all of performative magic is a kind of con, performed to part you from your money. After all, a magician is not a wielder of magic so much as a confuser of your perception. The difference between a true fraud and a magic show is willingness– we pay to see magic for the surprise and joy of not being able to trust our senses, and so we willingly suspend disbelief.

I think about this magic show because I’m pretty sure pulling off this trick must have involved pickpocketing the little girl’s father. I don’t know for sure, maybe there’s some other way to get a playing card inside a wallet without taking physical possession of it, but theft seems like the most likely possibility.

It’s interesting because overall, I think most people do not enjoy being pickpocketed. Having things stolen off your person is not just about losing your property, it’s a violation of your body. A stranger cannot steal your wallet without reaching into your personal space, and how did they do that without our notice? But I don’t think the wallet man was angry about the role he played in the show. Sure, maybe he felt a little “got,” but I imagine (and judging by his face), his feelings were closer to wonder. After all, there was no harm done, and think of how happy it made his little girl?

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There are many, many things that I would like my fellow American’s to get on board with. I’d like to convince some people, for one, about different approaches to the food and ag system– to funding it, running it, supporting it, and participating in it. But there’s other things I’d change if I could. I’d change some minds about the “need” for the average urbanite to own a half-ton, extended-cab pickup. I’d get more people to agree that everyone, including the rich, should pay their fair share. I’d convince folks to see the value of regulation, or at least to acknowledge that public companies are required by law to pursue profit above all, but that we are also free to change those laws. But I can’t tell people these things (unless, of course, they already agree with me). They simply won’t hear me.

There’s an old Jesuit saying I learned in college– “enter through their door, come out your door.” In other words, come at an idea from your audience’s point of view, and you can gently and lovingly guide them to seeing things your way. I love this idea, and for people I’m close to, it’s a tactic I use.

But I’m not convinced that this is a good strategy to make large-scale change. In my experience, you can go through someone else's door all you want, but you’ll often find they’ve nailed your door shut, boarded it up, and moved their fridge in front of it. They cannot be convinced to see things your way, and the more you try and tell them, the more they’ll fortify their resistance.

In my experience, American’s don’t change their minds, they only change their contexts. It’s the lesson of the RFS and emancipation. It suggests that rather than “go in their door, come out yours,” we’ve got to find a whole new approach to the situation. The answer is not to knock daintily on their door, invite yourself in for some coffee and a chat, and try to gesture gently towards the door they’ll never go through. The answer is to knock curtly, burst inside, announce that the house is on fire, and quick, let’s escape through this open window. It’s not your door, it’s not their door. Nobody was right or wrong. You didn’t get to tell them anything. But you’re both out of the house now, and that’s what you wanted in the first place.

I think it’s easy (especially when you’re a know-it-all like me) to want to believe in the right way, the straight-forward path, the moral argument. After all, when you’re atop a high horse on a high road, the views are spectacular. But the problem with telling people to take the high road is that we literally never have before, so why would we start now?

You can’t see quite so far from the low road, or while you're stomping around off trail, trying to find a new path altogether. But that’s where most people are, fumbling around, getting dirty, yelling at one another. Folks with their boots on the ground don’t care so much about the right way, the right choice, or the right reasons. They’re just trying to keep moving forward and not fall behind.

So I guess my conclusion has been to stop trying to find better arguments for “the right way.” Right as it may be, we’ve never been a nation for doing the right things or doing them the right way. If we want things to get done, we need to spend some time thinking about what it is we really want, and what we’re really willing to do to accomplish it. I don’t want to fall into a “the ends justify the means” argument here, but maybe it’s time to rethink which means are truly unjustified, and which means are a suitable price for progress.

I’m not saying that everyone needs to abandon the moral high ground and get down into the mud. I’m saying that insisting on moral purity is a great way to make sure nothing ever changes. If we only move forward along the most straight-forward, most ideal path, the wait for progress is going to be long. I think there’s merit in looking for backwards and sideways paths, screwy, crooked avenues to accomplish our goals. There’s no shame in achieving positive change by accident, or even through a little light trickery.

After all, sometimes people love being tricked. Sometimes, when you pick a pocket, it’s a crime, and your victim will call the cops and have you arrested. But change the context– give people some jazz hands, some jokes, some flair, and they’ll thank you for taking their wallet. They’ll tell you that their kid talked about you for weeks afterward, that they’ve learned how to do some card tricks themselves. After all, the magician didn’t change the mind of the man he pickpocketed, he didn’t tell the guy anything. The man still probably doesn’t like the idea of being robbed, still thinks stealing wallets is wrong. The magician never aimed to change that perception. But he was able to reach past the man’s defenses and help him arrive at the conclusion that parting with his wallet isn’t necessarily a bad thing. In fact, it can be quite fun, and it can make you the unexpected star of the show.

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*If you are interested in learning a more complicated story about the Renewable Fuel Standard (the RFS), check out Corn Saves America, the second season of my award-winning podcast with the team at Ag Economic Insights, about how the rise and fall of ethanol and carbon markets, and what these two markets have taught us about corn, American farm and environmental policy, and the future of ag as we know it. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts.