Joe Biden and the Common Knowledge Game
Epsilon Theory
July 1, 2024·97 comments·Politics
Everyone in Washington already knew Biden's faculties were failing. Cabinet members knew. Party strategists knew. Media figures knew. Nothing changed. Then one televised 90 minutes transformed private knowledge into something undeniable to all simultaneously, and suddenly everything shifted. The mechanism wasn't new information. It was the moment when everyone realized everyone else knew.
- The disclosure was the visibility, not the revelation. Biden's cognitive decline wasn't a secret in Democratic circles. The debate didn't expose new facts. It exposed the fact that the entire country was now watching the same thing at the same time and reacting together to it.
- Cabinet officers suddenly face an impossible choice. They knew. They all knew. But private knowledge meant they could continue transacting with Biden without reputational risk. Once that knowledge becomes shared and visible, staying silent looks like complicity, but speaking up looks like betrayal. So they do what cornered people do. They bail.
- This is the dynamics of common knowledge, not information. The Harvey Weinstein comparison reveals the mechanism. Widespread private knowledge that he was a rapist never changed behavior. Rose McGowan's public accusation changed everything, not because she revealed something new, but because she made it impossible to pretend no one else knew.
- Every future action Biden takes will be interpreted through this lens. The debate created a frame that cannot be unframed. Every stumble, every word, every moment in public will be scrutinized for signs of decline. The polling showing his approval will only worsen isn't cynical prediction. It's recognition that the perception has crystallized into common knowledge.
- This pattern will repeat in the near future. Hunt calls this the descent into the "Great Ravine" – the end of cheap globalization, institutional trust, and American dominance. Biden's collapse is one tremor. More are coming, each one shifting what we collectively know that we collectively know.
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Comments
Are you guys seeing any shift in the overall market narratives as a result of the debate? for June The Story was NVDA and recession/dovish economy needing some fiscal stimulus rate lowering. There wasn’t really any strong narrative elsewhere.
We know the narrative politically has shifted to the Emperor has No Clothes. A quick glance at the headlines today doesn’t show much cohesion anywhere to me. I would have thought there’d be some huge market narratives when everyone suddenly realized there was and has been no Commander in Chief.
This is simply - well written. It would have taken me a long time to both assemble and construct such a succinct, impactful essay.
I suppose this event is no different than the football team that puts in that old qb, who the owner/coach thinks is up for the game, until he throws 2 picks directly to the open receiver - on the other team.
On another note the beauty of the Common Knowledge Cycle is the resulting humor/comedy. The humor/comedy that is created from the wonderfully brilliant spin and deflection of the both reality of the event and the embarrassment of the inner circle, into some other reality…and selling the talking heads to SELL IT.
What a terribly shitty job that would be…PT Barnum would even become indisposed!
And so it begins…
Great piece Ben. Thank you.
For me the Common Knowledge collapse was more than just Biden. It was the presidency itself - it was the two-party system and its corporate pillars.
Biden was shocking - and it just collapsed any confidence that the current administration has been telling us the truth about anything.
Trump was shocking - and it was confirmation that this man is unmoored and just cruel.
A “debate” hosted by a media corporation (CNN) with no audience and a format so tightly scripted that it left no room for anything resembling authenticity was shocking.
It was a total collapse.
“High-functioning sociopaths” atop both parties.
I’m in the middle of Robert Caro’s epic biography of LBJ and last night I was wondering what percentage of politicians fit this category today.
https://www.reuters.com/world/us/joe-bidens-disastrous-debate-blamed-bad-preparation-exhaustion-2024-06-30/
I’ll add this about Trump breaking us…
We are already broken or he wouldn’t have such widespread appeal. If Trump is a dictator in waiting - a strongman as Ben would say. Healthy democracy’s shed people like that off. No-- they only arrive and have appeal when things are broken.
My personal theory is that we ceased functioning as a democratic republic a while ago. I’m not sure when exactly, but we have been governed by a loud minority for several years now, with their power only growing exponentially in the last decade or so. Our two-party duopoly gives us “elections” where we get to choose from a long list of two extremely expensive and highly underqualified candidates. I hope Ben is wrong, but I doubt that he is.
A couple of decades ago we had a candidate that promised to fundamentally transform the United States.
He won.
Maybe he succeeded.
Here was the state of Presidential politics before that fundamental transformation.
Edit: Google pictures from the 2024 Presidential debate —none come up with that vacant stare Biden had for most of the night. The only reason I looked is because I thought that the picture Ben used was not that indicative of the true state he was in for 90 minutes.
Here we go again!
When he got elected I began to think Joe Biden will go down in history as a Chester A. Arthur among men. A party hack who stumbled into the role because nobody else was around that fit at that moment. Maybe it will turn out to be worse than that for the Dems but probably only if Trump truly destroys the entire Republican party as well…what’s the chance of that?..40, 45%? I dunno, sure ain’t zero. But as bad as it seems for Dems right now I am not at all sure it isn’t just the process we have to go through to reject all these self-serving SOB’s for a new crop of less tranparently awful SOBs.
Biden’s cabinet officers are now in exactly the same spot as Harvey Weinstein’s business partners. Of course they knew. But now they know that everyone knows, and that puts their careers in danger. They can’t be seen as the courtiers insisting that the Emperor is wearing a fine suit of clothes now that we all know that we all know he’s naked, but they also can’t be seen publicly sticking a knife into Biden’s back. So what do they do? They bail. They distance themselves.
Virtue Signaling as everyone covers their own ass.
https://www.politico.com/news/2024/07/02/biden-campaign-debate-inner-circle-00166160
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