The biggest surprise about how the ideas lab operates is how careful its participants are. Each member has veto power, and they wield it liberally. Baierlein says he’s made four memes that could have been viral but released only two, because the other two are wryly satirical, “and the media yells at us when we’re laughing.”
“Everything we do, everything we put out there is vetted through all of us,” he said. “Somebody has an idea for a tweet, they type it out, they send it to everybody else and we say, ‘That’s good!’ or ‘Change this thing.’”
The basic rules are simple: no profanity, no violence—actual, symbolic, or implied—and no ad-hominem attacks. Personal digs are cheap, dirty, and counterproductive. Chiding politicians is the trickiest thicket to navigate: they want to call out bad behavior quick and hard, but they can’t get too personal or derisive, especially when their targets are Republicans. Their opponents are adversaries, not enemies. Matt Deitsch took a hold of his dog tag to illustrate the point. He was wearing No. 6, but this they had gleaned from No. 3: “Nonviolence seeks to defeat injustice, not people.”
