---
author: TED
date: '2026-06-14'
guest: ''
layout: post.njk
source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VBnocNg69o4
speaker: TED
tags:
  - political-violence
  - self-censorship
  - freedom-of-speech
  - dissent
  - anonymity
title: 异见的高昂代价：匿名与自我审查如何反噬民主体制
summary: 迈尔斯·泰勒通过亲历的政治风暴，揭示了公开发表异见所招致的系统性暴力与死亡威胁。他指出，真正的社会危机不在于极端的政客，而在于绝大多数民众因恐惧而退缩入“自我审查”。破解这种寒蝉效应的经济学路径，是勇敢摘下政治隐匿的面具，用更多的“真实发声”对冲恐吓的力量。
insight: ''
draft: true
series: ''
category: politics-society
area: society-thinking
project: []
people: []
companies_orgs:
  - Department of Homeland Security
products_models: []
media_books:
  - The Federalist Papers
status: evergreen
---
### 权力秩序的崩塌：从共识政治到“吹哨”的代价

不久前，我在遛狗时为了逃避手机不断的震动而把它留在了屋里。然而回到家后，我却体验到了那种胃部下坠的恐慌感——手机里涌入了成百上千个未接来电和陌生号码的留言。这些语音信箱充斥着极端的人身攻击与死亡威胁，有人骂我“反美”、“叛徒”，甚至扬言要“人肉搜索”并剥夺我在街头行走的权利。如果说这些恶毒的诅咒已经令人胆寒，那么更难以置信的是，在所有的恐吓中，这居然还算是其中“比较温和”的。在建立这种心理防线后，我们需要把时钟拨回，看看这一切的根源。

在2001年“9·11”恐怖袭击后，我怀着保卫国家、防止灾难重演的信念来到华盛顿，从国会山处于权力架构最底层（lowest rung on the totem pole）的信使做起。那时候，我在众议院后排拥有着可以说是华盛顿最好的位置，甚至比白宫里的**坚毅桌**（Resolute desk: 美国总统办公桌）还要好。我坐在那里，亲眼见证了国家遭遇灾难后的政治团结——议员们跨越党派分歧，共同为国家安全立法。然而，随着时间推移，这种共识不可避免地走向消退。到了2017年，我接任了**美国国土安全部**（US Department of Homeland Security）的幕僚长。我的上司**约翰·凯利**（John Kelly）曾用史上最糟糕的推销语招募我：“特朗普政府内部的情况，并没有外界看起来的那么糟……其实比那还要糟糕得多。”

我接受这份工作，是因为深知我们需要真正懂政府运作和国家安全的保守派来稳住巨轮的航向。但在白宫战情室和椭圆形办公室里，我亲眼目睹了一位鲁莽、冲动的总统。当国会议员和内阁部长们面如死灰地走出办公室，直言“这个人是对我们共和国体制的威胁”时，我意识到事态已经极度危险。面对这种局面，特朗普政府内部并不存在外界臆想的**“暗深政府”**（Deep State: 指被阴谋论者认为在幕后操纵国家政权的秘密集团），而只有一群试图对权力说真话、阻止总统违法（而非阻止他实施合法政策）的普通官员。然而，这让我们陷入了每天过度内省和束手无策的沮丧中。判断总统是否称职，本不该是我们这些非民选官僚的职责。为了打破僵局，深受**《联邦党人文集》**（The Federalist Papers: 美国建国初期推动宪法通过的政治评论集）启发，我最初选择了匿名发表文章，目的是制造舆论焦点，让美国民众重新审视这场关乎国家未来的讨论。这确实引发了全国性的震动，总统甚至在推特上发了一条七个字母、全大写的推文，愤怒地质问这是否构成“叛国？”（TREASON?）。我当时甚至感到庆幸至少后面还有个问号，因为叛国罪在美国可判死刑。最终，白宫律师叫停了对我的追捕，认定这是受第一修正案保护的言论自由。

<details>
<summary>Original English Source</summary>
Not long ago, I was giving my dog a walk.
His name is Martini.
(Laughter)
That wasn't even a joke.
My wife was out of town,
and I left my phone inside
so I could get away
from the incessant buzzing
and took him on a nice long walk.
And I came back inside,
and I had one of those moments
where your stomach sinks,
because I looked at my phone
and I had a lot of missed calls.
And my first thought was,
my wife is pissed about something.
It's a lot of calls.
But then I looked,
and it wasn't just a lot of calls,
it was hundreds of phone calls
and numbers I didn't recognize,
some of them unknown numbers.
And I decided to figure out what this was.
And I opened my phone,
and I opened the voicemails to see
if these people had left messages.
(Audio) Person 1: What you're doing
to President Trump is disgusting.
You are disgusting people.
You're evil and you're going to go down.
Person 2: You, my friend,
are a piece of shit.
You are a traitor.
Person 3: You're pushing for anti-Trump?
You dumb motherfucker!
We will squash you
like a fucking peanut, bitch.
You're done, you're done.
So eat a dick and die.
Person 4: Miles, we're going to dox you.
You're not going to be able
to walk down the street.
You're an anti-American.
Leave the country.
You're not welcome here anymore.
You're anti-American,
you hate your country.
Get out.
Person 5: Because you
will deserve the wrath of hell.
And I think you will get
what's coming to you.
God willing.
Miles Taylor: If you can believe it,
those were the nice ones.
(Laughter)
So anyway, before I get to that,
let me take you back in time.
Why did I end up in Washington, DC?
Like a lot of people,
after the attacks of September 11, 2001,
I wanted to come to DC
to make sure a day like that
never happened again.
That was going to be
the full focus of my career.
And I came into Washington,
the lowest place you can possibly
come in on the totem pole
as a young messenger on Capitol Hill,
a page messenger delivering envelopes
during my junior year in high school.
But despite being the lowest rung
on the totem pole,
I had the best desk in Washington, DC.
And I'm not joking about that.
Better than the Resolute desk
inside the White House,
because my desk was
in the back of the chamber,
the back of the citadel of democracy,
where I had a perch to see the comings
and goings of Congress
in the wake of a catastrophic attack.
And if you take a look,
that little red circle
has a little guy inside of it
who's me, sitting there,
watching the President's
State of the Union address.
And I'm going to tell you
what I saw in Washington
in that time period.
I saw unity.
I was a young person who was very inspired
by seeing members of Congress
walk across the literal aisle
to work together on legislation
to protect this country.
But times change.
Things fade.
Everything fades.
Fast forward in time.
I find myself in 2017
as the chief of staff of the US
Department of Homeland Security.
It's not a time of unity
anymore in Washington.
I took that job because of the worst
sales pitch anyone's ever made for someone
to join their office in history.
My boss, John Kelly, said, "Miles,
it's not as bad as it looks
inside the Trump administration."
(Laughter)
"It is so much worse."
(Laughter)
And I still took that job
because I understood what he meant.
I understood he meant we need
people who understand
how government functions,
how national security functions,
real conservatives to come in
and help steady the ship
of these agencies.
But I soon saw what he saw
and what others saw,
which is that in meetings
with the President
in the White House Situation Room,
in the Oval Office, on Air Force One,
I met a man who I had
not known previously,
and I found him to be reckless
and impulsive at best,
and at worst, on days members of Congress,
cabinet secretaries, walked out
of the Oval Office with ashen faces,
and they said things like,
"The man is a threat
to the fabric of our republic,"
I knew there was something
more serious going on.
Now I’m not going to talk
about the first Trump administration,
but if there was one theme,
I had to spend most of my time
not focused on the 250,000 men and women
of the Department of Homeland Security
I was responsible for helping oversee,
but one man who was regularly engaged
or attempting to engage in illegal acts.
There was no deep state
inside the Trump administration.
There were people willing
to speak truth to power
and prevent the President
from doing illegal things,
not to prevent him from
implementing a lawful agenda.
But I grew very frustrated
because these conversations
were happening among us,
a group of unelected bureaucrats,
navel gazing, wringing our hands,
complaining about how unfit
the President was for office.
It was not our job to decide
if the President was unfit for office.
We would not decide if he got
re-elected in a second term.
That's what you would decide.
And I felt like it was very important,
if these gray-beard wise men
wouldn't go out and say it in public,
that someone needed to.
So I decided I would go say
what we were talking about in private
in public.
Now I did that at first anonymously,
as many of you know.
And I put on that mask
not because I was afraid
to stand by my opinions,
but because I'm a student of history.
And my favorite book is a compendium
of essays called "The Federalist Papers."
(Applause and laughter)
Total best seller,
all the authors are dead.
(Laughter)
And the Founding Fathers
wrote anonymous essays
to sell the American public
on the Constitution,
not because they were scared
to associate themselves with those words,
but because they knew
it would create a spectacle
and it would draw attention.
And to them, it was the most
important issue of their time
to get the American people
to pay attention to this conversation.
I did the same thing.
I'm not comparing myself
to those founders,
but I used the same device, and it worked.
You paid attention.
We started a national conversation
about how the President's own lieutenants
didn't think he was fit for office.
That was an important
conversation to have,
whether you agreed with us
or didn't agree with us.
One person also noticed.
And in a seven-letter, all-caps tweet,
he said “TREASON?”
And I was grateful
that there was a question mark.
(Laughter)
Because treason is punishable by death
in the United States.
So at least if there was a question,
I had a chance.
The President of the United States
subsequently said he wanted
the author found
and turned in for national
security reasons.
But as I later found out,
the White House gave up the search
because lawyers in the White House said
"This article was First
Amendment- protected speech.
We can't pursue this person.
It's not treason,
we're not going to arrest them."
</details>

### 政治暴力的平庸化：摘下隐匿面具后的系统级反噬

匿名发声虽然有效，但在2020年大选前，我意识到继续躲在暗处会释放一种危险的道德信号——它似乎在暗示，人们可以躲在安全的阴影里发表意见而无需承担任何责任。为了向选民提供具体的证据以供他们做出裁决，我决定摘下面具。然而，这一决定的代价是毁灭性的。前总统在集会上公开宣称“坏事将会降临到迈尔斯·泰勒身上”，而他的追随者们将这句话转化为了现实的行动。因为这些毫无底线的诽谤和叛国指控，我被迫搬离了位于国会山的家，失去了离开政府后在私营部门的职位，耗尽了毕生积蓄来支付高昂的律师费和安保网络。在2020年选举之夜，我甚至不得不在武装保卫下躲藏在弗吉尼亚州北部的安全屋里，枕头下塞着上膛的手枪，仅仅因为许多同胞认为批评总统的人必须付出生命的代价。

这种由最高权力机构定向输出的仇恨并未随着时间被稀释。就在今年4月9日，我又一次带着马丁尼出门——因为他身上弄得很脏，成了一只真正的“脏马丁尼”（Dirty Martini），我不得不带他去宠物美容店。就在那个看似平常的日子，我收到记者的信息，告诉我前总统在椭圆形办公室里公开谈论我。这一次他去掉了“叛国”后面的问号，直接向全世界宣称我犯下了宪法中量刑可达死刑的最高罪行。法律学者告诉我，这是美国建国249年来，首次有总统发布行政命令，仅仅因为第一修正案保护的言论自由而去调查批评者。虽然美国司法系统尚未接受“批评总统即是颠覆国家”的荒谬观点，从而没有将我投入监狱，但那些被政治狗哨驱使的支持者们却早已心领神会。随之而来的，是又一轮狂轰滥炸的死亡恐吓与网络暴力。不仅我的生命面临危险，我妻子的安全受到威胁，甚至我一岁女儿的照片也被恶意挂到了网上。同时，我辛辛苦苦建立的、为50名员工发放薪水的企业也因此土崩瓦解。

更为绝望的是，我所经历的这场定点清除式的打压，在今天的美国已经变得极其“寻常”。从国会议员到州代表，再到基层的公园与游憩部门的主管，这种众包式的暴力威胁正在全方位蔓延。在特朗普当选总统的那一年，国会议员每年大约收到1000次死亡威胁；而当他离任时，这个数字飙升了十倍，达到每年10000次。当我们回顾2021年1月6日的国会山骚乱，那张我曾作为国会信使使用过、见证了华盛顿团结抵御外敌的办公桌，竟然被推到大门前，成为了抵御一群本国暴力叛乱分子的最后一道防线。当一场关于言论自由的演讲都无法在标榜自由的国度里免于恐惧地进行时，这种将政治暴力平庸化的运作机制已经触及了民主存亡的底线。

<details>
<summary>Original English Source</summary>
But that was not enough for me.
In 2020, I felt like I needed
to take off the mask
because behind the mask,
I was sending the signal that it was OK
to sit in the dark and put
your opinions out there
and not take accountability.
Before that election,
I needed to go out there
and tell you the specific
things that I saw
to buttress those claims
I made in that piece,
and let you make up your damn minds
about whether this guy
deserved to be reelected.
Once again,
he noticed.
We'll get to that in a second.
And he said, "At campaign rallies,
bad things are going
to happen to Miles Taylor."
And he was right.
They did.
His supporters made sure of it.
As a consequence of his rhetoric,
as a consequence
of accusing me of treason,
I had to leave my home on Capitol Hill,
I lost my job that I had taken
in the private sector
after I left the administration,
I lost my life savings
spending it on lawyers,
my security, friends.
And on election night 2020,
I found myself in a safe house
in Northern Virginia,
under armed guard
with a pistol under my pillow.
Because so many of my fellow Americans
believed I should die
for criticizing the President
of the United States.
Fast forward to April 9 of this year.
Of course, Donald Trump
lost that election in 2020.
He won, he came back to power.
And on that day,
I was out and about again with Martini,
which means, you know
something bad's going to happen.
He was a dirty Martini,
I had to take him to the groomer's.
We got him cleaned, I came home,
and I got a message from a journalist
who said, "Turn on the news.
The President of the United States
is talking about you in the Oval Office."
And I pulled it up on my phone,
and there was Donald Trump,
and there was Donald Trump declaring
not that I might be guilty of treason --
the question mark was gone.
He told the American people and the world
that he believed I was guilty
of the highest crime contemplated
in the United States Constitution,
a reminder -- a crime punishable by death.
And as legal scholars later told me,
it was the first time in 249 years
of the American Republic
that a president of the United States
has issued an executive order
to investigate one of his critics
for First Amendment-protected speech.
Now you would be right to ask a question.
If treason is tantamount to murder,
why am I standing here right now?
Why am I not in handcuffs?
Why am I not in a jail cell?
And whether you agree with me or not,
I will tell you the answer.
The answer is because
the US justice system
has not caught up to the President's view
that criticism of a president
is subversive,
that criticism should be criminalized,
that you need a permission slip
to criticize the president.
The justice system
hasn't caught up to that.
Yet.
But you know who did?
The same people before
that followed his dog whistles.
They were paying attention.
(Audio) Person 1: Miles Taylor,
what the fuck are you thinking
going against Trump,
you and your cronies?
Person 2: I really don't appreciate
you putting out garbage.
Do you want to be looking
at defamation of character, etc.,
for putting out lies,
because everybody's on it and on you.
Person 3: Your names are going to go viral
because you are treasonous ilk
to our country.
Person 4: You are
what is wrong with America.
You, sir, are a piece of shit.
Person 5: We don't forgive traitorship.
Person 6: I just want to let you know
that your efforts to try
and defeat the GOAT,
the greatest president of all times,
is not going to work.
You guys poked the bear.
You woke the sleeping giant.
We're coming, my man.
MT: These folks are not getting invited
to Thanksgiving at the Taylor household.
But I will tell you, joking aside,
those consequences were real.
Everything that we had rebuilt since 2020,
when our lives were detonated,
was kicked over again
because of all of this.
The address of our home
that we had moved to
to protect my family was doxed.
Our phone numbers were doxed.
My wife asked me,
do we need to sell the house
to be able to pay for the legal fees?
The business that I had built
in the wake of this,
that cut checks for 50 people
was destroyed,
and those 50 people
no longer received paychecks.
But the hardest for me
as a father and a husband
was watching not just me
get death threats,
my wife be threatened,
my one-year-old daughter threatened
and her image posted on the internet.
That's not OK.
And it forced us to take legal action
against people we've never met
in this country.
Even today, I will tell you the truth,
my security advisor said he did not
want me to come speak to you today.
And we know why.
Because of the environment we are in.
But think about that for a second.
The irony that a speech about free speech
can't be given in the land of the free
without fear of reprisal.
What's so remarkable about my experience,
and the reason I shared it with you today,
is that it is unremarkable now.
Because what has happened to me
is happening from people
at the member of Congress level,
all the way down to state representatives
and Parks and Recreation directors
and you name it in this country.
Poll workers, who are threatened
with crowdsourced violence,
members of Congress,
who are scared to hold town halls
because of their constituents
on the Left and on the Right.
I’m going to give you
a data point about this:
10X.
The year Donald Trump
was elected president,
there were 1,000 death threats a year
to members of Congress,
a thousand violent threats.
By the time he left office,
that had gone up tenfold
to 10,000 death threats a year.
And this is roughly
where the number has hovered.
And it is indicative of what we are seeing
in other parts of our society.
But I didn't need
the data points to know this.
I'll tell you what my data point was.
My data point was a desk.
On January 6, 2021,
you all know what happened.
What you probably don't know
is that a desk was slid
from the corner of the house chamber.
The desk I had sat at
as a congressional page
in a Washington unified
against a foreign enemy,
and it was slid in front of the door,
and it was the last line of defense
against a violent mob of insurrectionists.
I get chills still talking about that
because of how quickly our world changed
in that time period.
</details>

### 异见的经济学：破解自我审查与匿名的系统解药

就在最近，我们亲眼目睹了右翼顶级政治评论员遭到暗杀，以及针对国会最高级别民主党人的暗杀阴谋被提前挫败。面对甚嚣尘上的政治暴力，我们必须进行底层追问：是谁让美国社会表达异见的代价变得如此高昂？如果你认为答案仅仅是由于某些特定的政客，那便大错特错了。真正的责任人，其实是公众自己。近期**美国国家公共广播电台**（NPR: 美国主要的公共广播机构）的调查揭示了一个令人不寒而栗的数据：三分之一的美国人认为，为了让国家重回正轨，政治暴力是完全正当的。为了让你对这个比例有更直观的概念——在美国，同样有三分之一的人拥有宠物猫。更令人深思的是，支持暴力的极端立场在民主党和共和党选民中，呈现出统计学上的绝对均等。

也许你坚信自己绝不属于那狂热的“三分之一”，但你极有可能属于那沉默的“三分之二”。同一项调查无情地显示，由于害怕遭到报复，三分之二的美国人正主动承认他们在进行深度的**自我审查**（Self-censorship）。在移民、堕胎、气候变化等几乎所有极具争议的社会议题上，大多数美国人在私下里其实有着广泛的共识，但他们却因为恐惧而噤若寒蝉，甚至不敢公开谴责正在发生的政治暴力。正如我此时站在这里呼吁免于恐惧的自由，这本身就是一种极大的悲哀。在当前的社会架构下，民主制度面临的最大威胁并非显性的政客，而是隐性的**匿名性**（Anonymity）——我们都下意识地戴上了隐形的政治面具，在表达真相时战战兢兢。当整个社会都畏惧说真话时，恐吓与暴力的策略便会不可避免地取得压倒性的成功。

那么，我们该如何系统性地打破这种噤若寒蝉的僵局？这实际上可以被视作一个极其简单的经济学问题。在一个市场模型中，商品的价格完全由供给和需求决定。如果说今天在美国表达“真实异见”的价格高得令人难以承受，经济学明确告诉我们只有两种降低价格的途径。第一种是降低需求，即我们决定不再需要真相、不再需要辩论、放弃达成共识的可能性——但这显然违背了建立这个国家的初衷。因此，唯一可行的出路就是增加供给。作为这个社会系统中的微观个体，你们就是市场中亟需的“抗风险商品”。我们需要更多无惧报复、勇敢走上前台表达真实立场的人。当你在令人窒息的时局中迷茫发问时，请先向内审视：我是否依然隐藏在匿名的舒适区之中？如果答案是肯定的，那么化解这场时代危机的钥匙其实就握在你自己的手中——是时候摘下面具了。

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<summary>Original English Source</summary>
Now we know a lot of scary things
have happened recently.
We saw the assassination of a top
political commentator on the right.
Just last week, the top
Democrat in Congress
had an assassination plot
foiled against him.
And so it begs the question:
who is responsible for the price
of dissent being so high in America?
Why are people fearing for their lives
to speak their political opinions?
And if you think my answer
is Donald Trump,
you would be wrong.
Unfortunately, my answer is you.
Or some of you.
NPR just came out with a survey
the other week that showed
one in three,
one in three Americans now believe
that political violence would be justified
to put the country back on track.
I'm going to give you
another one in three.
One in three Americans own a cat.
(Laughter)
One in three.
Think about that.
Now I want to ask you a question.
Which political affiliation do you think
is more likely to hold this view?
Is it the Democrats?
Is it the Republicans?
You're all wrong.
It's Democrats and Republicans
in equal measure statistically.
Now you might be sitting there saying,
"Miles, but I'm not one
of those one third.
I'm not one of those.
I didn't call your phone that day."
At least I don't think any of you did.
(Laughter)
And again, statistically,
you're probably right.
You probably fit into this category.
Because a recent survey found
that two out of three Americans
are now actively admitting
to self-censoring their views
out of fear of reprisal.
It's not just people
inside the beltway, it's you.
We're all doing it,
we're all guilty of it.
The same survey found that the vast
majority of Americans agree in private
on almost all the controversial
issues in our society:
immigration, abortion,
climate change, you name it.
Survey found majorities agree
on those issues,
but they're scared to say it,
including they're afraid
to repudiate political violence.
So who's responsible for the price
of dissent being so high in this country?
It's not Donald Trump.
It's not even the one third of Americans
who believe we might have to use
political violence against one another.
It's the two thirds.
In my opinion,
the greatest threat to democracy today
is anonymity.
And I understand that that's
ironic coming from me.
(Laughter)
I get it.
It's anonymity.
We are wearing our figurative masks.
We are scared to tell the truth.
And you know what?
When we're scared to tell the truth,
intimidation works.
It works very, very well.
And I'm going to close by saying this.
The question is, how do we fix it then?
I'm going to give you an economics lesson.
Oh, God, this talk just got awful.
(Laughter)
If you remember supply
and demand curves.
In any marketplace,
when supply and demand meet,
that's what determines the price, OK?
If as many people want pencils
as there are pencils out there,
that's the price.
I don’t know, $1.50 a pencil.
If the price of dissent
in this country is high today,
how do you lower it?
Economics teaches you
there are only two ways.
That's it.
There [are] two ways to lower that price.
One.
You could decrease demand.
You decrease demand for pencils,
we don't want them anymore,
we're using pens.
The price will go down.
But when it comes to dissent
and truth and debate in this country,
if you believe in what
the Founders said about America,
you don't want to do that.
We don't want to decrease
the demand for truth and debate
and the possibility of reaching accord
on important issues.
So the only way to lower the price
in any marketplace
is to increase the supply.
That is you.
You are the good in that marketplace.
We need more dissent.
We need people unafraid
to step forward and speak the truth.
And so I will close by just saying this.
There [are] a lot of scary things
happening right now in this country,
a lot of scary things.
And I understand the inclination
to ask, "What is going on here?"
But before you answer that question,
I want you to ask yourself and the people
around you another question.
Am I anonymous still?
Because if the answer is yes to that,
then you also know the solution.
It's within your control.
And that solution is,
it's time to take off the mask.
Thank you.
(Cheers and applause)
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