“He may be a liar, but
he’s my liar.”
It may be the question that underlies
whether or not the United States, perhaps democracy in general, can survive
through the 21st century. How can an electoral process produce dependable
voting results when the body politic is lied to and tends to believe or dismiss
the falsehoods? Free speech in an inherent democratic right, even though Donald
Trump wishes to curtail the First Amendment when it comes to his critics. Yet China
is a nation where free speech is non-existent, but generally the People’s
Republic has grown faster economically than any other nation in history. China
taken almost a billion people our dire poverty, virtually entirely over about
three-plus decades. While China prospers, America is flailing.
We Americans live in a country where our
leadership is predicated on unachievable promises and out-and-out false
statements… believed or purposely “overlooked” by over 40% of the voting
public. “In the first eight months of his
presidency, President Trump made 1,137 false or misleading claims, an average
of five a day. In October, as he barnstormed the country holding rallies in
advance of the midterm elections, the president made 1,205 claims — an average
of 39 a day.
“Combined with the rest of his
presidency, that adds up to a total of 7,546 claims through Dec. 20, the 700th
day of his term in office, according to The Fact Checker’s database that analyzes, categorizes
and tracks every suspect statement uttered by the president.
“The flood of presidential
misinformation picked up dramatically as the president campaigned across the
country, holding rallies with his supporters. Each of those rallies usually
yielded 35 to 45 suspect claims. But the president often tacked on interviews
with local media (in which he repeats the same false statements) and gaggles
with the White House press corps before and after his trips…
“The president’s proclivity to twist data and
fabricate stories is on full display at his rallies. He has his greatest hits:
124 times he had falsely said he passed the biggest tax cut in history,
110 times he has asserted that the U.S. economy today is the best in history,
and 92 times he has falsely said his border wall is already being built.
(Congress has allocated only $1.6 billion for fencing, but Trump also
frequently mentioned additional funding that has not yet been appropriated.)
All three of those claims are on The Fact Checker’s list of
Bottomless Pinocchios.
“In terms of subjects, false or misleading
claims about immigration top the list, totaling 1,076. Claims about foreign
policy and trade tied for second, with 822 claims, followed by claims about the
economy (765) and jobs (741).” The Washington Post, December 21st.
Can democracy survive when voters accept what an obviously-lying president
says, more than a self-admitted tendency toward hyperbole? Some forgive this
mendacity as “oh well, he exaggerates, so what” but accept his lies over what
he has actually accomplished and its purported benefits to a majority of
Americans.
For example, a tax reform act that has not
produced new well-paying jobs, has increased our deficit by hundreds of
billions of dollars and rewarded the super-rich not only with lower taxes but
one trillion dollars of stock buybacks. He scoffs at “man-induced” climate
change in the face of mega-storms, unprecedented coastal flooding, droughts and
incredible wildfires. His deregulation exacerbates the problem, increases
pollution even into our drinking water and slams too many with higher
healthcare costs and lost coverage. His base still believes he is working for
them. Does truth even matter anymore?
Indeed, the tsunami of media and directed
communications flooding all of us has created an unusual level of filtration
against any contradictory information. Folks who are addicted to Fox News
wouldn’t be caught dead watching MSNBC, and vice versa. Our vocabulary is now
littered with new amazing pejoratives against truth: “fake news” is used to
negate that which we do not want to hear; “alternative facts” and “truth is not
truth” are used to explain away undeniable inconsistencies, and denial in the
face of an obvious reality becomes “truth” if repeated enough.
This filtration system, combined with the overflow
of mass communications, has enabled foreign nations with complex
auto-analytical software and robotic targeting to spread disinformation across
the land. Russians have conclusively targeted U.S. voters with clear
vulnerabilities and biases to discourage Democrats (and Hillary Clinton voters)
from casting ballots while emboldening conspiracy theorists with false
“information” to enhance Republicans and get Donald – I lost the popular vote –
Trump elected. They really understood how to select swing areas, neglected by
Clinton, to move key electoral districts toward Trump. It is a technique that
Russia now deploys everywhere it wishes to destabilize a democratic regime.
Which brings us to trying to grapple with this
democracy-destroying trend of elevating lies to a “believable false truth.”
Writing for the December 24th Los Angeles Times, Melissa Healy,
delves deeper: “In a
modern democracy, peddling conspiracies for political advantage is perhaps not
so different from seeding an epidemic… If a virus is to gain a foothold with
the electorate, it will need a population of likely believers (‘susceptibles’
in public-health speak), a germ nimble enough to infect new hosts easily (an
irresistible tall tale), and an eager ‘amen choir’ (also known as ‘super-spreaders’).
“Unleashed on the body politic, a
falsehood may spread across the social networks that supply us with
information. Facebook is a doorknob slathered in germs, Twitter a sneezing
co-worker, and Instagram a child returning home after a day at school, ensuring
the exposure of all… But if lies, conspiracies and fake news are really like
germs, you might think that fact-checking is the cure, and truth an effective
antidote.
“If only it were that easy.
“New research offers fresh insights
into the stubborn role of ideology in maintaining support for those who peddle
falsehoods, and the limited power of fact-checking to change voters’ minds.
Even in the face of immediate and authoritative corrections, we humans don’t
budge easily, or for long, from established opinions about politics,
politicians and the coverage they receive… And some of us — in particular,
those who endorse conservative positions — are quicker to believe assertions
that warn of grim consequences or of sinister forces at work.
“The findings of three new studies
suggest that fact-checkers had better be persistent, and that their
expectations of changing people’s minds had better be modest… But the research
also suggests that if fact-checkers want the truth to matter, they should not
be shy about touting the value of their services… A Fact Checker poll released
this month found that more than 6 in 10 Americans believe fact-checkers when
they conclude that Trump has made a false claim — meaning that more than
one-third of them do not.
“Is credulity, and a vague mistrust
of fact-checkers, unique to Americans, or is it a broader attribute of humans?
It may be a bit of both… In a study published Tuesday [12/18] and conducted
with a sample of 370 Australians, researchers found that the veracity of a
political candidate’s claims does matter to voters — sometimes. When Australian
subjects were shown an array of politicians’ false statements corrected by
fact-checking, they reduced their belief of those assertions. When they were
shown fact-checked true statements, whether attributed to a politician on the
right or one on the left, their belief in the assertions increased as well.
“This fact-checking changed subjects’
views about which politicians they supported, but only slightly — only when
false statements outnumbered true statements by a ratio of 4 to 1. When false
statements and true statements were attributed to a candidate in equal numbers
— four falsehoods in balance with four true statements — Australian subjects
didn’t change their opinions at all… Those results, which are not yet
published, suggest that, although both Americans and Australians are capable of
distinguishing fact from fiction (with help from fact-checkers), they are loath
to alter their overall view of their favored candidate accordingly…
“But there was a hitch: In addition
to being very small, subjects’ shifts in attitude became evident only when
their news feeds included an occasional ‘defense of journalism’ article.
Usually, these were opinion pieces that countered attacks on the profession… ‘Without
defense of journalism, fact checking had no effect on any of these outcomes,’
Raymond J. Pingree, a professor of mass communications at Louisiana State
University, and his coauthors concluded…
“As [voters] moved further right on
the ideological spectrum, people were consistently more likely to believe
frightening false claims and found them more credible than emotionally neutral
falsehoods. The results [of another supporting anthropological study at UCLA]
were published this month in PLOS One.
“That dynamic has worrisome
implications: When believers of ominous warnings succeed at the polls, ‘they
have the megaphone that power brings,’ [Anthropologist Daniel] Fessler said [in
that UCLA study]. ‘And they use that — whether cynically or genuinely I can’t
tell — to issue additional proclamations of danger.’… This, he said, has been
Trump’s stock in trade — foreign powers are taking advantage of the U.S.,
dangerous hordes are storming the borders, and we must build a wall to keep
would-be invaders at bay.
“‘That cycle is very difficult to
break,’ Fessler said. What’s more, warning people who are inclined to believe
that kind of narrative that they’re being lied to seems more likely to
reinforce the conspiracy theory than to induce a change of heart… ‘I do worry,’
he said.” So do I. We seem to have added “fake danger” to our vocabulary; that
concept appears to be the justification for so many rather dramatically
incorrect policy decisions and actions.
Whistleblowers are still demeaned and
persecuted. Military and uniformed services are increasingly encouraged to
honor a “code of silence” against their “own” atrocities. Too many universities
and the Catholic Church suffer from a need to deny the worst of conduct. Truth
suppression is the new normal. Exactly
who are we? What have we become? Indeed, the future of democracy and democratic
nations is very much at risk.
I’m Peter Dekom, and I hope that the X and Y
generations bring a healthy dose of skepticism to these political rantings with
a strong desire to know the truth, because if they don’t...
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment