"A popular government without popular information, or the means of acquiring it,
is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”
President James Madison, 1822
We live in an era of “fake news, hoaxes, witch hunts, deep state and alternative facts.” For the followers of such precepts, for the media that generates advertising and subscription dollars by reinforcing such distortions, the resulting belief system mirrors more a fanatical religious commitment well beyond a mere political opinion. The result is a powerful demonization of those who do not share those passionate beliefs, a rejection as “obvious falsehoods” any information that contradicts such perceptions and an increasing inability even to listen to the “other side.” Yes, blue liberals, you are as guilty as MAGA Republicans in refusing to listen to the visions, fears and how life has changed for “the other side” in ways that they cannot accept.
This definition of irreconcilable differences, polarization on steroids, makes a mockery of our very name: the United States of America. It is also the most fertile soil for conspiracy theories, demonization and blame, plus where autocracy can plant its most toxic but vigorous roots. But America has changed, left many behind, and saddled us all with catastrophic visions of the future.
The ravages of climate change are terrifying, inflicting incredible disasters everywhere. Even the most optimistic of us understands that containing global warming is intensely complicated, mind-bendingly expensive and will force economic sacrifice that will make the seemingly deteriorating world we live in so much worse. The notion of major and minor global conflicts, many so far away from our shores, forcing us to spend massive tax dollars in ways where many cannot fathom the benefits, further distorts our hope for the future. Will another pandemic push government, once again, to close our schools and businesses or force us to get inoculations… again? And who among us is trying to take away what little we have left? Different assumed truths generate different perceptions of what should be done about our world.
In times of seismic change for the worse, humanity has always been ready to assign blame, some deserved (like the horrors of slave owners) while others just convenient historical memes (like Jews in WWII Germany). But blame can create a common enemy that autocrats can use to concentrate their uniform “only I can fix it” response, the bedrock of dictatorships. It all stems from the assumed axioms and “factual” realities of the relevant constituency. As our fourth President, James Madison, effectively said in the above quote five years after leaving office, democracy depends on a general acceptance of a common pool of facts by the body politic.
An editorial (December 14th) from the prestigious British journal, The Economist, is watching the campaign for the 2024 US election as an experiment where democracy itself is truly up for a voluntary change by the voters. The story ends with this: “America progressed from narrowcast media and a limited franchise in the early days of the republic to broadcast media and universal suffrage. It has never had narrowcast media and universal suffrage at the same time. As a newspaper founded to promote classical liberalism, The Economist would like to think they can coexist happily. Next year’s election will be the test.” But they authors notes some salient points:
“As the turmoil at America’s elite universities over antisemitism shows, creating a political culture in which people can argue constructively, disagree and compromise is not something that happens spontaneously. In media, business models, technology and culture can work together to create those conditions. They can also pull in the opposite direction. Our analysis of over 600,000 pieces of written and television journalism shows that the language of the mainstream American media has drifted away from the political centre, towards the Democratic Party’s preferred terminology and topics. That could lower the media’s credibility among conservatives… As the country braces for next year’s election, it is worth thinking about the internal forces that deepened this rift. You can take comfort from the fact that the industry has been buffeted time and again during its long history, yet somehow survived. The worry is that today’s lurch may prove worse than any before.
“One of those forces is technological disruption. From printing to the mobile web, new media tend to disrupt authority. That is good news if you live in an autocracy. In America, though, technologies have often brought trouble. Father Charles Coughlin, a pioneering demagogue in the 1930s, used radio to reach a mass audience before Republicans and Democrats got the hang of it. Cable news helped foment a revolution in the Republican Party. It is hard to see how Donald Trump could have become the party’s nominee in 2016 without the ability to speak directly to tens of millions of Americans in messages of 140 characters. Artificial intelligence (ai) will up-end media once again, for good or ill. It may feed mind-scrambling fakery to anyone who hankers after conspiracy. But, for anyone who wishes to know what is really going on, ai may put a greater premium on filtering out the nonsense.
“Disruption powers fragmentation. The American media have passed through narrowcast ages and broadcast ages. In Madison’s and Jefferson’s day, narrowcasting was the norm: small-circulation partisan journals spoke to different factions of a small elite. Later, the spread of the telegraph and the penny press created mass media. Narrow partisanship was no longer good business. Advertisers wanted to reach as many people as possible and scarce electromagnetic spectrum, which limited the numbers of radio and television stations, led to a system of regulation. All that favoured objectivity: journalists should try to put their opinions aside and stick to the facts.”
Indeed, in my opinion, much of this journalistic fragmentation began with “cable news,” a strong vector of early American television’s half hour network segment of the nightly news, perhaps with a preceding half hour of local “news, weather and sports.” Even as cable news learned to recycle news, usually repeating three-hour cycles during the day with a few updates, the drive for ratings ($$$), filling 24-hours with enough “new programming” gave way to colorful personalities with flamboyant opinions wind-surfing on a menu of “whatever sells” approach to television “news.” “Anchors” became “hosts,” and facts mattered less than ratings.
“Why does this matter? Although most Americans do not regularly read a newspaper or watch cable news, elites matter in democracies. When different political camps exist in separate information universes, they tend to demonise each other. If you are told Joe Biden is in the grip of a cabal of antisemitic socialists, then voting for Mr Trump makes perfect sense. If Trump supporters are anti-democratic racists, why bother trying to win them over? As a result, the parties will find it even harder to reach the compromises that are essential for sustained good government. If the elites cannot see the world as it is, they will make bad decisions.
“As well as being a problem for politics and journalism, this is also a threat to core liberal ideas: that arguments need to be strength-tested, that insights can be found in unusual places and that encountering opposing views and uncomfortable facts is usually a good thing. These ideas will be challenged by newsrooms that see ‘objectivity’ as a sleight of hand which privileged groups use to embed their own power. Old-style liberals may have to adapt to ai-powered business models that reward those who tell people everything they already think is true is true.” The Economist. Yup, the same AI that will disrupt the job market, accelerate income inequality and provide convenient technology to manufacture what convincingly looks like truth.
I’m Peter Dekom, and why are you so puzzled at why so many people want someone, be it God or an autocrat with simple promises they cannot keep, to come and in make it all good “again”?
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