I had a friend, now deceased, who eagerly fell for every screwball rumor heard on talk radio or published in the National Enquirer. A perfectly ordinary person in every other way, the affinity for rumors, the more apocalyptic the better, seemed to be a big blind spot. Where did that come from? It was a little extreme, but something like it seems to infect a lot of people.
We, I mean you and me, are prone to make categorical assertions for which we have little evidence nor have made the slightest effort to verify. Two popular books make the point. The 1970 book “The Late Great Planet Earth” set off months of conversation among my friends. They were captivated by its assurance that biblical prophecy predicted the end of this age in the decade of the 80s. The argument seemed too rational. How could it be otherwise? Apparently God had not read the book so nothing happened. The second was the 2003 “The DaVinci Code.” It caused enough of a stir for me to hold a class devoted to debunking it. It was, it seems, another book God had not read. Both books were made into movies and featured on television, demonstrating how easy it is for ordinary, reasonably rational people to be seduced down alleys of fictional reality.
The MAGA crowd, led by a skilled huckster, is at the end of one of those alleys and have a loud enough voice to have thrown the nation into divisive turmoil. Established media have aided and abetted the turmoil through non stop color commentary. The unrestrained ubiquity of free-for-all social media platforms has created even more dangerous avenues for the blatantly false to be marketed as the only truth. Sadly, it has sold well.
Taken together they present an image of a divided, chaotic American public in a nation incapable of coherent government. What better opportunity for unfriendly nations and opportunistic agents to add fuel to the fire? It’s easily done through provocative misinformation fed into the social media mix parading as legitimate opinions of real Americans. The hope of unfriendly nations is to hasten the collapse of the U.S.A. as a global leader, while the intent of opportunistic agents is to gain political power and at the same time make a lot of money.
So, is it working? Consider the U.S. House of Representatives, the MAGA political machine, cable news and the polls they report, the answer you’ll no doubt find is yes. But I have my doubts. A scattering of in depth examinations of national conditions suggest that a majority of individuals are optimistic about their own prospects for a comfortable life. It seems that consumers are more price conscious than big business expected and are starting to lower retail prices, albeit unevenly. Even their own purchasing managers are pressuring other big businesses to lower prices for production materials. The strength and resilience of an economy energized by reversing forty years of trickle down supply side policies is gaining public appreciation in the face of the flood of misinformation thrown at it. Biden’s poll numbers aside, his achievements and most policies are broadly appreciated
I admit that my take on this is more intuitive than analytically data driven. Of course the MAGA crowd will continue to yell and scream to get attention. But how much good will it do them when the public is exposed daily to the incoherent ranting of their leader’s erratic thinking, disassociation from reality, and increasingly frequent spoken gibberish?
Don’t get me wrong. We have real problems demanding real solutions. Aside from well publicized domestic issues, the U.S. has to learn how to succeed as one leading nation among a global community of leading nations and other nations asserting their intent to be heard and respected in the global decision making process. Perhaps our most difficult problem will be to establish a new social equilibrium of multi-ethnic respect and harmony. The end of white hegemony will not come easily. It’s long overdue but fear of losing control and place in society inspires a vigorous rear guard resistance.
My hope and intuition tell me that the American people, most of them, treasure the constitutional promises of our liberal democracy. I hope and trust that the apparent surge toward authoritarian Fascist style rule will once again crumble against an electorate not tricked by its false promises. True conservatives, if there are any left, will rediscover that conserving our liberal democracy is the most conservative thing they can do. They need to do what they do best: restrain liberal enthusiasm that has a tendency to reach for more than can be achieved. It’s a symbiotic relationship of cooperative tension that has, and can again, imbue our democracy with enduring strength and stability.
The “enthusiastic” overreach of specifically “progressive” governance has been on display in the major West Coast cities for long enough now to have finally begun to generate a backlash devoted to discriminating “pragmatic results” from “good intentions.” Thus the undoing of the decriminalization of hard drugs in Oregon.
Portland’s City Council demonstrates what follows from “one-party” rule, though the “party” here is not so much the left wing of the Democratic party as a whole ideology.
The logic of “escalation” at the heart of that progressive ideology has now crystalized into the accelerating political violence on display, for example, in the vividly pro-Hamas rally directly in front of the Memorial to the October 7th Nova massacre in downtown Manhattan.
This ideology seeks to “normalize” a “by any means necessary” enthusiasm has an uncanny MAGA mirror-image of the very same dynamic.
Now add the relentless application of social media algorithms that promote “enthusiastic” clicks of extreme positions for profit.
All of which leads where…on the first Tuesday of November?