Trumpism: Long-Term Misinformation Campaigns Confuse Incivility with Virtue

Does the Ohio Civility Consortium ‘sound naïve’ as a leader of that group noted in the today’s Beacon Journal?  In a word: yes.  I applaud and support their effort, but  the article itself concurred, at least in part.

“Usual fixes were suggested: get money out of politics, make elections publicly funded and draw up competitive US Congressional districts.” 

As framed in the article, the suggestion is these were all mentioned without seriousness of purpose, without concrete plans to take on the powerful interests of those who benefit from the existing campaign finance and redistricting structures—many of whom were speakers at this gathering.

Then the article added that the group also discussed “innovative solutions,”  including building relationships among legislators to bring back the ‘good old days’ where legislators from both sides were friends, or public education efforts requiring civics in Ohio schools, and (of course) coming to grips with the internet and social media.

Of course, this list is hardly innovative.  Any discussion of politics, from the local pub to these former elected officials at the Ohio Civility Commission always includes, actually usually focuses on, each one of these ‘innovative solutions,' without a seriousness of purpose such that they ‘create a rhetorical Bermuda Triangle where everything drowns in a sea of empty posturing’ (thanks JSmooth) and then someone blames it on the media and we forget the whole thing ever happened.

What follows in the article is the usual pabulum.   Media sensationalism, as we have seen Trump exploit, is always an attention grabbing story line that reinforces nonsensical analytical frames ‘blaming the media.’  We are reminded that negative ads work even as they encourage citizens to lose faith in the system, that “the coverage of the presidential race is over the top,” and “it’s show business,” and there are more important issues to be discussing.  

And of course, there is the mandatory blaming of the average citizen who consumes the news (and by extension is to blame for both incivility and Trumpism).

Bunk.

In the same paper, we read Michael Gerson attempting to persuade Republicans who he says are ‘beginning to make their inner peace with Trump' that this is a bad move and in doing that he makes this observation:

“What the argument for accommodation is missing is the core reality about Trump.  His answer to nearly every problem is himself….  We are supposed to turn in desperation to the talent and will of one man who happens to be bristling with prejudice and blazing with ignorance.  We are seeing the offer of personal rule by someone with no discernible public or personal virtues…. [a man who] has offered disaffected people an invitation to political violence.”

The rise of Trumpism reveals the chasm between conversations among former elected officials and other public and private sector establishment figures about a return to civility and the deep and abiding culpability of our ruling establishment in creating the conditions that make Trumpism--incivility as virtue--possible and entirely foreseeable.

Candidates, elected officials, talking heads, think tank analysts, many academics and more have stoked the flames of American anti-intellectualism for decades.  Their motivations vary—from highlighting culture wars to mobilize voter segments likely to elect a favored candidate to diverting public attention from leadership failures to aim average citizen disgust at other citizens—but the outcome has been the same.

A steady diet of misinformation has encouraged large segments of our population to believe that Trumpism is a viable answer—that we cannot trust democratic governance or elected officials or ‘the media,’ or ivory tower academics and their ‘data,’ or anyone other than the guy who tells me I have been right all along.  The solutions are simple.  Let’s just give those who disagree an ass-kicking for their ignorance and welcome back the American Dream.

We have all cringed over the individual illustrations: creationism, climate change, vaccinations, the virtue of an unfettered free market, great man versions of history, interventionism is always the best first option, zero tolerance is an effective approach to crime and violence, birthers, all Muslims are terrorists, an inability to agree with those who remind us that black lives matter, and more.

Even though we all know that ‘The Media’ as a monological unit makes no sense.  After all, reporters skew liberal while editors and publishers lean conservative, and it is difficult to imagine Fox News and NPR on the same team in any game.  But even those at the Ohio Civility Commission repeat this tired script and pronounce ‘the media’ as a central culprit…only to invite the predictable retort from media elites that average citizens get ‘The Media’ that they ask for. 

We can circle these wagons only for so long before we just get off the merry-go-round and see that this way of framing the conversation sets us up to find Trumpism ‘incomprehensible,’ rather than just the next step in elite misinformation campaigns.

When we unpack ‘The Media,’ we see, hidden in plain sight, our everyday communication system driven by elites exploiting media outlets, including social media, to outflank traditional filters and avoid countervailing forces that might check and balance--tactics now central to Trumpism.  (Note: this does not remove citizen or reporter or publisher culpability, but only moves them into a shared culpability frame where they are not the most influential source determining what will be ‘the news,’ as we have seen Trump play the dominant role recently in defining what is news.)

Further, these elites misinformation efforts are not random, but loosely coordinated.  Recently the most virulent form of coordination was called the ‘Republican Noise Machine,’ by one former Republican insider, or unpatriotic obstructionism in the words of moderate and conservative co-authors Mann &Ornstein, or in an effort to pretend this ‘just happened without agency or elite finger prints’ the phenomena is sometimes bemoaned as an agentless Echo Chamber.

There are forces poised against this trend.  Many public and private sector elites continue to insist on data-driven decision making, even when it challenges ideological preferences, advancing powerful (but still largely ignored by candidates and parties) new media tools like fact checking, seeking rule changes that favor moderate, compromise-willing, candidates and elected officials willing to regulate in the public interest, tax and spend with prudence, and model the kind of thoughtful leadership (Paul Wellstone, John Danforth and others like them on both sides) that focuses on problem solving for the nation rather than headline skewing for the party.

While the Ohio Civility Commission has its heart in the right place, efforts to stop Trumpism through civility must draw everyone’s attention to the intersection of these ongoing, decades-long, misinformation campaigns that together form a powerful public pedagogy designed to reinforce the powerful and distract & divide the power-poor.  A powerful public pedagogy that no educational reform can effectively counteract.

Civility has to have a truth factor.  It has to address those, particularly the most powerful among us, who intentionally seek to mislead and misinform.  Without this, the effort will indeed prove naive.