Incivility: Trump as the
Expected Product of Elite Misinformation Campaigns
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.
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.
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