It’s a new year, and Americans need to talk. But communication is hard. It has always been hard, even between people who speak the same language.
It isn’t just the crazy, although in the era of Trump, crazy seems to dominate. A recent article in the Atlantic, titled “Let’s Talk About Trump’s Gibberish,” noted the insane stuff that comes out of his mouth and then becomes subject to the media’s “sane-washing.”
For too long, Trump has gotten away with pretending that his emotional issues are just part of some offbeat New York charm or an expression of his enthusiasm for public performance. But Trump is obviously unfit—and something is profoundly wrong with a political environment in which he can now say almost anything, no matter how weird, and his comments will get a couple of days of coverage and then a shrug, as if to say: Another day, another Trump rant about sharks.
The article quoted one of Trump’s frequent departures from rationality. In a campaign speech, his digression focused on a fanciful encounter with a shark. “I say, ‘What would happen if the boat sank from its weight and you’re in the boat, and you have this tremendously powerful battery, and the battery’s now underwater, and there’s a shark that’s approximately 10 yards over there?’”This bizzare detour from the ostensible subject of the speech went on–and on– with Trump clarifying that–assuming he had his choice, he’d rather be zapped than eaten.
Evidently, people who voted for Trump simply discount his looney-tunes digressions (along with yesterday’s list of appalling behaviors). More to the point, the proliferation of disinformation, distortion and click-bait has desensitized us to “communication” that ought to alarm us–or at least signal that the speaker is mentally ill.
What, if anything, can we do about an information environment rife with intentional lies and propaganda and the purposeful “flooding of the zone”? (I believe it was Hannah Arendt who observed that propaganda isn’t intended to make us believe X rather than Y–it’s meant to destroy our ability to believe anything.)
Countering the ocean of disinformation we swim in was the subject of a December article in Common Dreams.
It’s a crisis. America is now among 11 nations deemed most threatened by both mis-and disinformation.
Little wonder that almost 90% of us fear our country is on the “wrong track.” And, President-elect Trump has led the way with 492 suspect claims in just the first hundred days of his first presidency. Then, before the 2020 vote, in a single day he made 503 false or misleading claims. By term’s end he’d uttered 30,573 lies, reports The Washington Post.
Now, he is joined by his promoter Elon Musk who is flooding his own platform X with disinformation—for example, about the bipartisan end-of-year funding deal.
Irish philosopher Vittorio Bufacchi distinguishes between lies, which are about a particular event, and “post -truth,” which is a “shift to another reality” –one where facts simply don’t matter anymore.
The article tackles the important question: what can we do to restore the centrality of fact to our discourse?
One key will be more independent and public journalism, including PBS and NPR, driven not by narrow profit or partisan agendas. As local journalism—perhaps easiest to hold accountable—has suffered a sharp decline in the past decades, state and local governments can step up with financial support and incentives. Here, many peer nations can inspire us.
The article points to an experiment from New Zealand, which it calls a “unique approach.”
Since 1989, its Broadcast Standards Authority has offered an easily accessible, transparent online platform for any citizen to call out disinformation. The authority is tasked with investigating and requiring removal of what is both false and harmful material.
The BSA seems to have been both cautious and effective.
In the early years, complaints were upheld in 30% of cases. But by 2021-22, those upheld had shrunk to just under 5%. That’s a big change. And, a possible implication? Knowing one can be exposed for harmful lies can discourage perpetrators.
Such a mechanism would help the ordinary citizens who cannot afford the financial cost of a lawsuit for defamation, which is our (expensive) remedy for such harms. Requiring courses in media literacy in the schools is a longer-term but important effort.
The problem–as I have repeatedly noted–is our very human proclivity for confirmation bias. People who share Trump’s hatred for “others” and don’t want to believe he is unfit for public office will gravitate to sites that characterize his “shark” episodes as humor and his ugly attacks as “locker-room jokes.”
If “post truth” is “pre fascism,” as Timothy Snyder asserts, we’re in a lot of trouble.
Well the New Zealand concept is quite brilliant! Will it ever happen under a Trump regime? How can we implement this (and I don’t mean this in a sarcastic way)? Any ideas?
During Trump’s campaign, a number of his appointees who had spoken against his “election steal” rants but came forward to support his election campaign said, “Those things he says are just the way he talks.” Gordon Sondlund, Trump’s former Ambassador to EU. So far, among his chosen Cabinet members and appointees to high level positions, none appear to be any more qualified, enlightened or intelligent than Sondlund and will probably all agree with his assessment of Trump’s gibberish.
“Evidently, people who voted for Trump simply discount his looney-tunes digressions (along with yesterday’s list of appalling behaviors). More to the point, the proliferation of disinformation, distortion and click-bait has desensitized us to “communication” that ought to alarm us–or at least signal that the speaker is mentally ill.”
My youngest brother was actually mentally ill and violent at times; he was also highly intelligent, loving and funny at other times. There are no breaks in Trump’s mental illness or crazy actions and we are in grave danger of surviving his second term and come out the other side as the United States of America. I woke up during the night, looked at my clock which read 3:35; I was hit with a sense of profound depression that 2025 arrived, intact, dragging Trump along with it like an incomplete abortion. Can we survive another onslaught of racism and hatred operating on the whims of his mental derangement?
Happy New Year???
The New Zealand experiment is not possible in the USA. For it to be successful, you need the populace to be interested in determining the actual truth, and MAGA is _not_ interested.
This is why a field interviewer can ask a Trump voter about some bizarre thing that Trump did or said, but attribute it to Biden, and the Trump voter will denounce it in the strongest terms. Then, as soon as the interviewer says “whoops” and notes that it was Trump not Biden, the Trump voter immediately pivots to excusing–or even outright supporting–it.
19 days and counting! Is January 6th going to be a paid holiday? Jump the shark day? Kill the shark? Eat the shark? Eaten by a shark? 🦈 Will the battery retain its charge under salt water? Is it one of those old lead acid batteries? Lithium ion? Nickel cadmium? He should have elaborated a little more. As far as fascism goes, we are there. You’ve got them all exercising those tongue muscles so they can lick the boots of the boss. They noticed how well Musk is doing, and he’s in line for a much larger payday. There is no shaming anyone anymore, as long as they reach their goal. Ask Bezos, or, The Big Brother Zucker! It sounds like a really bad B movie, except it’s not! They need to remember to bend at the waist to kiss the ring and the knee for the boots. That’s how accidents happen.
You’ve got the supreme Court telling everyone to not ignore their rulings, that they must show a certain amount of decorum and respect for the rule of law. Except, they can’t do that themselves. So, that high horse is really just a pygmy pony. It isn’t too late, say it ain’t so Joe! It’s going to be really lousy to be known as the next Neville Chamberlain, that is if there’s even any rational history after January 20th.
I remember when I was a teenager sitting on the steps, my mother was cooking standing in front of the window. I looked out and saw this plane dropping it lower and lower and it wasn’t over the airport. I told her to call 911 there’s a plane that’s going to crash, she said there’s no plan going to crash, I said it’s going to crash, she said quit clowning around, then I told her it just crashed call 911! When you see something coming, and no one wants to listen, you got a problem, actually everyone’s going to have a problem.
Like JoAnn, last night “I was hit with a sense of profound depression that 2025 arrived, intact, dragging Trump along with it like an incomplete abortion.” What a great analogy!
I’m too tired from events of the past couple of months to even kvetch about things. We’re stuck in muck up to our axles and I don’t see any help in sight. The only ray of hope right now is that Musk won’t be able to abolish or hopelessly rig future elections and that the midterms in 2026 bring some folks who actually care about America to Washington.
Meanwhile, this is for JoAnn: yesterday you opined that you’d outlived your usefulness. I strongly disagree. Your comments are always thoughtful, well considered, and astute, and I always look forward to seeing what you have to say. This gathering of commenters wouldn’t be the same without you.
At the beginning moments of second period class, the principal speaks into a microphone set up in his office to broadcast announcements and maybe a thought for the day. By the third period, the principal’s announcements seemed inconsequential as teachers stuck to their lesson plans and 4 + 2 still equals 6. Remember? You still remember the good teachers names and not much about the principal unless he or she was exceptional. Relax. The best thing for all of us is to let Donald have his Oral Office microphone to make announcements. Then we convince him he is the best thing since sliced bread. Nothing consequential will happen because he won’t really know the difference. The state will continue following protocol. Don’t forget to turnout the lights when the party’s over. Oh wait! That’s not Don Trump! It’s the return of Don Meredith! Happy New Year. 😇
Many folks worry about AI (Artificial Intelligence) when we should be worried about the state of its precursor, human intelligence. After all, many US humans devised the Musk/Trump/Vance era (MTV), proving that silicon bits and bytes are now more reliable for arriving at the best answer than social biochemical ones.
The Other Sheila; thank you.
John Sorg; am I the only one questioning why “our side” is not making a major issue of the fact that Elon Musk is an immigrant and has been given such high authority over this nation? No sign from Trump that Musk will be one of the first deported immigrants and he is certainly the easiest one to find…connected at the hip to Trump!
Will ending the American birthright citizenship be retroactive? If so, that includes FOUR of Trump’s five children. He stated his deportation of immigrants will include some American citizens; how will they be chosen, for what reason and by whom?
For some reason, President John Kennedy’s Bay of Pigs situation has been on my mind recently; those who were against his stand against Russia deploying nuclear weaponry storage in Cuba, 93 miles from Florida’s coast, have probably made no connection to Trump’s continuing relationship with Putin and ending our diplomatic relationship with Cuba brought about by President Obama. We need to be watching that relationship closely with Trump’s hopes to “just nuke ’em” an unnamed personal enemy of his. Has his mental instability made the connection to how close Mar-A-Lago is to Cuba and the Cuba/Russia connection? The possibilities of nuclear war from any direction is now edging closer by the day.
Who can we talk to and which subject would be first on the Agenda?
The problem always is that the choir preaching the truth never falls on the ears of the ones who need to hear it the most. So NPR and PBS et al are only listened to by those of us who give a damn about what is actually happening in the world, and both sides only become more and more entrenched in their own bubble, one the truth and one full of mis- and dis- information. I don’t see that changing, and the only solution is to beef up the ranks of the truth believers until the other side can’t win. Let’s hope that begins with the mid terms.
It took me the last nine (9) years to get Zuck’s team of “lie detectors” to stop threatening all kinds of consequences for my pretty tame and mediocre efforts on facebook. I had gone through all of the steps to be “verified”, which is unnecessarily somewhat intrusive and threatening in itself. I have shared many things on my pages, on occasion I share something with some pretty thorough and strong points. But I’m a researcher and love verifying everything, and I don’t share anything that I couldn’t verify pretty thoroughly. I like getting all kinds of opinions about subjects and how they are handled. I use AI to get extra ideas about ways to handle some subjects, not to verify except to locate other resources and how dependable they are to help in verification. AI can help in many ways, but I regularly desugared AI material simply for not having enough information or approaching necessary perspectives that I consider pertinent to any specific subjects. I quite enjoy arguing with AI until it acknowledges that I have a pertinent point of view, usually from resources that I have already verified before talking with AI about a subject. Even with all of that, certain “lie detectors” who were obviously only there to harass non-maga efforts would threaten and report my “stuff” as untrue and remove posts, block them, or post messages on them for all to see saying they were found to be untrue. Receiving messages from these anonymous “lie detectors” working for Zuck has been nerve racking. I have put too much effort into all that I do, regardless of whether it has anything to do with politics or not, it is disheartening to be threatened to shut my account down and all of the groups and pages I run. I do genealogy and have several groups and pages about that. I work in many other subjects and have several groups and pages for those. I haven’t made any money on any of it, but they sure want me to pay them for using the platform. Which is another way to threaten and harass people they don’t like. So far, I’m not giving up on facebook even though I have given up on a few other social media giants. I have too many meaningful connections over the years to just let it all go. What it all comes down to, related to this blog post, is that if there’s going to be reporting of issues, especially about mis and dis-information, there needs to be a watch on who’s doing the “lie detecting”. I haven’t had any problems like this for the last couple of months. It may be that they are satisfied with the election and don’t think the resistance will continue after the inauguration. Surely maga is bound to get more drastic as things don’t work out the way they want them to. It’s bound to happen though, because every inch they get they turn into another mile of demands. At what point will so-called authorities throw their hands in the air and just give up on holding them responsible? Hopefully never, but it seems like the T-maga plan is to accomplish just that level of silencing by overwhelming everyone with the lack of evidence of all their lies.
Folk will wake up when their jobs are gone and their children are in a ‘conflict overseas’.
Mclv, I doubt it. The entrenched Trump-ites have pulled the lid over their silo. They’ll find a way to blame their personal miseries on Democrats or “wokeness”, or some other idiotic meme. It’s who they are. They are Trump and Trump is them: mindlessly insane. There is NO communicating with those who have no ears, no mind or no eyes for the truth.
Well, if the followers of the Democrat Party think they are consuming the truth while Republican followers are consuming propaganda, the oligarchy already has you in its grips. With that equation, the blue pill swallowers are defending the military-industrial complex and Wall Street – the “establishment.” It’s the party of the status quo, or as Hillary loved to say, “I am a progressive, but it’s all about incremental changes.” If you think Hillary is a progressive, then the propaganda corps at the liberal press has done its job.
Our press is so bad now that they literally write their stories around social media posts. Speaking of the Atlantic, they are stealing “journalists” from Bezos to keep tabs on Trump and his cronies for the next four years. Will they disclose how the oligarchy runs the show and why, or will they be a reactive story-telling medium?
MAGATs don’t read the Atlantic, so we all know who they are targeting with their publication. Will we get the truth or the superficial reactionary rants they’ve been printing for decades?
After all the arguing over a government shutdown and our $35 trillion in debt, #GenocideJoe gave Ukraine another $2 billion to keep up the proxy war against Russia, knowing Trump will likely end it within the first month. Will Hegseth (or his replacement) order an IG to take an audit of all the money and weapons sent to Ukraine? Who has pocketed billions and millions from that CIA adventure, and why? Did it fund the rebels from both sides in Syria?
Trump isn’t the cause of our issues—he’s just a symptom of the nation’s decay, which has been transpiring for decades. If you haven’t noticed, Musk has been the media’s focus because of the enormity of his contribution to Trump. He is our shadow president and a product of Silicon Valley. For some reason, the media has ignored Peter Thiel, JD Vance’s mentor and adopted father figure. Silicon Valley isn’t an accident, either! I would strongly recommend a deep dive into this CIA creation with Whitney Webb, a real journalist who is exceptionally well-researched and fearless. I’ve listened to Whitney for years, and she is knowledgeable. She’s written several books that will make your jaws drop…
Here is her latest article about Vance and Thiel to help you start off the New Year with a deep dive into the Tech Mafia:
https://unlimitedhangout.com/2024/07/investigative-reports/the-man-behind-trumps-vp-pick-its-worse-than-you-think/
flood the airwaves with stuff. take over the airwaves because it sells ads,and trumps stuff. (thats anything he says) now add billionaire shareholders who demand we listen. add car and cell phone,etc.hide out all day getting bombarded with constant ads and hate from rightwing virtuosos,and wondering if that jerk next to you is sound. seems the complete circle of attention is on whatever trump,has said. weve locked ourselves up in a room of constant fear and mongering. our societal makings are now electronic parroting and aggression. seems the human is no warrior against what a group of think tanks and trump can take over. human needs anyone?
Misinformation = unintentional lies
Disinformation = intentional lies
We get Misinformation from people who read or heard something that sounded right and passed it along without checking its veracity.
We get Disinformation from people decide to pass along something they saw or heard
despite knowing that it’s not true.
Who is more culpable? Is it the lazy liar or the lying liar?
Lipstick on the pig, once again. A lie is a lie! If we don’t stop trying to make everything sound less threatening, we will never win the war of words that we are in with MAGATS.
For those who still depend on NPR/PBS…whatever little government funding they have, it is on the chopping block. New Year? Yes….Happy….doubtful…
The NYT was deflecting t*ump’s crazy talk during the campaign and at the same time going on for pages about Biden’s slips and mental capacity, and now that they helped engineer t*ump’s election success they will spend pages on his insane talks and actions because that is what sells their newspapers.
The first thing that MAGA will do is go after NPR/PBS because they must control the narrative so they can put forth the history that they want. It is well worth the time to make note of what happens, when it happens, who is doing it, and why it is being done to maintain a written record of events. That way facts have a chance of surviving in a post-truth era.
Robbie, you need to read Whitney’s article, which I referenced above. Most people think Zuckerberg’s Facebook is a social media site. It’s actually a data-gathering site with the same premise as Google and cookies. You’ll be on a list if you use keywords that they find offensive. It’s all a national surveillance network that began during Reagan and Poindexter and developed into one that Edward Snowden and Julian Assange warned us about. 😉
Thank you, Sheila. I appreciate your open observations, and your thinking and sharing. These are troubling times – we need more people like you and Heather Cox Richardson to support what many of “we, the people” believe, but don’t have the talent to express it. Let’s for the 2025 year to be one of learning and figuring out ways to help our country. I want other countries to continue to respect us, and that will take lots of work. Blessings on you.
Happy New Year, if possible. At 81 I am concerned for my 11 year old granddaughter. She is exceptionally bright. I want a better world for her future. I admit after running for office two years ago with qualifications and getting beat was a blow to my energy. I worry…I am old….and I am tired! I find that most people don’t give a damn as long as they can buy illegal drugs, alcohol, smokes, food including snacks, gasoline and have a place to lay down their head. They come from families that are able to breed more like themselves and they continue breeding because it feels good. Education is so very important for our society so they understand that it isn’t about just getting by! The road ahead will not be easy and there is a lot of work ahead! Love and Hugs, SLS
Yes, i too came to 2025 with som e serious trepidation. We will be treated to a shit-show, and can choose to collapse, or to stand straight and look for ways to thrive.
Musk, by the way, I have read, is not just an immigrant, but an illegal one. How valid that is, is beyond my understanding. Anyone else have related info?
Mitch D; I did a little Googling and found numerous conflicting reports on Musk’s immigrant/citizenship/legal/illegal status.
Newsweek, 11/1/24: Elon Musk facing immigration problems for allegedly working in America without an employment visa and could be deported.
Politifact, 11/28/24: He immigrated to the United States as a student in 1992 and became a citizen in 2002 per a 2023 biography.
Other sites had other status reports offering situations regarding immigrant/citizen/legal/illegal and all levels of his situation(s) in between, depending on who was reporting. Remember he is now Trump’s sometime right-hand-man and at other times in a questionable position close to the president elect or being ignored by him. It all sums up to the normal chaotic MAGA politica and Trump gibberish at different times on different days.
Does that help you at all regarding the status of space cadet Musk?
FYI Musk is a citizen now, but he did overstay his visa. One thing you won’t hear from right wing news is that that is how we get most immigrants.
What I would like to know is how secure Melania’s parents are?
No matter what we call it, the chaos and lies coming from T and the rat are going to be a constant as they have every day since he rode on his golden staircase. I have turn off NPR and PBS news sources for several months as I found their sane-plaining just as egregious as on the other MSM.
It is a constant challenge to verify the truth of almost anything the usual previously trusted sources are clearly compromised by ownership in the hands of yet another billionaire/oligarch.
Peggy; how can you be so positive the source you read is the true information about Musk’s status?
Melania’s mother died a few years ago; that information was on actual news broadcasts.
Democrats need to stop preaching to the converted and fight fire with fire. Get on Fox, Newsmax and flood X with left wing propaganda – and invade the echo chamber. You can’t change people’s minds if they can’t hear you.
JoAnn, yes, while that is full of conflicting info, it is helpful to see it all ion one place.
And, Peggy, thank you as well.