It’s impossible–at least for thinking people–to live in today’s America without trying to figure out just how we got here.
Most of us start with the obvious question: how could some seventy-seven million people vote for a thoroughly despicable felon who was also a crude, bloviating, intellectually-challenged narcissist? (And yes, I’m afraid one answer to that is that he was a White male despicable felon, and therefore preferable to an accomplished, sane Black female.) But getting hung up over that question ignores another that should be equally obvious, the one with which I began this post: how did we get here? What social and political dislocations and structural problems enabled the election of this profoundly unfit individual, and what explains the millions who continue to support him?
In a recent essay for Axios, Jim Venderhel and Mike Allen offer one perspective on that question. They focus on what they identify as “three once-in-a-lifetime shifts”–the ideologies, tactics and tone of governance; the lightning-fast advancements in AI; and the rapid transformation of how our realities are shaped. They argue that all three are hitting us at once, and that focusing only on Trump misses “the enormity of change pushing our minds and nation somewhere new, different and uncertain.”
They don’t discount the enormous damage Trump has done. As the authors concede, Trump has turned Republicans into an America First fascist movement while stretching presidential powers far beyond their constitutional limits. He has re-shaped both parties–what they stand for and who votes for them, and he has destroyed previous global respect for the United States.
When they write that “whatever politics was before, it won’t be again” it’s hard to disagree.
The essay also references the changes in American society being wrought by AI–changes that are also part of the transformation that I consider most significant and most troubling: the technological advances that have increasingly sorted us into residents of dramatically different realities.
As the authors write,
As a society, we’re breaking into hundreds or thousands of information bubbles, shaped and hardened based on our age, politics, jobs and interests.
Pick six random people (we’ve both done this at dinners). You’ll often find that most get their information from platforms the others never visit, and trust people the others have never heard of. This is a brave new world.
The common window we once collectively looked through has splintered into countless pieces. This change is accelerating with the decline of broadcast TV and cable news, traditional print and digital media, and local news.
In its place: soaring podcasters, YouTubers, Substackers, and digital and encrypted communities. With attention scattered and trust shattered, we’ve grown highly susceptible to manipulation, polarization and persistent frustration.
One of my sons is a “techie,” and in the age of AI, he now distrusts virtually every “news item” he sees online until he checks it out. That includes the “deep fakes” that perfectly mimic genuine photographs.
Whether you agree or disagree with the authors of the Axios essay on the importance of these three shifts in our social environment–or the implied suggestion that they represent something new under the sun–I think it’s impossible to discount their combined effect. (The essay unhelpfully concludes with a hope that “thoughtful people” will spend more time thinking thoughtfully. I didn’t expect them to offer solutions, but failing even to suggest at least some ameliorative actions seemed like a cop-out.)
In a very real way, the three shifts identified in the essay are really just different aspects of a single, enormously consequential change in human society: the ability to curate our preferred realities. Americans no longer have a common understanding of our physical or social environment. The ability to choose our “news”–to seek out “authorities” who will confirm our biases, to “cherry pick” from an infinite supply of facts, half-facts and outright propaganda–enable Trump and his administration to lie repeatedly, knowing that a substantial portion of the population will willingly accept and parrot the disinformation.
One answer to my original question–how could people vote for someone so obviously repulsive and unfit–is that far too many residents of those curated realities were simply unaware of Trump’s unfitness. Voters who limited their information sources to Fox News and its clones didn’t live in the same world the rest of us occupied.
I am increasingly convinced that the most pressing issue we will face if and when we rid ourselves of the MAGA pestilence will be how to reconstruct a common, factual reality. There cannot be functioning communities–local, national or global– without it.
I used to think that corporate America would eventually stop supporting the distribution of lies and BS with their advertising dollars. I was wrong.
I disagree with the “common, factual reality” of the post. When I first got into the journalism field, it was due to the Gannett-owned newspaper in our community. It was the common source of information about our community for decades. They would attend the same meetings I did and communicate with the same people, but their stories were twisted to fit their reality. They would interview people, and then twist their words around completely. I never once got quoted accurately. Turns out, I wasn’t the only one.
I eventually called it their news ego. Due to the nature of the beast, they were the ONLY news outlet in the community; therefore, whatever they wrote was reality to 100,000 people – even more from readers outside the community. There is a sense of power and self-aggrandizement with that situation. They created the news!
I can give thousands of anecdotal stories to drive home the point, but let’s just say that they supported the local oligarchy and the Republican Party because it was financially in their interests. However, what they were peddling was a lie. They distorted the truth, and once the community learned they had been lied to for decades, they couldn’t sell their rag. The only people who were interested were boomers who read the OBITs. 😉
p.s. Trump claims to be America First, but his actions say otherwise. There is a reason that we’ve become known as the Anglo-Zionist Empire. There is absolutely no reason for us to care about Iran, or even Ukraine, but there we are spending a fortune when we can’t afford it.
Your last two paragraphs tell the story. The 77 million who DID vote for this monstrosity have always been with us in some form. But there were also another several % of MAGA who didn’t vote for it/him. Every analysis is skewed by the 81+ million registered voters who didn’t vote at all. So, continuing to worry ourselves to death about what we’ve become and where we’re going centers around whether or not we will be a participative democracy or a fascist dictatorship.
What this episode says to me is that we finally got a wake-up call. Our civic sloth and willful ignorance is being kicked (literally) in the ass by the worst among us. These creatures who’ve been lurking under rocks for decades were finally given permission to come out and vent their rage on the 75% who still believe in the Constitution. The orange monster fuels those dwindling flames every day with some new idiocy and horror. And here we are.
Where we go from here, however, depends on who and what the 75% listen to and think about and decide to take whatever action they can. Yes, there will be a new America. Sadly, I won’t be around to see it. But besides ridding ourselves of the accumulation of government detritus and corruption, new laws, new amendments and reconstructed trust between all of us AND our allies will be necessary.
How did we get here? Well, it wasn’t overnight. It was the gradual breakdown of all the unwritten rules of our lives that once guaranteed civility and stability. And yes, some of those unwritten rules regarding race and gender were bad and needed to go. But on the whole, those rules kept our values high and our way of judging behavior acting as our shield against public debauchery.
Leading the way in the demise of those good and needed rules was…. Hollywood. Yep, that bastion of entertainment where the public learned what was “in”, what was permissible, and what not to be in order to be “cool”. Movies and those who appeared in them became the center for pushing the envelope on unwritten rules, rules like cussing, sexual taboos, blood and violence, and a flaunting of hypocrisy that is openly rewarded. It didn’t help that there was big money to be made by being more outlandish, more violent, more provocative than the last movie out the cutting room door. And America bought it. America imitated it. America became it as it voting for Trump, the most outlandish, the most violent, the most provocative. He is the poster boy of “Life imitating art.”
“One answer to my original question–how could people vote for someone so obviously repulsive and unfit–is that far too many residents of those curated realities were simply unaware of Trump’s unfitness. Voters who limited their information sources to Fox News and its clones didn’t live in the same world the rest of us occupied.”
As most of you know, I often quote lines from movies and/or music, when something strikes me as important I write it down; yesterday I found one while watching “The Karate Kid” again. “Trust the QUALITY of what you know, not the quantity.” We are still be fed loads of Trump’s far-right, MAGA, White Nationalist bullsh*t; in quantities we can’t possibly keep up with. We can either accept is fact or work outside their limited box of alternate facts for answers. We have numerous sources actually at our fingertips with other sources of further information as Sheila’s son uses to go beyond AI as the be-all-know-all which produces the same garbage in-garbage out as other sources. They have more money than the majority of us combined but it hasn’t bought QUALITY to our leadership.
I question the current repeated demands for Trump to apologize for posting the ugly reference to President and First Lady Obama; why do you want him to publicly tell another lie? We need to be concerned about what new, increased attacks by his ICE, Border Patrol and our own National Guard troops is coming after the reported highly successful Bad Bunny performance at the Super Bowl half-time…which kept him from attending the Super Bowl and disrupting the game for attendees and TV viewers.
Sheila is totally correct; “It Isn’t Just Trump…” or his personal billionaires, it is those voters who share his racist, bigoted hatred of “other people” who are “different” and those who are impressed with the unfathomable amounts of money supporting him as proof of his qualifications and deserving his current job.
I participated in No Kings back in the late summer. While I was holding a sign I was approached by a MAGA representative. We exchanged a few words and he asked if I was a Democrat. After I said yes, he told me he didn’t trust Democrats because they spend too much tax money.
I asked how he felt about Trump giving $20 billion to Argentina to prop up his buddy. He said he didn’t know anything about it. Demonstrating the difference in our realities
JoAnn,
The truth is, Trump stayed away from the Super Bowl because he was afraid of being booed again. JD Vance got booed in Italy for the Winter Olympics. Outside of his MAGA cult, they are despised.
Vern,
I wouldn’t ignore Trump’s comments about the federal government controlling the elections, since the “states are just agents of the federal government.” I wonder who told him that. He thinks that every state that votes for Democrats is cheating because he should unanimously win in every state. He’s setting the stage…
Joe McCarthy tried to twist reality with faked photos, and faked “lists” of so-called Commies. Then Faux News came along, run by a fellow who was banished from Australia, because he was such a “special” person. He brought on Roger Ailes, out of the GWB crowd, who twisted anything that came his way.
Murdoch bought the NY Post, just as Bezos bought the Washington Post, and screwed it into the ground. But, millions believed the drivel published there, and still do, I’m sure. Now, Pillow Man is running for congress, never having produced the “proof” he claimed would change the 2020 election. Trump’s people were just told by a judge to, essentially, shove it…and pay a $40,000 fine for their efforts.
The nice thing about facts, and reality, as has been said, is that they do not change whether one believes in them, or not. But, the culture sure does.
I’m sure that those who continue to believe that there is no global warming, will point to the recent, almost nation-wide freezes, as “proof” that it does not exist, not having ever heard of the fact that the cause has been the destabilization of the polar vortex, by…wait for it…global warming. One of these is a work buddy of mine, whose cynicism keeps him ignorant of the reality outside his cranium.
Funny, not funny, I just took a peek at HCR’s post, and who is she referencing, but Joe McCarthy!
Theresa – super call out of movies/TV for the impact on our culture and, now, our politics. My wife and I have been watching “Law and Order” from the beginning and it tells it all….
Todd,
Oh yes. He will do ANYTHING to claim victory. His pathology is profound. He must be removed BEFORE the election … somehow.
“Trump has turned Republicans into an America First fascist movement while stretching presidential powers far beyond their constitutional limits”— I do not see that Trump has turned the Republican party into a fascist movement. I believe the Republican party was becoming a fascist movement WAY before Trump. The mistake the party made was thinking they could control Trump as their elected Stooge but his level of just pure evil and the darkness of his soul and his mental illness proved more than a formidable force that the Republican party could not control. They could not control him and for power they have relinquished everything to Trump and Miller.
At least, two movie series are counter to the Hollywood impacts mentioned in Theresa’s post, “The Lord of the Rings” and “Star Wars”. There are others, I can think of but won’t bother to list.
We hold the movie industry to account but fail to hold the viewers of those movies to account. It is always a personal choice. No one is forced to watch. I haven’t been in a movie theater for a very long time. The few movies I do watch are streamed.
Movies are a reflection of the culture, just as the other arts are. Yes, the dialogue has become much more course, the dumbing down of vocabulary to the lowest common denominator. The “F” bomb no longer shocks in any format, even in our civil discourse. My mother always told me that those who used vulgar language lacked imagination.
We have to decide who we are and who we want to be as individuals and as a nation. We also have to remember that the people who are driving this bus depend on chaos to keep us fearful and compliant as they drive into the ditch. Their goal is complete dominance. I fear that it will become worse before it gets better, if that even ever happens. Will the U.S. become another huge population of wage slaves and ideological zombies? Diversity has always been our greatest strength. Hopefully, tribalism and mindless adherence to religious bigotry will fail once again.
RESIST.
I was at a small dinner party on Saturday. One of the people at my table asked about Bad Bunny. Two others proclaimed their great dislike of everything “bunny” and said they would tune in the TP concert. (I’m not sure if TP is for Turning Point or toilet paper, so you just choose which one you like.) I said that music is universal and it wouldn’t matter if it was in English or Spanish or Chinese. If the beat is good and it gets you moving, you’ll enjoy it. I liked Bad Bunny and I couldn’t tell you a thing about the lyrics. I can say it was upbeat and fun.
4 decades of “conservative” talk-radio had a large impact as to how we’ve arrived to this environment.
And they’re still at it.
JD, Lord of the Rings and Star Wars were both set in imaginary worlds whereas movies like Dirty Harry and Heat and Seven were set in what the viewer would think of as the real world he inhabits. “If that is how it is”, they ask, “then that is how to respond to the world… and be the hero, the winner, the survivor”. And don’t get me started on the way women are portrayed in film, watched by millions of impressionable young girls who then think, “If that is how you have to dress and behave to get someone to love you, then I’ll do that too”.
Sheila—You certainly pushed many of your readers’ “hot” buttons with this blog post. Interesting responses.
Theresa – As I recall, Eastwood’s Dirty Harry was the conservative response to the “liberalness” of Hollywood. In Dirty Harry’s world, cops can instantly tell the bad guys and are only held back by “liberals” who believe in silly things like court trials and citizens’ rights.
Peggy – I couldn’t agree more about music. You stated it perfectly.
I am not going to throw up my hands and complain about the International Jewish Communist, Jewish Bankers, Anglo-Zionist conspiracy. I will try to look for better solutions.
So, as for fixing things – if we can, it will not be easy, fast, nor complete, but we should try.
I see three areas that need major changes.
First, structural changes have to be put into place to prevent future autocrats from exercising such power. That begins with the court, lest they invalidate any reform, and continues through efforts to end gerrymandering and stopping the influence of money in our election. More money does not mean more speech; it means louder speech drowning out opposing opinions.
Second, Big Tech should not have a privileged position. Their information mining and secret, every changing algorithms are like pollution – everyone gets effected. Reliance on the neutrality of AI is a fool’s errand. AI depends upon what data it is fed and how the algorithms are set up. It will never be neutral. Legal controls have to be imposed and the “intellectual property” argument is one that needs to be reexamined. We should not allow poison into our world because it is hidden as intellectual property.
Third, I keep going back to Erich Fromm’s Escape from Freedom. Too much change is happening too fast. People feel overwhelmed and left behind, so they cling to easy answers. We need to broaden our vision. We need to continue to fight discrimination based on race, creed, sex, color, and choice of partners but also recognize the difference between “necessary” and “sufficient” conditions. Maybe white maleness is (or is mostly) a necessary condition to be a super-elite, but it isn’t a sufficient condition. Being a white man does not mean that you have it made. Poor people are discriminated against in myriad ways, regardless of race. Poor white males (and many in the lower and middle class) haven’t felt noticed since FDR. We need to address their needs as well.
Yes, this won’t overcome bigotry, but the best that we ever did with that is to keep it tamped down and socially unacceptable.
It’s frustrating these days since the big, bad, lying, conniving and cruel libertine capitalist is directing US government for his personal enrichment and protection from the law and justice. In hero stories, that people for the ages have loved, from sitting around a campfire to development of printing press and age of books to modern entertainment of movies and streaming online, the quest for peace and security and overcoming evil aggression has been a main theme. We are in a time of great threat to our collective security and are finding it extremely frustrating and exhausting to put up with the stupid, crazy, daily attacks on our freedoms without a satisfying recourse that ends the immense corruption from the top. The majority of Americans need to get ahold of the narrative and direct this continuing battling saga toward justice for all of us. It turns out the majority of Americans working within the framework of Constitution, Bill of rights and rule of law is superman and superwoman.
The authors are thoroughly embedded in the American reality of which they write. This makes them miss a facet of the conversation that interests me greatly. Why is this so endemic to the USA, but much less so in other countries that would long have been thought to be similar, like (my own) Canada, or the UK, or Australia, or New Zealand, or much of the EU, etc.? To the extent that my country has a portion of its population adopting similar beliefs and living (head in the sand) within information bubbles, it’s largely because that group is being led by USA-made propaganda, just like other Faux watchers. In other words, the power and strength of the USA, it’s _gravity_, tugs at segments within other countries. However, we largely have an easier time maintaining a grip on reality. I think this is probably largely true for the other countries I’ve listed, as well.
Why is this?
Is it our more typical parliamentary governmental systems? Certainly, the USA system–cobbled together as it was to appease various groups–has many obvious flaws (like the Senate), and has developed others along the way (like gerrymandering and the broken filibuster). And now your government is moving headlong into fascism, where the executive ignores the rule of law, orders of the courts and the power of the legislature. Why have our governments not broken themselves as yours has? Why do we make voting accessible, use independent groups to draw legislative lines, _not_ create and abuse a filibuster mechanic?
Is it our lack of extended history of slavery? Is it related to our lesser religiosity? (I mention these together because I think they go hand-in-hand.) Have these two factors entrenched a bigotry into USA society that our countries have avoided? Why have we decided that multiculturalism and tolerance is sensible given the tiny planet we all share?
I don’t have the answers, but I think you guys really need to think about this factor more than you do. Why are you different? And believe me it matters. The power and influence of the USA has the potential to pull the rest of us into your “widening gyre” (as Yeats would have it).
PS Yeats’ poem is freakin’ brilliant.