Random Blogging – Page 3

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

In so many ways, America has entered into a time that can only be described as Orwellian. For those of you who’ve forgotten the world described in 1984, or who missed Orwell’s essay on Politics and the English Language, allow me to suggest their renewed relevance.

As a recent essay in the Atlantic pointed out, “Newspeak” language is violence by another means, an adjunct of totalitarian strategies.

Clear language, Orwell suggests, is a semantic necessity as well as a moral one. Newspeak, in 1984, destroys with the same ferocious efficiency that tanks and bombs do. It is born of the essay’s most elemental insight: “If thought corrupts language, language can also corrupt thought.”

Orwell’s essay is often referenced by political scientists who emphasize the importance of clarity and shared meaning to the political process. As the Atlantic essay notes, however, American discourse increasingly lacks both.

But the essay, today, can read less as a rousing defense of the English language than as a prescient concession of defeat. “Use clear language” cannot be our guide when clarity itself can be so elusive. Our words have not been honed into oblivion—on the contrary, new ones spring to life with giddy regularity—but they fail, all too often, in the same ways Newspeak does: They limit political possibilities, rather than expand them. They cede to cynicism. They saturate us in uncertainty. The words might mean what they say. They might not. They might describe shared truths; they might manipulate them. Language, the connective tissue of the body politic—that space where the collective “we” matters so much—is losing its ability to fulfill its most basic duty: to communicate. To correlate. To connect us to the world, and to one another.

And semantic problems, as Orwell knew, have a way of turning into real ones. Violence descends; threats take shape; emergencies come; we may try to warn one another—we may scream the warnings—but we have trouble conveying the danger. We have so much to say. In another way, though, we have no words.

In yesterday’s post, I considered the real-world implications of the vast right-wing propaganda apparatus and its coordinated messaging. That messaging employs a language akin to Newspeak, a vocabulary intended to mask, rather than communicate, reality.

Donald Trump is certainly not an intentional purveyor of Newspeak–indeed, calling anything this twisted and unselfaware man does “intentional,” is to give him credit he clearly doesn’t deserve. But like so many tools used by would-be autocrats, he has unconsciously adopted its essence, what the essay calls the “dark art of plausible deniability”– Orwell’s doublespeak—a “jargon of purposeful obscurity.” He says whatever comes to mind, and reserves the right not to mean it.

When he describes “the enemy from within”—or when he muses about police forces fighting back against criminals for “one real rough, nasty day,” or when he announces his intention to spend the first day of a second term acting as “a dictator”—you could read each as a direct threat. You could assume that he’s lying, embellishing, teasing, trolling. You could say that the line, like Trump’s others, should be taken seriously, but not literally. You could try your best, knowing all that is at stake, to parse the grammar of his delusion.

It isn’t only Trump. That right-wing media ecosphere amplifies the practice. The Republican cult adopts it. And the results go far beyond a lack of clarity. Americans not only occupy different realities, we have lost the ability to explain our respective frames of reference to those who do not share them.

We can no longer communicate. And without communication, political negotiation and compromise–even basic human kindness–becomes impossible. (The essay makes the point that clear language is a basic form of kindness that considers the other person.)

Democracy is, at its core, a task of information management. To do its work, people need to be able to trust that the information they’re processing is, in the most fundamental way, accurate. Trump’s illegibility makes everything else less legible, too.

The quoted essay was published before the election of the Newspeak Administration. Had Trump lost, the threat posed by what we politely call “disinformation” would still be troublesome, but what we now face is a threat to our ability to understand political reality.

I don’t think most members of the “chattering classes”– the “mainstream” commentariat busily finding fault with those who still live in the reality-based community–even recognize the enormity of the problem posed by Americans’ increasing immersion in the language of delusion and our corresponding inability to communicate.

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The Biggest Problem We Face

In a recent conversation, my youngest son made an observation that went to the very heart of America’s current political dysfunction: it’s the media–but not in the way that accusation usually assumes. Whatever the considerable deficits of “mainstream” coverage–and there were plenty of them–focusing on the New York Times and Washington Post and their ilk ignores the fact that the vast majority of Trump voters never read them.

As my son pointed out, what almost all of the finger-pointing and attacks on “messaging” miss is that Harris’s messaging was fine (indeed, it was arguably better than Democratic messaging in prior election cycles). That messaging would have made a huge difference–had it reached a majority of voters.

It didn’t.

We live in a time when mainstream media reaches far fewer people than the right wing media ecosystem that has developed in our digital age. That ecosystem goes far beyond Fox and Sinclair–it includes sites like AONN, social media like X/twitter, and all of the rightwing troll farms, bloggers, and podcasters. Their effectiveness rests on a dimly-understood reality: not only do these sources collectively reach more people, unlike mainstream outlets they are all on the same page--they reinforce and repeat the same propaganda, ignore the same “inconvenient” facts, and do so over sustained periods of time. Not only do they distort reality and manufacture issues (immigrants are eating dogs and cats), they encourage their audiences to blame groups against whom they’re already prejudiced.

The center/left has absolutely nothing like this, and would be philosophically allergic to establishing a similar propaganda arm.

There is evidence that Harris’s message would have been persuasive had it been able to penetrate that rightwing echo chamber. When the candidates’ names were removed, and only their policy proposals were polled, Harris’s plans and statements were vastly more popular than Trump’s. But Harris’ messaging never reached a majority of Trump voters.

It is certainly the case that significant numbers of voters simply refused to hear her, thanks to the rampant sexism and racism that characterized much of the voting public, but we cannot dismiss the importance of the fact that a majority of the American voting public never sees mainstream coverage. (People struggling to put food on the table don’t subscribe to the New York Times.) The deciding plurality of voters who delivered the election to Trump received only the Trump cult’s messaging.

If that observation is true–and there’s ample research to confirm its accuracy–Democrats need to stop their carping about what the campaign did or didn’t do right, and address the (pun intended) elephant in the room. How can fact-based information be delivered to people who have opted to get all of their information from a massive, co-ordinated right-wing propaganda ecosystem?

I tend to agree with my son, who argues that the actual messaging mistake wasn’t content or tone. It was dissemination.

Democrats have made a very consequential error in refusing to engage with the propaganda on the propagandists’ turf. Only Pete Buttigeig and Gavin Newsom have been willing to take Democratic perspectives onto that turf–to bring contending facts and messages to the millions of people who get their “facts” from media sources voicing the preferred messages of what Hillary Clinton once–quite accurately– called “the vast right-wing conspiracy.”

Autocrats everywhere understand the power of media, and move to control it. In the United States, a shadowy network of rightwing think tanks, theocratic organizations and plutocrats have been working for decades to roll back the “woke” politics of inclusion and civic equality–to return us to a social order dominated by straight White Christian males. Participants in that network understood that control of information was key to the success of that effort, and the right-wing media ecosystem is the result.

I often remind readers that support for the Constitution and the Rule of Law requires an informed public. When a significant portion of the public is misinformed, when they are fed uncontested propaganda that feeds and plays to their already-potent fears and prejudices, we get outcomes like the one we got on November 5th.

How to penetrate that ecosystem is a conundrum. Making it even more challenging is the vocabulary of the Right. I’ll discuss that further obstacle to political sanity tomorrow.

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The Road Ahead

In the wake of the devastating election results, a good friend sent me an essay that focused on the perennial question we face in life: What now? How do those of us who aren’t ready to submit to autocracy and neo-fascism respond?

The essay is lengthy; it includes several examples from around the globe and from history–examples that suggest productive ways to respond and resist. The subheading counseled that the key to taking effective action is to avoid perpetuating the autocrat’s goals of “fear, isolation, exhaustion and disorientation.”

I found the following paragraphs particularly helpful.

Under a Trump presidency, there are going to be so many issues that it will be hard to accept that we cannot do it all. I’m reminded of a colleague in Turkey who told me, “There’s always something bad happening every day. If we had to react to every bad thing, we’d never have time to eat.”

An elder once saw me trying to do everything and pulled me aside. “That’s not a healthy lifelong strategy,” she said. She’d been raised in Germany by the generation of Holocaust survivors who told her, “Never again.” She took it personally, as if she had to stop every wrong. It wracked her and contributed to several serious ongoing medical conditions. We can accept our humanity or suffer that lack of acceptance.

Chaos is a friend of the autocrat. One way we can unwittingly assist is by joining in the story that we have to do it all.

So–as we select our paths, what are our options? The author lays out a number of them, beginning with “Protecting People.” especially those who are being directly targeted– trans people, folks choosing abortions, immigrants.

This might mean organizing outside current systems for health care and mutual aid, or moving resources to communities that are getting targeted. Further examples include starting immigrant welcoming committees, abortion-support funds or training volunteers on safety skills to respond to white nationalist violence.

Another is“Defending Civic Institutions,” and yet another is “Disrupt and Disobey.” The elements of each are discussed. My own choice was the last:“Building Alternatives.”

We can’t just be stuck reacting and stopping the bad. We have to have a vision. This is the slow growth work of building alternative ways that are more democratic. It includes grounding and healing work, rich cultural work, alternative ways of growing food and caring for kids, participatory budgeting or seeding constitutional conventions to build a majoritarian alternative to the Electoral College mess we’re in.

As I have previously argued, our goal should not be a return to the status quo–elements of which facilitated the electoral rejection of American principles of liberty and civic equality. When Trumpism collapses (a collapse that those on the resistance paths can hasten), we need to be ready with a vision for an improved social infrastructure–one more firmly based on America’s unrealized aspirations.

In the runup to the election, the Roosevelt Foundation’s Felicia Wong wrote about “three things that will be crucial post-election, no matter the outcome.”

First, the old order broke because it failed to keep its most important promise: that a rising tide lifts all, or even most, boats. At the most basic level, a successful and enduring political system must be able to provide for its people.

Second, most of the media has focused on Joe Biden and “Bidenomics” in its narrative about today’s economy. But the reasons we find ourselves in this most perplexing moment, with the economic successes of the last four years frustratingly muted, go well beyond the policies of the last four years. To understand our moment, we must look further back in time and also imagine further into the future.

And third, even amid today’s confusion, we can sense convergence on the outlines of a new political order—but some versions of our shared future are far better, while some are far worse.

As Wong reminds us, successful political orders must deliver a reasonably good life for most people. Neoliberalism fails to do that.

People have different talents, different skills, different time constraints. As we proceed to choose our resistance paths, we need to consider where we are likely to be most effective. Many of you will choose to work through the already burgeoning network of grassroots organizations. Others will focus on what the essay calls “performative” aspects of resistance–what I might call “educational” efforts to draw lines between Trumpism and its inhumane and damaging consequences.

Choose the pathway that works best for you.

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The Best Analysis I’ve Seen

As I said yesterday, political finger-pointing is utterly beside the point. Harris ran a masterful campaign–unfortunately, she was female and Black, running against a man who encouraged people to vote their misogyny and bigotries.

As I also said yesterday, the election results weren’t political–they were cultural.

The best analysis I’ve seen was from Talking Points Memo.

That analysis began with what we all saw: this was a campaign “fought directly over the issues of democracy, rule of law, basic decency and respect, and protection for the marginalized.” Those were the principles and values that lost–soundly. As David Kurtz wrote, this wasn’t another fluke of our crazy Electoral College.

The dark path ahead was chosen clearly and unequivocally: With 51%, Trump is on track to win a majority of the popular vote. Second, Trump will win without undue reliance on the quirks of our 18th century anti-majoritarian constitutional structure.

There is clarity in that result. This is who we are. Not all of us, but a majority of us. It presents a stark picture of America in 2024, without sugarcoating or excuse. It makes it harder to fool yourself about the task at hand, which is an enormous cultural one more than a political one.

Donald Trump’s win isn’t the product of a constitutional quirk. It’s not the result of a poorly conceived or executed campaign by Kamala Harris. It’s not a messaging failure or a tactical error or a strategic blunder. Other broader dynamics at play – like a post-pandemic revulsion toward incumbents or an anti-inflation backlash – are too limited in their scope and specific in their focus to account for the choice that was made: Donald Trump. It would be a category error to ascribe our current predicament to a political failure.

If politics is merely a reflection of culture, then we get to see that reflection clearly and sharply as the sun comes up this morning. If you don’t like what you see, don’t blame the mirror.

There’s a lesson here: don’t expect politics to fix a cultural problem. Kurtz isn’t counseling us to ignore politics–although he also reminds us that we are at risk of losing the mechanisms for achieving political results – the threats to free and fair elections, majority rule, and the rule of law itself will make politics much harder. What he is doing is reminding us that what needs to change is the culture.

For those of us who believe in the rule of law, a pluralistic society, and standing up to unkind people who engage in hurting others as public blood sport, we’re going to have to take a long view toward promoting those principles in all aspects of our culture so that they are ultimately reflected in our politics in a way they simply are not now. I recognize that many of us have already been doing this slow and steady work, which makes the overnight result even more discouraging. It remains an enormous, decades-long task, but it is something each of us can engage in without uprooting our lives or changing professions or moving abroad.

With respect to the political tasks we face, he reminds us that marginalized and the disenfranchised folks are always hurt first and that it will be worse this time because hurting them has been advertised as the point.

The challenge before us is enormous. It is not a challenge any of us signed up for. It’s been foisted upon us. The past decade has felt like a detour from the lives and aspirations we had hoped to have. I feel a special empathy for those who came of age in the 1960s at the peak of Great Society reforms and have spent their adults lives witnessing their erosion. Those of us with an act or two left, and especially those with their whole lives still to dedicate to making America better than she is presenting right now, owe it to those whose time is ending to summon our essential optimism, roll up our sleeves, and get to down to the hard work that our current predicament demands. That may sound like a rallying cry, but I’m also trying to convince myself.

The first step to finding a solution to any problem is to define it accurately. Blaming campaign errors or systemic electoral issues just keeps us from recognizing the (very ugly) truth: a majority of American voters are unhappy with social changes that confer civic equality on people they consider inferior. They are unable to recognize the multiple ways those social changes actually benefit them, and they want to “return” to a time that existed only in their imaginations.

Good people have work to do.

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Hubbell Cuts To The Chase

We are now seeing the “Chattering Class” carping and criticising and offering convoluted reasons for America’s descent into fascism–aka, the election of Donald Trump. Harris should have gone more to the Left, no, she should have gone to the Right, the problem was Democratic elitism, etc. (Interestingly, very few media pundits have addressed the very real role played by the media environment, very much including a mainstream press which failed repeatedly to call insanity insanity, instead normalizing aberrant rhetoric and behavior that formerly would have been consider shocking and disqualifying.)

Almost all of those smug analyses are efforts to avoid the truth–refusals to face what really happened. Robert Hubbell, however, was clear-eyed:

Just as the media normalized Trump before the election, there is a wholesale effort to “normalize” the election results. Pundits are claiming the election was decided by voters’ concerns over inflation, immigration, or crime. Those issues are post-facto rationalizations offered by voters to conceal their real reasons for voting for a convicted felon and adjudicated sexual abuser over an eminently qualified candidate.

Kamala Harris lost because Trump’s supporters were motivated by racism, misogyny, and white supremacy. They voted for a felon and against prosecutor/senator/vice president because she is a woman of Black and South Asian ancestry. All of the remaining explanations are camouflage to conceal the real motivations of those who voted against Kamala Harris.

We will learn nothing if we accept pollsters’ dog-and-pony show to explain the election with exit polls and crosstabs in spreadsheets that have nothing to do with the real motivations of voters. Do not conflate data with information. Do not mistake information for knowledge. Do not confuse knowledge and understanding. Do not accept percentages and cohorts in response to the simple but profound question, “Why?”

Racism. Misogyny. White supremacy. Occam’s Razor.

Hubble is exactly right. H.L. Mencken predicted this years ago, locating the problem precisely in the defects of We the People:

As democracy is perfected, the office of the President represents, more and more closely, the inner soul of the people. On some great and glorious day, the plain folks of the land will reach their heart’s desire at last, and the White House will be occupied by a downright fool and a complete narcissistic moron.”

Well, we’re there.

Those of us who live in a kinder, less hateful world misunderstood the effects of Trump’s out-and-proud racism. We thought his horrific Madison Square Garden rally damaged him–as it certainly did with the nice, normal people who weren’t going to vote for him anyway. What is now clear, however, is that Trump’s supporters don’t share the reactions of nice, normal people. For them, it was a welcome endorsement of their bigotries, a reassurance that their resentments are valid, and an explicit permission to express them. It was a rejection of “political correctness” (aka civility), and a validation of the public expression of invective and meanness.

We all need to recognize that the inhumanity, the bigotry, the misogyny isn’t a bug–its a feature. Indeed, it is the feature. It isn’t a distasteful aspect of the Trump campaign that voters nevertheless overlooked–it is what a majority of our fellow-citizens voted for.

Living with that understanding is hurtful, to put it mildly.

But there’s a semi-silver lining. There’s a biblical adage to the effect that “the truth shall make you free.” Now we know. And when those who are working to build a better, kinder, more inclusive society know what they are up against, they can fight for that society more effectively.

We are about to see some very dark years. The theocrats and autocrats and ignoramuses will attack the foundational premises of America, and they will do considerable damage. Meanwhile, the rest of us need to step back and consider whether we want to defend a status quo that has morphed and ossified in unfortunate ways–a status quo with serious systemic flaws, economic unfairness, overly-complex and under-inclusive social programs…the list is long. The insecurities generated by the gaps and injustices undoubtedly contributed to the frustration and hate. Our jobs, during the dark days, will be to consider what we will build when the edifice built on racism, misogyny, homophobia and nationalism collapses.

Because it will. And we need to be ready to pick up the pieces–ready to replace both the dark side and the considerable flaws that preceded and enabled it with a better, more humane, more just version of the American Idea.

We need to resist the worst that will come. We must try to protect the objects of Trumpers’ animus. But we also need to plan for what will come after.

We have work to do.

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