The Story Of Our Age

Jeffrey Goldberg is the editor of the Atlantic, one of the more credible and informative publications I read, and he recently transmitted an email to subscribers titled “Notes from the Editor-in-Chief.” I am going to take the liberty of quoting large portions of that message, because I entirely agree with him about the nature and extent of the danger we face.

Last week, a Michigan congresswoman whose existence had not yet entered the rest of the country’s consciousness credited Donald Trump with having “caught Osama bin Laden,” among other terrorists. It is difficult to forget that night in 2011 when Barack Obama told the world that, on his orders, a team of Navy commandos had killed the al-Qaeda leader. But Representative Lisa McClain, a first-term member of Congress, showed that, with effort, and with a desire to feed Trump’s delusions and maintain her standing among his supporters, anything is possible.

In ordinary times, McClain’s claim would have been mocked and then forgotten. But because these are not ordinary times—these are times in which citizens of the same country live in entirely different information realities—I put her assertion about bin Laden on a kind of watch list. In six months, I worry, we may learn that a provably false claim made by a single unserious congressional backbencher has spread into MAGA America, a place where Barack Obama is believed to be a Kenyan-born Muslim and Donald Trump is thought to be the victim of a coup.

Disinformation is the story of our age. We see it at work in Russia, whose citizens have been led to believe the lies that Ukraine is an aggressor nation and that the Russian army is winning a war against modern-day Nazis. We see it at work in Europe and the Middle East, where conspiracies about hidden hands and occult forces are adopted by those who, in the words of the historian Walter Russell Mead, lack the ability to “see the world clearly and discern cause and effect relations in complex social settings.” We see it weaponized by authoritarians around the globe, for whom democracy, accountability, and transparency pose mortal threats. And we see it, of course, in our own country, in which tens of millions of voters believe that Joe Biden is an illegitimate president because the man he beat in 2020 specializes in sabotaging reality for personal and political gain. This mass delusion has enormous consequences for the future of democracy. As my colleague Yoni Appelbaum has noted, “Democracy depends on the consent of the losers.” Sophisticated, richly funded, technology-enabled disinformation campaigns are providing losers with other options.

The Atlantic has joined with the Institute of Politics at the University of Chicago, and the two entities staged a conference focusing upon disinformation of all sorts. (The conference is available online.) The Institute of Politics was founded by David Axelrod, who has expressed his opinion that the “future of this country—and of our democratic allies around the world—depends on the ability and willingness of citizens to discern truth from falsehood.”

Goldberg was forthright in admitting to the nature of the challenge disinformation poses for “big-tent” magazines like the Atlantic.  He reiterated his belief that citizens of democracies require  a wide variety of views and opinions, and insisted that

We strive for nonpartisanship at The Atlantic, and we aim to publish independent thinkers and a wide variety of viewpoints. But this most recent period in American history has presented what might be called “both-sides journalism” with serious challenges—challenges that have prevented this magazine from publishing many pro-Trump articles. (After all, our articles must pass through a rigorous fact-checking process.)

Long-term, the emergence of our citizens from the Tower of Babel we currently inhabit will require a co-ordinated effort. My own repeated calls for more and better civics education–leading to greater levels of civic literacy– obviously point to an important part of that effort, but civics education alone cannot address the economic and psychological insecurities that make so many Americans receptive to the lies and hatreds being promoted by would-be autocrats and their enablers.

I don’t know what it would take–what policies could impose at least a minimum of coherence and integrity to the Wild West that is our current information environment without sacrificing the First Amendment– but as Goldberg  and Axelrod clearly understand, figuring that out is obviously job number one.

I’m on vacation without reliable Internet access, but when I get home, I intend to click through and watch that conference….

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Trading Places

Many, many years ago, I joined a Republican Party that no longer exists. I was attracted to it–despite its longtime extreme-right “fringe”–because its rhetoric and philosophy was mainly that of classical liberalism: limited government, the rule of law, and the social contract.

Limited government, by the way, is not the same thing as small government–classical, 18th Century liberalism stood for limiting the ability of government to intrude into areas of citizens’ lives where government doesn’t belong. Determining where to draw that line has always been subject to debate, of course, and the GOP of my time was, admittedly, too often willing to pass intrusive  laws against “sin,” and resistant to necessary business regulations.

Back then, however, most Republicans took pride in the party’s history: the party of Lincoln had been the anti-slavery party while the Democrats had ruled the South and defended the ownership of some humans by others.

Over the years, America’s two major parties have essentially traded places, and I am only one of the many Republicans who realized that the party had morphed into something that had very little in common with the one we’d originally joined.

I thought about just how complete that switch has become when I read a recent column comparing Jared Polis, the Governor of Colorado, with Ron DeSantis of Florida, by Jennifer Rubin.

Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis (R), a 2024 presidential aspirant, has told cruises how to run their businesses. And he has threatened to raise taxes on Disney in retaliation for speaking out against the hateful “don’t say gay” bill. These are things you might expect from a petty authoritarian such as Hungary’s Viktor Orban or defeated former president Donald Trump, who threatened companies that didn’t kowtow to his administration.

Now, DeSantis wants to go after the board of directors of Twitter. “We’re gonna be looking at ways the state of Florida potentially can be holding these Twitter board of directors accountable for breaching their fiduciary duty,” he bellowed on Tuesday.

In response to DeSantis’ assaults on businesses in his state, Colorado’s Jared Polis tweeted

Florida’s authoritarian socialist attacks on the private sector are driving businesses away. In CO, we don’t meddle in affairs of companies like @Disney or @Twitter. Hey @Disney we’re ready for Mountain Disneyland and @twitter we’re ready for Twitter HQ2, whoever your owners are.

The GOP pooh-bahs who constantly talk about “freedom” clearly don’t understand what freedom is. (Hint: it isn’t “freedom” to refuse a vaccination so that you can infect your neighbors, or “freedom” to pick on people of whom your church disapproves.)

Rubin defines it properly.

Polis also understands how powerful “freedom” can be — freedom to run your company, freedom to raise your child (and seek legitimate medical care for them), freedom to choose not to give birth to a child, freedom for teachers to teach about civil rights without being sued, freedom to cast a ballot in the most convenient way for each voter, freedom to learn math. It’s remarkable how much control the GOP wants to exercise over every aspect of Americans’ lives and the economy.

Indeed, in abandoning classic liberalism (limited government, the rule of law, etc.) in favor of an authoritarian, theocratic model, Republicans have defied an essential feature of democracy. This is what scholar Yascha Mounk describes in the Atlantic as “the recognition that there is a sphere of life in which everybody should be able to do what they like without having to worry about anyone else’s opinion.” Having decided that America’s identity is White, Christian and straight, the MAGA right now spends an extraordinary amount of time and effort stretching the power of government to boss around everyone else.

Classical liberalism limited the role of government to actions necessary to protect citizens from others’ wrongdoing. Government could–and should–prevent businesses from dumping toxic waste in the river or cheating customers; government should prevent the selfish or heedless from harming others.

Barry Goldwater famously said that government didn’t belong in your boardroom or your bedroom (he won an award from PFLAG, the LGBTQ rights organization.) Today’s Republicans are intent upon invading both.

Looking back, I think it’s fair to say that the GOP of my day believed in over-restraining government. (When Nixon established the EPA, it was seen in some quarters as a betrayal of Republicanism.) Today’s version, however, has totally abandoned any respect for freedom, civic equality and the rule of law.

DeSantis, Abbott and their ilk define “freedom” as the right of businesses to support their hateful policies and the right of citizens to obey their dictates.

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Tan Those Genitals!!

The American Right just keeps getting crazier. Don’t take it from me; Dana Milbank, among several others, is reporting on Tucker Carlson’s current wacko campaign. 

As Milbank points out, now that the “hoax” of the pandemic is fading, “there are fewer occasions to swallow ivermectin or hydroxychloroquine or to inject oneself with bleach.
So what’s a Trump-loving, conspiracy-obsessed Fox News-viewing guy to do?”

He should stand naked and spread-eagle on top of a large rock at twilight and gaze heavenward as a red laser illuminates his genitals.

Believe it or not, Milbank is not making that up. Carlson is advocating “testical tanning” to address the problem of waning testosterone levels in men. If that “cure” seems….crazy….Milbank agrees.

To the extent declining testosterone levels are a problem, the correct solution would be to address a major cause: rising obesity. Instead of shining a red light on your private parts, dear Fox News viewer, turn off Tucker Carlson, get off the couch and go exercise…

Carlson sees testosterone collapsing in “American men” (it’s a worldwide phenomenon). There’s paranoia about the government: “The NIH doesn’t seem interested in this at all,” Carlson says, impersonating some presumed official from the National Institutes of Health saying “it’s not a big deal” (the topic is widely studied). There’s paranoia about the media: McGovern claims the benefit of red-light therapy “isn’t being picked up on or covered” and says “there’s a lot of people out there that don’t trust the mainstream information.”

Gee–I wonder why trust levels are even lower than testosterone levels…Could Fox “News” have something to do with that?

Milbank points out that Carlson’s recent obsession has a great deal in common with Trumpism: the celebration of a masculinity defined as aggression–a definition that has lately been promoted by Sen. Josh Hawley and former Trump aide Sebastian Gorka–and an unwavering belief in and celebration of junk science.

Actually, sketchy data makes sweeping conclusions suspect. But there’s little doubt testosterone levels are falling — and there’s no doubt obesity can contribute to this by facilitating the conversion of testosterone into estrogen.

Maybe Carlson will encourage his viewers (including one particular Florida resident who favors Big Macs and eschews exercise) to pursue healthier lifestyles. So far, his greenlighting of red-light therapy seems to be telling them that what they really need to be true men is more testosterone. And though testosterone supplementation will indeed increase a man’s “manly” aggression, it will also reduce his fertility.

Millions of Tucker Carlson viewers unable to reproduce? Maybe junk science isn’t all bad.

That last sentence does seem hopeful…

On the other hand, as a report for The New Republic put it,

“There is a real connection between these male supremacists and white supremacist networks,” says Kristen Doerer, managing editor of Right Wing Watch, a project that tracks extremist activity for People for the American Way. She points to Carlson’s concern for faltering manliness as just another version of the Great Replacement theory. “These men are concerned about the white race being destroyed, and part of that concern involves the need for controlling women and particularly white women, and an investment in them having white kids.” She warns that the manosphere is fertile soil for red-pilling, recruitment, and general crosspollination. “It’s not too hard to go from one scapegoat to another: ‘I’m going to blame all Jews, or all people of color.’”

Whatever the cause and/or cure of reduced testosterone levels, I am considerably more concerned about the evident, massive reduction in sanity levels and the associated growth in the credulity of the American public, exemplified by the tribalism and White Nationalism of the Tucker Carlsons of our world.

It isn’t just the “Big Lie.” Nearly half of self-identified Republicans in recent surveys say they believe that top Democrats in government are pedophiles. (I couldn’t find data on the percentage of GOP voters who believe that George Soros financed Jewish Space Lasers, but I’m sure it’s a non-trivial number.)

We are living in an extremely difficult era. We have all kinds of real problems, economic and social, all exacerbated by the very real possibility that climate change may decimate much of humanity. Rather than engaging in concerted, evidence-based efforts to solve those problems, a significant portion of our population has opted to reside in cuckoo land.

Maybe Milbank is onto something when he suggests that the crazies will adopt a worldview that will prevent them from reproducing. The other possibility, of course, is that their growing  numbers and influence will prevent all humans from reproducing–that their “solutions” and political preferences will end up erasing that thin veneer we call civilization and /or eradicating humanity altogether.

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A Compelling Read

Jonathan Haidt is a well-regarded scholar who has written a compelling article for the Atlantic, titled  “Why The Past Ten Years Of American Life Have Been Uniquely Stupid.” He begins by referencing the biblical story of Babel:

What would it have been like to live in Babel in the days after its destruction? In the Book of Genesis, we are told that the descendants of Noah built a great city in the land of Shinar. They built a tower “with its top in the heavens” to “make a name” for themselves. God was offended by the hubris of humanity and said:

Look, they are one people, and they have all one language; and this is only the beginning of what they will do; nothing that they propose to do will now be impossible for them. Come, let us go down, and confuse their language there, so that they will not understand one another’s speech.

The text does not say that God destroyed the tower, but in many popular renderings of the story he does, so let’s hold that dramatic image in our minds: people wandering amid the ruins, unable to communicate, condemned to mutual incomprehension.

Babel, according to Haidt, is not a story about tribalism. Instead, he insists it’s a story about the “fragmentation of everything.” And he makes a point that is often overlooked:  this fragmentation isn’t just happening between those who see themselves as red or blue, but within both left and right, and “within universities, companies, professional associations, museums, and even families.”

How have we come to this point? Haidt blames social media.The early Internet seemed to promise an expansion of co-operation and global democracy.

Myspace, Friendster, and Facebook made it easy to connect with friends and strangers to talk about common interests, for free, and at a scale never before imaginable. By 2008, Facebook had emerged as the dominant platform, with more than 100 million monthly users, on its way to roughly 3 billion today. In the first decade of the new century, social media was widely believed to be a boon to democracy. What dictator could impose his will on an interconnected citizenry? What regime could build a wall to keep out the internet?

The high point of techno-democratic optimism was arguably 2011, a year that began with the Arab Spring and ended with the global Occupy movement. That is also when Google Translate became available on virtually all smartphones, so you could say that 2011 was the year that humanity rebuilt the Tower of Babel. We were closer than we had ever been to being “one people,” and we had effectively overcome the curse of division by language. For techno-democratic optimists, it seemed to be only the beginning of what humanity could do.

Then, he writes, it all fell apart.

Haidt references the three major forces that social scientists have identified as collectively necessary to the cohesion of successful democracies: they are social capital–defined as extensive social networks with high levels of trust– strong institutions, and shared stories. And he points out that social media has weakened all three, as the platforms morphed from a new form of communication to a mechanism for performing –for what Haidt characterizes as the management of ones “personal brand.” Communication became a method for impressing others, rather than a sharing that might deepen friendships and understanding. He blamed the introduction of the “like’ and “share” buttons–which allowed the platforms to gauge users’ engagement–as a critical turning point.

As a social psychologist who studies emotion, morality, and politics, I saw this happening too. The newly tweaked platforms were almost perfectly designed to bring out our most moralistic and least reflective selves. The volume of outrage was shocking.

I encourage you to click through and read the entire, lengthy article, but if you don’t have time to do so, I’ll end this recap with the paragraph that struck me as a description of the most troubling consequences of our current use of these social media platforms.

It’s not just the waste of time and scarce attention that matters; it’s the continual chipping-away of trust. An autocracy can deploy propaganda or use fear to motivate the behaviors it desires, but a democracy depends on widely internalized acceptance of the legitimacy of rules, norms, and institutions. Blind and irrevocable trust in any particular individual or organization is never warranted. But when citizens lose trust in elected leaders, health authorities, the courts, the police, universities, and the integrity of elections, then every decision becomes contested; every election becomes a life-and-death struggle to save the country from the other side.

Haidt’s very troubling conclusion: If we do not make major changes soon, then our institutions, our political system, and our society may collapse.

I’m very afraid he’s right.

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The Troops Of Takeover

The New Republic recently ran a chilling article. It was titled “Ten People You’ve Never Heard of Who are Destroying Democracy,” and it reminded me of Cold War allegations about the mechanisms of  communist “fifth columns” working to undermine the U.S.

Wikipedia defines a Fifth Column as “any group of people who undermine a larger group from within, usually in favor of an enemy group or nation…Clandestine fifth column activities can involve acts of sabotage, disinformation, or espionage executed within defense lines by secret sympathizers with an external force.”

The problem with suspicions of a Fifth Column, of course, is the credibility of the charge. After hearing from QAnon nutcases about pedophiles controlling the Democratic Party and the presumed evil intentions of the “deep state,” prudence dictates a healthy skepticism when such assertions are encountered.

That said, The New Republic is neither Fox nor OAN, and I actually was familiar with one of the ten I supposedly never heard of–and what I knew about that particular “soldier” of the Far Right was all too consistent with the article’s report.

The lede was worrisome enough:

In recent years, America’s democracy has faced countless challenges. Some seemed to materialize out of thin air, but many have been the fruit of secretive networks such as the 40-year-old Council for National Policy. Here are 10 individuals who have sown the seeds of disruption and disinformation—and who are setting their sights on the 2024 presidential election.

I encourage you to click through and familiarize yourself with the entire list, but the very first entrant was the President of Hillsdale College–a deeply ideological institution I had previously encountered.

For decades, Michigan-based Hillsdale has served as an academic partner for the religious right. The college has had a close relationship to the Council for National Policy, the secretive Christian right umbrella organization that directs so much right-wing activism, through Arnn and his predecessor, George Roche III (who left in a cloud of scandal). Hillsdale’s major donors have constituted a who’s who of the radical right, including the Koch network and leading figures from the CNP. Arnn has expanded Hillsdale’s role as a platform for the CNP’s network of megadonors, fundamentalist activists, and media outlets, providing their policy prescriptions with a thin veneer of academic respectability. The college enrolls around 1,500 students, but its leaves an outsize footprint in political messaging. Its highly politicized publication Imprimis is sent to more than six million recipients. Hillsdale operates the Kirby Center in Washington, D.C., where it has groomed young conservatives at the Capitol Hill Staff Training School, run by the Leadership Institute (see Morton Blackwell, below). Hillsdale is also playing a role in the current disruption of public education, which has been used for political leverage in Virginia and beyond. In 2020, Donald Trump appointed Arnn chair of the 1776 Commission, to promote a “patriotic” rebuttal to the 1619 Project’s racially inclusive approach to U.S. history. Hillsdale has led an ongoing campaign to politicize public schools, promoting anti–critical race theory campaigns and assisting in the launch of “affiliate” charter schools in 11 states.

Some years ago, I was contracted to write a history of an Indiana libertarian organization–the Remnant Trust. The Trust has collected first editions of rare and important historical books and manuscripts, and has created an educational display featuring those materials that it shares with colleges and universities around the country. Early in that effort, it had contracted with Hillsdale in a sort of joint venture (I no longer recall the details), and the Executive Director regaled me–at considerable length–about Hillsdale’s bad faith breach of that agreement in what he claimed was an effort to enrich the college at the expense of the nonprofit organization. He had been stunned and blindsided by behavior he hadn’t expected from an institution trumpeting what he’d thought were similar values.

Later, I had a couple of students who had matriculated at Hillsdale; their recollections (albeit far less accusatory) confirmed much of the New Republic’s description. I’m also one of the six million people who gets Imprimus (in my case, the slick publication goes straight into the trash.)

Most recently, I’ve been alarmed by the news reports that Hillsdale is establishing a nationwide network of charter schools.

Others on the list of ten “Fifth Column” actors were the CEO of Right Side Broadcasting, the  Daily Caller (Tucker Carlson and Neil Patel’s publication), the CEO of Tea Party Patriots, the founders of organizations called “America’s Frontline Doctors” and “The Leadership Institute,” and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Bottom line: there are a lot of “underground” people and organizations that have been working hard to undermine America’s social safety net, and reverse any progress toward goals of equality and inclusion.

Some Fifth Columns, it turns out, are real.

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