I mentioned in my inaugural post that I really wasn’t looking to court controversy or lean into drama. I still believe that what follows is my personal view that I felt I needed to explain. Considering I’ve had a traffic total of 12 visitors in the last 4 weeks, I doubt I could reasonably be called a hyperbolic sensationalist. I am writing this in an attempt to both get it out of my head as well as crystalize my thoughts. I also want to preface my thoughts with the statement that I am not a political scholar, someone who spends a tremendous amount of time in meticulous research and fact-checking, or even a poli-sci major in college. I’m an average, run-of-the-mill American citizen and voter who tries very hard to keep a level head in a society that seems bent on tempting us into emotional extremes.
Current Frustrations
The political landscape is idealized to showcase wedge issues that define who you are and what you represent, focusing on those items to ensure that voters understand the ideals of who is supposed to represent them so voters can make an informed decision on election day. This also extends to an ongoing basis to keep politicians honest (I know.. I know.. I did say ‘idealized’…). Sadly it quickly spirals into what we have today which is an ongoing and endless political ‘gotcha’ finger-pointing match – or with the hyper-sensationalized ad-supported demagoguery-based “news” or “infotainment” organizations. Another way to say these words to describe the current state of the most-watched ‘news’ networks is ‘theater’.
To be fair, finger-pointing and the general theatrical nature of our/the American political system is a natural byproduct, especially if the people participating want to advocate for what they believe in. We just have to make sure it doesn’t spill into extremism. It’s become remarkably apparent to me over the last year that we have crossed the thin line of political theatre to extremism in our daily politics.
The (lack of) Trustworthy ‘News’ Organizations
I was taught growing up that American’s fought and continue to strive to fight a long, cold, and difficult battle for freedom. A key part of freedom is being able to speak your mind without worrying about repercussions by the state – a concept that became codified in the first amendment to the Constitution of the United States. I’ve always been appreciative and proud of this being a guaranteed right by our government. Recently, a question has come up with newer internet technologies such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, etc. that essentially ask the question – ‘what responsibility does a technology platform holder have on the legitimacy or validity of content hosted on their platform?’ This link has a good long-form legal evaluation on the topic. Regardless of the technology used, a legitimate and pertinent question to me from the last year is ‘should profit-driven companies or government representatives be enabled to intentionally deceive a population for monetary or political power?’ There needs to be accountability, but where does it reside – the people who say the things or the platform on which they are said? The answer at the time of this writing is that there seems to be incredibly thin to non-existent liability or accountability for representing false information at all for anyone. To point out in a humorous albeit somewhat biased way – Kimmel’s 1/7 opening points out at about 7m35s in that the Fox News specific conservative republican extremist agenda by baselessly redirecting blame to a shadowy political extreme organization on the other side for the 1/6/21 President Trump-inspired mob who occupied the capital for a few hours which delayed confirmation of his political rival.
Fox is just one very easy example of theater-based infotainment, though I’ve seen all major news networks present a heavily spun / opinion-based / non-factual representation of events. So… why don’t the most popular American news networks actually want to do the news instead of the emotionally manipulative, highly curated, and frankly callous disregard for the truth in the name of sensationalism? Because it’s a business. News organizations are a business first. They’re supported by advertisers who want the most amount of people to be subjected to their advertisements and the more people the ‘news’ networks can pull in, the more money they make. What’s the easiest way to get more people to watch? Make them emotionally invested by inciting fear, anger, or curiosity. What’s the best way to make people emotionally invested? Masquerade as some kind of ‘holder of truth’ and tell people things you know will upset them in some way to get them talking with other people who will also watch. It’s incredibly simple. Manipulation 101.
Have you ever wondered why the leading stories on the evening news are murder, rapes, horrible things some big business has done, and what the silly politicians are up to? Surely there are scientific discoveries, doctors going above and beyond to save patients and getting great results, literary marvels, and businesses turning themselves around that may be worthy of a lead… right? Well, we need to make sure we’re pulling in as many people as possible to sell ads, and leading with stories that trigger fear (murder/rape/big business) and anger (politicians) are much easier to draw viewership. I’ve heard people talk about how things were safer 20 to 50 years ago… I’m pretty sure people haven’t changed much (outside of hairstyles and clothes) in the last few thousand years, just a lot harder to hide now with the technology available and our news organizations feeding off of misery and negativity in the way they do.
Why are ‘news’ articles on the internet (now called click-bait) intentionally manipulative? Articles that are written with psychology in mind make people actively curious or fearful. Things like ‘<insert name of an attractive actor or singer> have 10 things they do for fun, number 7 will amaze you’ make a person legitimately curious. If you’ve ever clicked on that, have you noticed the actual content of those sites is literally hard to find because it’s 10’s to 100’s of ads? Each represents a penny or a fraction of a penny you just got the owner paid. Multiply that by a few million and you have CNN, Fox, or MSNBC.
It’s always been big business throughout history to keep the populace distracted, whether we’re talking about higher theatre (like… the actual theatre where you see plays for entertainment) to movies and tv all the way down to low theatre – the supposed ‘news’. I’m not sure about you, but I think… or rather know we can do better and are worthy of better.
Political Extremism
I keep thinking about something my brother-in-law mentioned on his podcast around people wanting to put themselves and others into boxes for political conversations – either right-wing or left-wing. He said, and I agree, that *most* people don’t easily fit on one wing or the other, most people are the torso (or the bird). I think this is mostly true, though what I’ve seen over the last 20 years with this country has been a security and politically fueled fear and anger spiral that culminated in political extremists occupying the Capitol of the United States this week. What I recall from the 90s was a level of disgust in terms of presidential and political behavior, which turned to fear and anger when 9/11/01 occurred. I honestly don’t think we ever recovered in nearly 20 years since then, and I don’t think we’re learning to improve ourselves.
When my wife sends me a message with a screenshot that one of her old ‘friends’ is posting the following on Facebook – I have to ask, isn’t this just veiled terrorism by extremist Americans?
Even though the news reports blame the other political extremist party for negative consequences due to the recent occupation of the Capitol, I personally don’t understand why I can’t find anything blaming extremism and not a particular political party. What is going on right now is not politics. Politics is a discussion on whether we can trust people to have less government oversight or whether the government should be an effective force for good using laws as a medium to achieve that ideal. Politics is a discussion on whether drug policy is truly effective or if we should change course or a conversation on how the country should be positioned currently in terms of immigration policy. What I’m seeing from the elected officials is extremism, not politics.
What’s Next
What follows is hope… I sincerely hope that as a nation we learn from this ignorant, shocking, and outright sad behavior. Nothing good comes from extremism. Only 5 people died when the occupation of the nation’s Capitol occurred this week, though still… 5 people died. We have to expect more from ourselves and one another to pull ourselves out of the mess we’re in. I see a lot of punditry and people talking about how the next president will/should help pull the country back together – though I think we’ve got to start thinking about how we combat extremism and address some of the fundamental flaws in how we operate today with our news organizations and how we are setting up politicians to succeed. I sincerely hope we are able to focus on the flaws of the system, as not one political party is better than another, we have to fix the system in which the parties operate to ensure the best results for Americans. Until that happens we’ll be in a nightmarish loop. But I do have hope and faith in us as a people we’ll get there… in time.
