Our American Ruin
I planned to watch the news on June 13, 2023, seeing as how an unprecedented event had taken place. For the first time in American history, a president had been indicted on felony counts—37 of them. None of the talking heads would share anything that I didn’t know already or couldn’t extrapolate, that I can tell you. But it might have been worthwhile to see a pinch-lipped anchor enumerate the evidence against the former Commander-in-Chief, along with still photographs of classified documents lounging in cardboard boxes beside a five-star commode and bedazzled sink.
By the way, I do appreciate that mainstream journalists must cater to their viewers’ amorous addiction to drama. Ah, the teasing set up, the breathless delivery. They want to get the story right, even if it’s spiked with Spanish fly.
Basta. Instead of sitting down with David Muir or Norah O’Donnell or Lester Holt, I watched bird feeders in rustbelt Pennsylvania. Orioles’ pecking at grape jelly have chests far more vibrant than the other shade of orange plumage dominating broadcasts in recent days. Sure, the news matters, but what’s the point of slavishly keeping my appointment with the television when anybody with a computer and technological savvy can concoct content and stream it to those who will accept its legitimacy without reservation?
Thoughtful citizens at present are justifiably alarmed about the damage that artificial intelligence (AI) in nefarious hands might do to American society. The dangers are varied. From the insurance industry using private information to jack up rates or reject customers to nuclear weapons and power grids being controlled by “thinking” computers, AI has the potential to cripple normalcy. As my subject here is examining what Americans accept as factual and how they come to do so, however, I ask you to consider with me the possibility that where the public’s consumption of information is concerned, AI’s hit job on our rationality and mental stability has already been carried out. Meanwhile, expert consensus—if anybody respects expertise anymore—is that AI is just getting warmed up.
It’s now common knowledge that our online behaviors are relentlessly tracked. Go ahead, google “golf,” then prepare for emails and advertisements on your Facebook feed hawking titanium clubs and balls with hexagonal dimples. Whether you’re a Republican or Democrat or another species all together, entertain this: if the Internet detects what you’re shopping for and sends you offers at light speed, would it hesitate to manipulate your perception of reality?
Of course, the Internet itself isn’t the villain here—nor is AI—but those with the know-how and resources to use all that technology divines about us to fulfill their own purposes. My observations are neither insightful nor cutting edge. Back in 2018, Bernard Marr warned, “By spreading propaganda to individuals identified through algorithms and personal data, AI can target them and spread whatever information they like, in whatever format they will find most convincing—fact or fiction.” Marr’s article appeared in Forbes Magazine, which is listed by Ad Fontes Media’s well-worn chart as “neutral.” I’ve always regarded Forbes as conservative leaning, but I don’t know everything.
In How to Have Impossible Conversations, Peter Boghossian and James Lindsay articulate a standard I now employ to decide whether to engage people with whom I disagree about the daily news and myriad subjects that have family members and friends at each other’s throats. “If . . . you invite your [conversation] partner to present evidence for her beliefs, and she responds, ‘There’s no point in seeking evidence because there is no evidence that would change my mind,’ then her belief is not based on evidence.” Although the book outlines steps to soldier on with an individual who can’t or won’t speculate about what might give her or him pause, I refuse to go on a fool’s errand.
Do I sound harsh? If so, permit two caveats. First, a person who says “I shall not be moved” is in no way inferior to me. Simply, I lack the moral standing or wisdom to say anything helpful. (There’s also the chance that I may be wrong or misinformed myself.) Second, as Boghossian and Lindsay conclude, “Someone is unlikely to revise what they believe not because there are no conditions under which they could imagine their belief being false but because revising that belief would mean their (moral) identity has been compromised.” My shorthand for this assertion: if a conviction is bound to a person’s self-understanding, good luck prying it loose. The effort is above my pay grade.
Were the dynamic I’m asking you to consider extremist, I’d say, “Take heart. Let’s live in hope of a better day.” But millions of Americans are parked in the “no evidence would change my mind” ramp. Contemporary Republicans occupy a disproportionate share of the spaces. The GOP is also guilty of the most egregious and numerous offenses against government of the people, for the people, by the people. At the same time, the hands of Democrats are so bloody that I have forsaken my affiliation to the party. Gone is my obligation to defend the libs. Labels and slurs that describe my philosophy and sympathies have ceased to be relevant in this historical moment.
Conservative and liberal are noble words. Both possess their share of wisdom. Both have occasion to guide America in needful directions. The trouble is, reasonable conversations about what is best for our nation are rare because we live in a segregated society. We’re separated not by race—at least not to the extent we once were—but by the information we consume and the skill with which we discern its accuracy.
Discourse is nothing but foul wind when its participants don’t agree about the definitions of terms. I’ve known this since English Composition class in 1981. More recently I learned that a stench also rises from a dearth of shared facts. What do your words mean? And, my fellow Americans, what truths are to you self-evident? In this year of our Lord, 2023, can we find common ground about language and facts? No, we can’t.
Please, prove me wrong!
I’m not talking about the fringes here. As Quinnipiac University polling analyst Tim Malloy comments on Fox News, “A federal indictment. A court date on a litany of charges. A blizzard of critical media coverage. The negative impact on the former president’s standing with voters? Not much at all.” Two days after his indictment, Fox has 76% of Republicans holding a favorable view of the former president. The same source goes on to report more of Quinnipiac’s numbers: 37% of registered voters view Donald Trump favorably.
Gloriosky. If millions of voters believe that Trump has smugly patted cardboard boxes stuffed with classified documents beside his toilet and think that’s okay, then we have lamentably different ideas about what makes a president great. If 30,000,000 Republicans (76%) want Trump back in office, then our disputes far surpass the over-versus-under toilet paper debate. And if 60,000,000 voters (37%) have a favorable view of Trump, then our American government and electorate aren’t merely polarized. Citizens of these “United” States neither speak the same language nor share a native land.
I never tire of insisting that the societal damage of recent years isn’t that we blindly follow leaders of any political stripe. Our American ruin is well underway now because we believe whatever we please. To suggest that people are wrong is to violate something akin to a constitutional right. When we don’t like what we hear, all we need to say is, “That’s a lie.” My wife told me perhaps a year ago that one of her co-workers described how she determines the accuracy of information she receives via media. “I decide what’s true by how I feel about it,” she said, patting her chest.
And that’s the way it is. If Americans yield to immoral purveyors of information who insist that we are in the right because they say so, then we’ve got some nerve calling ourselves great. As for the evening news, well, never mind. Indictments, whether red or blue, won’t lead to convictions anymore.
Again, please prove me wrong.
Matters of Conscience 