What is the proper response to fake news? I ask this in the wake of a NY Times story titled, "From Headline to Photograph, a Fake News Masterpiece." It chronicles the story of one Cameron Harris, who created, start to finish, a "fake" news story about fraudulent ballot boxes having been found in an Ohio warehouse. If true, it would have substantiated Trump's claim that the election was rigged. I won't detail the whole story here, but suffice it to say, he profited handsomely from it, to the tune of $100K in ad revenues, and he did it, self-professedly, less for political reasons (although he was a Trump supporter) more for the money. The story started, of course, not on the NY Times website, but on ChristianTimesNewspaper.com, and that should have been a tip-off, and the story was spread, ultimately, through social media. Harris' story fits, as it were, the classic definition of "fake news," which Until now, "had been widely understood to refer to fabricated news accounts that are meant to spread virally online."
Before I go any further, let me just say there is an element of credulity attached to "fake news." I am a rather skeptical sort, and had I been confronted with that story, I would have had, as a first thought, that it just didn't seem credible on the surface. Even if someone had gone to the time and effort to print up tubs of fraudulent ballots, one would need to enter them into the "official count." It may be possible, perhaps, and anyone who has read Caro's monumental biography of Lyndon Johnson, knows that it was a "common practice" in Texas politics in the years following the 2nd world war -- a common, but even then, an increasingly difficult task as more and more ballots were tabulated electronically. If one were to stuff a ballot box today, it's more likely, and more credible, that it would be done electronically, through hacking, rather than plastic tubs of paper ballots actually marked "ballots." To actually believe Harris' story without a good deal of corroborating evidence requires the confluence of a spotty understanding of election safeguards and desire, and of the two, desire is greater. It is believed not because it IS true, but because one WANTS it to be true.
It is easy enough to fabricate stories that, with the thinnest veneer of truth, appeal to what people WANT to be true. Trying to avoid yet another anti-religion screed, suffice it to say that those who click on a link to ChristianTimesNewspaper have most likely already conflated what they WANT to be true with what actually IS true -- are already predisposed to what Coleridge called a willing suspension of disbelief -- "a semblance of truth sufficient to procure for these shadows of imagination that willing suspension of disbelief for the moment, which constitutes poetic faith" or more to the point religious faith and its close cousin political faith. The so-called good news of the bible has not been widely understood as fabricated accounts meant to be spread virally among the dispossessed, the disposables and deplorables of the late roman empire, not by social media per se, but by its ancient and still potent equivalent, "word of mouth." Of course, it is heresy to call biblical accounts and what they purport "fake news," but we should remember that, for those who proffer fake news, it can serve an agenda. The opportunity to call out heretics, those unwilling or unable to suspend disbelief, becomes the point, and a point of social control for those within the community of believers. What you want to be true is true, but ONLY for those who believe, ONLY for those who conform to the authority of the given faith. And so, you find, as the NY Times reports, "conservative cable and radio personalities, top Republicans and even Mr. Trump himself, incredulous about suggestions that fake stories may have helped swing the election, have appropriated the term and turned it against any news they see as hostile to their agenda."
As an aside, as William deBuy points out, "One of the upshots of the faux-news business is that, amid intense click-bait competition for advertisers, only sites and articles pandering to the far right make money" in the way that Cameron Harris made money. "Disseminating made-up stories favorable to Hillary Clinton or Bernie Sanders returned nothing to the bottom line of the freelance hackers operating in what has become one of the Russian-speaking world’s newest cottage industries. Evidently a suspension of critical thinking -- or its complete absence -- is easier to exploit among those disposed to hate liberals and love Trump." There may be many reasons why this willing suspension of disbelief is easier to exploit among those who supported Trump. Part of it may be education, and the quality of the education, because "critical thinking" requires a skilled use of certain tools, habits of the mind, that are developed through a rigorous and demanding education. Part of it may be the mutually reinforcing social pressure within homogenous groups, the sort of social pressure epitomized by small town life in America, a social pressure that makes it unnecessary to imagine (or tolerate) forms of life other than one's own or one's neighbors. Being well educated, being urban, doesn't necessarily make one liberal, but it helps. A broad education in the humanities and social sciences gives one the tools to imagine other forms of life, to include religious life, while the heterogenous jostling of a city street creates a different sort of social pressure, a social pressure that makes tolerance, if nothing else, prudent. Regardless, Trump went about affirming the uneducated, not in an "I'm OK, you're OK" sort of way, but in a way that suggested their superiority to condescending elites who without doubt lack the common sense of the common man. Likewise, Trump went about affirming a rural and suburban homogeneity, which, I have to admit, doesn't necessarily make him racist or xenophobic, but it did provide an appeal to intolerance that many, including me, thought had passed out of American political life. Trump affirms what his supporters WANT to be true and tells them it WILL BE true, but ONLY for those who believe, ONLY if there is complete conformity to the authority of the orthodoxy.
This insistence on orthodoxy should scare us more than a bit. Here's how it works. A more or less technical, but important example -- the $15 minimum wage. As the Times again reports, "when coverage of Mr. Trump’s choice for labor secretary, Andrew F. Puzder, highlighted his opposition to minimum wage increases, the writer and radio host Erick Erickson wrote that Mr. Puzder should have been getting more credit for pointing out that such increases lead to higher unemployment. 'To say otherwise is to push fake news,' he wrote." There is a difference, of course, between fake news that invents stories from whole cloth in order to support an agenda, and opinion that is selective of facts in order to support an agenda. Likewise, it is one thing to suppress "fake news," or at least insist it be labeled for what it is, quite another to suppress opinion. With opinion, one may disagree. One might point out other relative facts in support of one point of view over another. One may, in other words, engage in rational argument, and with an issue like the minimum wage, there is plenty of room to engage in rational argument. Whether or not a $15 minimum wage, universally applied, will or will not contribute to job losses is disputable, and the same Times article reports, "the effects [on jobs] actually have been found to vary from city to city." Rational argument of the sort that considers all relevant evidence could potentially reveal a more nuanced and workable solution to the minimum wage. The GOP orthodoxy, however, insists that any raise in the minimum wage (indeed the minimum wage itself) contributes to job losses or suppresses job growth or "higher unemployment." By placing an opinion critical of the GOP orthodoxy in the same basket as "fake news" -- by appropriating the term and turning it against any expressed opinion critical of their agenda -- he invites its suppression, not because the contrary opinion lacks a basis in fact, but because it is heretical to the orthodoxy. Indeed, it doesn't take a nuanced view of history to understand a basic all too human tendency among those in power -- the more a contrary opinion actually HAS a basis in fact, the more virulent the efforts to suppress it as heresy and apostasy.
It probably goes without saying that many Trump supporters, particularly his most committed supporters, would benefit from a raise in the minimum wage. A cynic and skeptic might point out that the reason they are being fed an article of faith so contrary to their interests is fairly straight forward. The "capitalists" -- those who employ minimum wage workers -- want the greatest return possible on their investment of capital, and the higher the cost of labor, the lower the return on capital. There is some truth in the argument that climbing labor costs will engender job losses, and we have already seen that on the manufacturing side. The cost of labor had grown too high, in part because of union negotiated labor costs, and the jobs were exported to China and elsewhere. The cynic might point out, however, that most minimum wage workers are "service" workers, employed in industries that cannot easily export or automate away jobs, and their resistance to raises in the minimum wage is really all about its impact on the employer's return on capital. Moreover, the skeptic might also point out that those same industries receive a substantial, but indirect, government subsidy. The point of diminishing return works for both employers and employees. When wages grow too high, employers will seek other investments for their capital and shut down those enterprises leading to job losses. When legitimately acquired wages fall too low, when they are no longer a "living" wage, employees will ask "why bother?" At the moment, government subsidies like food stamps, keep minimum wage workers just on the other side of the "why bother" tipping point. The American tax-payer, in other words, by supplementing the income of the minimum wage worker, allows those who employ them to pay less, keep a workforce, and maintain their return on capital. Raising the minimum wage to a "living wage," which could vary relative to the cost of living in various communities, transfers the whole cost of employment to the employer, reduces substantially the need for tax-payer funded government subsidies. At that wage level, it is highly likely that the employees will actually spend their wages, helping fuel the economy and job creation through increased demand. All of which is my opinion, almost all of which could be buttressed (or challenged) with verifiable facts, but little of which simply accepts the GOP orthodoxy that "raising the minimum wage will lead to increases in unemployment." Whether true or not, the GOP elite WANT it to be true, in part because it serves their interests. The more a contrary opinion actually HAS a basis in face, the more virulent the effort to suppress it as heresy and apostasy.
One might suggest that the GOP has plowing the ground for a take-over for some time. If the facts aren't on your side, there are a couple of well worn paths to winning an argument in the hearts and minds of the people. The first is to attack, not the credibility of the facts themselves, but the purveyors of the facts. One source of "facts" has been the mainstream media, whose reporting is buttressed by an army of "fact checkers." The GOP attack on the "mainstream media" has been been consistent and persistent, itself a backhanded admission that the facts are not on their side, but that aside, if one cannot trust the mainstream media to get the facts right, then who can you trust? The NY Times may have a liberal bias in the interpretation of facts, particularly on its opinion pages, but I am reasonably certain that their reported "facts" are indeed verifiable and true. Likewise, the Wall Street Journal may have a conservative bias in the interpretation of facts, particularly on their opinion pages, but I am reasonably certain that their reported "facts" are verifiable and true. John Ziegler, a conservative radio host, points out, that "over the years, we’ve effectively brainwashed the core of our audience to distrust anything that they disagree with. And now it’s gone too far,” and it's gone to far "because the gatekeepers have lost all credibility in the minds of consumers, I don’t see how you reverse it.” If the NY Times and the Wall Street Journal can't be trusted, who then? The Christian Times Newspaper? Fox News? The latter is so clearly the organ of "conservatism" that its claim to be "fair and balanced" would be almost laughable, except that "fair and balanced" has come to mean unremitting support of the GOP orthodoxy.
If the facts aren't on your side, the second path to winning an argument is to play on emotion, and of these, fear and anger trump all else for stoking the irrational. James Fallows, writing for the recent Atlantic, noted that Trump's inaugural speech was "virtually identical to Trump’s campaign-rally speeches: just as long on anger and dystopia, just as short on specifics of policy. When the language differed from that of the campaign speeches, it was generally by being even blunter and more negative." One expected an indictment, in the metaphorical sense, of the Obama years -- he ran after all as the anti-establishment candidate -- and as Fallows also points out, "almost any newcomer has a bill of indictment about the status quo," and of course even those of us who hoped desperately for a different result (almost any different result) had own bill of indictment about the status quo. Still, "by recent standards this was extremely bleak: the Washington Post’s graphics team put out a fascinating item listing the words from Trump’s speech that had appeared in no previous inaugural. They include: carnage, disrepair, rusted, stealing, ripped, tombstones, trapped." For some Americans, Trump pushed a button that set off a loud and discordant alarm. In places like Mountain Home, ID, and Geneva, NE, he really has described "a reality that some but not most Americans perceive," and as I and many others, including Fallows, have suggested, "far too many people are displaced, left behind, shortchanged, and dead-ended by the effects of technology and finance. That’s the human and economic challenge of this economic era, and it’s especially true for older people, less educated people, and those in some majority-white Appalachian and Rust Belt-locales where businesses have been closing rather than opening." Trump may be more broadly based, however, than Fallows admits. It's not just majority white Appalachian and Rust Belt America, but the more rural areas across America whose main streets have been Wal-Marted, whose surrounding fields have been DeKalbed, whose small town way of life has been economically exsanguinated by a distant and faceless bureaucracy. They are living, if not in a dystopian reality, then a reality of diminished prospects -- a reality that is "losing" in everything, including population, as their children and grandchildren move away to the other, more prosperous, America.
Here again, however, the facts are not entirely on Trump's side. As Fallows also points out, "for most Americans, the past few years have represented economic progress rather than decline." He cites two pieces of evidence for the "some, but not most American's" view of the American landscape. One is Trump's loss in the popular vote, a loss that is simply a "fact" that must be explained away or suppressed if Trump is to view his electoral victory as anything resembling a mandate. The other is represented by "the classic Politico headline from the GOP convention. It was 'GOP Delegates Say Economy Is Terrible—Except Where They Live.'" There is considerable evidence for the persistent "terrible everywhere except here," which indicates that people are not completely blind to their own circumstances, but WANT to believe the GOP orthodoxy that the current taxation and regulatory regimes have left the economy in a shambles -- the persistent belief among republicans in general that employment has fallen during the Obama years (it hasn't) -- the persistent belief that wages have stagnated and fallen during the Obama years (they haven't). As Fallows notes, the list could go on to include any number of false beliefs -- inflation, financials, energy-production, manufacturing, trend in deficits, emissions -- but it was summed up nicely by a respondent on Quora, who writes, that their "traditional beliefs are impervious to facts. This one amazes me whenever I witness it. Intelligent people will change their beliefs in order to accommodate new, verified information. Your average Republican, however, will double down - using every type of fallacy or denial to fend off what they perceive to be a personal attack. It's stunning, like watching a 37 year-old defend the Tooth Fairy." Of course, they double down in part because it is a "personal attack." If one's identity is tied up in being a christian, in being a republican (virtually identical to many) the "new, verified information" represents a challenge to what they WANT to be true. The more fact based the challenge, the more virulent the response, and yes, it is stunning, literally, because one cannot engage in rational argument with those who are impervious to verifiable facts. From their perspective, one must either join the party -- as my son would say, shut up and drink the Kool-Aid -- or be branded a heretic, an apostate.
So, how should one respond to fake news? I'm really not sure. Arguing with the core GOP base is akin to arguing with those missionaries that occasionally show up on one's doorstep or accost one on the street. There is no arguing with them, not in a rational, productive sense. On the one hand, there are those whose interests are served by the articles of GOP faith -- particularly low taxes and lax regulation. Nothing will change those interests. On the other hand, there are those who have entangled their christian faith and their GOP faith, both of which require a significant willing suspension of disbelief, and are willing to engage in argument FOR the faith, but never against it. The former are served by the latter. There is, however, a difference between cynical self interest, genuine faith, and Trump. Although one can feel some humility in one's bowing before God, but there is also an element of narcissism in the core christian doctrine -- that we are and I am in particular made in the image of god, that he sacrificed his own son to save the world and me in particular, and that we are and I am in particular the object of the almighty's concern on a day to day basis. It is perhaps telling that "religious leaders," those who develop a cult following, take the narcissism of "I in particular" to an extreme, who no doubt believe that god has singled them out, communicates with them directly, and they personally have a special mission for the world. As I have suggested before, Trump is less a political leader, more a religious leader, whose narcissism knows few bounds. There is less in the way of "policy specifics," more a sense of "as I decree, so shall it be." He has developed less a governing consensus, more a "movement," or so he thinks of it. He tells us, drawing on divine authority for his own authority, that "the Bible tells us how good and pleasant it is when God's people live together in unity. We must speak our minds openly, debate our disagreements honestly, but always pursue solidarity." How openly, how honestly, is always a question when "God's people live together in unity," because ultimately it is a conformity to the faith, the suppression and exclusion of apostates and heretics, that produces the solidarity.
And Trump has already given us a small test of our faith, challenged the willingness to suspend rational disbelief. According to the NY Times, "he also called journalists 'among the most dishonest human beings on earth,' and he said that up to 1.5 million people had attended his inauguration," but there is evidence, verifiable evidence, that his claim simply isn't true. It may be what Trump himself wants to believe, what he wants the world to believe, but photographs of the event show a rather sparse crowd compared to the inauguration of Obama, and even the women's march seems to have had a greater turnout. Wanting and getting are two different things, however, and could be dismissed as the same sort of doubling down on debunked statements that characterized his twitter feed throughout the campaign, but he now holds power. As the Times goes on to report, "Later, at the White House, he dispatched Sean Spicer, the press secretary, to the briefing room in the West Wing, where Mr. Spicer scolded reporters and made a series of false statements," most of which concerned the credibility of the news itself. "He said news organizations had deliberately misstated the size of the crowd at Mr. Trump’s inauguration on Friday in an attempt to sow divisions at a time when Mr. Trump was trying to unify the country, " and the ominous note comes at the end when he "warn[s] that the new administration would hold them to account." If "holding them to account" means "holding them to the truth," then the news media has little to fear. If "holding them to account," however, means "insisting on conformity to the faith" -- as Ann Coulter put it, displacing god for the news secular messiah, "in Trump we trust" -- then we can expect the same suppression and exclusion of the apostate media and heretical reporting that we witnessed during the campaign, suppression and exclusion buttressed with political power. So far, the media doesn't seem particularly cowed, and even benign ABC reported on the crowds at his inauguration. Then too, given his cabinet picks, Trump may well turn out to be an oligarch serving his own class interests. Either way, as the new messiah and leader of his chosen people, or as American Putin, it ends badly for the people, particularly the people who put him in office, and its unlikely God will protect them from the evil they brought on themselves.
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