Watching a so-called "undecided voter" on CBS yesterday morning - part of the network's 'Crossroads" segment- was illuminating. The thirtyish black woman was asked if she had made up her mind on whom to vote for. She hemmed and hawed - said she was initially for Biden- but then wasn't too impressed by his behavior ("unpresidential") in the first debate on Sept. 29th. My explosive reaction? WTF were you watching, lady? Did you not see Trump's antics? See e.g.
What was most mind boggling is that this black woman from Philly had to have seen Trump's calling on the racist Proud Boys to "stand by" yet her reaction was that she still "hadn't made up her mind". So, if she's telling the truth, she also has been infected by a rampant imbecility (which I refer to as "Trump agnosticism") affecting a large swatch of the nation. Did she know Biden's actual policy positions? No, she said she was going by her "feelings" and "impressions". As Janice put it, "A total idiot!"
Then two days ago I spotted a NY Times piece that might account for her agnosticism and that of many others. The article began:
"The common view of American politics today is of a clamorous divide between Democrats and Republicans, an unyielding, inevitable clash of harsh partisan polarization. But that focus obscures another, enormous gulf — the gap between those who follow politics closely and those who don’t. Call it the “attention divide.”
What we found is that most Americans — upward of 80 percent to 85 percent — follow politics casually or not at all. Just 15 percent to 20 percent follow it closely (the people we call “deeply involved”): the group of people who monitor everything from covfefe to the politics of “Cuties.”
Clearly, this black woman from Philly, on CBS for a 'battleground state' voter dialogue, is one of those "80 percent" with minimal investment in following U.S. politics. She goes by her gut, and evidently is oblivious to the ways a gut can mislead a voter. Where I had issues with the Times' authors is their labeling of those with deep familiarity with the politics and issues as "hard partisans" or "political junkies". For example,
"Among Democrats, the political junkies think the influence of wealthy donors and interest groups is an urgent problems. But less-attentive Democrats are 25 percentage points more likely to name moral decline as an important problem facing the country — a problem partisan Democrats never even mention."
The correct term ought to have been citizens, not political junkies- which is derogatory at a basic level. After all, it was Thomas Jefferson who first pointed out the supreme importance of the citizen in his Notes on Virginia, i.e.
"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves therefore are its only safe depositories. AND TO RENDER THEM SAFE, THEIR MINDS MUST BE IMPROVED"
Why the difficulty? Jefferson knew, as any intelligent American would, that being a "safe depository" in one's nation meant being attentive to its politics and political dynamics. That includes an easy recognition of the most important, critical issues at a given time. Is this hard to do? Yes, of course! Particularly when so many have competing demands on their time - from work, to online schooling of their kids, to caretaking duties of elder parents, to you name it. However, none of this absolves the real citizen of the duty to improve one's mind, in this case being informed regarding a nation's political dynamic, the forces at work to either consolidate unity or destroy it.
This isn't the case right now, which explains the sophomoric - perhaps even infantile - level of the average U.S. voter. Also, why so many have fallen into the rabbit hole of insane conspiracy ideations and movements (like QAnon) as well as becoming prey to fake news-misinformation claptrap. Thus, instead of acknowledging and understanding the fundamental differences between the two major parties,
"Most Americans just see two angry groups of people bickering over issues that may not always seem pressing or important."
Meanwhile, treating QAnon garbage, and Trump's bombastic assertions ("we're turning the corner on this virus") and claims ("best economy ever") as important. No surprise a backward political universe where black is white and up is down is created.
This is pathetic to say the least. It also dovetails with multiple survey findings of how few Americans are able to:
- Name their two state Senators
- Name the congressional representative for their district
- Name the three main branches of the federal government
- Name five of the Bill of Rights
Which confirms not only a dismal lack of attention but serious ignorance derived from lack of political education as well as deficient critical thinking. Truth be told, if this 80 percent who isn't locked in to political information (reliable!) was instead in tune and paying attention, we wouldn't see the fake news virus all over the place.
As recently as mid-June, PizzaGate was reported to have reached a level nearly exceeding its 2016 fever pitch, according to an analysis by The New York Times. TikTok posts with the #PizzaGate hashtag were viewed more than 82 million times from April to June. Google searches for PizzaGate reportedly skyrocketed. All this again points to the infectious value as well as propagation value of the original meme. (Recall Pizzagate's pushers - like Michael Flynn - claimed Hillary Clinton ran a child sex trafficking ring in the basement of a D.C. pizza parlor.)
But this sordid episode also underscores the inadequate political knowledge and total absence of critical thinking in those millions of indiscriminate Pizzagate consumers.
According to the Times analysis:
"In the first week of June, comments, likes and shares of PizzaGate also spiked to more than 800,000 on Facebook and nearly 600,000 on Instagram, according to data from CrowdTangle, a Facebook-owned tool for analyzing social interactions. That compares with 512,000 interactions on Facebook and 93,000 on Instagram during the first week of December 2016. From the start of 2017 through January this year, the average number of weekly PizzaGate mentions, likes and shares on Facebook and Instagram was under 20,000."
If Jefferson were alive today he'd be appalled at the mental degeneration evident in too many Americans. Improving their minds? Safe depositories of our collective national heritage? Hell, more like receptacles of misinformation, disinformation, political garbage and toxic memes. Certainly, the black woman interviewed on CBS as an "undecided voter" yesterday had been influenced by some of these. That she couldn't even distinguish a decent candidate like Joe Biden from a corrupt, criminal reprobate like Donald Trump - says little about her political I.Q., character assessment or her ability to cast a judicious vote. I.e. one in the interests of the nation, not one man's furtherance of narcissistic ambitions.
The question also isn't: "How can we get politics to match the opinions of the majority of Americans?" - which defines citizenship down, but rather:
What do more Americans need to do to become real citizens?
Of course, I am certain that most of our population - like the black undecided voter- regard themselves as true citizens to the core. But ARE they really? I myself believe being a citizen means much more than voting at each opportunity or being able to recall several facts about the governing system, or naming one's reps or Senators. It is, to me, a deep and almost tactile awareness of one's role in exposing the real workings of our system and how it often isn't living up to our justified expectations.
So, what can we say defines or delineates the real citizen, as opposed to the wannabe? I offer the following attributes for readers' consideration:
1) The real citizen perceives the interest of the commonweal over his or her own passing fancies, or hedonist pursuits, or whether a promised material gain (e.g. tax cuts, stock gains) is more important than the national welfare.
2) The real citizen sees the need for the prioritizing of public or civic space above encroaching commercial interests in many venues (most especially media - perhaps imposing a tax on E-M spectrum usage for the corporate megaliths).
3) The real citizen will additionally see the need for fairness in tax liability. So, he will pressure government to alter the existing tax burden so that investors in the stock market do not always come out ahead of ordinary wage earners.
4) The real citizen dedicates himself to improving his mind (in accord with Jefferson's injunction) by reading widely and with discrimination. He understands he owes it to himself to educate himself not only about national politics, but the history of his country. Above all, he trains himself to recognize false information when he sees it, and helps to educate his fellows about it - so they don't spread it.
5) The Real Citizen doesn’t need a ‘pledge’ or song to remind him of his duties and obligations – he knows his Bill of Rights and more importantly exercises them. (Use them or lose them!) He also helps to educate his fellows about these rights, as well as other critical sections of the Constitution.
7) The Real Citizen - above all - doesn’t confuse the nation he loves with the corporatocratic, toxic SYSTEM which confers disproportionate power on corporations in relation to the PEOPLE. Only flesh and blood PEOPLE can have rights – not legal artifacts.
See Also:
And:
I have become consumed with an alarming possibility: that neither the polls nor the actual outcome of the election really matter, because to a great many Americans, digital communication has already rendered empirical, observable reality beside the point.
If I sound jumpy, it’s because I spent a couple of hours recently chatting with Joan Donovan, the research director of the Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy at Harvard’s Kennedy School. Donovan is a pioneering scholar of misinformation and media manipulation — the way that activists, extremists and propagandists surf currents in our fragmented, poorly moderated media ecosystem to gain attention and influence society...
This week, Donovan’s team published “The Media Manipulation Casebook,” a searchable online database of their research. It makes for grim reading — an accounting of the many failures of journalists, media companies, tech companies, policymakers, law enforcement officials and the national security establishment to anticipate and counteract the liars who seek to dupe us.
Media manipulation is a fairly novel area of research. It was only when Donald Trump won the White House by hitting it big with right-wing online subcultures — and after internet-mobilized authoritarians around the world pulled similar tricks — that serious scholars began to take notice.
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