Matching Tracksuits

Today, conservative commentator Dinesh D’Souza tweeted the following:

I’ve seen the same sort of pronouncement in other places. Trump-supporting conservatives are heading to alternate social media platforms, with MeWe and Parler being the most often mentioned replacements for Facebook and Twitter. The reason for this is fairly succinctly summed up on Parler’s “Values” page:

Biased content curation policies enable rage mobs and bullies to influence Community Guidelines. Parler’s viewpoint-neutral policies foster a community of individuals who tolerate the expression of all non-violent ideas.

What they’re referring to is FB’s and Twitter’s policy of labeling misleading information as such. Groups based on ideas with absolutely grounding in reality (like QAnon and white supremacist groups) get kicked off; groups that share clearly factually incorrect information have labels slapped on the posts. Is this censorship? I don’t know. But I see value in this. We’ve all seen the mess social media has made in our lives: it’s easy to live in an echo chamber of our own making, and if someone promotes dangerously deranged ideas that threaten the very underpinnings of a democratic society, someone needs to point that out. Will this help? I doubt it will for most people. But for a few? To see that fact-checkers have determined this meme contains incorrect, inflammatory information? It might just give second thoughts to someone.

But with everyone heading off to “free speech” social media platforms, the echo of everyone’s self-created echo chamber will only resonate more and more loudly. If many people do indeed follow through with D’Souza’s idea, we’ll have two parallel societies in America in life and online, two distinct realities. And one of those realities at this point seems decidedly disconnected for facts.

It will only get worse.

Stories will be invented whole-cloth. Conspiracy theories will no longer be hidden in the dark like mushrooms; they’ll be out in the open, flourishing but, like mushrooms, still fed on shit.

Shit in; shit out. Parler is already in the news for an Arkansas police chief’s call to kill all Democrats:

Would this have happened without Trump? Would these people have been as brazen in their ridiculously absurd notions, their shameless hatred, their unencumbered ignorance? Would QAnon have arisen without Trump? Would supporters of a non-Trump Republican president have come to doubt the legitimacy of the electoral system in America? Would this graph have looked the same?

Best case damage scenario: Trump takes down the whole Republican party. Massive restructuring and soul-searching takes place and the GOP emerges cleansed, humbled.

The LA Times thinks this might be impossible:

Because Trump’s narcissism was so profound, he responded to any criticism with the political equivalent of a nuclear counter-strike. And because Trump’s insecurity was infectious, his fan base — which had outsize power in primaries — would follow suit. This ensured that most Republican politicians shouted their praise of Trump and muzzled their criticism. […]

Institutionalized Trump narcissism probably cost him the election, because the superhuman image he insisted his loyalists embrace never reflected the reality on the ground. Many Republicans were in fact not that into him. They liked the judges, the tax cuts, even some of the “own the libs” bombast. But they were turned off by the self-indulgence, the conspiracy theorizing and the constant need for praise and attention. Still, few conservative politicians or media figures were willing to say so, at least not in a way, or on a platform, where the president would get the message. Trump believed his most fawning media and his fawning media told him again and again, “Never change.” […]

For four years, Donald Trump was president, which also meant he was the de facto head of the Republican Party. This allowed the acolytes of Trumpism — however you want to define that sloppy term — to marry Trumpism, nationalism, patriotism, populism, tribalism, MAGA, etc., to old fashioned party loyalty.

That marriage is over now. And the breakup is ugly and revealing in its ugliness. For many people, Trumpism wasn’t about the party. For a few it wasn’t even about the country. It was about him. His infectious narcissism and incessant victimhood fueled this cult of personality, which he valued more than the office he held. He’s lost his grip on the office, but he’s doing everything he can to hold on to the cult, by claiming he was robbed. It remains to be seen how many he’ll ultimately take with him. But we can be sure the answer will be too many.

Those of us who said Trump might indeed be an existential threat to our system shouldn’t be gloating over being proved right, in part because the people actively working to help Trump destroy our system — i.e., his supporters — don’t even see it that way. They’re saving democracy. Sort of like destroying the village to save it.

had a different feel this evening.

I understand that there are a lot of people out there who are feeling the same worry I felt four years ago when Trump unexpectedly won. I feel for them, but I don't think their fears are as founded in reality as mine were. I guess that's natural, that bit of self-centeredness in one's thinking, but I really think the fears of Biden turning America into Venezuela are as unfounded as QAnon's fears of the "true" nature of the Democratic party.

The reaction of Trump supporters to the mounting crisis is firm evidence of two things:

1. This is no longer the Republican party; it’s the party of Trump.
2. The party of Trump is not interested in democracy or the will of the people; it is interested in power.

How to hold on to that power? Well, at the simplest and most benign level, they are praying. There’s nothing really radical about that. These women are “praying justice will be done and righteousness prevails,” which in this case means the re-election of Trump.

This might be achieved, I suppose, through some miraculous means, but it doesn’t necessarily entail overturning the will of the people.

Yet not all Trump supporters wish for divine intervention to usurp the will of the people. Some are willing to just beat the other side down.

https://twitter.com/RexChapman/status/1311413755633381381

Or kill them.

Or perhaps behead them.

All this stands in stark contrast to John McCain’s concession speech in 2008 in which he showed what a real leader looks like.

https://twitter.com/theJeremyVine/status/1324430854697922561

How did we devolve so far in just twelve years?

One

“I’m so glad the election today, and it will all be over soon,” said K yesterday as we were cleaning up after breakfast.

I put down the dish I was rinsing. “Are you kidding? This is only the beginning. It won’t be over until the inauguration.”

It was a thought I’d had along with many others: Trump, in an effort to usurp the election, might try to stop states from counting votes before all absentee ballots have been counted. That appears to be exactly what’s happening, and predictably the corrupt Republicans (are there any other kind these days?) are going along with it.

Two

When I got to school today, students were buzzing about the election. They were checking the news every few minutes, watching it in realtime during lunch, completely engaged, so perhaps that is one benefit of this divisive election: it’s getting more people involved than ever before, at least in my memory.

Will this translate into political activity and engagement when they’re eighteen? We should all hope so. And yet, if they’re not informed and principled voters, will it really do anything to solve the problem?

Three

We’ve all heard this argument for the electoral college’s continuing validity: “If we got rid of the electoral college, then three states would decide the election.”

I simply don’t understand that “logic.” States don’t vote. People do. The electoral college simply means that some individuals’ votes (i.e., voters in less densely populated rural regions) carry more sway than others’ votes (i.e., voters in more urban states). It seems to me to be an intentional biasing of the electoral system to favor the rural areas over the urban areas. This always means favoring the conservative vote over the progressive vote. Every time a candidate has won the electoral college vote and lost the popular vote, it’s favored the conservative candidate.

Four

When the results of the 2000 election were dragging out, it became clear that more than just the presidency was on the line. The faith in our political institutions was also under fire, and when all legal means had been exhausted, Gore conceded. In his concession speech, he said:

Almost a century and a half ago, Senator Stephen Douglas told Abraham Lincoln, who had just defeated him for the presidency, “Partisan feeling must yield to patriotism. I’m with you, Mr. President, and God bless you.”

Well, in that same spirit, I say to President-elect Bush that what remains of partisan rancor must now be put aside, and may God bless his stewardship of this country. Neither he nor I anticipated this long and difficult road. Certainly neither of us wanted it to happen. Yet it came, and now it has ended, resolved, as it must be resolved, through the honored institutions of our democracy. […]

This has been an extraordinary election, but in one of God’s unforeseen paths, this belatedly broken impasse can point us all to a new common ground, for its very closeness can serve to remind us that we are one people with a shared history and a shared destiny. Indeed, that history gives us many examples of contests as hotly debated, as fiercely fought, with their own challenges to the popular will. Other disputes have dragged on for weeks before reaching resolution, and each time, both the victor and the vanquished have accepted the result peacefully and in a spirit of reconciliation. So let it be with us.

I know that many of my supporters are disappointed. I am too. But our disappointment must be overcome by our love of country. […]

President-elect Bush inherits a nation whose citizens will be ready to assist him in the conduct of his large responsibilities. I personally will be at his disposal and I call on all Americans — I particularly urge all who stood with us to unite behind our next president.

This is America. Just as we fight hard when the stakes are high, we close ranks and come together when the contest is done. And while there will be time enough to debate our continuing differences, now is the time to recognize that that which unites us is greater than that which divides us. […]

And now, my friends, in a phrase I once addressed to others, it’s time for me to go. Thank you and good night and God bless America.

He did not suggest there had been fraud. He did not suggest that elements within the government had conspired against him. He did not suggest that Bush was evil. He did not predict failure for Bush and therefore for America.

He stepped aside and accepted the results of our institutions. He called for healing and unity. His actions were guided by the simple principle that the country is more important than his personal political ambitions.

In a similar situation, can anyone imagine Trump doing anything even remotely similar?

I’ve heard it all my life: the mainstream media has a liberal bias. When I considered myself a liberal, I didn’t really believe it — how can one see one’s on bias? Now that I’m moving more politically to the right, it seems more obvious. Of course one could argue that I see what I want to see, that just as I didn’t see liberal bias as a liberal because I didn’t want to, now I see liberal bias as a moderate because I want to. But as I watched the debate this evening, I couldn’t keep myself from snapping a few screen shots to see if I was right.

I was.

First, there’s the question of selecting which social media comments (Tweets and Facebook updates) to run across the screen. During the few minutes I watched, I saw a few anti-Obama comments:

I saw a few anti-Romney comments:

This is by no means a scientific sampling: I’m sure I missed a lot, and I certainly missed some anti-Obama ones among them. But the vast majority were highly critical of Romney. Now, someone had to choose which Tweets and FB status reports to post, and something had to inform that choice. Perhaps they wrote some scripts to pull random samples. It would be nice to believe that, but it would be naive given the independent polling that shows the two candidates just about even.

The next type of bias came in the form of info-blurbs flashed on the screen while a candidate was speaking. While Obama spoke, all sorts of facts about the administration’s achievements were flashed on the screen. It almost seemed choreographed:

All these factoids do what? They present an image of a man who is faithfully conveying facts, devoid of rhetorical twists or omissions. It’s Cliff Notes, in essence: it makes sure that viewers fully understand all of Obama’s accomplishments.

During the same period of time, I saw two such factoids flashed for Romney:

I didn’t watch the whole debate, so perhaps I was missing something at the beginning. But the somewhat random sample I got, within about a twenty-minute period of time toward the end of the debate, seems to be blatantly pro-Obama.

This of course doesn’t even take into account the moderator’s defense of Obama regarding the declaration that the attack in Benghazi was a terrorist attack and not some spill-over from a protest. K looked at me and asked, as if she were missing some nuance of the language, “Is she defending him?” I nodded. “That’s embarrassing,” she concluded.

Well, it should be.