What We Choose To See
The attempt to undermine democracy is out in the open. Will we choose to see it?
The documentarian Ken Burns rarely fails to enthrall. We always learn new facts about old stories; ones we thought we already knew. He ranges widely, and from the Civil War, to baseball, to our national parks system, Burns manages to uncover unseen patterns and pull them to the surface.
His current work, “America and the Holocaust,” now airing and streaming on-demand on PBS, is no exception. Having lost family in the Holocaust, and as a student of World War II, I thought I had a fairly good understanding of the times, but I was wrong. A big Oh-Wow for me was the fact that Hitler’s master-propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, modeled the legal noose around Germany’s Jews’ necks’ on America’s Jim Crow laws that restricted all aspects of Black life, especially, but not limited to the Southern United States, from business startups, to home mortgages, to interracial marriage, to voting, and, importantly, to education.
It made me stop and think about how we’re manipulated by media and slogans.
“Academics First” is one of those harmless-sounding but misleading slogans. It is a dog-whistle; code for those who would like to stop the accurate teaching of American history, ban the books they don’t like, and reject teaching tolerance in our public schools. It stands against the societal trend toward support of gay and transgender students, as well as people of color. It seeks to whitewash history, denying students of the very facts they need to keep from perpetuating, then passing age-old prejudices on to the generations that follow.
For better and worse, one of the miracles of modern life is the potential to connect with a good portion of the planet instantly. Media may no longer be “mass,” in that we don’t all love Lucy, and we no longer sing along with Mitch, but a single post on social media can take the world by storm. If we don’t use this technology to at least dent intractable prejudices, it will be used against us.
Social media is a two-edged sword. For example, we have an ex-president who is demonstrably damaged goods, yet there are millions of people who are unable to see his malignant narcissism or his pathological lying. They seemingly have not noticed that he has no plan, no policies, and no moral compass. In fact, when he gets in front of Republican legislators who know—and say in private—exactly what he is, they fawn and proclaim loyalty as their own moral compasses begin to whirl like the spin cycle in your washing machine. Tell a lie often enough and it seems true.
Here are four examples from an endless list that is too depressing to post in its entirety, besides, there are only about 30 pages in this newspaper:
· I lost the popular vote twice? It was voter fraud.
· The Charlottesville “Unite the Right (White?)” gathering where a woman of color was murdered? There are good people on both sides.
· I inspired the Capitol Riot? It was Antifa and Black Lives Matter.
· Stolen top secret documents? They must have been planted, or the National Archives said I could take them, or I declassified them just by thinking about it. Pick one.
These don’t even address the financial investigations, all which of course are Witch Hunts! I expect the United Covens of Witches will sue for defamation any day.
The damage to truth is insidious, and worldwide: In Iran, the secret police deny that there are nationwide riots in the wake of the police killing a girl whose head scarf was to loose according to the “Morality Police,” calling it, you guessed it: “Fake News.” A Trumpism as useful in theocracies as it is in autocracies.
There was a very cynical letter to the editor of this paper that falsely claimed the “limousine liberals” on Martha’s Vineyard turned their backs on the legal asylum seekers who were flown there from Texas, under what appear to be false pretenses, by the governor of Florida (which in itself is enough to put your head through the spin cycle), when in fact, they were greeted warmly, and helped back to the mainland where other helpers awaited them.
How many Republican candidates will follow the Trump Rule and not accept defeat? Ron Johnson (R-Fantasyland) has already said if he loses in November, it will be fraud, a transparently desperate position, considering he is well behind in the polls. Compare that to his opponent for the Senate from Wisconsin, Mandela Barnes, who, like Al Gore in 2000, has already said that he will abide by the results of the election. Accepting the will of the voters is a pretty low bar, but a high number of Republicans are denouncing that once-universally accepted American standard.
Whose “truth” will we choose to see?
©2022 Jon Sinton
My problem is that unlike you, when I get angry and try to express it, it turns to satire more and often less. It keeps me from burning up inside.
Consequently I’m so grateful that you can carry the light with fierce and intelligence.
In a world in need of fresh water, internet propagandists have poisoned the well by taking that torch that was passed to a new generation, burned the house down and now want to extinguish it in the last drops of truth that remain.
Bless you for your backbone and fortitude in thoughts, words and action.
As I'm sure you know, Jon, the U.S. has always had strong fascist and anti-Semitic leanings to match its founding racism. Your essay reminds me of the "Father Coughlin" radio phenomenon when 30 million Americans tuned into his weekly broadcasts. Given the U.S. population was about 125MM back then and assuming half were kids, his audience was half of U.S. adults. (Roosevelt cancelled his show when WWII broke out.) This mid-term election is the most important in the history of our representative democracy. If the GOP wins the House and/or Senate, the experiment is over. GOTV is critical despite the GOP's voter suppression efforts.