It appears that advertising as a profession and a business arose in the late 19^th century.[1] With the advent of digital media, we are probably confronted with hundreds, maybe even thousands, of ads every day,[2] though not nearly as many as the 10,000 frequently cited with little empirical evidence.[3]

I often despair at how much our lives are manipulated by elites—governmental, economic, religious, policing—add your own troubling categories.. Not too long ago, I became especially aware of how social institutions like on-line media (news media, social media, retail media, and on and on) tell us what we should care about[4]—and how we way too often submit to their enticements.[5]

Advertising of a material product, or a political candidate or cause, is the most obvious, and perhaps longest lived, example, but nowadays it’s often a subset of some larger “concern” to which we’re being alerted. I think the problem extends to the entire digital world, especially in this age of nearly constant attention to our digital devices (which seems to cut across ALL age groups—that’s right, us old codgers, too).

Some examples:

• Picking up on contemporary standards for what is important in our world (commonly revolving around money, power, controversy, and sexual attractiveness), news headlines highlight people whom media and their subjects want us to care about, like billionaires (as in the catastrophe of the deep-sea vessel visiting the Titanic, or the latest shenanigans of Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, or Jeff Bezos), or feuding politicians (especially when they’re in the same party), or people characterized as celebrities (as in how much money they just paid or received for a house, or whom they’re sleeping with). More everyday casualties of any sort don’t generate sufficient readership.[6]
• Headlines commonly use unspecified but titillating references about supposedly important information, so that digital lemmings that we are, we click and read what is often bland content. But by the time we realize that, we’ve witnessed multiple ads embedded with the “news” item—and often, we anyway click on links embedded in the “news” story.
• Headlines lure us with heart-stopping adjectives like “bombshell,” “stunning,” “shocking,” “devastating,” “jaw-dropping,”
• We take brand names so for granted that when a crossword puzzle uses them for entries, we feel proud if we know the relevant name—or frustrated with ourselves if we don’t. [7]

Do we ever question the media’s construct of imaginary agglomerations of people with supposedly unified positions? These instant individual or group self-styled authorities give us the scoop on endless significant or trivial features of our culture. Here are some generic templates used by so many digital media sources:

• Sports report vital information like “Major League Baseball [or your own favorite professional or collegiate sport] world [or “Twitter” or just “the internet”] expresses [some elaborate emotion, preferably akin to outrage] over [anything at all]”
• Or: [Athlete in some sport] [accomplishes something unspecified] never before seen[8] [or at least not seen in donkey’s years]
• “[Very young person] gets rich [with unspecified innovation] ”
• “The [some one- or two-digit number] best [Netflix films this month, EVs, hidden travel sites, etc., etc.]”
• “I’m an expert in [anything the news service has dreamed up], and I have this startling news for you”
• “The nation [gasps/reels/reacts] as [one famous person or social group or government institution attacks another]”
• “New poll shows [dramatic but unspecified truth about some topic of purportedly crucial importance]”
• “Genius trick[s] to [accomplish something you’ve unwittingly been doing all wrong up to now]”
• “Shoppers agree on the superiority of [some popular consumer item], and it’s on sale right now at [usually Amazon] for [this amazingly low price that you can’t pass up]”
• “[You need to] [do this thing you didn’t know about] right away”
• “Most iconic [whatever]”
• [Review after review (including great bargains, as appropriate) of anything imaginable, material or otherwise]

I have the impression that sources about which we might care have taken up many of these techniques to draw us in[9]—and, not incidentally, to motivate us to make donations. Here are some examples from August 9 of this year (I will not waste your time or mine with examples from the Wall Street Journal[10]):

• NPR: “A boy on the autism spectrum struggled with a haircut. His barber saved the day.”
• CNBC: “At 101 years old, I’m the ‘world’s oldest practicing doctor’: My No. 1 tip for keeping your brain sharp”[11]
• The Guardian: “What I learned from hiking with a partner who strode ahead—and wouldn’t slow down”
• BBC “Can eating dessert for breakfast actually help you lose weight? A scientist explains.”[12]
• National Geographic: “Animals trapped in war zones find a second chance here.”[13]
• Smithsonian: “Can Peacock Vasectomies Save This Florida Town?”[14]

As I was finishing this commentary, I encountered this on-line headline: “World reacts to Megan Rapinoe’s clear opinion on America.” I end with it because of how its reach tries to smush together very different (though not to the headline writer) concerns:

 Context: Rapinoe has been a star member of the US women’s soccer team that recently was knocked out of this year’s women’s World Cup championship (after having won it the two previous years, which took place, before the pandemic). A lot of people seemed to feel patriotism was wrapped up with either rooting for the Americans or condemning them, and apparently the outspoken Rapinoe has become the focal point for whatever is viewed as wrong with the team.[15]

1. Rapinoe has made some critical comments about the US (no free speech in sports, of course), and has been taken to be unpatriotic (I can only hope she is).[16]
2. The concern in the headline, however, is not stated to be about soccer but about the entire United States.
3. Given other sports headline phraseology, we might have expected this statement to start with something like “US soccer world.” But no—suddenly the entire globe (try to picture that) is gripped by this drama and has deep concerns about this very narrow topic, symbolized by a single soccer player, in one very specific country.
4. Of course, we won’t know what Rapinoe’s “clear opinion” is unless we click on the headline. I leave it to curious readers to suss out exactly what the expression means.

A final note: You may have observed that I have not ventured into the quicksand of internet use for political malfeasance, though of course politics and any economic system intertwine to the point of being indistinguishable.

[1] I have a vague memory that Henry James used the novelty of professional advertising as one key character’s job.

[2] I gather that for starters, an awful lot of people, and especially young people, subscribe to multiple social media, which I also gather are riddled with ads.

[3] One thoughtful article on the history of such estimates begins with “Hundreds of articles and blogs will tell you that we see up to 10,000 ads a day. The problem? No one – from Harvard professors to Market Research Council hall-of-famers – believes it’s true.” (https://www.thedrum.com/news/2023/05/03/how-many-ads-do-we-really-see-day-spoiler-it-s-not-10000)

[4] You might wish to add that they also try to tell us what and how to think, but I see that as a side issue (albeit troubling) that doesn’t matter so long as you buy advertised goods and services.

[5] My only social medium is Facebook, which I view infrequently and almost entirely for leftish political posts (though these can get pretty repetitive). If you’re on one of the social media, think about how often you click on ads.

[6] Except, it seems, for the latest wartime deaths and mutilations, many or few, in Ukraine (but typically not Russia, much less other countries where fighting is happening).

[7] Further re brands: Consider how we love to urge specific brands or businesses on our friends. And how we offer this free advertising without expecting to be paid by the companies we’re touting.

[8] I like to imagine that the unique event (they are almost daily) is scatological.

[9] Even the leftish Huffpost[9] has a daily section called “Huffpost personal” that, judging by its headlines, are full of extravagantly boring personal tales imagined to be valuable for our own lives.

How many readers today know that Ariana Huffington was once a right-winger married to a California Republican congressperson? Not, of course, that past behavior should ever be predictive of future results.

[10] Of course, nothing and no one is objective in the sense we normally mean by that term, but the Journal can almost always be counted on to push any news in a conservative if not ultra-right direction. I have some limited trust in, but still check with caution, headlines (and sometimes parts of corresponding articles) in the NY Times and the Washington Post (though I never forget that Jeff Bezos owns the Post), but I use FAIR (Fair and Accuracy in Reporting—fair.org) to keep up with current examples of how journals like these are skewing news, especially in relation to biases about social justice and economic issues. I have some fondness for, and relative trust in, articles in, The Atlantic, The New Yorker and The Nation.

[11] If it’s so goddamned important, why isn’t the answer in the headline????

[12] Judging by the second line, the answer to the question is “yes.” (I refuse to click and find out.) If so why pose it as a question? And notice that we are to assume, here and elsewhere, that ANY “scientist” is an unimpeachable source.

[13] Is “here” so complicated it can’t be specified in a word or short phrase?

[14] So hard not to click and see the details on this especially provocative locution…but I managed…so far.

[15] Aside from losing that key match, during the tournament many of the American players refused to pay homage to the “Star-Spangled Banner.” Reading a headline about this supposedly unpatriotic protest of American social injustice, which I could wish all athletes would repeat, is what made me pay attention to the tournament at all.

[16] I have always felt dismay at how patriotism (coined in English in the 17^th century) remains so highly valued, apparently in all countries. I always liked the relatively conservative Samuel Johnson’s “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel” until I recently learned that, according to Boswell, who recorded the quote, “he did not mean a real and generous love of our country, but that pretended patriotism which so many, in all ages and countries, have made a cloak for self-interest.” (I took this quote from https://interestingliterature.com/2021/05/patriotism-is-the-last-refuge-of-the-scoundrel-meaning-origins/. You can find the larger context by searching for a unique part of the quote in Gutenberg.org’s version of Boswell’s voluminous Life of Johnson at https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/1564/pg1564-images.html.) Boswell’s description, of course, continues to apply to many politicians.

After several days of rooting for effective Ukrainian resistance with minimal[2] loss of life and limb, I’m realizing that at some level such a feeling may be little different from the let’s-go-to-get-‘em! war emotions that political leaders easily stir up in a population. Think, for example, about the huge US enthusiasm among Americans for attacking Afghanistan after 9-11 (I wasn’t one of them) or enthusiastic German support for World War I as depicted in _All_Quiet_on_the_Western_ Front_.[3]

Not unlike government leaders when they infuse a population with war lust, most of the rest of us are personally far removed from the reality of what is happening in Ukraine, and so our vehement cheering can be viewed as convenient and easy. We become like the cheering crowds who pack sidewalks as Our Boys (and now Girls) march gallantly off to defend home and hearth.

This is not to say we shouldn’t condemn the Russian war effort, nor that we should expect the Ukrainian people to roll over in the face of the threat to their cultural and biological lives. But for me, it does mean we should be cautious about racing to find heroes, a tendency that media play up or, as in the cited article, may actually use to stir war fervor and, in promoting unity of purpose within our population, normalize some of the worst aspects of our own culture. So far as I can tell from history, one overwhelmingly common effect of war is to encourage rationalizations that encourage the worst in many people, civilian and military. One such effect is to prompt us to ignore any behavior that doesn’t fit our polarization of events into angelic or demonic.[4] While it no way redeems what they are wreaking, I have no doubt that some Russian soldiers are torn about what they’re asked to do and may even at times do generous things for those they defeat. There could even be a 21^st-century version of refuseniks among them, though I doubt we’ll ever hear of any, or that Ukraine supporters outside the country care. (I can understand why Ukrainian citizens themselves wouldn’t care or even believe such reports.)

Then there are the ostensibly supportive and unambiguous cultural mantras we bandy about. I think especially of preserving “democracy,”[5] a thorny term that has always been compromised—among other ways in who is allowed to vote, who is able (or allowed) to run for office, and the level of critical thinking skills an electorate applies to political or war campaign slogans and behavior. Guess which severely compromised country of which I’m a citizen is high on my list here?

No nation in war (or peace) is pure, as we know if via no other source from the history of war attitudes and atrocities among American troops during our own history.[6] Consider reports that Ukraine border guards discriminate against dark-skinned people trying to leave the country, whether their own citizens or foreign students. If this prejudicial behavior is accurate, I can’t know if it’s narrowly limited to the guards’ culture[7] or, more likely, reflects a larger Ukraine attitude towards non-white-skinned people. In any event, it’s discouraging and a reminder that we at a distance who are white probably take for granted that the Ukrainian population we see looks incredibly white.

Starting from the fairy tales we encounter in early childhood, and continuing into adult delight in the morality tales of the Iliad or Arthurian legend or (good) police TV series or superheroes or westerns or spies saving the world from destruction, we are infused with a quest for heroes in our lives to give us some hope in the face of an often-hostile universe. From the likes of Donald Trump and his fellow white supremacists to Stacey Abrams and farther left, we seek heroes (a word I intend as ungendered) to save us from rampant untruth, injustice, and the unAmerican way that keep cropping up.[8] And while many of us may condemn war in principle, we can quickly support it when leaders use an atrocity to demonize those who (allegedly) perpetrated it. Because we have learned that wars can indeed be terrible, we yearn for no war at all or, if we have to have one, a Good War, but I suspect there are only Less Bad Wars.

It will be interesting to see the long-term effects of the (sort-of) non-violent economic and isolating techniques being used against Russia,[9] though as Putin claims, they are indeed a form of war.[10] I can hope that regardless of their current effect, they turn out to be a constructive way of diminishing loss of life and even destruction of infrastructure in future conflicts.

It will also be interesting to see, when this war ends (whatever that means, exactly), how long it will take before a return to business as usual with Russia by the tsk-tsking international Western businesses currently joining the stampede to condemn and punish Russia. I suspect much of that behavior will turn out to be for public relations. And I expect that like the days in this country after 9/11, the unusual unity within our culture will quickly dissipate into long-familiar variations of oppressors, oppressed, and the lucky people like me in the middle who can afford to take a wide variety of hedging positions towards our cultural problems.

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[1] Here’s a recent commentary that echoes some of my concern: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/media-hawkish-iraq-ukraine_n_622125c4e4b042f866eaf43c?utm_source=pocket_mylist.

[2] Note how this very qualification compromises a moral discussion about war in particular and violence in general.

[3] And apparently common in any population for any war. This might be a good time to watch a powerful anti-war film.

[4] See, for example, https://news.yahoo.com/fact-mythmaking-blend-ukraines-information-190837967.html?utm_source=pocket_mylist.

[5] While in our own country I have been extremely troubled by right-wing efforts to repress voting that would go against them, I am also unhappy that we in opposition pretend that we’re defending a “democratic” tradition that hasn’t yet existed, though we have gradually seen an expansion of those technically entitled to vote (and I am well aware that many people will admonish me to be thankful for what we’ve got instead of railing against what we don’t).

[6] I had a Lower East Side Jewish communist uncle, desperate to fight Hitler but classified 4F, who managed to get himself into a Red Cross unit in the European theater. He told me that he discovered extensive anti-semitism among many of our own troops, who, he opined, should have been fighting for the other side.

Demonizing an enemy with, for instance, demeaning labels, seems universal; presumably this doesn’t help matters when the winners have to reconcile with those they defeated.

In the mustering of foreigners to fight in Ukraine, I see echoes of the Spanish Civil War—a seemingly (lost) Good War, a characterization which Hemingway reminded us was not entirely valid.

[7] While, especially in having elected a Jewish leader, Ukraine as a whole may have distanced itself from its history of anti-semitism, a core of such attitudes remains and seems to have some influence within the country: https://getpocket.com/read/3567406974

[8] Need I observe that we will never agree on the meaning of those terms? Or that the third one is narcissistic (if that can apply to a country—maybe I should say “jingoistic,” though perhaps that term isn’t well known any more)?

[9] I doubt I’m the only one who has wondered why so much of the world can be so thoroughly united against Russia and in support of the single nation of Ukraine but can’t do the same in relation to the impending climate catastrophe that affects every nation.

[10] Compare, for example, the use of war blockades and sieges in recorded history, and presumably earlier.

What has happened to progressive standards of free (civil) speech and open debate? It’s one thing to require reliable sources for a claim or demand civil exchanges (I’ve seen far too many social media vitriolic attacks even from people with whom I like to think I share political goals); it’s another to reject civil disagreements because someone or a cadre of people doesn’t like them.

This (new?) standard reminds of the sectarianism and dogma that has appalled me all my life on the political left. And how does it differ from the kind of behavior we hate in our enemies?

When I signed onto this group (because I wanted to see what other progressives in CT were thinking during the Trump years), did I fail to see that the group is a bastion for selecting and then protecting the “right” candidates? What will constitute a violation of this rule? Criticism of Joe Manchin? Of moderate, non-progressive Democrats? Will non-Democrats not be allowed (in which case, please let me know so I can withdraw)? Indeed, is this a Democratic Party site?

Did I miss an open consultation of members of this group about enacting this policy? How exactly was the decision made?

And who moderates a moderator’s decisions?

Is constructive criticism (which I hope this is, though I’m sure my anger peeks through my formal prose) no longer a value?

Will this post itself be censored?
d onto this group (because I wanted to see what other progressives in CT were thinking during the Trump years), did I fail to see that the group is a bastion for selecting and then protecting the “right” candidates? What will constitute a violation of this rule? Criticism of Joe Manchin? Of moderate, non-progressive Democrats? Will non-Democrats not be allowed (in which case, please let me know so I can withdraw)? Indeed, is this a Democratic Party site?

Did I miss an open consultation of members of this group about enacting this policy? How exactly was the decision made?

And who moderates a moderator’s decisions?

Is constructive criticism (which I hope this is, though I’m sure my anger peeks through my formal prose) no longer a value?

Will this post itself be censored?

I often cite the limitation rubric about crying fire in a crowded theater[1] (which I guess is a synonym for “clear and present danger”). This “definition,” of course, can be used as a cudgel in all sorts of adverse ways, as in wartime censorship, or hysteria like the HUAC-McCarthy era and 9/11, or the bullying presence of the Official Secrets Acts in the UK.

Thinking, of course, keeps evolving and old truisms keep getting debunked and tossed into rubbish heaps. But I have a sense that all humans resist entertaining such a thought about ideas most precious to us, like core tenets for those of us who support the ACLU. I fear that we are starting to contort old arguments into new contexts where they don’t fit. In particular, I’m concerned about how the huge effect of social media may need to moderate our exact approach to free speech.

I don’t know the history of how law, anywhere, has handled changing communication tools that became bedrocks of everyday life. Did the telegraph or telephone raise civil liberties issues, and if so, how were they handled (or mishandled)? What about teletype or faxing or [your top-of-mind pre-hi-tech communication service here]?

The Jan. 6, 2021, Capitol invasion, the full impact of which is only beginning to penetrate my brain, seems a kind of climax to the power of Twitter that we have seen exercised so appallingly in the last four years. It underscores the old dilemma of what to do if permitted freedoms are bringing about their own demise. Especially if we’re privileged and not personally among a class of people whose victimization we sincerely seek to correct, we may feel detached from their concerns and comfortable about sticking to our ideals because they haven’t seemed threatened (until now?).

I can’t remember where I read this recent provocative comment: “Free-speech no longer exists in America. It died with big tech.”

Even if it ends up producing no clear answers, should we not be re-examining exactly how we approach civil liberties? Many of our traditional ACLU concerns will always be present, but some, I strongly suspect, require revamping to factor in the social media age. This is most obvious with what is apparently a powerful impact of social media, notably facebook and Twitter.[2] Among the several articles I’ve read on this subject, new ground doesn’t seem to be getting broken. I’d love to know of writings that do otherwise.

So far as I can reckon after nearly eight decades of life, the ACLU and its high civil liberties’ standards should be at the forefront of such re-evaluation, but should not shy from it just because it causes anxiety about the organization’s heritage. I’d like to see intensive study, aided by recruitment of the best (who decides?), diverse honchos in relevant areas of thought and practice.[3]

Considerations must include the insoluble problem (about which I’ve spoken and written) that different humans have different unprovable basic assumptions (often called articles of faith) that provide little or no basis for confronting a different set of such assumptions. “Facts” and “objectivity” are approximations of what they claim to be, and not all people will agree on how to determine them. (To us, for example, covid = hoax is a flagrant disregard or deliberate obfuscation of “facts.” Thousands of other such disagreements have arisen throughout human history but, for our purposes, notably under Trump. I’ve written and continue to read about what may be motivating such seemingly irrational thought.)

How do we conscientiously enforce adherence to basic standards of rationality that WE value when others think we’re crazy (as we don’t understand them and how they “think”)?[4] Who gets to define a “fact” or a “lie”? In short, how do we (conscientiously) enforce a Western tradition of rationality that I certainly venerate? And why should we? Perfectly fine cultures embrace other approaches without ever descending to the hellish pit we’ve recently been experiencing: religion, mysticism, alternative medicine, ancestor worship, and so on—none of which are among my articles of faith.[5]

Indeed, what right have we to demand other cultures practice what we define as responsible morality? Female genital mutilation? (And since we do make this condemnation, doesn’t consistency demand that we ban male circumcision?) What we perceive as oppression of women? Child labor? Punishment by whipping or severing body parts? Genocide or “ethnic cleansing”? Slavery? Etc., etc. And yet we do—and I do. Much as I hate religious missionaries, I have to realize that we all, including me, are missionaries of a kind—and a kind that others may detest as much as we detest certain behavior. Converting others to our key (or not so key) viewpoints seems hard-wired.

In case it’s not clear, I’m trying here simultaneously to promote the idea of devising some new approaches to free speech that factor in unanticipated consequences of digital communication and to underscore how slippery that task would be.

Other countries seem to have found (relatively) comfortable limits on free speech. (I only know specifically of Germany’s laws against promoting the Nazism that destroyed the country, and I have no idea how they work.) Can we learn anything from them that would be useful in the context of our own history and current realities?

I have no solutions to offer here, though I’d probably be happy to be part of any effort to carry out what I’m proposing.

_______________________________

[1] I thought I got this from John Stuart Mill, but apparently, as probably all of you know, it was first articulated by Oliver Wendell Holmes in a 1910 unanimous SCOTUS decision: “The most stringent protection would not protect a man falsely shouting fire in a theater and causing a panic.”

[2] I am on facebook but not Twitter or any other social media (except for a brief and stormy relationship that ended with right-wingers bullying me off Next Door). I only engaged with facebook after Trump’s election; I looked to it to give access to what politicos progressive and further left are saying, and to share my own thinking in relevant areas. I have learned a lot this way, though part of that learning is that all too often, similar-minded folk fall prey to the same kinds of infuriatingly poor critical thinking that seems to permeate our enemies. Most notably, unsupported stories are shared as true, claims are “shared” with no supporting evidence, and invective replaces reflection and analysis. I don’t pretend I’m perfect, but I try hard to come close.

[3] Should “disinformation” be illegal? If so, who gets to identify it? Were it realistic to ban social media, would that return us to some kind of “traditional” approach to free speech? Or setting boundaries to what a given social medium can do?

[4] In my research on right-wing conspiracists, I found that pretty much all of them embrace a notion of “sovereignty,” which very roughly means being able to do pretty much anything they want without interference from (intrinsically) corrupt governing or corporate entities.

[5] I’m reading a fascinating book (Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Successs: How Culture is Driving Human Evolution) on how culture and its evolution often produces biological selection pressures for evolution. One discussion contends that certain cultural behaviors are dependent on NOT having a rational understanding of the procedure—that such consciousness would undermine the efficacy and efficiency of the procedure.

Today it hit me that many of those people may not believe the lies at all but enjoy them and even wish they could lie with similar impunity. Of those, I’d guess that a large majority of them like various of Trump’s policies and don’t care what he says as long as he continues to wreak havoc with social attitudes they dislike. This, of course, would be true of white nationalists, but I suspect also anyone who feels condescended to by people who are educated, privileged, or who really or seemingly look down on them.

The outrageous lies (and behavior) could well seem like apt revenge on those of us who care about things like accuracy and critical thinking and feel helpless and frustrated when such tools are treated as irrelevant.

I have no idea how to overcome such feelings quickly (like between now and the election) as opposed to long-term strategies capable of changing attitudes in all of us.

Many of us are in terror that even if Trump loses the election, he and his cronies (maybe with support from his armed followers) will find ways to reject the loss and keep him in power (maybe with the Supreme Court again choosing the president…).

This essay is not about those in direct or indirect power and their personal interests in extending the outrages of this administration, but about that large number of “ordinary” Trumpian supporters, many of whom are drawn to acting out prejudices and long-held resentments against anyone they perceive (sometimes legitimately) as demeaning them or having an unfair advantage over them—the people Hillary Clinton so unadvisedly called “deplorables.”

On social media, we often offer retorts to lies and misunderstandings, but I doubt we convince anyone but ourselves (indeed, I doubt anyone but our choir reads them). More troubling is the way we use our “superior” knowledge and analytic abilities to lord it over ignorance we perceive behind, say, resistance to what “science” puts forward. We pontificate about their shortcomings, happily promoting stereotypes of bumpkins, ignorant nitwits, uncultured louts, beer-guzzling slobs, gun nuts, and the like, who in our minds collectively form an undifferentiated and single community of…deplorables. Our intellectual chauvinism is in its own way no less obnoxious than so many of the never-ending vituperative and stereotyping attacks made by those we view as our enemies.

No one likes to feel lorded over. Think about your own experiences with feeling ridiculed, not just by peers when you were a child but especially by teachers or other “authorities” who have made you feel humiliated when you made a mistake or spoke without due respect for traditional cultural attitudes or just disagreed with the authority. Such teachers were modeling how to look down on people as a behavioral norm. (If you somehow escaped such treatment—perhaps because you were among the chosen whom your educator cultivated—how did you feel when you watched classmates being put down? How should you have felt?)

When we make social media posts that ridicule our “enemies,” what do we expect? That they’ll humbly acknowledge the error of their ways and thank us for correcting them? Or bother to read us? If they happen to encounter what we say, they will instead, of course, picture yet another snotty egghead or (unfairly) well-off know-it-all. When they alternatively hear people whom they experience as speaking to their deepest needs, both good and bad, why should they care about whether the foundation of those statements is “true”? [1] Indeed, how often do we ourselves shunt aside troubling information about someone whom we admire or some idea central to how we think about life?

Other than non-trivial differences like financial and class status of many of them and us, their daily lives and ours (when we’re not intellectualizing) are pretty similar: they have romances, raise families, seek entertainment, eat out, celebrate holidays, treasure pets, respond to peer pressure, promote and cling (often stubbornly) to beliefs that give meaning to their lives, expatiate on compelling issues, and so on. During the pandemic, they are flummoxed about what to believe, how to adapt, whether to accept imposed or recommended limitations like keeping kids at home or wearing facemasks. They proudly and publicly turn to ingrained precepts about, say, individual freedom, without regard to consequences for themselves or others.

They are not alone in the human history of finding ways to reject uncomfortable truths and looking for scapegoats for their troubles. And indeed, intellectual history is rife with well-educated folk who insist on “truths,” including scientific dogma, that turn out to be totally wrong.

Where we have been conditioned to use critical thinking as the key to evaluate what is or isn’t “true,”[2] they (not unlike Trump himself) seem to focus on visceral intuitions (“feeling,” so to speak, trumps “reason”—a guideline we’ve all been taught is appropriate in certain contexts), with minimal interest in whether a proffered “fact” is accurate. In opposition to our hoity-toity, educated superiority, they readily grasp onto outlandish (to us), conspiratorial interpretations of why their lives are under assault (the latest example—for me— is QAnon).[3] They feel marginalized about their concerns and powerless to make their lives better—or maybe more accurately, meaningful and just. Many of “them” seem to need scapegoats based on differences in skin color, worship, class, privilege. Why should they give credence to anything, including media reports, anyone in such suspect categories puts forth?[4]

At one level, we and they share mistrust of governments and business. When “they” interpret political and economic issues more or less as we do, we applaud and embrace them as the salt of the earth. But when they fall into line behind Trumps and QAnon barkers, we ridicule them as unacceptable aliens (we might even secretly like to put them behind barbed wire), a conditioned reflex not uncommon when people fear their “normal” lives are about to be stripped from them.

None of this, of course, helps us know how we might change the minds of such people. But all of it has to do with what kind of human beings we are.

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[1] I’ll forego here a discussion of what are “truth” and objectivity.

[2] This is not to say we’re always good at critical thinking. How many of us ourselves can be taken in by reports that we’d like to believe are true?)

[3] How different is such “logic” from metaphysical beliefs?

[4] An interesting scholarly article that reinforces my intuitions (and therefore must be accurate) is https://www.niskanencenter.org/the-density-divide-urbanization-polarization-and-populist-backlash/ (summary) or https://www.niskanencenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Wilkinson-Density-Divide-Final.pdf (full article). The essay focuses on the history of population movements to cities and a consequent increase in divisive social attitudes.

I’m not sure why black-/dark-skinned people continue to be viewed as a “race” when we have advanced past so many similar mis-identifications (Jews, nationalities like the Irish or Italians, etc. etc.). Or maybe I should say that I can figure out the “reasons,” but they boggle the mind.