The current age favors subjective impressions over rational arguments and clear thinking. In 2016 this led to the first postmodern president, a power-mad fabulist.
By Greg Guma
Despite their promise and early benefits, digital media have deepened social and political divisions. Websites, blogs, and podcasts, along with major media platforms, attract mostly like-minded people, and reinforce a segregated news and information environment that reinforces and amplifies extreme ideas and behavior.
This isn’t completely different from the type of partisanship and zealotry that characterized public communications in the past. But this version is more potent, closed off and addictive.
Millions live in sound-proof, mesmerizing “silos” and “bubbles.” Truth and facts have meanwhile become debatable and difficult to define.
Conflict drives the news cycle. Partisan sources and individual “influencers” often shape national and local narratives. This makes it more difficult to reach agreement or even have a civil discussion, and easier for opportunists and demagogues to ignore or distort reality, pushing narratives and initiatives based on convenience or self-interest.
Along the way there has been a loss of faith in almost everything, and a growing escapist mentality rooted in belief that no meaningful progress is possible. Popular culture feeds this attitude, encouraging excess and striking poses while confusing commitment with fanaticism and "straight talk" with hate speech.
Insurgent 1968 presidential candidate Eugene McCarthy once warned that the emerging postmodern age favored “fuzzy logic” and subjective impressions over rational arguments and clear thinking. It recognizes no absolutes, just degrees and disposable attitudes. “This predicament is not altogether reassuring,” he lamented, “as it may lead us to a state of ‘entropy,’ of randomness, chaos and disorder, with little basis for optimism as to what may result.”
In 2016 it led to the first postmodern president, a power-mad fabulist. That in turn opened the door to an authoritarian cultural counterrevolution.
Speaking on his own TV network back in the Reagan era, televangelist Pat Robertson made the long-term goal of his “moral majority” movement clear: “to mobilize Christians, one precinct at a time, one community at a time, one state at a time, until once again we are the head and not the tail, and at the top rather than at the bottom of our political system.”
In a country founded on the principle of church-state separation, it sounded unlikely at first. But Robertson’s allies and followers ultimately found an opening and vehicle to redefine civic life and reality itself, while simultaneously promoting themselves as national saviors in a “final” battle between good and evil.
Demagogues and evangelists had been using different media to do the same thing for generations. We’ve gone from traveling Chautauqua tent shows and radio sermons to Tiktok, Truth Social, and X. Only the specific targets have changed. These days it can be practically anything associated with multiculturalism, progressive politics, reproductive rights, or social justice.
Fueled by Fox News and conservative powerhouses like the Koch brothers, christian nationalists and white supremacists have mass marketed an extreme, paranoid vision, immersing millions in a false reality. They present specious arguments and patent falsehoods as history, biblical truth or indisputable fact. Too often other “reality based” outlets let the disinformation slide.
It also migrates too easily — from Russian media fronts to Democratic Socialists and US radicals. This is one reason that the current political system is in the process of slowly unraveling. After decades of open hostility, the far right and far left have finally found some common ground — contempt for “liberal” elites and their “oppressive” governments.
Rather than being at opposite ends of the spectrum, they resemble each other in some ways — two ends of an ideological horseshoe. Political scientist Jeff Taylor argues that the political spectrum “may be linear, but it is not a straight line. It is shaped like a horseshoe.” Some say this may help explain the resurgence of antisemitism on both the right and left.
The common ground is a “shared anti-liberal resentment,” warns Kyrylo Tkachenko. “Of course, there remain palpable differences between the far left and the far right. But we should not underestimate the dangers posed by these left-right intersections.”
The extreme declarations and leading questions of so-called “defenders of liberty” from Tucker Carlson to Vandana Shiva and Robert Kennedy Jr., are music to many ears. Conspiracy theorists who discounted the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines and other public-health mandates are often portrayed as far right. But many are organic farmers, members of homeschooling and alternative communities, and anti-war hippies. The anti-vax faction is linked to left-libertarian politics and a deep mistrust of institutional authority.
Media echo chambers have helped to create a distorted picture of contemporary reality that makes sense to millions who feel insecure, angry, and hungry for clear answers. In response, some people try to puncture the bubble, putting their faith in exposing the lies and contradictions. When the public finally understands the distorted, illogical views of extremists, goes the argument, they will be exposed, and their followers freed from the bubble.
Once upon a time, it felt like a safe bet.
Unfortunately, millions are angry, alienated and worried about their futures and the safety of families and friends. It makes them vulnerable to the politics of paranoia and blame. Bombarded with lies and distortions, they choose to remain inside a toxic bubble, placing their faith and the planet's future in the hands of demagogues and hucksters who offer slogans as answers and the elusive promise of a return to “the good old days.”
It’s a formula for disappointment and disaster.
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