It is beyond tiresome to hear the propaganda term "Fake News" constantly spouted by the president and his allies in social media and the Fox News/Breitbart/InfoWars world whenever anything disagreeable to them pops up (every other hour). By now, most people understand the usage of this phrase is a way to dispute facts. If a news story features facts that one does not happen to like, it is Fake News, whether or not it is true or false. If you don't believe it, or even like it, it ain't true, even if it is quantifiable.
Although Trump plays up Fake News as something the Mainstream Media produces, it is his own tried and true tool from the KGB/Nazi fascist toolbox. Think of Steve Bannon declaring that "the media is the real opposition. And the way to deal with them is to flood the zone with shit." Dear Leader creates confusion and doubt by attacking established sources of trusted information, thus setting up himself as the unilateral dispenser of truth. It's why they all loved Big Brother.
A recent study on the effects of Fake News in our free society is fascinating and insidious. Think of how Fox News, Twitter and Facebook can command attention and shape attitudes:
"The effect misinformation has on our minds is much subtler; it works on the margins. But in today’s world, where a few platforms dominate information sharing, the margins are huge, filled with millions, and influential."
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2017/10/5/16410912/illusory-truth-fake-news-las-vegas-google-facebook
And it's nothing new. As mentioned above, fascists are well acquainted with this tool:
https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/the-ominous-nazi-era-precedent-to-trump-s-fake-news-attacks-1.5438960
Alarmist? Well, maybe. But maybe not. Consider the following from Margaret Sullivan:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/the-term-fake-news-has-lost-all-meaning-thats-just-how-trump-wants-it/2018/04/03/ce102ed4-375c-11e8-8fd2-49fe3c675a89_story.html?utm_term=.0e659d542b73
Huh. 3 out of 4 now believe traditional news organizations report Fake News. While this particular poll may have problems with framing questions and analyzing results, it's still pretty chilling stuff. If traditional sources of Truth are eroded by a demagogue, that same leader will strive to be the only source of "Truth".
Another chiller was a previous poll that asked Republicans, if Trump postponed the 2020 elections how would they react? Not well, it turns... More than half would support such a postponement if Trump said so:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/monkey-cage/wp/2017/08/10/in-a-new-poll-half-of-republicans-say-they-would-support-postponing-the-2020-election-if-trump-proposed-it/?utm_term=.83d315d4a6e6
Not good.
The latest media actor to emerge as an agenda placeholder for the President is Sinclair Broadcast Group, the single largest owner of local TV stations in the nation, with 173 now and 60 more in the offing. To characterize Sinclair as being profoundly conservative over the decades is not an understatement. It specializes in broadcasting in markets where they are the only game in town (Trump Land).
Recently, Sinclair directed their local TV news anchors to read this "breaking news" on the air:
Thanks, Deadspin, for that terrific mashup. It clearly shows all these anchors spewing the same propaganda, word for word, across the country. What is scary about this is how its viewers, locals, watch these stations for local news. It's not like they are tuning into Fox News, where it's expected to have a barrage of right wing blarney. And here's the Sinclair Chairman, David Smith. He says that ALL print media has no credibility. None. But his group does!
http://amp.nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2018/04/sinclair-chairman-entire-print-media-has-no-credibility.html?__twitter_impression=true
"Print media is devoid of reality and serves no real purpose." It's no wonder President Trump took time during the White House Easter Egg Roll to pump the publicity for Sinclair! He also scared the poor kids there with remarks about Amazon, the US military's plush funding, NAFTA, DACA child immigrants, militarized borders, and how great he is. Even the Easter Bunny was speechless!
Encouraged, Trump went on to throw out the script at a "tax reform roundtable" to ramble about everything but. Mexicans are rampant rapists ("women are raped at levels never seen before"). Colossal voter fraud in California ("the same person votes many times... millions and millions of people."). ICE - Immigrations and Customs Enforcement - liberating Long Island towns from the MS-13 gang ("It's like a war!"). High level agitprop fantasies for his "base" without the slightest hint of evidence for any of it. Fake News.
So, you may ask, where does this all lead? The President is obviously unfit for office. He is a clear and present danger to our nation's well being. But short of having the Mueller Investigation drop a 16 ton weight of indictments on his orange ass, can he be removed? Esteemed Harvard University Constitutional Law Professor Laurence Tribe doubts it. No fan of Trump, he has considered the "unfit for office" argument and sees it failing to rise to an impeachable offense, or as grounds for removal through the 25th Amendment.
Therefore, unless Mueller delivers a slew of iron-clad charges that link the President with treason, or Trump exhibits clearcut signs of serious cognitive decline, we will be stuck with this unfit and terrible person. The GOP Congress won't move a lick, as they are paralyzed by fear and complicity. His style of improvised expertise-free and fact-free governance by tweet is already leading the US into a spiral of significant decline. Even if he lasts only a single term, it will take years to undo the damage.
Damage can be undone, usually. A couple of election cycles and voila! But what if...
Jane Jacobs, the late world-renowned expert on economics and urban renewal, observed some traits from past empires that apply to ours. Her last work dug into the perils of allowing a democracy to languish. Read more here, it's a fantastic article. Here's a slice:
In her comparative study of fallen empires, Jacobs identifies common early indicators of decline: “cultural xenophobia,” “self-imposed isolation,” and “a shift from faith in logos, reason, with its future-oriented spirit … to mythos, meaning conservatism that looks backwards to fundamentalist beliefs for guidance and a worldview.” She warns of the profligate use of plausible denial in American politics, the idea that “a presentable image makes substance immaterial,” allowing political campaigns “to construct new reality.” She finds further evidence of our hardening cultural sclerosis in the rise of the prison-industrial complex, the prioritization of credentials over critical thinking in the educational system, low voter turnout, and the reluctance to develop renewable forms of energy in the face of global ecological collapse.
Yikes! It's like she saw the future, ours. Following on this theme, there was a sobering essay in The American Conservative that addressed this thought of national decline and the attendant "social pathologies of collapse."
http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/underestimating-american-collapse/
Based on this pessimistic reading, cudgels like Fake News wielded by our Strongman-wannabe will result in a broken society, nihilistic, lacking simple trust in the very things that have kept us together. "Trust in institutions is collapsing. Trust between people is falling. Loneliness is rising... if social bonds are broken, then democracies, economies, and societies are more likely to become authoritarian, tribal, feudal places. The world plunges headlong into tribalism, division, hate, spite, anger, rage, and fear. "
You flood the zone with shit.
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