In her thoughtful and interesting essay in the Guardian, “The death of truth: how we gave up on facts and ended up with Trump”, Michiko Kakutani, former chief book reviewer of the NY Times, explores the roots of the current American political crisis in which people appear to be more divided than ever around more and more issues to the point where many educated mainstream media commentators such as Kakutani, feel that the truth is being lost to partisan bickering and tribalism. She writes that we got to this bad place because some influential leftist professors in the sixties pushed ideas that resulted in relativism regarding the truth, positing that there could be many different truths depending on where the truth teller was positioned in society and that all are equally true. She points to fictionalized accounts of reality such as Oliver Stone’s JFK which contributed to the tenuous grasp on reality and history that the public already had. Then she contradicts her own view by claiming that a lot of our best fiction writers (with the exception of Tom Wolfe) focused only on the personal eschewing any attempt to present America writ large. (If so, how did they contribute to partisanship?)
After taking on the alt-right with its fascist memes and its attempts to blame people of color for the oppression of white people, Kakutani follows with a masterful depiction of the horrors of Trump and his Republican defenders comparing their distortions of language to those depicted by George Orwell in the novel “1984”. And she excoriates the mainstream media for giving Trump’s campaign billions of dollars worth of free publicity through constant uncritical coverage of his every insane or reactionary utterance.
At the end of her article she sums up: “Without commonly agreed on facts – not Republican facts and Democratic facts, not the alternative facts of today’s silo-world – there can be no rational debate over policies, no substantive means of evaluating candidates for political office, and no way to hold elected officials accountable to the people. Without truth, democracy is enfeebled.”
This statement aptly sums up the opinion of most of the pundits who work for the New York Times, MSNBC, CNN, Washington Post and other influential and widely distributed media. You hear or read it on all the non right-wing major media outlets. Confronted with a flood of disagreements between Americans over matters of life and death importance the instinct of these pundits is to seek the high ground. One thing they do is to blame the public with lack of historical knowledge giving them a loose grip on American reality. But, Kakutani seems to suffer from a similar malady.
She forgets that at all significant junctures of American history there have been huge disagreements over where the truth lies with highly inflamed partisans going at it hammer and tongs. And these disagreements were not resolved by finding some middle ground or by the partisans sitting down over coffee to reach a compromise (see the Civil War). What Kakutani and those who share her views have forgotten or do not know is that when real issues are at stake the consensus imposed by the rulers of society which keeps a certain peace going can break down hugely. One doesn’t have to go back to the Civil War to see this. Just look at the Thirties when unions were being built over the dead bodies of working class men and women, killed by hired goons employed by the largest, most mainstream corporations or fired at by government troops. The labor movement slogan “Which side are you on?” was not a cry for compromise on this issue. It is true that after World War II there came a post war economic boom along with the McCarthy Red Scare which whittled away at the unions until today they are a skeleton of what they were (and wages stagnate for workers while the one percenters enjoy more and more of the national income). But while this robbery was taking place we still saw a basic consensus of the mainstream pundits best characterized as: “who cares?” Donald Trump cared. He saw he could use the situation to fool a sizable amount of people into thinking that he was a billionaire who gave a damn. Bernie Sanders saw it too but was crushed by the Democratic Party functionaries who thought it totally important to give the nomination to a person who advised bankers at half a million dollars a pop.
But I digress. Postwar America had little partisan bickering compared to today because the consensus held that American was great, American had a mission to roll back Communism, everyone had to stand up in school and pledge to the flag and recite the Lord’s Prayer. Also we were required to wear certain clothing. Also, no facial hair for men. Also, a woman’s place was in the home. Also, homosexuals were bad and could not be employed or associated with. Also, Blacks were inferior and laughable: in the South they were to use their own public facilities and act humble lest they be lynched and in the North they were to be excluded from unions, good society, housing you name it and shot at by racist cops and mobs. It may be hard for some Millennials to remember this but I would have thought pundits like Kakutani, who, unlike the public is schooled in history, would know.
Once the post War consensus was destroyed by the Civil Rights Movement, the Beat Generation, the Hippies, the Black Power Movement, Antiwar Movement, Women’s Movement, Gay Rights Movement, Black Lives Matter, Immigrants Rights, Resist -- the list is huge and growing -- how could politics remain at the level of “let’s sit down and decide what the truth really is” level? Of course many mainstream pundits would hope for a unifier – perhaps a President – who could take all this bubbling chaos and smooth it out so that instead of alt-right trolls shouting “Save our White Culture” and leftists shouting “America is a land of Immigrants”, all would bask in the glory of this unifier and say “We need to sit down and find a common truth; one which takes both of our concerns under consideration and comes up with something in the middle…like, for example: immigrants of color should be admitted but must study the core curriculum before branching out to Zora Neale Hurston.”
Yes, they hoped that Barack Obama would unite the country and, as bring, as he promised, change that matters. It seems laughable now. After all, if he was another Martin Luther King he would be a magnet for attacks by racists and corporate plutocrats (remember the Poor People’s Campaign?) which he was anyway by dint of being black. If he was an Eisenhower his thought would be horribly out of date in a country where the great white, bland, ex-general would not be acceptable to anyone on any side anymore. Kakutani hearkens back to the founding fathers and quotes their warnings about “factionalism” and their exhortations of “uniting for the common good”. But even then the context of unity was acceptance of slavery as the national norm. And as for Obama, he turned out to be fiddling while Rome burned as the Russians helped steal the 2016 election without a peep from his side. He also had a nasty habit of directing drone strikes against perceived American enemies including US citizens all of which amounts to assassination (branded illegal by Congress many years ago, although never stopped) not to mention letting the NSA bug our phones…all our phones. He did not reverse Republican voter suppression and Gerrymandering which put Trump’s future henchmen into key local and national roles. And he did nothing to stop the far right from packing the Supreme Court, which was already reactionary enough to pass Citizens United and gut the Civil Rights Act. And as for wage stagnation…that would have meant taking on the plutocrats who rule this country and Obama never even hinted he would do that. But at least Obama wasn’t a lying autocratic misogynistic racist snake.
In her article Kakutani appears to be saying, like so many mainstream pundits, that by increasing the ability to communicate ideas the Internet is somehow to blame for the current climate of partisanship since it allows anyone, including even foreigners to put stuff out there. This assertion bears some scrutiny. In fact the pre-Internet media was key to preserving the dominant ideology of the ruling elite. Dissenting opinions were marginalized and characterized as “fringe” without the holders of those ideas being able to have their say. Until Reagan there was a “fairness doctrine” which required that both sides be aired. But the two sides that aired were just mainstream Democrats or Republicans. Or mainstream liberals and conservatives – perhaps this is what non tribalism means to Kakutani, a return to those days. The media was so sure that the War in Vietnam was a just cause that it was virtually impossible to get a contrary view into it unless you publicly burned your draft card or got arrested throwing blood on the records at draft boards or (later) had a gigantic antiwar demonstration or, in the case of civil rights, were murdered or bitten by dogs in Alabama. In response to this blackout small circulation alternative newspapers were started in many cities (TV and radio were too expensive). In hind sight these were the precursor of the Internet. Even today, there remains a de facto major media ban on ideas like Socialism despite the fact the major contender for the Democratic Party nomination in 2016 was…a Socialist. And if God forbid we invade some country or take a major hit by terrorists, guess whose views will prevail on the mainstream media repeated ad nauseum (remember 911? remember Iraq?). But then, we’ll always have Facebook. Or will we? There’s a concerted effort by some Democrats to get Facebook to throttle back what it allows for political coverage in the name of keeping the Russians from influencing the racist third of the country that favors Trump anyway.
To her credit Kakutani accuses the mainstream media of using false equivalencies in regard to things like climate change and vaccinations where anti-scientific views are given equal time with scientific ones. However I wish she would apply this to the broader situation and stop complaining that Truth with a capital T lies somewhere between today’s partisans. If it does then what are these Truths? Neither Kakutani nor her fellow liberal pundits (for that is what they are….they are not really above the fray) ever mention what truths are being maligned by all this “partisan” squabbling. I’m sure, if you were to recite the list of Trump’s multitude of lies, that Kakutani and the rest would come out in favor of the truth that negates these lies. If that is the case then why does their partisanship or tribalism negate the truth? Right wing Trump stooges like Sean Hannity have no trouble with this, nor do Fox and Friends. They wear their partisanship on their sleeve. People can see what they stand for and what they don’t. Hannity and the Fox “Friends” don’t spend any time crying that the truth is being mangled because people are divided on the facts.
Political truths are never facts in the sense that scientific ones are (and even those are subject to change, see Earth revolving around the Sun..take that Ptolemy!). American rebels who attacked the notion of kings did not suddenly find an eternal truth. They took a position that would create more fairness in the world and advance the pursuit of happiness for all people (except, of course, slaves and indentured servants and women…). Our media pundits, after helping Trump rise by their almost insane fascination with him as a television personality and their whorish pursuit of ratings should stop belly aching about “tribalism” and “partisanship” and should take a hard look at reality and ask themselves “Which side am I on”?
There should indeed be a national discussion. Not one between the bigots and non bigots but amongst the tribe of those who resist racism and support economic equality and human rights. Those of us in that tribe have been given a new understanding by Trump and the resurgent right of what society could look like if we do not take decisive action now. (And it’s far worse than the Handmaid’s Tale.) Is that action merely electing Democrats to replace Republicans? Although that would be a step forward at this point, it will not solve the basic problems in our society that gives rise to Trumpism. If you want to see the futility of that approach just study what happened after Obama was elected President when there were Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress. As long as the Democratic Party is controlled by big corporate donors that kind of solution only leaves the door open for another and perhaps even worse future Trump (although right now that may be hard to imagine). What about transforming the Democratic Party into a party along the lines of the British Labor Party? What about income inequality: could a real fight against that be the key to uniting workers and the poor with progressive middle class people? If so, how we do take away the wealth of the one percent and distribute it fairly to the people?
This is the kind of discussion we should be having. It’s doubtful that the corporate-run major media will facilitate or participate in this discussion but – who knows? In the age of Trump the one thing we’ve learned is anything is possible.