The De-Evolution into Idiocracy, Pt I

The spreading of Trumpian falsehoods reveals the false promise of the internet of 20 years ago. The fact-checking sites are no match for false clickbait. Getting people to click has taken priority over spreading factual information. This crisis has no viable solutions being discussed. The various partisan tribes being targeted with clickbait continue to wage war online. The once radiantly optimistic predictions for the internet and social media have been replaced by rancorous divisions on these social media.  The “information superhighway” has devolved into a clickbaiting medium for millions of people with eyes glued to their screens. Algorithms designed by the tech overlords reinforce entrenched positions on issues in order to please social media addicts. Inciting reactions to screen-addicted people’s reptilian brains takes precedence over  journalism intended for intellectual enrichment. People enslaved to their digital devices react to clickbait for hostile exchanges on the emotional level of poo-flinging apes. Emojis are exchanged with ease as conscious reflection is too strenuous.

This is how a pathological lying malignant narcissist is able to navigate through the mainstream media where ratings take precedence over factual accuracy. The actual premise of factual truth is sacrificed to separate “truths” for various factions of people. Opinions with no substantiation are dispensed on popular cable programs, mostly Fox’s so-called “news”. Facebook gladly circulated false information prior to its recent censorship regime. Yes, Russian bots served the interests of the motherland as Putin wanted his toadie, Trump, to win. Cambridge Analytica extracted data from 87 million facebook users. Former CEO,  Alexander Nix described questionable practices used to influence foreign elections and said his firm did all the research, analytics and targeting of voters for Trump’s digital and TV campaigns. He boasted of having met Trump when he was the Republican presidential candidate “many times”. Investors in Cambridge Analytica include the family of American hedge fund manager Robert Mercer and Steve Bannon.  A minimum of 15 million dollars has been invested into the company by Mercer, according to The New York Times. Bannon’s stake in the company was estimated at 1 to 5 million dollars.

Long before the rise of social media, there was the issue of news media accuracy and bias.  The term “infotainment” refers to soft news whereby the audience is being simultaneously informed and entertained. Idealizations abound for journalistic integrity prior to the 1987 abolishing of the Fairness Doctrine, because there existed such luminaries as Walter Cronkite, CBS news anchor, and Edward R Murrow who had the audacity to editorialize about the red-baiter Joseph McCarthy, whose paranoia-based smears against “communists” closely resemble utterances by QAnon-addled Trump cultists who insisted that Biden “stole the election”.

The Fairness Doctrine has often been conflated with the allotment of equal time for political candidates.  Fact is, the broader purpose was to “… mandate that broadcasters cover issues of public importance in ways that presented opposing perspectives, operating under a view of free speech that privileged an audience’s rights to diverse voices and views over broadcasters’ narrower First Amendment protections.” The merger of large media conglomerates encouraged by Reagan promoted profits over accountability to dispense accurate and useful information to the public.  As cable TV surged in the 1980’s, competition for viewers amped up. Profits are derived from charging companies for commercials. Low ratings equal low profits. Entertaining viewers is essential for high profits, in contrast to adhering to standards of “hard journalism”, which does not guarantee ratings and therefore profits.

As the era of opinion-based faux journalism began, talk radio pundits like Rush Limbaugh were experts in grabbing people’s attention with enticing narratives, not dissimilar from gossiping at your neighbor’s fence. The folkloric notions about “the liberal media”, “Jews who run Hollywood”, etc. was now allowed to spread nationwide over the airwaves, as rumors once spread like wildfire in a small town. The power of infotainment media was revealed in 1988, when democratic presidential nominee Michael Dukakis was vanquished by attack ads featuring Willie Horton,  a convicted murderer who received 10 weekend passes from Dukakis. Weekend furloughs were a common practice at that time, quite successful.  Horton’s mug shot appeared in an attack ad,  part of an infamous election-season strategy to stoke fear and racial anxiety among white voters. Infotainment titillation had already peaked the year before, with democratic presidential candidate, Gary Hart’s extramarital affair with Donna Rice being revealed.  Rice was sitting on his lap on the ship, Monkey Business, on the 6/2/87 National Enquirer cover photo. This scandal set the stage for the extremely boring Dukakis to become the democratic nominee, unable to overcome George Bush Sr’s incendiary racism-stoking attack ads.

As the infotainment era aided and abetted the decline of American civilization in the 1990’s. Jerry Springer, Morton Downey Jr, and Maury Povich brought Trash TV to the fore. On 6/17/94 police chased O. J. Simpson in his white Ford Bronco down a Los Angeles interstate.  This was the day Simpson was charged with two counts of murder in the deaths of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ronald Goldman. He was supposed to have turned himself in to face the charges but didn’t. He was declared a fugitive, and a warrant was put out for his arrest.  The announcement of the verdict in O.J. Simpson’s trial was the most-watched event in TV history, drawing more than 150 million viewers.

The descent into idiocracy sped up on Oct. 7, 1996 when Fox News began broadcasting. A clear-cut cultural divide emerged as Fox narrated what liberals think and do, such that other news channels felt compelled to reply. Two news-spheres emerged for the bi-coastals and the heartlanders (although 4 midwestern states, Michigan, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Minnesota tilted towards Biden). Trump figured out by 2011 he was siding with red-state conservatives when he wanted Obama to produce his birth certificate.

I have a birth certificate. People have birth certificates. He doesn’t have a birth certificate. He may have one but there is something on that birth certificate — maybe religion, maybe it says he’s a Muslim, I don’t know. Maybe he doesn’t want that. Or, he may not have one.”

— Donald Trump, March 30, 2011

Trump’s attacks on Obama began in the Tea Party Era in which white conservatives were enraged about a black man being president. The Tea Party arose out of white rage over a “Kenyan Muslim” black man becoming president. The Dark Age sprang from this white rage and alternative versions of “news”, that is, rightwing propaganda led to the disastrous 2016 election. As the #1 online propagandizer,  Donald J Trump poured his perpetual stream of twitter balderdash into the empty skulls of his 88 million Twitter followers. The collective impetus of online and cable TV news media was not enough to cure the millions of warped minds. In this new Idiocracy Era, Trump amassed 74 million votes in the 2020 election, 46.8%, and gained 1,183,561 votes from California major metro voters in San Jose, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Riverside, Sacramento, and San Diego. This is 53% more major metro voters as he gained in red state Texas, 770,126.  The spreading of Trumpian falsehoods reveals the false promise of the internet of 20 years ago. The fact-checking sites are no match for false clickbait. Getting people to click has taken priority over spreading factual information. This crisis has no viable solutions being discussed. The various partisan tribes being targeted with clickbait continue to wage war online.