If you can step outside of the current moment, in a way, and consider it from a high-level view, we’re at a morbidly fascinating point in time. We have a person with few tangible business successes, beyond being born wealthy and using that position to build an empire of charismatic grifting, who is now single-handedly setting the country’s trade policy. He evidently made decisions based on gut feelings and then concocted a nonsensical methodology out of thin air (or via AI) to explain those gut feelings. Even the economists cited in his methodology don’t understand why they were included, as their work doesn’t support what transpired last week.
In a sense, some would say we’ve reached the economic version of injecting bleach or sucking down horse deworming medication to fight off novel viruses.
At the same time, this person’s support base / political party appears to be shifting from near-constant complaining about inflation and high prices to either ignoring that entire line of thought (look over there! a trans person!), or claiming that dealing with high prices and inflation is okay now, even honorable, because it’s part of a noble effort that will restore mythical glories of the past.
We’ll all be just fine if we trust the man who found ways to bankrupt casinos (while making millions in salary for himself).
If you tilt your head just right, the casino debacle mirrors what we’re watching right now: illogical, broad tariffs that hurt everyday investors and consumers followed by a push for a tax plan with trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. Bad business decisions, but the people at the top make out like bandits.
It reminds me of how the bleach/deworming advice has been long forgotten, or is seen as harmless buffoonery, but public health officials are now Public Enemy #1 for daring to recommend evidence-based policies. People in power, and their supporters, are attacking educational institutions and the co-equal branches of government and firing/threatening funding for anyone who stands up to say, “Wait a minute…maybe these decisions don’t make actual sense.”
Loyalty to an autocrat over country, “feelings” over facts, in a country that purportedly despises kings. Money always flowing toward the wealthy; the rest of us waiting for that magical, ever-elusive trickle-down effect.
Again, from that higher-level view, you have to wonder how we got here, and how this will play out.
Regarding how we got here, I’m sure someone smarter than me could give a long list of reasons. The one that keeps popping up in my mind is the rise of TV news as both entertainment and propaganda, and how common it is to see TVs tuned to “news” channels in the background of so many public spaces – airport terminals, waiting rooms, dentists offices, barbershops, etc.
And then I think of Roger Ailes’ influence over the years, dating back to his Nixon-era memo titled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News.” **
“People,” Ailes wrote, “are lazy. With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.”
Aile’s plan, as laid out in the memo, was to provide “pro-Administration, videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States.”
The overall Ailes plan, then, was underpinned by a clear formula: People are lazy + The thinking is done for them (by television) + Pro-Administration messaging is sent out as television “news” = the people are thinking what the administration wants them to think because people are too lazy to think for themselves.
There’s an interesting implication to be unwound from all of that: if people think for themselves, they won’t think what the administration wants them to think.
When Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in 1996, he made Roger Ailes the CEO. Under Ailes’ leadership, Fox News became one of the most watched news channel in the country (now at the top of the list).
How will this play out?
How do you put more informative content out there in an easily digested form? TikTok dances?
I don’t see a way to re-work how so many of us are programmed, which leaves me thinking that it will take a giant shock, bigger than what we’ve experienced in the past three months, to get people out of their recliners. Carefully researched and well-presented news programming simply won’t garner the same attention as an Ailes-inspired DramaRama.
In the meantime, I still think it’s important to write all of this down. To take notes. To provide any sort of counter to the fire hose of misinformation. And, because we’re at Baghdad Bob levels of communication from the administration and it’s pro-administration channels, it’s important to turn off the TV.
** I’m hosting the PDF, originally sourced from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, on RFB because I wonder how long it will be before people start attempting to scrub it from history, or bury it behind paywalls. You can also find the entire Ailes files at https://ia800805.us.archive.org/12/items/59037838TheAilesFilesComplete/59037838-The-Ailes-Files-Complete_text.pdf, or you can contact RFB for a copy (it’s too big for our hosting package).
