Drumpf, The Left, and Information (Week 3)

      
      America is saturated with information - every day we are gorged with knowledge, drowned in facts. The rapid proliferation of information, which, at this point, are little more than rumors, has created a fundamental issue for those of us who seek the truth: it has become nearly impossible to distinguish truth from fact. 
       The digital age, in its effort to educate the people of the world, has had the opposite effect. While information is vitally important to the process of fact-finding, there must be a limit. The digitized nature of modern America has failed to locate that limit, and I contend that this is largely the reason Donald Trump was elected president in 2016. American politics resembles a schoolyard -- politicians have formed into cliques, spreading gossip about one-another in a profoundly dishonest and depoliticizing way. Even the most objective truths -- things like recorded quotes or proven statistics -- are muddled within machine of modern America. There are thousands of voices in the ether, and all it takes is one that is slightly louder than the others to convince millions of Americans of things that are altogether false. That one voice is Donald Trump. Amidst a flurry of confusion, fear, emotion, and facts, Trump burst into the eardrums of millions of Americans with his xenophobic, traditionalist ideology. During the course of his campaign, he contested the facts on everything from climate change to economics to abortion, all with unprecedented success with the American public. 
      Applying a strategy that is seemingly nonsensical, Trump spoke loudly, fearfully, passionately, and incorrectly, and managed to convince countless Americans that he should be the Commander in Chief. If the left had been able to form a coherent story -- a single, powerful strain of truth -- we may have had a better chance to hedge back against Trump's barrage of falsities. But we failed to do, and the passionate pleas of many liberals were dismissed under the umbrella of fake news. Where the Alt Right capitalized, the left failed: the plane of information. 
      It is estimated that over 10 million fake social media accounts were created to promote presidential candidate Donald Trump, each of which posted propaganda several times a day. This, in my view, is a perfect example of the double-edged sword that information presents to the American left: it offers a means of speaking the truth and informing the masses, but it also has the power to saturate political communication so heavily that it becomes unintelligible. This is what happened a year ago, and this is what will happen in 3 years unless the left can unite to break through the clutter. 

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https://www.thoughtco.com/donald-trump-quotes-2733859

Comments

  1. Jacob DeanDecember 10, 2017 at 3:31 PM

    Donald Trump's election was not due to an excess of information, it was caused by people being unwilling or unable to pay attention to what was true. In any amount of information there is bound to be some truth and some lies, so people will always need to to make that choice. Also, even if too much knowledge was the root of our current predicament, how do you propose to remedy this? Perhaps we should create a government agency to regulate the media and ensure we don't get too much truth?

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    Replies
    1. UnknownDecember 17, 2017 at 2:41 PM

      No - the left should have been able to form a coherent story. If that is something we are unable to do, we should abandon the notion that the proliferation of information has emmancipatory power. We should not begin politics from a drive for truth. I think that the assertion that Trump was elected because people were, "unable to pay attention," merely proves my argument - that the rapid creation of information fails to inform the masses, and, instead, creates an mirage of transparency that is the foundation of modern fascism.

      Delete
    2. Jacob DeanJanuary 4, 2018 at 11:38 AM

      So, if you're right, what should we do to fix this "mirage of transparency?"

      Delete
    3. UnknownJanuary 15, 2018 at 11:49 AM

      form a coherent story outside of the imperative of fact-finding

      Delete

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