America's Alternate Reality
Social Media, MAGA politicians, Conservative media, and Trump-supporting pundits were focused on an online troll post made before the verdict in Trump’s New York business fraud/election interference case. The post claimed to know that Trump was going to be found guilty because their cousin was on the jury and told them it was a done deal.
It took very little time for a right-wing firestorm to ignite, claiming that Trump’s trial was fixed from the beginning, and this was proof of how Democrats were out to get him. The lie was, in turn, spread further to all of their social media followers.
If this were a one-off event, it might be somewhat interesting, but this is what our lives, our politics, and our government have become every week (if not every day) in America. And not without a cost.
We now live in an America where millions of people no longer trust experts, the scientific method, or even news reports based on multiple sources and rigorous investigation. For a large swath of Americans, all of those avenues have been tossed aside as untrustworthy at best or as part of a coordinated effort to mislead the public at worst.
Government is the enemy.
Mainstream news is the enemy.
Scientists and medical professionals are the enemy.
Even education has become the enemy.
Who do these millions of Americans turn to instead? Random people on the internet that they do not know but who spout lies that match up with what they want to hear. These social media posters are accepted as truth-tellers. The rest of us would understand if we just opened our eyes to see it, or so they claim.
It is bad enough that millions of voters are basing their decisions on conspiracies, but it is even worse. The rest of America has to waste its time debunking these lies and working to ensure that the facts are spread further than the fiction.
That means we’re not spending time discussing all of the problems facing our country or the solutions to those problems. We don’t discuss the fact that 12% of Americans live in poverty, that 14% will be homeless at some point in their lives, or even how our maternal mortality rate is double that of our peer nations. Instead, we waste our time confirming that the world is, in fact, round and that it is getting warmer.
It is easy to see that the truth isn’t winning out over the constant stream of lies happening day in and day out.
Over half of Americans think the US is in a recession when we actually have a booming economy.
Half of Americans think the stock markets are down when they’ve been hitting record-setting highs.
Half of Americans think unemployment is at a 50-year high when it had been under 4% for 27 months and is currently at 4% as of last month. All of which is a record not seen in over 50 years.
77% of Americans think crime increased last year when crime has decreased the last two years in a row, and violent crime is near a 50-year low
We live in a nation with the best economy on Earth. Over 15 million jobs have been created, manufacturing is booming, infrastructure projects are happening across the country, wages are rising, inflation is falling, prices are lowering, and gun violence is down. The country is largely moving in a positive direction.
Yet this isn’t what we hear about. The news is focused on Trump’s trials and his latest dangerous rhetoric. Or on Marjorie Taylor Greene talking for over a month about attempting to vacate the Speaker when it was guaranteed to fail. The Speaker spreads lies, conspiracies, and even the white supremacist Great Replacement Theory.
It is easy to say that Democrats should simply rise above it all, but that is what was tried back in 2016. Ignoring ridiculous lies and conspiracies seems like a good strategy until you see how far those lies spread and how many millions of Americans end up believing them.
Since then, Democrats have been more active in dispelling the misinformation, pointing out how little Republicans have accomplished and how dangerous their political positions are.
While that approach has been more effective, it is a massive time sink, and it still hasn’t been enough. This is why we spend so little time talking about where the country truly is and why we spend even less time discussing the problems our nation faces.
This has to change for our government to function properly. That change comes from voting as many MAGA politicians out of office as possible to prevent them from using their majority to obstruct progress. However, even once Democrats gain a majority, they need to make a concerted effort to change the culture of Washington and the nation's narrative.
None of this happens without a change in ourselves. We all need to work to change the narrative from the lies and the conspiracies to the progress we’ve achieved and the problems we still need to solve. It isn’t about beating them at their game. It is about putting their game back on the shelf.
