The Banality of Lies: When We Grant Media and Government a Right to Label Hatred & Lies as News, We Enable Political Corruption
Our government is currently getting more corrupt. Greg Sargent recently wrote an essay detailing the extent of corruption.
We didn’t get to this point by accident. Hannah Arendt’s famous idea of “the banality of evil” fits our times. Ordinary seeming people are doing things, many of which are not illegal. Yet these actions are evil, causing massive harm.
We tolerate many news media outlets being full of lies — on TV, radio, Internet news sites, podcasts, and videos. Unsurprisingly, this has resulted in a Right Wing media consumer president, who frequently talks on the phone to Hannity and Murdoch. He sometimes decides on policy by reacting to what is said about him on Fox.
Trump isn’t our main problem. He’s only a symptom. He didn’t come out of the blue, without warning. Even before Fox News, Newt Gingrich had initiated a massive disinformation campaign in the 1990s, to deceive voters and to unfairly bash Democrats.
When we accept being immersed in lies as normal, the lies get bigger and more harmful. A black president is said to not have been born in the U.S. and is labeled a terrorist sympathizer.
The blocking by Republicans of the vote on Merrick Garland’s nomination to the Supreme Court, also gets treated as if it is normal, until long after the fact.
Mainstream media hire people, and invite guests, who are constant liars. Media do this for “balance”, because of their ingrained habit of bothsidesism. Many in media act as if all speakers from both sides of the political spectrum are discussing matters in good faith — even though some individuals repeatedly lie and cheat.
We’re just beginning to have journalists like Margaret Sullivan suggesting that media should lower its tolerance for constant liars.
More people in media are also beginning to admit that Paul Ryan has told many lies during his years in Congress — a fact economist Paul Krugman has being pointing out for years. Even supposed data oriented journalists like Ezra Klein are just recently admitting to themselves and others that Ryan has been lying about economics for a decade.
https://www.bloomberg.com/opinion/articles/2018-12-20/so-long-paul-ryan-you-won-t-be-missed-jpwj0sem
We need more people to follow in Sullivan’s and Krugman’s footsteps — to call out lies for what they are.
Citizens need to demand that mainstream media report fairly and objectively. When media treat both sides as equally credible, even when one side is lying, this promotes corruption. Citizens may have to protest outside media offices with signs saying how media screwed up and what we want them to do instead. Right now, media often ignore feedback from Left of Center people. If we BECOME the news by protesting, that may get their attention.
The Right Wing pressures media to accept lies as normal. One form of pressure is to claim that media are too negative about Trump. For example, mainstream media get accused of covering Trump more negatively than Obama — as if media ought to cover every president’s actions in a glowing way, even if they are destructive.
Once a political group or party gets away with lies, it’s seems easy to take the next step — cheating and stealing elections. If our no one in society or government sets limits, unethical people go further, committing bigger crimes.
We’re dealing with voter suppression and removal of voters from the rolls in a number of states, and have been for years. We do little about it. We also have voting system fraud, such as that in North Carolina.
The power grabs in Wisconsin and Michigan, that disenfranchise citizens by withdrawing power from the incoming administration voters just voted in, add to the corruption.
There is even greater potential for evil in our voting system. Voting machine software can be written, for example, to take every third vote for the Democrat and assign it to the Republican — or vice versa. We can’t even detect this crime if it is occurring, because voting machine software is proprietary by law.
People think of political problems and issues in terms of parties and ideologies. However, we have only one major political problem: corruption.
Perhaps in the future someone will start specialty newspapers or TV stations that cover political and economic system corruption only. That information would be more useful than most of what is covered in news today.
Those of us who suffer from political information overload, and want to focus on what’s important, should focus on corruption. In fact, we all should.
Every high school should teach courses on political corruption, as well as on how to do the critical thinking necessary to tell fact from fiction. Colleges should teach courses on the history of, and solutions to, political corruption, in the U.S. and around the world.
All schools of journalism should teach courses on propaganda and con artistry. Why? Because journalists are immersed in disinformation and con artistry. Journalists constantly have to wade through attempted manipulations from corrupt politicians and pundits. People in politics lie to media, falsely accuse media of Left Wing bias, and label media as the “enemy of the people.” Media don’t stand a chance against such treatment unless they understand what is happening to them.
Here’s one of the many good books about the kinds of manipulators who surround us: In Sheep’s Clothing by George K. Simon. Both ordinary citizens and journalists would do well to read books like this, so that we can understand how con artists in politics act and why, and so that we can deal with them effectively. Most con artists are far better at conning than most people are at seeing through the cons. This is why manipulators artists are so often successful.
This is the task ahead of us, if we want to save the integrity of our political system: Make intentional lying in media and other kinds of corruption less banal — less ordinary. We can make it a priority to get information about corruption when it is occurring, or when there is the potential for it to occur. We can focus intensively on corruption, giving it its due importance, and stopping it in its tracks so we can save our democracy.
Lying in media is the gateway to cheating, stealing and doing great harm in politics. Here is some information about ways that people are fighting lies in media.
Help! Our Nation Is Drowning in Right Wing Lies and Propaganda. Here’s How to Change That
