Two important items escaped my post earlier today on this week’s skirmishes from our ongoing “Truth Wars.”
First, Kristin Soltis Anderson of Echelon Insights, a national polling firm, released charts on Twitter from their most recent survey of Americans on what concerns them most. I’ve captured the whole series here. The concerns of Republicans should surprise no one. Economic damage from COVID tops the list, closely followed by the spread of COVID. In fact, four of the top five concerns were COVID related, including school closures and lockdown policies. The only one not related that made the top five was budget deficits and the national debt. Seems normal.
But guess how that compares to Democrat’s top concerns.
You read that right: the top concern was “Donald’s Trump supporters,” with 82% being “extremely concerned,” followed pretty closely by “White nationalism” and “systemic racism,” gun violence, and “Americans lacking health coverage” (wait, wasn’t Obamacare supposed to resolve all that?). “Domestic terrorism” is right on the heels of the top 5, with “police brutality” in hot pursuit.
Holy cow. No concerns about the economy. Job losses. Nary a mention of COVID. Just a lot of very misplaced fear about some 75 million people, like me, who voted for Donald Trump.
Yes, the “Truth Wars” are real, and I’m glad to be on the side with at least one foot firmly planted in some objective reality. Imagine living in fear of almost half of all voters, or a quarter of all Americans. One additional observation: Climate change actually made the top 10 list of GOP concerns at number 6, but you won’t find among the Democratic top ten. John Kerry, call your office.
Of course, there’s a theme among the top Democratic concerns. Trump supporters are a bunch of gun-toting, racist, white nationalist and violent Nazis. You don’t have to look very long on Twitter, a veritable petri dish of leftist sentiment, to find good examples.
Yep, this all seems rational. So well documented! And civil, too!
Tristan Justice at thefederalist.com summarizes the Echelon Insights survey this way:
“Data from a new survey out Wednesday from the polling firm Echelon Insights illustrates that while Republicans remain more concerned about substantive policies such as taxes and immigration, Democrats are fixated on overpowering their political opposition.”
Of course, a few Google searches will produce all kinds of scary headlines about white nationalism being on the rise and even behind much of last summer’s violence, and I do not seek to dismiss or minimize it. But guess who Richard Spencer, perhaps the best known white nationalist in America, supported for President in 2020? Yep, Joe Biden (his campaign disavowed the endorsement).
Second, two Members of Congress who serve on the House Committee (Energy and Commerce) that oversees the Federal Communication Commission, sent letters to owners of media outlets, blaming specific center-right media outlets for the deliberate spread of misinformation about the 2020 election and our nation’s COVID response. Their objective was plainly obvious - to censor center-right and conservative media organization by getting them deplatformed from channels like Roku and Direct TV, among others. This clearly runs afoul of First Amendment guarantees of a free press, not to mention free speech. It seems, at least on the left, if someone is airing information that runs counter to your narrative, it’s OK to shut them up. It’s what the late philosopher, Herbert Marcuse, advocated for decades - “repressive tolerance.”
Sure, do assertions that later prove to be wrong make their way into news broadcasts? All the time. And it is far from limited to “conservative” leaning outlets. This commentary from RealClearPolitics.com outlines the 19 largest untruths from the mainstream media about COVID. And independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson hosts a website that outlines some 151 media mistakes during the “Trump era.” Yes, the provably false Russia collusion hoax made the list.
Wall Street Journal columnist Kim Strassel outlines it well:
“Chairman Rep. Frank Pallone (House Energy and Commerce Committee) generously conceded that the First Amendment protects speech that is ‘controversial’ but distinguished ‘misinformation that causes public harm.’ Apparently Mr. Pallone wants someone, perhaps the government, to determine what constitutes public harm and when speech causes it. Would two years of false Democratic narratives about Russian collusion with Mr. Trump qualify as public harm? How about apologias for riots in the streets last summer?”
Most surveys of media consumption show that most Democrats trust the media, while most Republicans don’t. And if you’re constantly fed a scary narrative about violent, racist, Nazi white supremacists Trump supporters, and you are a Democrat, you may be likely to believe it, facts and context be damned.
Maybe it’s time for all of us to question what we’re fed and read, no matter the source. Lockdown policies fueled by the pandemic have helped isolate us from other people, even family and neighbors, and diverted us into the cesspool that is social media. Perhaps our sanity can be rescued by diversifying our media consumption with a wider, yet more selective range of opinion and reporting. Move away from social media (especially Twitter and Facebook), and rely less on big corporate media. Reject news stories that rely exclusively on one source, or nothing but anonymous sources. Rely less on “opinion journalism,” or at least be more discerning on who, or what, you follow. Carefully choose your “news aggregator.” My favorite is justthenews.com.
There is plenty of good independent journalism out there, and a lot of it increasingly seems to come from here on substack.com, especially real journos like Glenn Greenwald. There is a growing universe of others, and I’ll assemble a list of favorites to share. The Epoch Times is a personal favorite, and I prefer regional newspapers outside the DC-NY axis, such as the Dallas Morning News or the Columbus Dispatch. At a minimum, question and try to verify everything you read and see.