The Age of Post-Truth Politics

[amarie24]

Oh, wow! My first politics/open thread post.

I have to say first and foremost that I understand where this term comes from. Especially when I see videos like these:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GvfNEflMKp8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9DCEw82Os5E

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nBfWB64iHAs


For the first video, Obama was actually speaking of roads and bridges…that business owners didn’t build.

For the second video…well, I don’t even know where to begin. But Goddess bless Katie Couric.

And for the third video, Romney was only speaking of his corporate/capitalistic freedom over his business, though people have distorted that, too.

Here are a few people that believe in the age of Post-Truth politics, and note that most of these examples are from the 2012 presidential election between Barack Obama and Mitt Romney.

Paul Krugman: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/23/opinion/krugman-the-post-truth-campaign.html?_r=0

David Roberts: http://grist.org/politics/in-an-era-of-post-truth-politics-credibility-is-like-a-rainbow/

Jeremy Holden: http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/09/28/the-washington-post-and-the-emergence-of-post-t/190197

But what do all of you think? Where did this era come from? Being twenty-one, I barely remember anything before Bush’s second term, and therefore I’m curious to know if this started with another president/political era before I was born. Or perhaps it started with our first black president? Or do you think we’ve always been this way, and now the problem is more apparent?

If you don’t believe that there is such a thing as the Post-Truth Era, what do you think is in its place? Is the truth still easily searched for and found?

If you do believe in the Post-Truth Era, what do you think caused it? Media? People? Not enough education all around? Too much education all around? Something else entirely?

Let me know what you think!

Comments

[lonespark]

My first reaction is that we've always been this way but now some aspects of our media diet make it more apparent.

That's certainly how I feel when people complain that politics is more partisan or nasty or whatever...

One of the aspects of mainstream news that has changed since a certain high water mark in the last century would probably be the standard of...I'm not sure if objective is the right term, but journalism where presenting most of the relevant facts is at least a major goal...

[amarie24]

A certain high water mark? Err...you mean Watergate (if you don't, I completely understand if you call me Michelle Bachmann)?

So you feel that, today, representing relevant facts is less and less a priority?

[lonespark]

I didn't mean Watergate specifically. I would place that in the era I'm alluding to. I just meant that that wasn't always a strong strand; partisan newspapers are more "traditional" in some senses...

[amarie24]

Ahhh...I see what you mean, now. You're saying that the...divide...wasn't as deep as it is now? If so, can you elaborate on when you think the shift from being mostly partisan to being mostly divisive began? At least, in your opinion?

[smurasaki]

I'm older than you, but maybe not old enough to be much help. The drift away from truth dates back at least to the 1980s with some of the Reagan-era nonsense about welfare queens with fancy cars and the like. But I have the sense that the 24 hour cable news (or cable propaganda) networks are massive contributors to both the idea that truth is optional (or possibly even a negative) in journalism and the severity of the hostility between liberals/democrats and conservatives/republicans.

After all, if Fox News talking heads feel safe making on air death threats against people they don't agree with (and publishing books with more ideology based death threats), it must be okay to be super hostile to people of differing ideas. In the '90s I was openly liberal and a feminist in "real life," now I'm very hesitant off-line to comment on anything political. (Though I regularly annoy my workplace's HR department by reporting assorted hostile workplace and diversity fails. And my car has an Obama bumpersticker and a Coexist bumpersticker. I may be failing at being a stealth liberal...)

[amarie24]

Ahh...so some of this did start around Reagan. Was it only welfare that people were decrying, or was it something more?

And you do NOT have an Obama bumpersticker?! *le gasp* Down here in Georgia? I tip my metaphorical hat to people that have that Obama/Biden sticker. Goddess knows the stares they get when they park and/or walk to their cars in parking lots...

[smurasaki]

I'm pretty sure racism and sexism played into the "welfare queen" myth. (Which really hasn't gone away. The outrage has just switched from almost certainly made up stories to examples that are true but don't mean what the outraged person wants them to. Homeless guy with a cell phone!!111! Um, how else is he going to get a job and become not-homeless? Person using foodstamps who has a tattoo!!111! You do realize those are for life, right? The tattoo, I mean.)

Also, somewhere in there was when we as a country stopped caring about the infrastructure. Again, that pretty much had to be supported by the media, because I don't know how else you convince people that they don't need bridges, pot-hole-free roads and the like.

I DO have an Obama sticker. (Stealth apparently not being my strong point.) And, despite the fact that where I live periodically makes the news for headdesky reasons, no one seems to side-eye my car. Granted, I don't spend much time in the more conservative parts of town, but my friend who works in a pretty conservative part of town (near Focus on the Family) has a car absolutely covered in liberal stickers and hasn't gotten any crap for it.

Edit: Which suggests that a lot of the factional hostility is hot air. People are willing to say all kinds of nasty shit about "the other guys" but wouldn't say it to their faces. I mean, I've overheard coworkers saying absolutely horrific stuff about liberals, but none of them have ever said anything to me or behaved badly towards me.

[amarie24]

*winces* The Welfare Queen. You know, that currently reminds me of when someone called Obama the "Food Stamp President". That reeks of the same racism/stereotyping to me...

And you're lucky as all heck, Depi. People down here won't necessarily say to your face "Hey you! Don't you support that socialist! Get that sticker off your bumper!". But they will gave you a Stink Eye from here to hell. >.<

[silveradept]

Truth has always been something that is shaped and manufactured and created. In or current media climate, however, we are...self-selecting the news. Instead of having to choose between three news channels, all carrying generally the same stories, we now have a plethora of outlets, each catering to a particular set ideology of the world. Truth is convenient, but readers are more important, and generally, everyone has either cable or internet or both, so they have access to choose their sources of ideological news (or to get bubbled, like Google does).

Truth, when not ideologically convenient, is spun or sent away. Which allows for increased partisanship, as now both sides are arguing from their own facts, rather than from a shared reality, and they have no incentive to form that shared reality.

[amarie24]

*nods* Oh, I definitely agree with you, Silver. Everything now says that facts are optional and opinion is mandatory. The more I hear from and of pundits, politicians, and ordinary voters, the more I feel that we're in an age where you can dispute 2+2=4 just because, well...Jesus said so.

But, if I may, what do you think drives this? We have a media and political arena that lies to us at every turn for their own gain (or, to be gracious, just when the people talking don't know what they're talking about). Do you think the people have just accepted this, or are there just too many layers for us to really make an outcry against it? Or something else entirely?

[silveradept]

Politics is certainly more complex in our current era than in previous eras, but that's partially because the interest groups have both gone corporate and gone anonymous. Even as recently as a decade ago, the reformers were out to try and get the big spenders to have to disclose their actions, or at least adhere to their stated purposes and the tax laws regarding non-profit status. The Citizens United decision basically allowed corporations to use their business coffers for political purposes, which meant the entities that political candidates had to court to be competitive went away from groups with well-defined goals and filings to corporations and their arms, which have much less defined goals and reporting requirements.

So part of everyone getting frustrated at the layers of reality but being impotent to do something about it is because the individual and the group are basically outgunned by corporations and media outlets writing their own realities into the political tableaux. Some of those corporations are now able to openly act in political ways, often to the detriment of their workers.

The other part is that people are naturally seeking allies and support in their own political ideologies - the technology we have now allows us to slice those groups thinner than the average Baptist church's denominational differences with their neighbor church. We see how this works out in the voting - no one sliver can successfully field their ideal candidate, so the slivers band together to elect compromise candidates that nobody is happy with and that never gets around to doing the work of the people that elected them. (Too busy doing the bidding of their funders, you see.) You end up with the two-party system because those two parties have broad enough ideologies to let a majority of people elect their candidate.

Ultimately, we only notice a problem when the system fails to provide the bread as well as the circuses - economic crashes, severe weather, corporate greed, and the sudden decision by the Republican Party to basically get nothing done has bright the gears to a halt, forcefully ejecting a lot of people from their comfortable illusion.

They can't blame the people responsible in any way that will make them listen, so they seek shelter with the like-minded and attempt to grow their number enough until they can make the people responsible listen. With internecine fights all along the way that will likely deal them from their purpose.

[amarie24]

Okay. This.

Plus 1. 1+

Although, I will say...I sometimes thought that it was only me and a small fringe of people that believe Citizens United is the most Problematic Thing For Democracy Evar. Glad to know that's not the case! ^ ^

[silveradept]

Well, there was a hue and cry raised about it when it first came down, but for reasons discussed above, the fury largely was dissipated into partisanship or other things. Even as the things that we were warned about came to pass, and the fury rekindled for a bit, it was quickly shunted away because of X political campaign or Y convenient scandal.

It's basically what the world is today - lots of excellent ways, wielded by corporations and their bought politicians, to make sure that actual political movement is kept well away from the levers of power.