On Nextdoor I often run into MAGA thinking, which I need to look at occasionally in order to understand it. These people seem to inhabit an alternate reality in their minds. They think that the mainstream news coverage of Trump, ICE, immigration, and similar topics is fictional. The fantasy extends to their neighbors, claiming that all of us who attend protests against the government’s outrages are paid to go.
I find myself bouncing among different explanations for them. Are they brainwashed by podcasters? Has journalism gotten so bad that many people completely disbelieve the news? Do they lie to show off to their peer group? Is it to con everyone else? Have they surrendered their personal identity, and with it any concept of truth and falsehood?
There are other groups that show similar patterns. On the left side, there are the people who claim as established fact that Trump has sexually abused children. When Biden announced the novel economic theory that inflation is caused by greed rather than government policies, a lot of people quickly adopted it. Some groups, like flat Earthers, are weirder but less harmful. Some flat Earthers spin elaborate arguments that supposedly prove our world is pizza-shaped, even though hiding that “fact” would require a massive conspiracy. Other people believe that the position of stars in the sky when we’re born has a significant influence on our lives.
Most of these people seem to live otherwise normal lives, though I wonder if flat Earthers ever fly to other continents or use satellite-based devices. MAGAs, though, have a more thorough alternate reality. They believe that the election results and the reports of MAGA brutality are fictions delivered by a vast conspiracy. They think the tens of thousands of people across the country engaging in protests are all getting paid by George Soros. If they’re consistent, they’d have to think that whole court documents ruling against improper prosecution are being forged and posted. It’s a cult mindset, and the White Queen is a realist by comparison.
All of these groups have a worldview to which facts are required to conform. They’d rather throw out mountains of evidence than discard their belief. Maybe we can imagine what this is like by thinking what we’d do if something contrary to the normal, common-sense, scientific worldview happened. Suppose the events of Ghostbusters really occurred and a giant marshmallow man rampaged through the streets of New York while a hole opened in the sky. Most of us would brush it off as a hoax. Even reporting and videos by a major news outlet would leave me skeptical.
Having doubts would be reasonable. Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Members of these groups just have different ideas of what’s “extraordinary.” For flat Earthers, it’s extraordinary for the world to be round. For MAGAs, it’s extraordinary that immigrants who have fallen behind on their paperwork or have seen their status arbitrarily revoked might not be killers and rapists. How they got to that state of mind is the harder question.
I’d best leave that question for another post, or for someone else to answer.
Update: Aaron Ross Powell posted a piece on the same day as this article, on treating history as a kind of fannish lore. This part struck me: “They enjoy feeling like the worldbuilding they’ve done is coherent, and they hate the incoherence introduced by critical examination or diverse perspectives. It’s not about veracity.” An invented world can feel more consistent than reality, because people are often inconsistent. Myths often are simple and neat, the way we wish the truth would be.
Hi Gary,
I labored to produce a response. It was long. It was semi-detailed. I will not bore you with it.
The largest problem is media bias. For my entire adult lifetime, the media has exhibited a marked bias against anyone that is to the right of Bertholt Brecht* while simultaneously providing favorable coverage of leftist politicians, activists, and organizations. It was noticeable in my youth. It is unconscionable now.
Mainstream news is not to be trusted with conveying all of the facts about any topic.
As someone who spent the majority of my life as a news junkie (reading at least one newspaper a day, subscribing to news magazines, listening to NPR news until they gave up all pretense about biases), this current situation is really frustrating.
Are there other contributing factors? Yes. Unquestionably.
The overt media bias against conservatives (an libertarian-ish folks like me) is the 900 pound gorilla in the room. Facts do not have a leftist bias.
Perhaps, it would be worth seriously engaging with some of those folks to understand their deeper motivations.
Regards,
Dann
People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf. – Richard Grenier
*A joke. There was a comedy song ~20 years ago about being politically correct and to the left of Herr Brecht. The media is not that bad. Yet.
Hi, Dann, I expected you’d have something to say. Media bias is an ongoing problem, but the bigger one is journalistic ineptitude. It seems the average journalist can’t tell the difference between reporting facts and expressing opinions. A story will start by reporting some facts and abruptly shift to some point that’s only distantly related, or they’ll throw in loaded words. Quotations are cut to the bare bone, so you’re left wondering what the context really was. Then they pad out the articles with text that’s most likely from a library of files for padding out.
Just today I saw an article on a lawsuit by Biden seeking to keep the Justice Department from releasing recordings of interviews he made for his biography. Nowhere did the article explain why the DoJ had those recordings. Whether it’s left bias or right bias, omitting that point leaves readers unable to make sense of the situation. Whether it’s legitimate to release the recordings depends on how the DoJ got them, for what purpose, and what conditions were attached. That’s just ineptitude.
The sloppiness is found all through news outlets of both the right and the left. If people don’t trust the news, the major news outlets aren’t helping.
Hi Gary,
I’m predictable!!!???!?!?!??? Whodathunkit.
More seriously, I think what you are seeing is the leftist bias in the MSM in action. In the alternative reality of the MSM, only Donald Trump commits crimes. From their perspective, being factual about the problematic behavior of those on the left “normalizes” Mr. Trump.
What normalized Mr. Trump was the shift in the media using loaded words, editorializing in the middle of a factual account, omitting important (and inconvenient for the leftists) context, and otherwise providing slanted news reporting.
Trump v2.0 constantly leaves me shaking my head. Even when he/they have a sound objective, their tactics are screwed. But he isn’t doing anything new. Perhaps in some cases he is dialing it to 11, but in most cases you can find equal (and sometimes worse) behavior by leftists that the media will willingly overlook and/or excuse.
It’s a bit depressing, TBH.
Regards,
Dann
The true delight is in the finding out rather than in the knowing. – Isaac Asimov
I’ve been thinking of writing a post on the shift of power to the presidency, which Trump is just the reductio ad absurdum of. Arguably it goes back all the way to Jefferson (the Louisiana Purchase). It might provide some perspective.