Warning. I’m hammering on Trump. If this bothers you, please move along.

I really have to back off on the consumption of news. My attitude has become far more misanthropic than usual. Between the savage war in Ukraine, Trump’s traitorous boy crush on Putin and bills signed by that demon-seed governor of Florida, my head is throbbing from the noise of all the dissonant waves coming in. Surely, something is going right in the world, isn’t it? Maybe?

Part of what is stressful is the inability to intervene personally, to make a positive difference. Oh, to have 2 minutes to yell at #45. Or to remind DeSantis and the Florida legislature that their elementary schools have never taught sex education and have never given kids instruction on how to choose alternative genders or lifestyles. It would be disastrous for any teacher’s career and they know it. This LGBTQ instruction “issue” in K thru 3rd grade is entirely invented to agitate the excitable and poorly informed on a certain side of the bell curve. This is social conservative engineering boldly executed in plain view and vastly amplified by instant distribution on social media. DeSantis is maneuvering to be an alternative to Trump in 2024, which is a choice between bad and awful.

Trump is morally bankrupt. This should be obvious to any high school graduate who paid attention is school. He is a real estate developer who banks on his special gift of persuasion. His speaking style is well suited to that of an after dinner speaker. He teases his audience by saying naughty things and mugs and poses behind a false modesty, all of this while he is not making outrageous claims about his abilities. And many people eat it up. It is a very effective rhetorical style polished by years of practice. His time on reality TV has helped hone an air of authority and expertise in organizational management.

He learned that if you are going to exaggerate, make it big and repeat as often as possible. Throw great gobs of it and see what sticks to the wall. This is propaganda 101: Political persuasion through any means available.

As corrosive to American democracy as Trump is, there is a bigger problem. That would be the matter of his large crowd of eager voters. They seem to be of a disposition that instinctively distrusts government and lays a large part of the blame of alleged government malfeasance on liberalism. Since the days of Reagan, the word “liberal” has come to be an epithet through repeated encouragement by Republicans. Blame for societies ills on liberalism was further exaggerated by Newt Gingrich in the 1990’s. Unfortunately, this guy has reappeared and is frequently interviewed in conservative (Fox) news today.

I can remember stopping by a booth at the Boulder County fair in the mid 70’s which was occupied by the John Birch Society. They are ultraconservative, staunchly antigovernment and libertarian in orientation. I see many similar traits in the earlier Tea Party and in the current MAGA crowd. Unfortunately, once someone embraces this kind of mind-set, they rarely come back towards the middle in my experience. Distrust, fear and paranoia are things the human brain does very well.

Never in the history of humanity have so many people had a platform for the instant broadcast and receipt of political information. It is a challenge to the stability of a democratic nation when fringe ideas spread and are adopted across the population in a matter of days. Not everyone remembers history or has a grasp of basic political and economic concepts. In prior times, there were limits to the accessibility, reach and variety of news and opinion. There was also editorial control over what got published. Fringe letters to the editor or op-eds were published once and that was it. The reach was often limited to where the paperboy went.

With most of social media in much of the world there is no editorial control. Any brilliant or stupid post gets broad circulation with equal ease. The volume knob has been turned up for individuals who wish to practice the art of persuasion. Unfortunately for the Chinese and Russian people, their governments are clamping down on the content of both received and sent information.

Back to toxic news. Broadcast companies are businesses. Broadcast news has a job to do. It is to deliver as many eyeballs to ad messages as possible. It’s the same with social media. What gets aired is that which is compelling to the eyes and heart. And “compelling” draws eyeballs. To expect to get an education or a balanced view from commercial TV is a fools errand. Some people believe that “balanced” means that all views are equal. Well, some views are based upon a false premise and are unworthy of consideration. Also, the old saying “if it bleeds, it leads” still applies no matter what pious talk you may hear about journalism.