“Unrelenting, top-to-bottom negativity”
Philosopher Linus van Pelt famously lamented, “There’s no heavier burden than a great potential!” It’s a burden Democrats carry too. Supporters and leaners are easily upset. Not so with Republicans. They anger us, sure, but because we expect so lttle of them they cannot disappoint us the way our friends can.
It is a dynamic David Roberts, a.k.a. Dr. Volts, wrote about in a thread on Sunday. A Washington Post profile of voters in Door County, Wisconsin (pop. 30k) finally pegged his P.K.E. meter.
Roberts writes (bolding mine):
This article is worth examining closely. It’s a classic “visit a swing county to hear about politics” piece, so it forces itself to be even-handed & “pox on both houses,” but if you read closely you can glimpse something else. washingtonpost.com/nation/interac…
Why are they upset? “the broader political backdrop— the impeachments, Trump’s torrent of falsehoods about the 2020 election, the Capitol insurrection, the band of hard-right Republicans ousting their speaker —has blocked out notice of what both sides cast as accomplishments…”
Hm… what do all those things have in common? Oh, they’re all about Republican extremism! It’s relentless GOP agitprop & anger & corruption & hysteria that is making politics so draining. Because making people sick of politics *serves the right’s interests*.
Here you see what might have been an alternate framing of the article: “the right’s quest to make politics toxic & to destroy citizens’ trust in basic political & media institutions is working.” The lead anecdote is about a woman seeing a *psychic* for answers.
Then there’s this: “They long for compromise. They want to feel heard and understood. Most Americans, for instance, desire access to abortion, tighter restrictions on guns and affordable health care. Many wonder why our laws don’t reflect that.”
There’s a party that talks constantly about compromise & making sure everyone’s heard. It supports access to abortion, tighter restrictions on guns, & more affordable health care. It’s the Democratic Party. It borders on performance art to refrain from saying so in that graf!
Tell me again why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are so low. Rather, let Roberts tell us why Joe Biden’s approval ratings are so low. MSNBC’s Chris Hayes invited Roberts to explain it to viewers.
An then this, from a swing voter:
“I can’t really speak to anything [Biden] has done,” he said, “because I’ve tuned it out, like a lot of people have. We’re so tired of the us-against-them politics.”
[sound of Dave becoming the Joker]
So what we really have here is an article about swing voters pining for calmer, more sensible politics & a range of moderate policies–EXACTLY THE SHIT THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY STANDS FOR. But when they tune in, all they see is madness & ugliness & fighting & claim & counter-claim…
… so they “tune out” & thus do not hear about Biden saying/doing exactly the f’ing things they want someone to say/do. That is the right’s mission, accomplished. That is the core US political dynamic. That’s what these articles should be about.
Everywhere, reactionaries in politics are the same: they try to blur truth, increase bile & anger, exhaust everyone, and convince the public that no one can be trusted (ie, only a Strong Man can fix it). Those are the circumstances in which reactionaries flourish.
That’s what the right is doing in the US & the media is helping them by rewarding them with endless attention when they act out. The public is telling the WaPo here, as clearly as it can: we care about calm, deliberation, substance, policy, but all we get is spectacle.
This is been a head-f’ing aspect of US politics as long as I’ve paid attention: centrists & swing voters pining for someone to do/say exactly what Democrats are doing/saying. They just don’t know Democrats are doing/saying it, because the view they get of politics obscures it.
But then obscuring Democrats’ accomplishments is the idea. Both-sidesing by the press contributes to clouding the view, not clarifying it. Plus, shitting on Dems is the business model of the right-wing noise machine. Roberts notes in an earlier thread that Hayes spotlights (my bolding again):
If you’re on the right, shitting on Dems is how you demonstrate the shared hatreds that make you part of the tribe.
If you’re on the center-left, shitting on Dems is how you demonstrate the above-it-all independence that earns the admiration of peers.
If you’re on the left …
… shitting on Dems is how you demonstrate the moral & ideological purity that are the price of membership.
If you’re in the media, shitting on Dems is how you fight off accusations of bias & establish your “objectivity.”
There is no faction in US politics — barely even elected Dems! — for whom praising Dems is socially advantageous. There’s no approbation waiting, no repetitional [reputational] boost, for anyone. It is, from almost every vantage point, uncool. (Just try it on Twitter to see for yourself.)
Thus we get today’s information environment, which responds to a transition from four years of violent irrational madness & mass death to three years of relative scandal-free sanity & economic recovery with … unrelenting, top-to-bottom negativity.
No faction — far as I can tell, not a single individual — wants to reckon with their role & responsibility in this state of affairs, so I guess we’re just going to talk ourselves into outright fascism and it’s gonna be no one’s fault.
Roberts almost gets at the fact that this dynamic programs our brains (yours and mine) with the notion that Democrats are hopelessly disappointing. Gaslighting on a societal scale [timestamp 43:55]. Through endless repetition we are all gaslighted (the word of the year in 2022). Being told repeatedly by people we trust — pundits, friends, allies, the “news” — that Democrats are feckless, “half a loaf,” etc., leaves glass-half-empty progressives who endlessly accuse conservatives of voting against their best interests considering staying home or voting third-party. That is, as Roberts suggests, talking ourselves into outright fascism out of pique.