Gaslighting, brainwashing, or just dominating the information battle-space?
Blowhards have a way of attracting attention. They thrive on it. They put on a good show. Rush Limbaugh made his fortune as one, as have a biblical flood of TV preachers. Rupert Murdoch erected a global media empire around blowhards. The decibels they generate and maintain day after day do more than entertain audiences and generate cash flow.
What Bill McKibben once said of the Christian right might have presaged the rise of the flag-bedecked MAGA cultist: “They’re like the guy who gives you directions with such loud confidence that you drive on even though the road appears to be turning into a faint, rutted track.”
Is it gaslighting, brainwashing, or simply dominating the information battle-space? Blowhards organize discontent to “groom” their base and work the media refs. Donald Trump, Rudy Giuliani, the Freedom Caucus, and fringe-right disinformers succeeded in convincing followers that the 2020 election was “stolen” from their savior-king. The blowhard right has long convinced the media that they represent majority opinion.
Philip Bump’s analysis of the Issue 1 vote in Ohio reflects that biasing even as his data demonstrates the opposite:
A review of six statewide votes since last year, including Ohio’s, shows that in 500 of 510 counties, access to abortion outperformed President Biden’s 2020 results. Across those counties, including a lot of deep-red ones, the margin of support for abortion access topped Biden’s 2020 margin by an average of 26 points, a significant shift to the left.
No. That’s not a “shift to the left.” That majority support for abortion rights was always there. It was just so drowned out by the blowhard right that it created the illusion that, as Matt Novak of Paleofuture blog observes, “an extremely loud 30% of the country … convinced a lot of people they’re half the country but they’re not.”
The blowhard right “are not actually popular.” But they believe, says Tennessean Trae Crowder, “if the hearts of the people cannot be won, then the will of the people must be quashed.”
Republican officials, write Melissa Murray and Kate Shaw, “are afraid of their constituents when it comes to abortion and … are taking increasingly aggressive steps to prevent voters from making their voices heard.”
Or as Rep. Shontel Brown (D) put it, they reach for the “‘If you can’t beat ’em, cheat ’em’ Republican playbook” (timestamp 4:52).
Democracy, popular sovereignty, government of the people, are more popular than the blowhard right. Ohioans proved that again on Tuesday.