by Max Humana, October 2015

Anyone who watched the first Republican presidential “debate”, then watched the first Democratic debate, must have wondered if the people on the respective stages were all actually competing for the same job in the same country. It was truly bizarre to watch the Democratic debate with the memory of the Republican disaster still fresh in the mind. The experience was like watching like a Twilight Zone episode in which there are two mirror worlds which look very much alike, but on closer inspection are actually quite different.

In one of these worlds, one group of people in suits stands on a stage in an event called a “debate”, but the proceedings look and sound much closer to a middle school playground argument, complete with name calling, exaggeration and outright, baldfaced (and completely unchallenged) falsehoods. It’s hard to tell what the purpose of the event actually is, with all the clutter in the way. At the end, it feels like a “Chinese fast food” event – it can be hot and spicy while you’re eating it, but after it’s over you feel like you haven’t really eaten anything.  Plus it’s very messy and full of things that are bad for you, and you feel guilty for having partaken.

In the world on the other side of the mirror, the other group also engages in a debate. These people are also dressed in suits, and are also on a stage with bright lights, but in diametric opposition to the other group, they conduct themselves like a group of mature adults who respectfully and carefully discuss problems in an intellectual and informed manner. Their discourse is noticeably bereft of insults, lies and attempts to deflect and steer away from the truly important issues.  They clearly try very hard to passionately but calmly inform the viewer, state facts and positions in understandable language, name the toughest problems currently facing the people they wish to lead, then discuss some reasonable solutions. This event is more like a seven course home cooked meal – there’s been so much variety and nutrition that you’re totally satisfied at the end, although you wish there had been room for even more debate for dessert. And you feel like you did something good for yourself by partaking.

In the contrived Fox “News” universe,  on “Middle School World” substantive debate is not the goal. The spectacle is the goal, and the narrow, out-of-touch agenda is the road to follow. There is no real intent to focus deeply on the actual major issues facing America. In the other world, Grownup World, the one on display at the Democratic debate, there isn’t time for pettiness or personalities or pablum. Real issues exist, and real debate on real issues is what is required before making real progress.

The Democratic debate was informed, fact-driven and positively focused on getting problems solved. Candidates were deeply aware of the issues, and in most cases had experience working through them on various levels, and often in bipartisan settings. The Republican debate lacked only a laugh track to make the joke complete.

These debates were starkly clear microcosms of the dynamics present in American politics today, and this extended far beyond the obvious ideological differences of the candidates. Most damning for today’s right wing was that the contrast in the quality of the candidates was absolutely stunning. Even the weakest of the Democratic candidates, and there were two on stage who were indeed clearly not ready for prime time, proved to be light years ahead of the ‘best’ of the Republican candidates. Although, when the actual best Republican option is “none of the above”, a choice which the Republicans have served up to America for many years now, it’s clear there are no palatable options within the party and it serves no good function. Not a single current Republican candidate is fit to be elected neighborhood dog catcher, much less to the highest office in the land.

For many years now, Democrats have pursued substance over spectacle, values over volume, and results over rhetoric. Republicans have been sinking lower and lower into a smelly mess of their own making, and doing everything in their power to subvert actions and legislation that would actually help real people. What is sad is that there are Americans who vote such individuals into office and happily contribute to their own downfall. In today’s America, voting Republican is a vote for assisted suicide for the American Dream.

The spectacle-over-substance paradigm has gained strength in the last 10 to 20 years, due to several conditions, with a major contributor being the demise of the Fairness Doctrine, as has been well-discussed by many astute observers. An additional contributor, enabled by the loss of the Fairness Doctrine but focused on the weakness of the human psyche, has been the blending of visceral stimuli into what would otherwise be a staid and objective relation of the news to the viewing public. Think of morning talk radio vs. C-SPAN, or Stephen Colbert vs. Walter Cronkite. Fox has been the most visible of such manipulators but is far from the only offender. Fox’s operating concept is to appeal to the visceral, not the intellectual, and to appeal to the mob mentality, not the mental capacity.  The Fox model is to capture attention with bright lights and scary sounds and fear, and to dull the power of cognition.  A truly informed and reasoning voter is the last thing a Republican candidate or power broker wants to see walking into a voting booth. The right wing establishment knows this, and in addition to their continuous efforts to prevent actual voting by American citizens, they distract, underinform or misinform with their multimedia messaging.

A typical Fox “News” segment is populated by attractive female personalities who are positioned and decorated to make them as appealing as possible. The broadcast on the screen is full of lights, sights and sounds designed to catch and hold the eye. Every new development, no matter how banal, is accompanied by a NEWS ALERT!! crash-bang emergency sound and colorful banner. Such breathtaking developments can range in importance from the World Trade Center attacks to the Dow Jones Industrial Average going up or down by .001 points; all ‘developments’ are introduced the same way. The tone of a Fox broadcast is rarely neutral, and is almost always tainted by at least some conservative ideological slant. Confrontational, aggressive or demeaning language is very often used, simply to appeal to the mob mentality of the viewer and/or their vulnerability to fear. Every bit of the presentation is carefully designed to appeal to the visceral, and to gain an emotional attachment to the broadcast. My personal moniker for Fox is the “L3 Channel” (legs, lunatics and liars).

What many people fail to realize is that Fox’s approach is carefully designed to capture then brainwash minds, and the more gullible the viewer, the better. Viewers are led around by the nose through hooks in their guts, not appeals to their brains. Much has been written about this hook into the psyche; it has been done in advertising and is being done in politics. Since the right wing cannot use facts as a true and honest basis for their arguments and positions, they have chosen to appeal to the gut through advertising and psychological warfare. As the gut often overpowers the rational brain, this is actually a viable strategy and has been clearly shown to work on a great many people.

The entire mentality of today’s sound-bite and short attention span America can be explained quite clearly. If a student walks up to a bunch of kids eating lunch in a high school cafeteria and tells them there’s a really good informed debate going on in the auditorium, reactions will vary from indifference to an irritated or condescending ‘shut up and get out of here’ rejection, if not outright hurling of uneaten lunch items at the informant.  However, if the same student walked up to the same kids and told them that Ronald Mugwump and Zeb Shrub were outside on the playground beating each other up, the kids would move so fast to see that fight that they’d leave holes in the air. One scenario appeals to the thinking persons in Grownup World. The other scenario appeals to the visceral and gets an immediate emotional response…the Middle School World response.

The visceral reaction is extremely powerful. Put yourself in the two scenarios above and see which one you’d be more likely to go to, especially if you knew all the persons involved. Many people are frankly incapable of moving beyond the visceral and making informed, holistic decisions based on that very elusive species called the fact. Appealing to the mob / ‘let’s slow down to look at the car crash’ mentality is much easier than appealing to the rational mind. The average American today doesn’t have the patience or the inclination to make a reasoned assessment of candidates’ past performance, current positions and future potential, then cast a vote. Their level of introspection and analysis is low to nonexistent. A bit of research on the incredible power of confirmation bias indicates the difficulty many people have with avoiding faulty thinking. Fox and its ilk prey on the gullible and those who cannot or will not overcome gut reactions.

Five hundred years ago, Martin Luther said that “Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has; it never comes to the aid of spiritual things, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Word, treating with contempt all that emanates from God.” A modern Republican rendition of this quote would read ‘Reason is a trap, the greatest enemy that we have; it never comes to the aid of our cause, but more frequently than not struggles against the divine Message, treating with contempt all that emanates from Fox.”

Luther was right. As informed reason invariably draws people away from religion, informed reason invariably pulls people to actual truth, provided they have the mental capacity and/or training to support it. What works against God will work against Fox, and this has always been the case with humans. The most pernicious factor making the invisible hook inside the guts even harder to pull away from is today’s overwhelming lack of critical thinking, a skill which would go a long way toward ameliorating the abuse of the airwaves and in assisting individuals and groups with making better decisions.

Much as America has drifted from a production economy to a service economy, the sheer mass of the informational infrastructure has led to a migration of individual and collective inputs from active collection of desired information to a cherry-picking of specific preferred inputs. This has led to a ‘gut reaction’ paradigm of thought on issues, driven by mass consumption of sound bites from biased, misinforming and unchecked sources. When we began to sell politics, science and opinion like we sell laundry detergent, and dumbed everything down to a lowest common denominator / “if it bleeds, it leads” level, our society began a slow march across a mental and economic Rubicon into a place where manipulation and exploitation of the masses for the material gain of a few becomes the norm. Even a cursory glance around today’s America shows this to be the case, most extremely and particularly in states where Republicans hold power.

The Foundation for Critical Thinking® describes a quite elegant method of codifying critical thinking skills which enables an understanding of the state of affairs in today’s America. This model lists six stages of increasing capability in critical thinking. The first is “Stage One: The Unreflective Thinker”, in which “Unreflective thinkers are largely unaware of the determining role that thinking is playing in their lives and of the many ways that problems in thinking are causing problems in their lives.” The stages progress up the complexity ladder to Stage Six, “The Accomplished Thinker”, which describes highly advanced capability of thought: “Accomplished thinkers not only have systematically taken charge of their thinking, but are also continually monitoring, revising, and re-thinking strategies for continual improvement of their thinking. They have deeply internalized the basic skills of thought, so that critical thinking is, for them, both conscious and highly intuitive.”

One shudders at the knowledge of how many Americans drift through their lives in Stage One, blown about like a mindless feather in a gust of hot Fox News air. They not only have little ability to progress higher up the ladder, but also lack the inclination to do so. Why should they? Fox and the right wing media do all their “thinking” for them, on a daily basis. The trouble with this is that the Fox viewer is demonstrably less informed than even a person who does not watch news at all. Fox is a less-than-zero sum game, in other words, and is actually a continuous source of misinformation. This is not an accident; any respectable self-checking and self-correcting organization, with or without “News” in its name, would ensure its broadcasts are factual. It would not, for example, so fail to screen the liars it puts on air that one of its favorite so-called terrorism experts would be arrested for being a fraudster. But if your business isn’t really news after all, but is actually just packaged messaging, why let a few inconvenient truths get in your way?

Capping off this repulsive collection of ignorance is the fact that many Republicans actually oppose the teaching of higher order and critical thinking skills. What could be more counterproductive to an advertising campaign than consumers and voters who actually think? That sort of thing must be avoided at all costs! Off with their heads! (Figuratively, one assumes, except in the case of homosexuals, Muslims, atheists, women who have abortions, and of course, witches).

This opposition to intelligent discourse is unfortunately not a joke. Many Republicans actually believe that critical thinking is evil, and should be stamped out. Many Republicans think that altering books to fit their narratives (modern day book burning and suppression) and suppressing critical thought should be key planks in their governance platform. Evidently they think it is a good idea to reinstitute their favorite bits from the fascist and communist regimes of the 20^th Century, and add in a pinch of Orwell’s 1984 to modern day America.

If that weren’t enough, just wait! There’s more!

In addition to the hooks into the viscera which right wing media use, Republicans as an aggregate have both moved toward and let themselves be pulled farther and farther to the fascistic right by the most extreme and unhinged elements of their party, these being the Tea Party, extremely wealthy special interests and even many in the general population. The lack of intellectual rigor and honesty in the party is clear, as is its drive to corrupt of government at all levels to permanently change America to their specifications. They want to build walls to keep people out. But in this case, it is not illegal immigrants which they seek to keep out, it is honest and hard-working Americans whom they want to keep out of ‘their’ future America. They want to keep the ‘little people’ in their place. Their never-ending drive to change legislation to keep the poor in indigence, to cut programs and funding for education, women and children, to keep minorities from voting, and to push women back to a second-class status. Worst of all, this is being done not just for the financial benefit of their cronies and themselves, it is also being done to inculcate their particular brand of morality into law. As Republicans move farther to the right, their already tenuous grip on reality continues to weaken.

We don’t really live in mirror image worlds, although it sometimes seems like it. We do, however inhabit two cultural and political worlds – Middle School World and Grownup World. In today’s political landscape, Republicans and the Tea Party rule Middle School World, while Democrats and many Independents and Moderates inhabit Grownup World. At the intersection of these worlds are media outlets and information to which everyone has access. The intersection also includes a presidential election not too far away. Voters will be looking to various media to inform them either what to think or how to think. The challenge will be weeding through the smoke to get to the truth beneath. What to do?

Responsible media should present verified facts and truth to the public without spin, and should immediately and clearly retract errors. Responsible media should present discussions, debates or opinion in a clearly defined and clearly understood manner. It is a stone cold certainty that Fox will never change its current slanted perspective, so this must always be kept in mind, and a variety of media sources should be consulted, in addition to actual original documents and transcripts.

Responsible voters should seek information and truth, and think critically about their voting decision. Voters using critical thinking and facts should not merely sit on their high horse, confident that they know the truth and those who fail to use critical thinking and facts, or are merely on the other side, are just misinformed or have less than pleasant motivations for their vote. Every vote counts the same (unless you are in Russia, North Korea, Iran, Florida in 2000, or a minority in a red state who has been or is about to be gerrymandered out of relevance). The uninformed or misinformed voter who votes Republican based on visceral hooks in the gut casts a ballot that is just as countable as the Nobel Prize-winning economist or political scientist. And the number of truth-seeking, involved voters today who can think critically is not an embarrassment of riches, but is rather merely an embarrassment.

This ‘tale of two countries’ is an illustration of the challenges that those who use truth and facts face when confronted by smoke, mirrors and hidden agendas. The citizens of this country, particularly on the Grownup World side, must seek to reduce the continuing divide which some in the media and politics are going out of their way to foster. This must be done on a grassroots level, through action and discussion. If we on the progressive side or in the moderate middle sit back and think that surely, one day, ‘they’ will come to their senses, we are deluding ourselves. That is simply not going to happen, no matter how little sense their positions or actions make. Facts always lose out to fiction in many minds, and when fiction washes over you like a river, many people simply go with the flow.

We need to help those who can be pulled out of that rising water, by extending a hand and talking about the facts. We need to vigorously counter the deceits and misrepresentations in the media. We need to demand that publicly important events such as debates are performed in Grownup Land, not Middle School Land, and falsehoods are openly challenged when they are blithely thrown about. We need to ensure critical thinking is indeed a skill which each American child has the capacity to employ in every aspect of their life, including when electing leaders at the local and national levels.

The future of the country is in the voters’ hands. Let’s make sure those hands are Grownup hands.