As IF Times

Source: How the Internet Threatens Democracy – The New York Times

This New York Times article bemoans the universal access to the internet and purports to warn of impending threats to democracy because of such access.  Again, it’s comical that left leaning factions are constantly warning of some existential danger to mankind.  If it’s not famine, it’s disease; if it’s not rising water levels, it’s too much sun; if it’s not white bread, it’s unsaturated fats.

So this guy now thinks that too much information, once lauded as a good thing, is now a danger to democracy. The last paragraph of this whiny article reads:

“…Our politics are vulnerable to nefarious influences — whether of the Kremlin variety or the Breitbart variety — not because our information landscape is open and fluid, but because voters’ perceptions have become untethered from reality. For reasons that are both complex and debatable, very many voters have stopped seeing government as a tool for the production of the common good, and have instead turned to politicians (and others) who at least make them feel good. Thus, the news we consume has become as much about emotion and identity as about facts. That’s where the vulnerability comes in, and its roots are in our politics — not in the internet...”

Oddly, I happen to agree with this premise. But while he laments in thinly veiled terms the gullibility of a public that’s been influenced by ‘nefarious’ sources, if we replace the words Kremlin and Breitbart with NY Times and CNN, the statement is equally valid.  Except that the influence of the Kremlin and Breitbart are just straws to be grasped at, whereas the political bias of the NY Times, CNN and for that matter, the Washington Post, have been on full partisan display for decades.  A recent Washington Times study indicated that fully 88 percent of all news stories on Trump during his first month in office, have been hostile.

For at least the past 8 years, his comment that “voters’ perceptions have become untethered from reality” has been the political norm.  With the support of the media sources named, the entire narrative of what was correct thinking was pushed in a direction that had to come crashing against reality and observable common sense.  In this previous 8 year period, the message was so effectively spun that voters handed their proxies to representatives that couldn’t possibly have achieved public office if there was the most basic IQ test requirement.  As an example, an entire congressional district was represented by someone who thought too many marines on an island would tip it over.

The narratives concerning most everything including civil rights, entitlements, foreign  and domestic policy and most importantly, health care and public finance were championed by people with increasingly obvious credibility issues. What the author bemoans is that the population were able to check reality with alternate information sources that were at odds with what they were being told by their governors and established media.

So now, to the chagrin of the media cabal that held a monopoly over the narrative for 8 years, the momentum has swung the other way.  Suddenly voices that were marginalized have now managed to manifest themselves into a political force to push back. The blame or credit does not lie with the Breitbarts or the Limbaughs of the world.  It lies with the establishment media that tried to push their distorted worldviews to an increasingly skeptical audience.  Again, I happen to agree with the sentiment in the paragraph above: “many voters have stopped seeing government as a tool for the production of the common good“.   That was for the last 8 years…and that’s why Trump is now President.