The Trouble with Reality: A Rumination on Moral Panic in Our Time by Brooke Gladstone

Author:Brooke Gladstone [Gladstone, Brooke]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Publisher: Workman Publishing Company
Published: 2017-05-16T04:00:00+00:00

Recovering Reality

American history is pocked with ferment, battles, and brawls over what is true. But at this moment, the nation seems to be waging civil war over reality itself. It is thrilling to watch, and tough to sit out, because the stakes are so high. But how will it end? Arendt suggests that demagogues have a fatal vulnerability: “The deceivers started with self-deception.”

Trump is briefed daily, but judging from his speeches and tweets, the information he retains comes mainly from Fox News, Breitbart, a conspiracy website called Infowars, and a close circle of confidants. His comments suggest that he watches the other cable and network news shows and reads the New York Times and Wall Street Journal, mostly to get angry.

“Oddly enough, the only person likely to be an ideal victim of complete manipulation is the President of the United States,” said Arendt.

“Because of the immensity of his job, he must surround himself with advisers . . . who exercise their power chiefly by filtering the information that reaches the President and by interpreting the outside world for him.”

So Trump will cite a number and respond to a reporter’s correction by saying “people told me.” He’ll refer to a terrorist attack in, say, Sweden, and rebut that nation’s stunned objections by saying it was on Fox News. Arendt argued that the walls of such a bunker must collapse eventually.

“The self-deceived deceiver loses all contact with not only his audience, but also the real world, which still will catch up with him, because he can remove his mind from it but not his body.”

We’ll see how that goes.

Meanwhile, since the election, the fact-based media have engaged in some long-overdue soul-searching. One fateful error now conceded: From the moment Trump emerged, reporters should have laughed less and reported more. As Michael Signer told On the Media during the 2016 campaign:

SIGNER: My study of demagogues shows that satire does not work. . . . When you lampoon him or when you satirize him or when you call him a clown or a carnival barker, none of that matters because they’re showmen, and they . . . connect with people in a way that ordinary mortals do not. . . . Actually taking a demagogue seriously in their claims and educating the audience about how . . . what they’re doing actually hurts the country . . . that’s what the history of successful confrontation with demagogues has shown.

ME: You are optimistic that the American people will overcome what you suggest could be an existential threat to the nation. Why? You’re not going to invoke American Exceptionalism, are you?

SIGNER: Ohhh. I am. [laughs] I wasn’t going to, but you got me. Demagogues thrive when we’re cynical about truth. They start to deflate when we put faith back again in public reason, and if you look at the history, we have always prevailed. And it’s not the checks and balances that we have . . . it’s because the American people in the end always choose that demagogues are beneath them.

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