Op/ed: The head-spinning divide between truth and lies in Donald Trumps America
4 replies, posted
"We've become two different worlds, it makes me insane to watch," says Claude, watching CNN in the lounge at JFK Airport in New York.
He is the very first person I approach when my feet touch American soil. The longer I was in America, the more people repeated what this lackadaisical man from Connecticut was telling me: "You never know if anyone is telling the truth."
Coming to America to talk to its bewildered citizens about their media, I expected cynicism and tribalism. But I wasn't expecting the doomsaying.
I'm addicted to the news and I broadcast it every day. Taking talk-back calls and burrowing into policy detail to try and nail Australian politicians, I thought I knew what a fractured media landscape looked like.
But then I landed in the US and sitting on a couch, flicking between channels, I was hit by a head-spinning divide.
"The President is a disgusting human being." CLICK
"Democrats don't care about facts." CLICK
"The media is President Trump's cocaine." CLICK
"It's the beginning of the unravelling of democracy." CLICK
"The mainstream media are almost treacherous." CLICK
"The President's performance was nothing short of treasonous." CLICK
"Immigrants are attempting to invade the country." CLICK
I've been trying to decipher politics in Australia for more than 20 years. I've reported from natural disasters and foreign elections, so I thought I was hard to surprise.
But I was shocked that so many Americans, from newsmakers to the news consumers, think the system is broken.
"That's what the world's all about now, isn't it," Claude says with a resigned smile on his face, before I've even had my passport checked.
He welcomes me to his country and says "you have to decide what you think is true and what you think is false".
...
Read the rest of the article by Rafael Epstein at The head
Rafael Epstein is a former Europe correspondent of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation and a two-time Walkley Award winner
...
American politics and media is a spot of fascination for many people outside of America, given how bewildering it all is compared to the relatively insipid affairs of Australia, Europe etc. The article is written from the perspective of an Australian journalist.
Donald Trump may have exacerbated the cycle of falsehoods, hate and division in America, but he was a symptom of those cycles rather than a cause. Americans as a people almost have an intrinsic trait of aiming to win at all costs, and if that can be achieved through spreading lies (whether on traditional or social media) or accusing the other side of being treasonous, then so be it.
I hope that sharing articles such as this one will serve as a reminder to Americans that it is up to each and every American to break the cycles of lies and hate. There needs to be more respect in American political discourse. That includes among members here on Facepunch who constantly shit on Republicans, and are themselves perpetuating those negative cycles.
When it comes to the bit about shitting on Republicans, I usually say that you need someone to step up and reach out to people who have fallen through the cracks economically, who don't understand what was so great about Obama because they live in places like West Virginia that didn't get any help, etc. One of Bernie's biggest victories imo was showing that this works by doing the town halls during the campaign. I don't know if all of his plans were realistic but he showed that people tend to support social policies if you describe them.
You then need those people to vote Republicans out of government because honestly most of them have shown repeatedly that they are only there to scam the country. One of my biggest frustrations over the years has been how to respond when people make broad equivocations about right and left, because the answer is more complicated than saying we need to work together. I think being respectful is a good goal on a local level, but when it comes to congress...ehhhhh. I think Democrats need to ignore the current GOP and speak to the public as much as possible.
They need to speak to the working man, and they need to do their best to balance the wages of dealing with a post-citizens-united world with actually addressing the concerns of the working class. The sad fact of the matter is that any democrats who voted for that shit basically hung themselves by their own petard, because voting to allow massive corporate funding to flood into the political system has essentially hamstrung the Democrat platform. It's difficult to be anything but "republicans but less shitty" without losing corporate funding, and the people of America aren't interested in 'Republicans but less shitty', they want someone who will legitimately reach out to them and help them.
Citizens united wasn't a bill, it was a 5-4 Supreme Court decision authored by Anthony Kennedy. The entire thing started when Citizens United tried to run an anti-Hillary Clinton attack ad.
80% of people oppose it, John McCain opposed it, Chuck Schumer opposes it, John Kerry called for a constitutional amendment to reverse it, Sandra Day O'Connor, appointed by fucking Reagan, and retired,
co-authored the dissenting opinion with John Paul Stevens.
On January 27, 2010, Obama further condemned the decision during the 2010 State of the Union Address, stating that, "Last week, the Supreme Court reversed a century of law to open the floodgates for
special interests – including foreign corporations – to spend without limit in our elections. On television, the camera shifted to a shot of the SCOTUS judges in the front row directly in front of the President while
he was making this statement, and Justice Samuel Alito was frowning, shaking his head side to side while mouthing the words "Not true".
Citizens United may very well be put into the list of "fucking bad Supreme Court decisions" like Dred Scott and Plessy v. Ferguson.
Thank you for this, for some reason I'd been presuming that it was a bill. Absolutely unbelievable.
Sorry, you need to Log In to post a reply to this thread.
