Well, you can't say I didn't warn ya! Today the lame-duck session of Congress takes the Hill, and all over the country, the nuts are rapidly taking their place amongst the "responsible" and "reputable" in statehouses and Congress. There is a name for it...its called an asylum. With people running like scared rabbits to the polls to elect a less-than-stellar cast of characters into office just because they can't take their eyes off of Facebook to understand the world around them, the result is a decline in our democracy.
The far-right and far-left are already beginning to lob verbal grenades at each other, over a whole host of issues. From guns to gays, deficits to defense appropriations, taxes to the Tea Party; each volley is becoming more outrageous and less about truth, and more about the quick sound bite. Unfortunately, people with thoughtful and careful legislation in mind are not in fashion, and therefore will be swept out in the greatest shift towards polarization our country has seen since our country was a young, young nation.
One of the books I am digesting right now is Al Gore's latest, "The Assault On Reason." In it he describes a political climate where civility and respect in politics melts down, and makes a case for how it deteriorates democracy. I could not agree more. We are now coming of age as a society that is looked-upon by other societies as once great, but in decline. This is because we have allowed quick hits to be surpassed by polite disagreement, where the "political assassination" method has trumped civil discussion. In such a world there is little place for thoughtful and respectful debate, leaving a vacuum that eventually is filled with hatred, bigotry, and shrill screaming.
Technology and the culture of celebrity are partially to blame for this bull. The spread of gotcha politics through mass media and social media has reached a fever pitch, such that even the nuts can spread and organize their fringe efforts so fast it makes Thomas Jefferson spin in his grave. The genteel has been replaced by the swift and uninformed, the smart and comprehensive analysis replaced by the one-line "factish" blurb that may contain no real fact at all.
There are limits to the spread of falsehoods, of course, and bloggers are often the worst of the worst when it comes to newsy-but-not-fact-based discussion. I have, I am sure, been guilty of it at times; despite my journalism education and experience covering and participating in political campaigns in the past. The question is, does one throw in the towel and make every post a version of TMZ, or does one take the high road and attempt to bring real journalism back to the fold?
I would argue that the solution to this conundrum is real journalism itself. If the pundits had to become journalists, they would fall down on the principles of journalism alone. If the journalists would work a little bit harder at adapting the principles of modern journalism to the social media world, and really work as hard as guys like The Daily Beast's Howard Kurtz, or The Huffington Post's Howard Fineman, and collectively dismiss political operations disguised as news operations through a movement to re-assert the profession of journalism upon the mass media; the scale of informational quality could be determined by better-discerning audiences of media consumers. The result is a more accountable democracy.
We can't make the "truthiness" disappear without a healthy dose of self-reflection and committment to better standards for a profession which is slow to adapt. We also can't do our jobs if the owners of the massive corporations that own the major news outlets continue to behave like Eliot Carver from the James Bond film "Tomorrow Never Dies." They can't have it both ways. Making fake news and hyper-inflating every iota of every story 24x7; and real reporting and balanced commentary -- when juxtaposed -- do not allow the other to survive. One must win. I am hoping that our profession will continue to push for the better of the two options; electing to re-commit to truth and transparency in all of the news media.
If the journalists themselves, i.e. "The Fourth Estate," do not commit to becoming more than just a psycho-babble monkey grinder, our democracy is sure to suffer and continue its decline. Decay comes when the people are ignorant. Based on the latest election results, there are a lot of ignorant and scared "sheeple" who had their blinders on when they voted.
