Such an important memo. Especially like "They're building worldviews. We're building talking points." Along with all your other points -- emotion, connection, repetition -- what Dems and progressives have to learn is pace.
The days of the occasional "media hit" followed by periods of silence are long gone in the attention economy.
Excellent post. The point I think is that it's an emergency. I respect the hell out of Robert Reich but he says sometimes that this is a new gilded age and that we can beat it back the way we did the first, and I don't know if he believes that or is trying to keep our spirits up and thinks optimism is a more productive outlook but I believe it's different this time...
Even the Civil War failed to make us into one country, but it's happening now and on the wrong terms, big time. All that Will describes is right out of our own little apartheid substate and the Yankees aren't seeing it. Republicans are fighting a war and we still have some kind of bipartisan hallucination going while they're actively annihilating the state, and not in the cause of a small government enabling individual freedom, but in favor of an oppressive, Christo-fascist empire.
Thanks for the like, Will ... we can see as well how this fits seamlessly with evangelical Christianity, the Lost Cause narrative and the southern disavowal of everything they actually stood for which required creating a parallel world of lies and denial ... which morphed into a secular version (Lost Cause=Big Lie) where they act like the Borg as part of a common consciousness from which no individual may diverge, the shared-consciousness-repository thing I call the lie-cloud from which they draw their entire mental makeup having forfeited the right and maybe the ability to dissent ...
This is an excellent description of the right-wing echo-sphere and why it is so successful. Lots of new progressive media outlets are now trying to counter the right-wing firehose in ways suggested here. But this and similar essays all fail to address what I think is an urgent--and possibly unsolvable--problem. I do not believe it is enough to build out a robust progressive, democracy-supporting and more engaging reality-based media. I think we must somehow alter our laws, regulations and civil case precedents to STOP the easy, blatant, relentless lying the RW media does with absolutely no consequence. A $750 million settlement against Pox News and other settlements against Alex Jones and others have had little or no effect. Until we stop half of the media world from being completely unethical, their lies and fearmongering will continue to poison existing and new consumers. I don't know what the solution is, maybe an updated Fairness Doctrine and new libel laws. It's hard to know how to stop this egregious abuse of our First Amendment rights.
We also all need to daily block any social media source (beit person, bot, or troll) that consistently spouts outrage — the majority of which are bots or paid trolls anyway. When millions of us do this, fb et al will notice.
I wholeheartedly agree with the "firehose of falsehood" premise. Thanks for so eloquently calling it out, Will.
This phenomenon isn't exclusive to one side of the political spectrum. Progressive media ecosystems can be just as insular. No need to list the obvious sins of the left.
The erosion of institutional trust is the broader issue. When institutions are captured and limited to any ideological perspective, they lose their ability to serve as unbiased arbiters of truth. This creates the environment where firehose tactics become effective in a populace that is addicted to rage bait but experiencing news fatigue with 43% of Americans avoiding the news.
(see Reuters Institute for Journalism's 2024 Digital News Report)
The real challenge is to rebuild institutions that can legitimately claim to pursue truth over tribal loyalty. Alternative models like Ground News, Perplexity, and Arxiv are interesting for presenting opposing views. X's community notes requires cross-partisan agreement for notes to appear. Kalshi is scary fascinating in that it provides financial incentives for objective predictions.
The public and this independent voter are desperate for solid fact.
Such an important memo. Especially like "They're building worldviews. We're building talking points." Along with all your other points -- emotion, connection, repetition -- what Dems and progressives have to learn is pace.
The days of the occasional "media hit" followed by periods of silence are long gone in the attention economy.
Excellent post. The point I think is that it's an emergency. I respect the hell out of Robert Reich but he says sometimes that this is a new gilded age and that we can beat it back the way we did the first, and I don't know if he believes that or is trying to keep our spirits up and thinks optimism is a more productive outlook but I believe it's different this time...
https://robertreich.substack.com/p/sunday-thought-hope/comment/141719361?r=8oyab&utm_medium=ios
Even the Civil War failed to make us into one country, but it's happening now and on the wrong terms, big time. All that Will describes is right out of our own little apartheid substate and the Yankees aren't seeing it. Republicans are fighting a war and we still have some kind of bipartisan hallucination going while they're actively annihilating the state, and not in the cause of a small government enabling individual freedom, but in favor of an oppressive, Christo-fascist empire.
Thanks for the like, Will ... we can see as well how this fits seamlessly with evangelical Christianity, the Lost Cause narrative and the southern disavowal of everything they actually stood for which required creating a parallel world of lies and denial ... which morphed into a secular version (Lost Cause=Big Lie) where they act like the Borg as part of a common consciousness from which no individual may diverge, the shared-consciousness-repository thing I call the lie-cloud from which they draw their entire mental makeup having forfeited the right and maybe the ability to dissent ...
This is an excellent description of the right-wing echo-sphere and why it is so successful. Lots of new progressive media outlets are now trying to counter the right-wing firehose in ways suggested here. But this and similar essays all fail to address what I think is an urgent--and possibly unsolvable--problem. I do not believe it is enough to build out a robust progressive, democracy-supporting and more engaging reality-based media. I think we must somehow alter our laws, regulations and civil case precedents to STOP the easy, blatant, relentless lying the RW media does with absolutely no consequence. A $750 million settlement against Pox News and other settlements against Alex Jones and others have had little or no effect. Until we stop half of the media world from being completely unethical, their lies and fearmongering will continue to poison existing and new consumers. I don't know what the solution is, maybe an updated Fairness Doctrine and new libel laws. It's hard to know how to stop this egregious abuse of our First Amendment rights.
Trusted messengers. Meaning: leaders. Who do you suggest?
We are the leaders we are waiting for - nurses teachers small business people parents veterans - to start - all have a powerful voice
Nice work on this one! The firehose is a properly observed and stated tactic of disinformation... and its uncomfortably good.
We also all need to daily block any social media source (beit person, bot, or troll) that consistently spouts outrage — the majority of which are bots or paid trolls anyway. When millions of us do this, fb et al will notice.
I wholeheartedly agree with the "firehose of falsehood" premise. Thanks for so eloquently calling it out, Will.
This phenomenon isn't exclusive to one side of the political spectrum. Progressive media ecosystems can be just as insular. No need to list the obvious sins of the left.
The erosion of institutional trust is the broader issue. When institutions are captured and limited to any ideological perspective, they lose their ability to serve as unbiased arbiters of truth. This creates the environment where firehose tactics become effective in a populace that is addicted to rage bait but experiencing news fatigue with 43% of Americans avoiding the news.
(see Reuters Institute for Journalism's 2024 Digital News Report)
The real challenge is to rebuild institutions that can legitimately claim to pursue truth over tribal loyalty. Alternative models like Ground News, Perplexity, and Arxiv are interesting for presenting opposing views. X's community notes requires cross-partisan agreement for notes to appear. Kalshi is scary fascinating in that it provides financial incentives for objective predictions.
The public and this independent voter are desperate for solid fact.