Charred Trumpism: Repudiation Denied
With an administration responsible for a record of ineptitude that includes more than 240,000 dead Americans, Democrats had reason to believe that repudiation day was NYE. Although some state policies ran in his favor, the House numbers fell and an overwhelming swing toward a unified Democratic government clearly did not happen. Because? Because Trumpism is now charred.
Political pundits explained that some House districts have returned to their dark red origins, state offices have made big Democratic progress, and voters are loath to give all three branches of government to a single party, so They often split their votes. I call it “Horse Hockey”!
In 2016, the Republican information sphere was called a bubble, but Trumpism has now charred it into a shield against logic and fact, creating its own deadly view of the world as virulent as the Covid-19 virus itself. How do we know this?
The fact that 50% of all voters in the Midwest know someone who died or helped fill their rural hospitals to the brim SHOULD have led to clear repudiation. The horrifying and preventable mortality of Covid-19, mishandled by Trump and his enablers, SHOULD have easily pushed the Democrat-oriented electorate up and down the ticket. Period. So how did Trump get more, not fewer votes, than he did in 2016? The Carbonization.
The explanation didn’t come from psych doctors, public experts, or forecasters with pockets for pens. It came from my financial advisor. He explained how this cocoon of ignorance hardened and swelled so potentially as to charge our most trusted and dedicated professionals, the heroic and weary doctors and nurses of this country, with fraud.
Our frontline medical workers are tired and frustrated by this impenetrable shield of ignorance. Longtime epidemiologists, some working on the vaccine, have grimly called this winter’s projected Covid-19 declines “a massacre.” Just like in New York, we are seeing freezer trucks arriving at hospitals in the Midwest.
All Americans deserve better, but 40% are “under the influence.” If this were an armed conflict, they would have been declared deserters. They have left their post in our democracy.
This is how he explained carbonization. Five companies on the Nasdaq/QQQ stock exchange now dominate global investment and customer loyalty by a wide margin over all others. Can you name them? Hint: the oil multinationals are gone. The younger you are, the more likely you are to name all five. Facebook, Google, Amazon, Microsoft and Apple dominate investment security and global popularity, by a wide margin, over all other companies. This is not a healthy financial environment.
More importantly, with the exception of China, the first two control most of the absorbed political information in the world. Unfortunately, that information is dedicated to creating fear in others, which can only be satisfied by more clicks and more reads, which generates more ad dollars per eye minute.
The results of the 2016 US elections granted and simplified the strategy for these advertising programs by Facebook and Google. Intelligence sources say these ad dollars, with the help of Trump loyalists, were finely tuned to vulnerable counties in the industrial belt. Under the protection of free speech, the allure of political innuendo and fear became a mainstay of online profits, much of that content controlled by Russian troll farms or GRU operatives.
The algorithms responsible for selling regular products proved hugely profitable when they became the political arena and required no fact-checking, despite frequent warnings from intelligence agencies. It is now abundantly clear that this charred Trumpism, through internet sales of disinformation, served Republican interests in the 2020 general election. An election that should have been an avalanche of condemnation if that part of the electorate had been paying attention. . But they were otherwise busy.
Clicks that begin with harmless curiosity lead the user further down a rabbit hole into unsubstantiated political accusations, hate speech, and fear-driven paranoia. Soon, each session brings more temptation to explore unsubstantiated conspiracy theories that are contrary to our constitutional beliefs and detrimental to our collective mental AND physical health as a nation.
This cocktail of fear-based political fantasy helped elect the first outspoken Q-Anon member to this cycle’s congress. Yes, users of misinformation also show signs of dependency, such as damage to their responsibilities, career, and lifestyle. Is there a simple intervention?
Like a slot machine player “gluing” himself to the chair of his favorite machine, political ad threads and links to hate groups and widely discredited stories become addictive and believed-as-fact over time. A victim of this deepening misinformation led a follower to visit an alleged child slavery ring in the basement of a popular family-run pizzeria in Washington DC, complete with an assault rifle. It’s not a coupon for a deep dish.
We now know that 40% of the voting electorate is being held hostage to these subtle, sinister and mathematically precise inculcations. We now know that 40% of the voting population has been lost to them with little hope of returning, no matter what the circumstances surrounding them.
Neither a dying relative nor a trusted GP can break the stranglehold of these political algorithms, these dirty formulas. Only those in the depths of opioid addiction compare worse to this “charred Trumpism.”
Is there an antidote? Fortunately, yes! Independent, real-time, third-party fact-checkers can monitor all political content on the air and online with posted warnings. Just as the first warning labels on cigarettes gave the new user a fighting chance against the suave Marlboro Man on TV, it’s time to monitor these seductive and dangerously addictive new browser profit centers. Debunking in real time is not difficult to execute.
Reversing this cultural addiction will require the political will of the people and public protest. Google and Facebook should be held accountable for violating the robust nature of healthy, traditional American skepticism, to their own advantage. A new, modern admonition for free speech protections must be forged to be next to yelling “Fire” in a crowded building when there are none. Dangerous misinformation threatens our health as a nation and requires guardrails to stop the “charring of Trumpism.” Hans Solo came out. We can too!