We have a lot of problems right now, too many to list exhaustively. We have a fundamentally broken campaign finance system, our electoral system is archaic and needs reform, our infrastructure is crumbling, our education system falls further and further behind. And we are helpless to do anything about it. In fact, we appear to be actively ignoring it all. Indeed, the discourse in America is hostile to even the idea of major reforms of any kind. Healthcare reform of a sort passed, and the immediate talk was repeal. Financial reform passed, but the real nasties in the system (payday lenders and the like) survive.
I could name a thousand possible villains here, but I think the root of the matter lies with no single ideology or group. It is the 24 Hour News Cycle.
Nothing in news today is new. There has always been scaremongering and yellow journalism. Indeed, the Just the Facts journalistic mythos we grew up with is something of an aberration. A leftover of the Progressive Era. In days of yore, people read the paper they agreed with as today they watch the channel and read the blogs they agree with. Nothing new under the Sun, &c.
What creates problems today, though, is that our brains are simply unable to process the information in a meaningful way. It comes at us too fast and there's too much of it. Not only are there two sides to every story, there are often dozens of sides and they are all often quite contradictory. Where is the "truth" in this arrangement? You'd be forgiven for having no idea.
Consider the debate leading up to the health care bill. Sarah Palin tweets about "death panels." This is manifestly stupid. Everyone with even a rudimentary knowledge of the health care system knows that rationing already exists. Fox, bless them, takes up the cause and starts talking about it in that "we're not sayin', but we're sayin', knowwhatwe'resayin'?!?!?" way of theirs. CNN and the networks do what they do: augustly examine and debunk the claim (without really debunking anything for fear of appearing "biased"). MSNBC and the Stewart-Colbert Axis ridicule. By the end of it, death panels are the story. Not health care reform. And the impressionable mass of "independents" is not sure what to think. Only that they've heard a lot about these "death panels" that are apparently involved, and surely we don't want that!
This is where I, as a Liberal, would ordinarily exhort the other media outlets and their associated political apparati to work harder to "set the terms of the debate." But that's not going to happen. The game is rigged. These firestorms are started by tweets. No substantive policy point can be argued in 140 characters or less. Which means, of course, that the power now lies with people who have no substantive policy point. We live in a media culture that is perfect for populist outrage and antithetical to actually fixing what ails this country. When we, as a nation, are arguing about the relative merits of statements that have no inherent merit instead of the actual pros and cons of the hard choices we will need to make, we are never, ever going to get anything done.
I don't know how this problem will be solved or indeed if it can be. I'm tempted to say that if we ignore the stupidity, it will just go away. But we can't do that, either, because for news outlets to make money they need to have eyes on their ads. And to have eyes on your ads, you have to be in some measure inflammatory. Sarah Palin et al. get the eyes and the clicks, love 'em or hate 'em.
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