Trump's Most Malicious Legacy
Category: News & Politics
Via: john-russell • 4 years ago • 91 commentsBy: Peter Wehner (The Atlantic)
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
The outgoing president leaves behind a tribalistic, distrustful, and sometimes delusional political culture.
December 7, 2020 Peter Wehner Contributing writer at The Atlantic and senior fellow at EPPC 
Damon Winter / The New York Times / Redux
========================================================================================
"We are entering into an epistemological crisis," Barack Obama recently told my colleague Jeffrey Goldberg.
The crisis didn't begin with the Trump presidency, but it rapidly accelerated over the course of its term—and the situation has, if anything, grown worse in the aftermath of the presidential election.
According to one poll, 70 percent of Republicans say they don't believe that the 2020 election was free and fair. According to another, 77 percent of Trump backers say President-elect Joe Biden won because of fraud. And a Reuters/Ipsos poll found that 68 percent of Republicans said they were concerned that the 2020 election was "rigged," and that only 29 percent believed that Biden had "rightfully won." More than half of Republicans said Trump "rightfully won" but the election was stolen from him because of widespread voter fraud that favored Biden, claims that are hallucinatory.
This may be Donald Trump's most enduring legacy—a nihilistic political culture, one that is tribalistic, distrustful, and sometimes delusional, swimming in conspiracy theories. The result is that Americans are disoriented and frustrated, fearful of and often enraged at one another.
Donald Trump didn't invent misinformation and disinformation; they have been around for much of human history. But Trump—by virtue of his considerable skills in this area, aided by social media and capitalizing on "truth decay" and diminishing trust in sources of factual information—exploited them more effectively than anyone else has in American history.
"It was unthinkable before Trump for anyone to run this kind of disinformation campaign from the White House against the American public," according to Jonathan Rauch, the author of the forthcoming book The Constitution of Knowledge: A Defense of Truth . As a result, we live in an era defined by epistemic chaos and noetic disarray, one in which a large portion of the population embraces falsehoods and fairy tales and thinks of them as "alternative facts."
The deceit being dispensed by Trump & Company is hardly universal, but it is extensive, which is why defeating Trump was essential if we're going to move away from perspectivism as the interpretive theory in our politics. But objective reality as a concept—truth as something that exists independent of affect, independent of subjective narratives, independent of whatever a partisan information silo claims is true—has been badly damaged. Among the most urgent tasks facing America, then, is to strengthen our regard for what Plato called episteme over doxa , true knowledge over opinion, reality over fantasy.
Disinformation flourishes in a profoundly polarized society, which America most certainly is. How to depolarize our society is its own challenge, of course, especially when Americans have been subject to Trump's relentless disinformation campaign for the past half decade. As president, Biden will turn down the temperature of our politics; any person replacing Trump would. But Biden seems particularly well suited—temperamentally and based on the political culture that shaped him—to calm our politics.
Believing that the toxicity in our politics will quickly and easily be drained would be silly; in fact, in some quarters, things will get worse. (We see this in Trump supporters who are migrating from Fox News to Newsmax and One America News because Fox was deemed insufficiently pro-Trump, as startling as that seems.) But not having a president who wakes up every morning thinking of ways to divide Americans by race, region, and religion, by class and party, will be a move in the right direction.
A former adviser to President Bill Clinton told me that if Biden wants to go beyond that, he should focus on practical issues, such as infrastructure, while avoiding unnecessary fights over issues that inflame people's emotions.
Adam Serwer: The crisis of American democracy is not over
The new president could take on a conservative cause such as promoting adoption and foster care. Common ground might be possible on policies such as a pandemic stimulus package, indexing the minimum wage to inflation, reducing child poverty with a child allowance, combatting the opioid epidemic, expanding national service, implementing paid family leave, and boosting worker training and apprenticeship programs. On immigration, a deal could probably be struck that involves reinstating DACA (Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals) and E-Verify. There's even an opportunity to find common ground on gay rights and religious liberties in the form of the Fairness for All Act.
Another top Clinton adviser, William Galston, recently argued that Biden would be wise not to push for his Justice Department to open investigations into Trump that could lead to his prosecution. Appointing someone to the Biden administration such as former Republican Governor John Kasich, who endorsed Biden in 2020, would be an impressive gesture. The president-elect could also nominate Michael Wear as director of the Office of Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships. Wear, who served in the Obama administration, is trusted by key stakeholders and voices from across the political and religious spectrum in a way that would be of value to the administration.
The Republicans may not reciprocate Biden's outreach efforts; the early signs are not encouraging. Nevertheless Biden, as president of all the people, should try. It's part of the job description, and modeling respectful outreach, particularly in this rancorous environment, would be a patriotic act. We need circuit breakers.
But political outreach, even if successful, is hardly enough. The United States won't reverse what Rauch calls "epistemic secession" until social-media platforms adhere to epistemic standards and norms.
We've seen marginal but measurable progress over the past four years, with some of the most popular social-media platforms embracing measures to curb misinformation and increase transparency. For example, Facebook is removing all accounts that represent the QAnon conspiracy theory. Twitter now includes warning labels on misleading tweets, including the president's. (Twitter has a Civic integrity policy.) YouTube has community guidelines.
"In 2020, the United States did better than in 2016 against pre-election disinformation," Rauch recently wrote in Persuasion . "Traditional media wised up to manipulators; social media reduced the reach of propaganda; scholars and activists got better at exposing coordinated campaigns; the public grew more sophisticated about fakery. Taken together, those and other countermeasures were an impressive feat of adaptation."
From the March 2020 issue: The billion-dollar disinformation campaign to reelect the president
In our daily lives, seemingly small acts, if enough of us actually perform them, can create the conditions that allow our country to again share a common reality. I have in mind things like venturing outside of our echo chambers to build relationships with people who see the world differently than we do. We can avoid making needlessly provocative comments, including on social-media platforms. And we can all do better at "stepping away from the emotional heat of a conversation," as one person I know put it.
I'm not a Pollyanna, nor am I under any illusion that deep differences will evaporate because people show courtesy toward one another. I'm saying only that if we have any chance of reconstituting truth in the public arena, then marshaling arguments and emailing fact-checking articles to people with whom we have political differences—and I've done both—aren't enough. There has to be some human connection, some way to reassure others that they're not under attack, some means to instill confidence that the person you're arguing with doesn't hate you and might even care for you. We have to find a way to lay aside, at least for a time, our swords and shields.
One of the essential tasks of this decade, then, is to rebuild trust in one another—and that happens best person-to-person, often at the local level, a conversation at a time, a generous act at a time. We also need to rebuild trust in our institutions, trust that has been mostly declining for decades. But for this to happen, institutions—government, media, the academy, the corporate world, churches—have to act in ways that earn our trust. The more institutions deliver, the more trust we will have, and the more trust we have, the less likely the seeds of paranoia, conspiracies, and subjectivism are to take root, or if they do, the soil will be shallow. But even if trust in one another and our institutions increases and feelings of alienation, apprehension, and isolation decrease, we will still have to navigate a turbulent time. An awful lot of cortisol has been released into our national bloodstream.
"The party told you to reject the evidence of your eyes and ears. It was their final, most essential command," George Orwell wrote in his masterpiece 1984 .
[Winston Smith's] heart sank as he thought of the enormous power arrayed against him, the ease with which any Party intellectual would overthrow him in debate, the subtle arguments which he would not be able to understand, much less answer. And yet he was in the right! They were wrong and he was right. The obvious, the silly, and the true had got to be defended. Truisms are true, hold on to that! The solid world exists, its laws do not change. Stones are hard, water is wet, objects unsupported fall towards the earth's center. With the feeling he was speaking to O'Brien, and also that he was setting forth an important axiom, he wrote: Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two makes four. If that is granted, all else follows .
For four long years, that important axiom was denied by the president of the United States and almost everyone in his party. But last month, more than 80 million Americans declared that enough was enough. What many of them were saying with their vote—what I was trying to say with my vote—was that it's time to reaffirm that stones are indeed hard, that water is indeed wet, that objects unsupported do fall toward the Earth's center. That two plus two does make four.
We shouldn't kid ourselves; enormous repair work still needs to be done. Donald Trump's hold on his party, a party that became a battering ram against reality, remains unchallenged, at least for now. And for some number of his followers, convinced that the election was rigged and that Trump was robbed, now is the time to settle scores, to exact revenge, to burn down the village.
Rachel Shelden: Republicans discover the dangers of selling bunk to their constituents
"We have now entered a fighting season in our country," the Trump acolyte Charlie Kirk, the president of the student-movement group Turning Point USA, recently told the talk-show host Eric Metaxas. "It tells us in Ecclesiastes there is a season for everything. This is a fighting season." Republican Representative Paul Gosar sent out a tweet urging the president's supporters to follow the example of Japanese soldiers who continued to fight decades after Japan lost the war. Nothing can be done right now to connect people who have this mindset with reality; it's an invitation they will decline.
Still, in less than 50 days, Donald Trump will be an ex-president, and the importance of that can hardly be overstated. It is a necessary condition if we are to find our way out of our epistemic crisis, if hardly a sufficient one. My hunch, or at least my hope, is that having gone through this exhausting ordeal, Americans now better understand that when truth is dethroned, a lot can unravel, that living within a lie can rip a nation apart, and that living within a lie can also be soul-crushing.
But there is another side as well, which is that, in the words of John Keats, "Beauty is truth, truth beauty." The line's meaning is elusive, but Keats seemed to be saying, at least according to some of his interpreters, that truth is not just a philosophical concept; it has an aesthetic quality as well. And beauty itself is tied to truth, to transcendence, to the way things really and truly are. To live one's life aligned with truth—especially when standing for truth has a cost—is to live a life of integrity and honor. But is that something we even talk about these days?
Maybe the road out of the epistemic crisis that Barack Obama correctly identified runs not simply, or even primarily, through the realm of politics or social-media reforms, as important as they are. Perhaps the path requires us to order our lives well, remind ourselves and others to love what is worthy of our love, and affirm that "one word of truth shall outweigh the whole world." We won't get there tomorrow. But each of us can begin to take steps on the journey tomorrow, a journey out of mist and shadows toward the sunlit uplands.
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.
Peter Wehner is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center. He writes widely on political, cultural, religious, and national-security issues, and he is the author of The Death of Politics: How to Heal Our Frayed Republic After Trump .
Tags
Who is online
443 visitors
+
Excellent accurate and informative seed, while exampling and reinforcing what most, had already summarized about US and that which Divides, how splitting the peoples now pitted against each other, so Trump and the GOP could put forth a flawed and impaling no object, as only Mitt Romney and a scarce few knew the 'Right' thing to do, like maybe OBJECT to the OBJECTION REJECTION in our White House of Pains.
SPEAK TRUTH TO POWER, and LYING A WHOLE 'S UMS it up for me , now lettuce see how long it takes to undo what should have NEVER BEEN DONE, and certainly hope they had FUn, cause when i think of all of the TRUE PATRIOTS of this once great Nation, it gives me quite a sad sensation, as to witness so many gullible non winners ask for chicken dinners, when they certainly aren't winners, as none of US Are, after the debauchery debacle The Republicans and Trump and cump have contributed to , creating a world where the most common of common sense issues, are now no longer, as the mistrust grew steadily, the days longer, the stress caused and felt stronger, cause as TRUMP LIED, AMERICANS DIED,
and the GOP sat there with their collective dicks in hand, applauding a dick on a bully-pulpit grand stand, as they are all GUILTY, as they jerked off a Nation , with a standing ovation, as they applauded with one hand, and gave US the Clap with the other, and that , WAS the Happy Ending....
Six years ago, before Trump announced his run for the presidency, who would have thought that just six years later one of our two main political parties would be a haven for constant and often insane conspiracy theories and relentless lying? Yes , it is in large part Trump's doing, but he has needed collaborators all along and with the pull of right wing media and right wing social media, the conspiracies and the denial of reality found fertile ground.
This IS the major societal issue facing America today.
It’s a vicious circle. Trump whips up his ignorant base with his supremely ignorant rhetoric, then the Republican “leaders” respond by following the will of their moronic constituents (or at least uses them as the excuse to be morons themselves) because they would rather keep their job than stand up to a traitor and protect democracy. Democracy is fragile, as it is built on the intelligence of the electorate. The dumber the populace, the weaker the democratic process is - and this country has been getting dumber and dumber for decades. To protect and further that arc, this administration removed as much of the foundation holding up intelligent governance as possible and either didn’t replace it at all or installed Betsy DeVos types to further tear it down.
The Mueller investigation hoax was the biggest conspiracy theory of all time.
As you well know, there is no right wing media to speak of, social or otherwise.
Even if this were true, why is it an "issue"?
Conservative media outlets [ edit ]
Can you provide readership/viewership/subscriber stats on your "list"?............as compared to the mainstream of NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT,(where most people see their news daily) CNN, Vox, Mother Jones, Salon, AFP, mediaite, and the plethora of never Trumper water carriers? Therein lies your true comparison.
Thanks
I knew I could draw out some facts.
So Greg says this:
As you well know, there is no right wing media to speak of, social or otherwise.
...John provides proof to the contrary, and you post this:
Can you provide readership/viewership/subscriber stats on your "list"?............as compared to the mainstream of NBC, CBS, ABC, MSNBC, WaPo, NYT,(where most people see their news daily) CNN, Vox, Mother Jones, Salon, AFP, mediaite, and the plethora of never Trumper water carriers? Therein lies your true comparison.
If you think stats and comparison's are necessary, I for one, will be glad to take a look at your results when you post them.
It's called moving the goalposts. Or in other words, "but...but...but..."
There are numerous right wing radio talk shows all day every day. There are stations, in even the biggest cities that program nothing else but right wing talk . They reach tens of millions of conservatives on a weekly basis. Fox News is tv as are the others on the fringe. Sinclair is a right wing media company (local tv stations) that covers most of the country.
The ABC , CBS and NBC news programming is not "liberal", it is corporate. You mistake their negative stories about Trump for a bias against him. There would be something seriously objectively wrong with any news program that did not criticize Trump over the past 5 years. He is not fit to hold public office in the United States of America. If anything the "big three" have gone far too easy on Trump, especially for the first three years.
Right wing media on the internet and on social media is rampant. It is everywhere and there is no need to list them all.
Greg didn't say anything about readership/viewership. He just stated that there wasn't any right wing media.
I suggest you go to Goggle or Duck Duck Go (since that seems to be the conservative go-to search engine these days) and find out for yourself.
Need to know how many people heed what "source". He brought the conservative list into the mix, he needs to enlighten himself and our readers with the negative of the main stream.
Even in the small city of Little Rock there is not just one but at least 3 that do nothing but serve up conservative talk all day long.
John is not the one that needs to do that research. You want to know, so you do it. Do your own homework for a change
I would say before he points the finger at all the supposed pro Trump sources, he needs to take a look at his own never Trump sources. Perhaps he could change his tune after said "illumination".
That was Greg's question. In the rest of his comment he didn't ask for readerhip/viewership numbers. You're the one that harped on that.
We all know there are plenty of never trmp sources. But that wasn't the question that was asked, was it? A football field is only 500 feet**** long. If you really want to keep moving the goal posts I guess we could move this discussion to a runway for a 737 jet
***500 yards not feet! sheesh!
I. Am. An. Idiot.
A football field is 100 yards long. If I had used some critical thinking I would have know that.
Stop John.. Just stop.
The reason that they have more followers is they get actionable, factual information to print instead of the latest version of Boogy-man-gotcha.
Mine is 500 yards that i measure only with a meter stick
Why is there no left wing talk radio?
Because no one cares?
Can't get sponsors.......................The left wing knows all so it doesn't matter .........../s
This is why everyone should use the metric system.
Exactly!!!!
It would be rather humorous if football announcers started to only speak in terms of feet.
"Well the Packers are on the 70 foot line and they'll need another 30 feet for a first down..."
"Well in that last play the running back picked up a lot of feet..."
"We'll see if the kicker can make this 150 footer, he's missed four from 153 feet or longer this season...".
If we went to metric, wouldn't they use meters to call plays?
they'd replace announcers with "Meter Maids" ?
Careful, you'll get a ticket...
I won't even try to put those lengths in meters...
Not everywhere. In Canada it's 110 yards long, and as far as I know it hasn't been converted to metric.
What an incredible thread this has been. An unbelievably ignorant comment is posted by Greg Jones, and when it's proven ridiculously wrong by John, the trolling starts flowing. Nobody needs to prove an unbelievably ignorant comment wrong - the person who makes the comment needs to prove it's correct. Then aother Trump-supporter jumps on the bandwagon to add requirements that are needed to prove the origninal ignorant comment wrong. Personally, I would just deliete this whole thread as beiing an embarrassment in the eyes of anyone reading it.
Still 12 players?
Yep - an extra backfielder.
Okay, I just had a high school flashback about the old If train A is going east at 60 mph and train B is going west at 70 mph, etc.
And the left takes no responsibility for current state of affairs?
I'm sorry, but the left wing fools lit the fires of the hate and mistrust, what with baseless investigations and an ongoing repetition of lies. Now they will have to live with the ash fall of their misdeeds.
Utter nonsense.
The left has no responsibility for the current state of affairs as the vast majority of propaganda and lies that you like to promulgate originate on those same right wing sources John outlined well in 2.2.1
And your statement in 3.2.1 would equate to the greatest piece of denialism of the 21 century..
Utter nonsense.
Speaking of conspiracy theories there was the grand daddy of them all - The Russia Hoax!
As I contemplate the return of Biden and the Elite Class back into power, I shall always be grateful to the Orange man who disrupted progressive rule for a wonderful term in office.
That said, the coffee tastes so much better.
There was no Russia hoax. Trump's campaign was investigated because of the actions of its campaign members and Trump himself.
In private testimony all the intelligence chiefs admitted that they never saw any evidence of collusion.
2/3 of Democrats believed Russia manipulated vote totals.
where did they hear such nonsense?
Donald Trump asked Russians to hack Hillary Clinton's email system. In public. Did you really think there was never going to be any repercussions to that?
Trump LIED to the American people about his business interest in Russia.
His son and son in law and campaign manager sat in at a meeting where the purpose was for Russian intermediaries to offer the Trump campaign dirt on Clinton.
Trump's personal associate Roger Stone attempted to co-ordinate the Wikileaks information on Clinton release with activities of the Trump campaign.
Trumps campaign manager was passing private polling information to a Russian agent.
-
There was nothing wrong with investigating the Trump campaign. In fact it was necessary.
hard to believe 4 years later and people are STILL lying about what Trump said.
sad creatures clinging to lies to further their insane hatred of Trump.
lol. You could write all you know about this on your fingernail.
At least I know what he actually said and have no need to lie about it!
pushing more lies to back up the original lie is rather stupid.
can you even quote Trump's words?
because I know what the fuck he said, and I didn't need msm to explain it to me!
there are some people who cannot accept reality, we all know that.
BECAUSE it was widely speculated at the time that Russia had hacked the DNC and the material ended up at wikileaks where Assange released it to the public, Trump thought he would ask Russia if they could do the same for Hillarys private email system.
Its really not my problem if you dont understand that.
He didn't encourage anyone to hack anything. He said if you find her deleted e-mails
You know, the ones the FBI somehow couldn't find in addition to the ones the FBI allowed to be destroyed which had been subpoenaed. The person who destroyed them was given immunity. [deleted]
"Russia, if you’re listening, I hope you’re able to find the 30,000 emails that are missing,"
So you're saying that he wasn't encouraging hacking, he was just asking Putin to have his minions comb the beaches and bars looking for the missing emails? Obviously he was encouraging Russian hacking, which increased dramatically the day he made that comment.
Thanks you for admitting that there are no decent people left in the Trumplican party that continues to deny the truth about him losing the election.
As for Hillary's emails, you obviously have nothing if you're complaining that someone was given immunity for their testimony. Just more whiny whine whine going on for nearly a decade from miserable pathetic losers desperate to convict a Clinton on something, anything, but continuing to come up short even after nearly a dozen Republican investigations. I've never liked Hillary or the Clintons, but the completely useless nonsensical conspiracy theories some dumb fucks have invented about them are just beyond stupid.
[Removed for context]
[deleted]
that is an outright lie. Trump never asked anyone to hack her emails, and no matter how many times the lie is repeated, it is STILL a lie.
Oh, and BTFW, how could anyone hack a computer in FBI hands?
... and Henry II never asked anyone to murder Thomas Becket...
Yep, people who claim otherwise don't understand the English language, basic computer tech, or how time works.
I have no idea what vague analogy you are attempting to make here, but you should spell it out.
BTW, how could an unplugged computer in storage be hacked?
Do tell!
Good Lord... preserve us from ignorance....
Good Lord, please instill in people the basics about hacking an unplugged computer sitting in storage, and please prevent them from spreading the lies!
Trump has OCD about Clinton's emails but conveniently forgets that Pence, Ivanka, and Jarrod have done the same thing within the WH that he accused Hillary of doing.
That's big news! Can you link to that story of those three sending classified emails on personal servers?
Of course not.
Vic, there were two important things that Robert Mueller said in his first public statement following completion of the investigation. He said (essentially) that he could not support the indictment of a sitting President, no matter what the investigation revealed. He also stated that the biggest thing our country had to worry about was foreign interference of any kind. In fact, he stated it more than once. Considering so much of the report was redacted at that time, he did the best he could informing the public that ongoing concern regarding the matter was prudent. How much more spelling it out do you need?
And PS: Trump is about to lose his sitting President status. What did what's her nuts say during the RNC? Oh, yeah...this:
Stock on snacks. It's gonna be a show of shows.
No. He didn't.
Considering so much of the report was redacted at that time,
Very little has been redacted. Moreover, no criminal charges were filed alleging anyone conspired with Russia.
If there was evidence of Trump conspiring with Russia, why didn't Democrats impeach him for it? That's a much lower bar to reach than a criminal charge.
Please spare us the progressive spin. He headed an investigation that had no pretext from the start and it was continued for as long as it did for no other reason than to hopefully hand off a "report" to a democrat controlled chamber of congress. Most democrats now know and are able to admit that it was wrong. Not our hard left members here. They still try to defend it.
What did what's her nuts say during the RNC?
Kimberly? I usually watch her with the volume turned off. I just gape actually! You know, even at my age, I still take cold showers!
Every time I see her picture it reminds me that my bass fishing gear is in storage.
He was impeached for trying to extort the Ukraine into helping him further his smear campaign against Hunter Biden. The Ukraine opted out. Extortion is....kind of illegal.
Ukraine isn't Russia. They are two different countries. This discussion is about Russia.
This discussion is about Trump's Legacy. Don't believe me? Scroll to the top and read the title.
You understand how the reply button works, right? This discussion is about the lies told about Trump and Russia. Ukraine is not Russia. and is an obvious deflection. I get why liberals need to play the squirrel game when their lies about Russia are discussed, but it's not relevant. Feel free to discuss Ukraine in a different thread.
This article is about Trump's malicious legacy.
I get it... Deflect Deflect Deflect. Anything to avoid discussing the years liberals spent gaslighting the country about pee tapes etc...
So why did 2/3 of Democrats believe the lie that Russia manipulated vote totals John? Who planted that lie?
Wow. Project much?
Did somebody forget to read the seed again?
Oh, please!
That's against the rules on NT.
Actually she was correct. With Trump gone, the best is yet to come is on Jan 20 when Biden/Harris are sworn in.
She does have nice hair though.
Oh sorry, didn't mean to go off topic on your article.
Oh wait it's John's article.
And this discussion just about sums it up.
Not even close. I would say claiming that there were millions of fradulent votes in the 2020 election....while providing literally no evidence at all, is likely the biggest hoax ever. Russia hoax?
Please. That, "hoax" landed a lot of people in jail.
Just as a refresher.
The Clintons are statistically valid proof of conservative monomania. They have been investigated for fifty years... with no charges brought. But despite five decades of evidence to the contrary, the right continues to proclaim their guilt about... whatever...
Both will be dead, and the right will continue to shout, "Lock her up!"
That's pithy... but is it pertinent?
Your first table needs totals: