Our democracy is fighting a bad case of ‘truth decay’
Surely I’m not the only American who is reminded by President Donald Trump’s refusal to concede of the loony scene with the Black Knight in “Monty Python and theHoly Grail.” At least the moviewas funny.
The Black Knight is memorable for refusing to let his inept swordsmanship get in theway of his claims of victory. Even as he loses limbs, thanks to special effects, in a pitifully onesided sword fight, the knight refuses to surrender. “… Only a fleshwound!” he scoffs as he is hacked apart. “I’ve had worse! … I’m invincible! … Come back here! I’ll bite your legs off!”
No less relentlessly, Trump denounced “voter fraud” and “fake news media” among other villains, as his election night lead vanished and he filed fruitless lawsuits and recount requests.
Like the Black Knight, he seemed to believe the dubious adage that if you don’t quit, you can’t lose.
And, remarkably, he is encouraged by the faithfulness with which most of his voters seem to believe it, too, judging by postelection polls that show their doubts of the news and evidence unfolding before us all.
Some 70% of Republicans said they don’t believe the 2020 electionwas free and fair in a postelection Politico/ Morning Consult poll. That’s a big bump up fromthe 35% of Republican voters who expressed similar disbelief before the election.
Views among the skeptics largely echoed Trump’s evidence-free claims of ElectionDay hanky-panky: 78% believed that mail-in voting led to widespread voter fraud, 72% believed that ballotswere tampered with and 84% said the whole process unfairly benefited Democrat Joe Biden.
Similar results appeared in a Reuters/Ipsos poll that found 52% of Republican voters believe that Trump won and 68% were concerned that “rigged” vote-counting processes may have favored Biden.
Meanwhile, among Democrats, guess what? Their belief that the electionwas free and fair jumped in the Politico/Morning Consult poll to 90% from only 52% before Biden’s victory.
But perk down, Democrats. The corrosive effect of long-term skepticism about our elections and the media that cover them is no joke. Information is power and credible information, particularly about our elections, is the nourishment upon which our democracy sustains itself.
“Truth decay” is a label that the Rand Corporation think tank applied in a study earlier this year. Much has been said about the “alternate realities” and “alternative facts” generated in our national discourse by the explosion of social networks and other new media.
As much aswe have been empowered by these media to receive and spread good information, the same media also empower falsehoods, misleading propaganda, dangerous conspiracy theories and a disturbing national erosion of the glue that holds our social, economic and political systems together: trust.
Trumpian assaults on facts, truth and the scientific method of problemsolving— on such battlefronts as the COVID-19 pandemic fight— long preceded the rise of Trump and they’ll be with us long after.
As the Rand study notes, we’re hard-wired to reject information that contradicts our beliefs, andwe’ve been through periods of similar confusion before. Most notably, wewent through this type of confusion in the yellow journalism and “Gilded Age” eras of the 1880s and 1890s, in the Roaring
’20s and the Great Depression of the late 1920s and ’30s and in the social and political upheavals of the 1960s and ’70s.
What’sworse today is the speed and intensity of false information, including the sort of “big lie” thatmoves politics.
Much has been said about the need to improve civic education in our schools and, Iwould add, media education. Programs such as theNews Literacy Project, founded by journalists, have done an admirable job of coaching young people in howto compare media sources and judge who’s credible and who isn’t.
Butwe need more. To rebuild public trust, public officials and concerned media need to raise awareness of “truth decay” andwork to close the information gaps that leave some Americans feeling like their lives and complaints are being ignored by elites.
Otherwise, we leave that important task to demagogues— and they don’t need the invitation.