DONALD TRUMP IS HORRIBLE!!! is really not effective propaganda. That sentiment has been carried everywhere for two years. It hasn’t worked. He goes up and down in the polls a bit, but there is no real correlation, seemingly, not just between left wing media coverage (which is a virtually, but not entirely redundant phrase), which is always, every day, negative, but even actual news, like the convictions in one week of two close Trump associates.
I have in the past used the Little Boy Who Cried Wolf analogy. There is a point where you cannot become more negative, where you cannot spend more time in the day trying to paint Trump in a negative light.
I have taken to calling this Peak Propaganda. CNN and MSNBC really can’t make their coverage of Trump more negative, or spend more time trying to trash him and everyone around him. Perhaps it is possible–I don’t and can’t watch either network for more than a minute or two at a time–but that is my perception. When I look at CNN in the gym, there is always some new atrocity of Trump being discussed.
Now, Jacques Ellul, who I have mentioned from time to time, although not in a while. mentions two types of propaganda: Agitation propaganda, which is designed to get people riled up and active and angry; and Integration propaganda, which is designed to make people calm and confident in the activities of their group, in their goals, in their fundamental goodness, in the fundamental value of their membership in and support of that group.
The nominal goal, I think, for the propaganda organs of the Democrat Party and their more or less open Communist–certainly Socialist, big S–sympathies, is to make ordinary Americans angry at Trump, such that the idea of voting for him or supporting him in any way is horrifying, and such that they feel the need to defy him at every step.
This aim is failing, where most Americans are concerned. It is why Trump was elected, in spite of the most relentlessly negative press coverage I have seen in my lifetime, coverage which was shameful, and completely inconsistent with the most basic standards of journalistic integrity.
But this coverage, now, does continue to serve out the Kool-Aid for the True Believers. It agitates them into taking to the streets, and it integrates them into the fundamental idea of the inherent superiority of the Democrat cause.
But this process, inherently, only applies to people already in the fold. It has split from any attempt to describe reality as it is, to tell true stories, to to evaluate the evidence honestly. There is no longer even any serious pretense at objectivity, or journalistic integrity. And this is obvious to all. For those who share their biases, of course, they are just doing their jobs, showing how awful and terrible Trump and all his followers are.
For anyone outside this process, though, the whole thing looks extraordinarily unattractive. It is like watching sausages being made in a factory with glass walls and glass machines, where all you can see are the unfortunate animals, and the people slaughtering and processing them. Nothing is hidden, for anyone with anything approximating intelligence.
So we have this split in the middle of the nation, one being driven by relentless lies. It is a split the media cannot hide, and cannot plausibly deny. It is a split, in the end, between those who value truth telling, and those who don’t. Between those who value integrity and true public mindedness, and those who don’t.
It is very, very hard for me to conceive how this could possibly be helping the Democrats. In reality, it seems most likely it is causing, for now, soft damage, but damage which will over some time frame expand and eventually become irreversible, absent MAJOR changes to the party as a whole. If we have an honest election, I think this will show clearly.
It is certainly possible they have revised and improved their systems of voting fraud. I hope the alleged Russian meddling alone will spark new national guidelines on election integrity. I wonder, in fact, if Trump can issue an Executive Order requiring all States to demand valid ID to vote, and if there is any way to refuse to seat people from places like San Francisco, where they have openly given the right to vote–in patent violation of national law–to people here illegally, and thus ineligible to vote.
Where voting is concerned, it does seem to me the national government has a right and vested interest in ensuring that national laws are followed. I tend to be leary of the national government stepping into State affairs. Where State legislatures and officials are concerned, it categorically should not.
But our national assemblies, our House and Senate, create laws which affect all Americans. It is the right of all Americans to know that the people elected to those offices were elected fairly, and by people legally eligible to vote. Representatives from California, for example–which I believe to be our most populous State–could easily swing legislation one way or another. Is it fair to people in Oklahoma or Nebraska to have laws inflicted on them which were passed through majorities created by people elected illegally–who were put in office by Mexicans who want open borders, for example?
This is an important question. Perhaps I should have dealt with it in a separate post, but I will leave it here.