Political propaganda erodes independent thought on left and right
by Michael McKenna · The Washington TimesOPINION:
I am starting to think that the constant need to defend the increasingly absurd political stances of one’s allies is making people mentally less agile.
For example, I recently asked two friends what I thought was a simple question: Do you think regime change in Iran will happen as a result of American efforts in the Middle East? One was quick to say yes, the other offered a lengthy, senatorial nonanswer.
It wasn’t a complicated question; it simply asked for a prediction about a relatively closed system.
The inability to pursue independent thought is a disease spreading through the political class.
Some have been unable to identify what happened in Venezuela as a simple switching out of presidents rather than a regime change. They don’t like to characterize the extrajudicial killing of people on the high seas (the Caribbean) as possible instances of extrajudicial killings by the federal government. Were they innocent pleasure boaters? Unfortunate bystanders? Drug runners? Who can say, especially since the government has not shared any evidence or testimony one way or the other?
People of all kinds have trouble with the simplest questions. Is the president sometimes tone deaf? Did the Department of Government Efficiency affect the trajectory of federal spending at all? Does His Holiness really need to bone up on his theology? Did we need to do more second-order thought before we launched on Iran?
This phenomenon is, of course, not limited to folks on the right; it manifests itself across the political spectrum.
No one on the left is prepared to climb down from their own indefensible nonsense. They are unwilling to give President Trump credit for solving the supposed insoluble problem of illegal immigration, to recognize that those who face confiscatory taxes will simply move to other jurisdictions, or acknowledge the obvious biological fact that women can’t really become men (or vice versa) by simply saying so.
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Redistributing cash through taxation doesn’t really lead to prosperity. By the time Joseph R. Biden took office, he was greatly diminished. Vice President Kamala Harris was manifestly incapable of being president. Former President Barack Obama knows damn well what motivated the would-be assassin at the White House Correspondents’ Association dinner.
The examples are legion on both sides, and one could go on for a long time, but you get the point.
My grandmother used to encourage us to “tell the truth and shame the devil.” The inability of those in the political class to simply acknowledge what is manifest to everyone makes them look foolish and diminishes their legitimacy.
It doesn’t help that a sizable fraction of the chattering class now communicates entirely in semiformed thoughts and sentence fragments. How seriously can you take someone who lives their life primarily on social media?
Many Americans are tired of politics and believe that the political class is a cancer, mostly of idiocy but to some extent malice, upon the citizenry.
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The republic has limited faith in its governing class for a reason. It is because the members of that class routinely lie to them in ways gross and subtle. If you can’t trust a person to tell you the truth about something that is obvious to all, then how can you trust them to act on facts that are perhaps not as evident or well-known?
To make matters worse, partisans on both sides routinely avoid facts they do not care for. If you hold a position of authority, or even one of trust, then you have a moral responsibility to help less intellectually gifted citizens understand complex issues.
God didn’t make you smart — or sort of smart — so you could lie to people for cash or power or personal aggrandizement. You are supposed to use your gifts for good, to help people. Not to be a cog in a propaganda apparatus.
• Michael McKenna is a contributing editor at The Washington Times.
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