Truth is Essential to Democracy
The case can
be made for explaining America’s political divide on failure of the body
politic to agree on the truth of facts.
For example, the American Enterprise Institute’s January survey finding
that 66 percent of Republicans believe that Biden’s victory was illegitimate. The
truth of the matter is that the presidential election of 2020 was well
conducted and remarkably free of tampering or distortion. So, what are we dealing with? Are we dealing with an instance of mass
brainwashing? Is it possible that a
president can condition the collective minds of his party and followers to
believe an outcome by repeating month after month that defeat could only be due
to manipulating the results of a national election, whose voting system has
been through the years remarkably honest?
I find it almost impossible to know how to think about this issue. I do
not know where to start, but let us by sidestepping the journalists, pollsters
and pundits, and begin with the social scientists.
Rasmus Klein
Nielsen, Director at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the
University of Oxford writes that, “First, on social science, I don’t think we
can understand the 2020 election outcome without putting identity in center
place, especially if we are to understand why many white Americans have
responded favorably to Trump’s explicit racial appeals.” He goes on to
elaborate that, “voting has its origins “in ethnic, sectional, class, and
family traditions” and is a matter of sentiment and disposition rather than
“reasoned preferences”, an approach further develop in the “Michigan model”
that put party identification at the center. I think I can understand that
summation in that in my own family growing up in the last mid-century in
western New York State, in sum, believed in the Catholic Church, General
Motors, and the Republican Party—sort of a cultural triad. Nielsen cites Ashley
Jardins’s White Identity Politics as a likely cause and not for
any of the other crazy reasons. We can at least start there and ask if
consultants, pollsters, lobbyists, and think tankers, if they have anything to
add to the social scientists’ conclusion have anything to contribute. We know
that social science may not be as precise as medical science, which has many
forms of quackery, but “white identity politics” is a strong argument, in my
research, the strongest. Trump is
clearly not the cause, but certainly the latest symptom of a very bad disease
corrupting Truth. I cannot believe that
white identity politics is the entire reason for the irrationality of the
rampant conspiracy theories permeating the social media of the country. What of
the incredible irrationality of Republican party leadership? An example is the criticism faced by
Pennsylvania Senator Pat Toomey after voting to support the second impeachment
of former President Donald Trump.
Washington
county (PA) Republican Chair Dave Ball in a TV interview [1], viciously
attacked Senator Toomey for justifying his vote to convict Trump on the charge
of inciting the violent January 6th riot at the US Capitol with the absurd
statement,” We did not send him to Washington to vote his conscience We did not send him there to do the right
thing or whatever he said he was doing.
We sent him there to represent us, and we feel very strongly that
he did not represent us”. That statement
stands as a marker for all time. The same reference continues reporting that,
“York County, PA Republicans voted to censure Toomey over the weekend, arguing
that he is out of touch with the core beliefs of the people of
Pennsylvania. But Not Out of touch with
Truth! The message is, we have to solve
this problem or we will not keep our democracy.
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[1]. Santucci, Jeanine. Impeachment Vote Brings Censure.
2021. USA TODAY, Rochester Democrat & Chronicle Feb 18, 2021.
