“Journalists can give the public what it needs to govern itself, but they can’t save democracy. That will be up to the American people.”
George Packer, THE ATLANTIC, Jan/Feb 2024
At stake in the upcoming election is the survival of our democratic institutions, including the free press. Donald Trump openly hates the searching journalism Americans have grown accustomed to in more than two centuries of our mostly successful democracy. As president, he called some reporters “enemy of the people.” As a candidate he has publicly threatened news organizations that he dislikes. We should probably take him at his word. He is constructing a case to be a dictator, not only on “day one.” The MAGA base supports his autocratic intentions; therefore, Republican politicians, following the corporate practice of unquestioning obedience to the boss, are goose-stepping along. Cultish fascism is a real possibility in America. Who can envision a future of all MAGA news, only MAGA news, all day, every day…without getting sick?
A solid quarter of likely voters back the end of American democracy, with another quarter determined to preserve it, leaving us with about half the country’s population either indifferent to or unaware of how severely threatened our democratic institutions are. Why are the media, a cornerstone of democracy, not trying to reach these people, as if their very existence depended on it? Regrettably but unsurprisingly, news outlets on the far-right are embracing and promoting the arrival of fascism, determined to convince the rest of us that it really isn’t all that bad on the other side, over there where “freedom is slavery.” But executives in the mainstream media seem content to exploit the ratings boosts their organizations get from the popularity of Donald Trump’s neofascism—and order their journalists to give the fascists free publicity. Like employees everywhere, reporters must do as they are told. The owners of most media are not interested in what their employees practice: journalism. But in America, we are fighting for the survival of our democracy, including the free press. Journalists need to keep us aware of this danger, for their own, as well as society’s, good.
Besides being taken over by corporate raiders, journalism has another fundamental problem early in the Third Millennium: Americans no longer disagree on how best to deal with reality. We now are totally divided by our perceptions of what reality is. One side believes climate change is actually happening, and is caused by humanity’s consumption of fossil fuels. This side believes that COVID-19 is a true threat to millions, and needs to be controlled by ongoing actions throughout the community, following the guidelines put forth by medical science. This side believes that the 2020 election was fair. And people on this side believe that human beings are descended from apelike mammals who roamed parts of Africa several million years ago. Those on the other side believe otherwise. How do we find common ground?
To some extent, we can thank Kellyanne Conway for assuring us that believing “alternative facts” (a euphemism that sounds more benign than Orwellian “doublethink”) is acceptable in modern politics. The term made Conway famous—ranking her with social philosophers like Plato, Rousseau, and Locke, at least to some Americans who get their information exclusively from TV and social media. An added advantage for alternative facts adherents is the ability to avoid delving into science, verifiable news, or literature more involved than twitter. Now, thanks to Conway, people can simply believe whatever they want to believe. Small wonder the free press is on its death bed. Who needs news in a world of alternative facts?
Who needs democracy, for that matter? Many Americans believe it only serves to protect a small group of malcontents who want to trouble the powerful without going to jail. (Full disclosure: I am one such malcontent.) Millions of Americans who have no use for democracy will vote for Trump, who continually promises to replace democracy with a state obedient to him. Warnings about the imperial presidency are on the verge of coming true. While during the past century America has flirted with fascism, Trump, true to his reputation, intends to perform the date rape. If he wins in 2024, he will certainly try to take all the power he can for himself…doing so, of course, in the name of the American people. And who will stop him, if he keeps his promise to replace democracy with autocracy? His followers in the MAGA base demonstrated their willingness to trash democratic institutions in a losing cause on January 6, 2021. Imagine how they might vent their hatred, should they win in 2024.
Will our established system of checks and balances challenge Trump’s autocracy, if he wins election? He totally controls his cult of true believers, and therefore the Republican Party. Congress is weak, sharply divided, incapable of real action. The Supreme Court is a corrupt joke. The “Fourth Estate,” the free press—owned by plutocrats who are absolutely disinterested in journalism’s avowed mission to discover and report the truth—is fighting a losing financial battle, and is increasingly dependent on Trump’s entertaining antics to stay solvent. Only the Democratic Party has the resources to prevent fascism in this country, but it remains unpopular among many voters, despite many successful compromises that help the environment, society, and working people. Many voters dislike the boring process of compromise. Does that justify turning the country over to Trump? The presidency’s long running evolution from an administrative to an imperial office, from executing the country’s laws to being the law, is finally at a stage where we must choose, individually and collectively, to either let it happen, or commit to stopping it.
Only a total effort from all of us can turn back fascism here in the “land of the free.” We have long trusted a free press to protect our freedoms, but today, journalists, still devoted to finding and reporting the truth, are under increasing pressure to avoid the truth if it interferes with quick profits. According to our judgment at Nuremberg after WWII, people are responsible for defying orders if they go against the general human conscience. But we now know that orders, backed by force, can be persuasive. We who consume media can rightfully ask those who produce it to learn and tell the truth, even if doing so goes against company policy. But we do not know what goes on in the minds of individuals who make their living from reporting news. We cannot insist that others, with families to feed, do what we want them to do. Yet those who do seek the truth deserve our support. We must make the decision whether to do our part.
For my part, I believe that America’s endangered democracy is the primary issue in the upcoming election. People in the media are responsible for dispensing provable information, for countering alternative facts with truth. I derive hope from vocal protests by newspeople whose bosses tried to hire an election denier for their TV staff. But whatever those in the media do, we are all responsible for turning hope into reality. We must do everything we can (short of committing violence) to ascertain the MAGA cult of personality does not attain power, lest alternative facts become all that we see and hear from now on. While I remain hopeful, I know that our democracy is in grave danger. Either fascism or freedom will become reality after the next election.