Ignore the former guy and focus on truth: Trumpmania is yesterday's news

Yesterday's News  "well traveling to the point that I, - I can't stop it -get so familiar- never get enough - talk about it all the time- just drop it..."

Echo Opinion | The Trump News Show Is Over and We’re All Healthier For It; published in POLITICO Magazine Fourth Estate, by Jack Shafer.

What have you been doing with your time? The numbers tell us that the average news consumer is watching a whole lot less cable news and has gone on a restricted online news diet. Over the past year, the major cable channels have lost from 34 percent to 43 percent of their audiences. The New York Times website lost almost 34 percent of total unique visitors between June 2020 and June 2021, and the Washington Post has seen a similar 27 percent drop in uniques over the same period. Nearly every online news leaderboard has taken a hit, whether they have paywalls or not: CNN.com, uniques down 20 percent; the Atlantic down almost 52 percent; Business Insider down 31 percent; POLITICO down 44 percent.

Outlets sometimes dispute the precision of external counts such as ComScore’s, but no one argues the downward trend isn’t real. There’s been no C-suite purge, however, because the mass defection of millions of eyeballs doesn’t equal a business crisis. That’s because the bulging ratings collected by cable news were a Donald Trump-related anomaly, helping to move advertising. The entire industry anticipated the decline whenever Trump left office. 

For Fox News Channel (ugh!) and CNN, the more lucrative and more reliable source of revenue has always been monthly subscriber fees paid by viewers through the cable company. 

For non-cable outlets, higher page-views related to Trump were difficult to monetize. 

Despite Trump’s prediction that the media business would croak without his agitations, we see the opposite. New hiring continues at the established outlets, coverage is expanding and acquisitions at high valuations continue. Robert Allbritton just sold his POLITICO properties, as you may have read, for more than $1 billion. (This might be a counter-intuitive strategy to control the liberal news outlets?)

What the drop-off actually signifies is that news readers and viewers have resumed their previous consumption habits after several years of gorging on news the way a drunk who crashes his yacht into the island of free pizza might scarf down a hundred slices of pepperoni.

Now that Trump Island is gone, news consumers have happily gone cold turkey. How many of us are actually that upset he no longer swamps the news flow? The drop-off has also benefited journalists, too, giving them a chance to dismount from the junk news treadmill they had been running. The market for news has miraculously right-sized itself, leaving us as well-informed as before and about half as crazy.

The causes behind the “great media crash” are self-evident. Last year was a campaign year, which always causes news consumption to spike. It was also the last year — barring his reelection in 2024 — of President Donald Trump. Trump was a one-man perpetual news machine, forever feeding reporters high-calorie, low-nutrition tidbits and serving dumpsters of coverable commotion, some of which was forgotten the day after it was reported. 

Remember when the White House promoted Melania Trump’s jewelry line or when Kellyanne Conway hyped Ivanka Trump’s clothing line? Sometimes #TFG would uncork two or three mini-scandals a day. The press corps was sometimes unable to discern which of his threats were empty (Would he torch North Korea, inject the ill with bleach or stop the election count?) because so many of the threats turned out to be full (He did have reporters banned from the White House, he did back the murderous Saudis to the hilt, he did impose a Muslim travel ban, incarcerate children and declare the 2020 election fixed).

The saturation Trump coverage was justified journalistically — a rogue and unpredictable chief executive is a very dangerous thing, and if he uses the Constitution as a kitchen towel you’ve got to call him on it. 

Preserving a record of Trump’s transgressions was essential, so let’s not quarrel with the volume of coverage. But, in retrospect, once Trump had self-stereotyped himself as a liar, a cheat, a scoundrel and a crybaby, few of us had to read beyond the headline and first paragraph to get the message. We let the Trump Show become delicious breakaway entertainment, served in round-the-clock installments, like a bundle of your favorite Netflix serials. The more we read about Trump, the more we wanted to read about him, and the more we looked forward to the conveyor belt of books about Trump steered our way. We bolted down so much Trump news it’s a wonder readers and viewers livers didn’t grow so enlarged you could make human foie gras from them.

We’ve been indoctrinated since grade school to believe that partaking the news was essential to citizenship, democracy and our American way of life: Study the issues! Debate the issues! But nobody ever told us that a thing that’s a nutrient at one dosage can become a poison when quintupled. During Trumpmania, billions of man-hours were needlessly burned reading and viewing Trump stories that could have better gone toward gardening, parenting, reading, hobbying, drinking, sexting and even sitting on the porch doing nothing. Each of us could have learned a foreign language or learned to play guitar instead of reading about him from day to night for four years. We really should have known better. Guy DeBord (Society of the Spectacle) and Daniel Boorstin (The Image) warned us in the 1960s that our appetite for mass spectacle would make us a target for political extremism if somebody appeared who knew how to use the media and exploit it. Trump appeared, he made for excellent copy and we all got hooked.

Having been towed to the depths by the news binge, we have only now surfaced to reorder our priorities. First, we must never forget the way we let Trumpmania upend our media diet and turn us all into fatted hogs. When Trump returns — or the next Trump uses his attention-grabbing methods — we should be prepared to resist his caterwauling. Somebody should create a browser add-in that would remind us when we’ve over-partaken of the news. 

Moreover, CNN could add a product disclaimer to its programs noting that over-watching TV news can mess with your mind and that TV is only safe when taken as directed. I kid, but only a little. Like Facebook and YouTube, TV news narcotizes its clientele. Because we know the media can’t — and shouldn’t — show restraint in its coverage when it covers norm-flouting politicians, it’s up to us to know when to turn away.

If Trump deserves major blame for boosting viewership, Joe Biden should get some credit for relieving us of our 24/7 news duties. You don’t have to be a Biden fan to appreciate the way his conduct has reduced national political news from the totality of existence to something more like a companion. 

If anything, Biden has downplayed his role in the national drama to levels just below perception. Had we not bolted from Afghanistan, how much would we be reading about him? Sometimes I Google “the name of the president of the United States” to remind me who occupies the White House.

Ask anybody who has successfully lost weight, and they’ll tell you the first task is portion control. To push the metaphor, go ahead and fill your plate with all the news you like, but use a nine-inch plate from the 1950s instead of a modern 13-inch platter. 

And as you read, consult your sense of satiety and act accordingly.

One reason for the decline of the New York Times uniques is the newspaper ended its distribution deal with Apple News in June 2020. But its decline is still consistent with other outlets. 

Juice my email numbers with messages to Shafer.Politico@gmail.com. My email alerts have a weight problem. My Twitter feed never turns its TV off. My RSS feed can’t read.

Donald Trump's reading lessons: A third grade score

Donald Trump Talks Like a Third-Grader- an encore read.
This essay was first published in 2015, before stumbling Donald Trump became a failed president. 

I read about this essay, written by Jack Shafer and published in Politico Magazine, in the book “Toddler in Chief”, by Tufts University Professor Daniel W. Drezner.  

Retrospectively, reading this in 2020, seems like experiencing a prophetic analysis. In recent propaganda filled White House press briefings during the coronavirus pandemic, Donald Trump has started to read his directives and, frankly, he needs more literacy coaching.

https://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/08/donald-trump-talks-like-a-third-grader-121340 

Donald Trump isn’t a simpleton, he just talks like one. If you were to market Donald Trump’s vocabulary as a toy, it would resemble a small box of Lincoln Logs. Trump resists multisyllabic words and complex, writerly sentence constructions when speaking extemporaneously in a debate, at a news conference or in an interview. He prefers to link short, blocky words into other short, blocky words to create short, blocky sentences that he then stacks into short, blocky paragraphs.

The end result of Trump’s word choice is less the stripped-down prose style of Ernest Hemingway than it is a spontaneous reinvention of Ogden’s Basic English, the pared-down lexicon of 850 words selected by early 20th century linguist/philosopher C.K. Ogden as the bedrock of a new world language. In the August 6th Republican candidates debate, Trump answered the moderators’ questions with linguistic austerity. Run through the Flesch-Kincaid grade-level test, his text of responses score at the 4th-grade reading level. For Trump, that’s actually pretty advanced. All the other candidates rated higher, with Ted Cruz earning 9th-grade status. Ben Carson, Mike Huckabee, and Scott Walker scored at the 8th-grade level. John Kasich, the next-lowest after Trump, got a 5th-grade score.

Trump’s low grade at the debates wasn’t a fluke. His comments from an August 11, news conference in Michigan earned only a 3rd-grade score.

Flattening the English language whenever he speaks without a script, Trump relies heavily on words such as “very” and “great,” and the pronouns “we” and “I,” which is his favorite word. 

As any news observer can observe, he lives to diminish his foes by calling them “losers,” “total losers,” “haters,” “dumb,” “idiots,” “morons,” “stupid,” “dummy” and “ disgusting.” He can’t open his mouth without bragging about getting the Clintons to attend his wedding, about how smart he is, the excellence of his real estate projects, the brilliance of his TV show, his generous donations to other political campaigns and so on. In a freakish way, Trump resembles that of Muhammad Ali at his prime—except the champ was always kidding (even when he was right) while Trump seems to believe his claims (and often is wrong). Or perhaps he is afflicted with binary vision disorder, which renders all within his eyeshot either great or rotten.

It’s obvious that Trump’s verbal deficit, as grating as it may be on the ears of the educated class, has not caused him much political pain. The media has noted the opposite: Trump’s overreliance on sports and war metaphors in his public utterances, his reductionist, one-dimensional policy prescriptions—including nuanced geopolitical arguments such as get tough with China and Mexico, which are killing us!—inspire trust in many rather than distrust. Trump’s rejection of “convoluted nuance” and “politically correct norms,” mark him as authentic in certain corners and advance his (fake persona..) as a plainspoken guardian of the American way. By not conforming to the standard oratorical style, he distinguishes himself from the pompous politician. Less is more when you’re speaking Trumpspeak.

Still, don’t interpret Trump’s low scores as a marker of low intelligence. Trump’s professional history indicates a skill at dealing and deceiving, inspiring and selling, and such attributes would likely qualify as a types of intelligence in Howard Gardner’s book. The role Trumpspeak has played in Trump’s surging polls suggests that perhaps too many politicians talk over the public’s head when more should be talking beneath it in the hope of winning elections.

After all, who says you can’t build a political foundation on Lincoln Logs?  (Maine Writer opinion: It takes logic to play with Lincoln Logs and by the way, Abraham Lincoln spoke plainly too, but he could communicate using complete sentances and without reading aides.)

Reading Trump transcripts, you can sometimes sense him downshifting to find a clever word or original expression to make a point. Why shouldn’t he want to rise from Trumpspeak and find an honored place among the articulate? But instead of turning a phrase, he almost always grinds his rhetorical gears in defeat. “OK” and “Excuse me” are two of his regular verbal placeholders that indicate that the words he’d like to speak aren’t available. He also likes to ask himself questions when he’s gathering his wits (“How does that help us?” “Did you know that?” “You know why?”).

It’s precisely because of his apparent inarticulateness that I give him the benefit in the incident from last week, when he said after the Fox News Channel debate that Megyn Kelly had “blood coming out of her eyes, blood coming out of her wherever” as she pummeled him with questions on stage. He maintains that “wherever” was a placeholder for “nose,” which his tongue failed to locate. Trump is capable of invoking a woman’s menses in a put-down, but I would wager he lacks the felicity to do it in real time.

There’s more to communication than writing—or speaking—in such a way that boosts your Flesch-Kincaid grade-level scores. Excerpts I chose at random from The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn score at the 4th- and 5th-grade levels. Yet Mark Twain manages to communicate the great complexities of 19th century American life, especially on the topics of race and justice. Alas, this observation is irrelevant in any discussion of Trump. Twain possessed a nearly unlimited vocabulary and could compose sentences that flow with more twists and turns than a big river spilling into a delta. Huck Finn was deliberately composed in a simpler voice—the voice namely of a poor, illiterate boy. It’s a voice Twain assumed, not his personal voice.

The essay came a couple of decimal points from scoring at the 11th-grade level. Thanks to Oren Tsur , a post-doctoral researcher at Lazer Lab at Northeastern University and at the School of Engineering and Applied Science (SEAS) at Harvard University.

Conspiracy theories 2016 contribute to The Big Lie

"...those in power can actually act on their wild hunches..." Joseph Uscinski in Politico Magazine.  

This article is like a huge neon Danger sign....wake up!

Donald Trump built his political brand on larger than life vaudevillian bravado where he spews lies. In fact, truth appears to leave the room when Donald Trump enters. He's a master of communicating The Big Lie theory of political discourse. In other words, Trump tells so many big lies that it's virtually imposible to keep track of all of them. Consequently, many of the lies go unanswered and fall into the margin of incredulous believability.  

Conspiracy theories fall into The Big Lie pattern.  Joseph Uscinski wrote about the danger of conspiracy theory communications. The problem is, of course, will voters demand for the lies and conspiracy theories to stop? In oher words, where are Trump's plans and vision? Rather than explain his positions,Trump negatively entertains voters with lies and conspiracies without having to explain his wacko reasoning.

Uscinski wrote, "....former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani told Fox News Sunday viewers that Hillary Clinton was seriously ill. The media, he said, “fails to point out several signs of illness by her. … Go online. Search for ‘Hillary Clinton illness.’ Take a look at those videos for yourself.”

The idea that Clinton is secretly wrestling with some unknown illness is just the latest conspiracy theory to go mainstream in an election season chock full of them. Conspiracy theories, which Uscinski studied for the past seven years, has always been part of American politics, but they’ve tended to pop up in the dark corners of political discourse, serving mainly as sideshows to more important political disputes. 

Not so this year; Uscinski said he's never seen a time when conspiracy theories dominated the mainstream debate—and when they had the potential to do so much harm.

Whether it was witches colluding with Satan during colonial times, Freemasons nefariously controlling the government in the 1800s or communists coopting the State Department during the Red Scare, Americans have always been drawn to the idea that certain people or organizations are working in secret for their own benefit against the public good. Polls suggest that all Americans believe in at least one conspiracy theory; most believe in several. 

At the height of birtherism a few years ago, about a quarter of Americans believed that President Barack Obama was born outside the United States. A similar number believed there was a conspiracy behind the terror attacks of 9/11. More than 50 years after the fact, a majority of Americans continue to believe that President John F. Kennedy’s assassination was due to a conspiracy rather than to a lone gunman. In 2012, when I asked a representative sample of Americans to agree or disagree with the following statement, “Big events like wars, the current recession, and the outcomes of elections are controlled by small groups of people who are working in secret against the rest of us,” only 30 percent disagreed.

Despite this, the United States has not gone off the conspiracy theory cliff because our elite politicians and mainstream news sources generally eschew this type of heady theorizing. A few politicians or news sources might allege a plot from time to time (think Sarah Palin and her Obamacare death panels), but these are usually a result of overheated partisan rhetoric and they tend to receive intense backlash.

That was, until now. Donald Trump has been propagating, and now creating, conspiracy theories as a major theme of his campaign.

There’s an obvious reason for this: Donald Trump has branded himself an “outsider.” In my research, I have found that conspiracy theories tend to work best when they are employed by outsiders, electoral losers and statistical minorities. These “losers” have to use conspiracy theories to justify their outsider status, explain away losses and call accepted practices into question. 

If you want to explain why you want to tear the accepted system down in favor of a new approach or if you want to enter the White House without ever being part of the political establishment, then it is fitting to use conspiracy theories to call that system into question.

As for Clinton, the environment created by two outsiders—Sanders and Trump—has forced her to respond in kind. She is under pressure to give lip service to Sanders’ economic conspiracy theories in order to attract his supporters. And she has also been forced her to push back on Trump’s conspiracy theories about her with conspiracy charges of her own.

Maybe there is nothing fundamentally wrong with conspiracy theories. Sometimes they turn out to be true (think Watergate, for example), and sometimes they bring new information to light (such as securing the release of many documents pertaining to the Kennedy assassination). But too many can distort our perception of reality, squander precious government time and resources and endanger lives—especially when they move out of the fringes of political life and become the currency of the truly powerful.

Here are the five most dangerous conspiracy theories of 2016 (and some honorable mentions).

1. Mexicans and refugees are murderers, rapists and terrorists
Danger: Violence

Donald Trump has accused Mexican immigrants of being pawns in a Mexican conspiracy to send murderers and rapists to America. He also has accused refugees, fleeing their tattered homeland and shattered lives, of working against the government as ISIL agents.

Most conspiracy theories in the United States resonate when they are levied by the weak and accuse the strong (when out-of-power Democrats accused the Bush administration of being behind 9/11, for example). These conspiracy theories are usually annoying at worst, because those accused of conspiring are well-protected and powerful. In this case, however, the typical model is reversed: The strong (a man running for U.S. president with the backing of a major political party) is accusing the weak (refugees and minorities). This is a more dangerous type of conspiracy theory because those in power can actually act on their wild hunches, sometimes with deadly consequences. If Trump were to act on his conspiracy theories, for example, it could spell doom for those groups in the United States. And those who believe Trump’s rhetoric might choose to act on their own by doing violence to the targets of Trump’s theories.

Just look at what has happened when similar conspiracy theories have caught on before: There are the Salem Witch Trials, where innocent women were brutally murdered; the Red Scare of the 1950s, which saw the United States government violating the rights of countless Americans; and the Japanese internment camps during WWII. When the powerful believe there is a conspiracy against them—real or not—their reactions can have terrible consequences.

2. “There’s something going on”
Danger: Mass paranoia

A favorite go-to conspiracy theory of Trump’s, used in different circumstances at different points during the campaign, these four words suggest that our governmental institutions and our institutions for disseminating information are not only malevolent, but also engaged in a cover-up of epic proportions.

This conspiracy theory is useful for Trump because it lets him avoid specifics; it’s also dangerous because it’s open-ended, leaving Trump supporters plenty of room to connect their own dots. What is, in fact, “going on”? It could be Radical Islamic Terrorists in your neighborhood, refugees armed with ISIL cellphones or a president who either doesn’t care about terrorist attacks on the homeland or is directly involved in them. Maybe a terrorist lives next door, maybe the FBI is actually aiding the terrorists. Maybe our president is a terrorist, too. Who knows, right? But these four words suggest that everyone is in on it, we need to watch our neighbors, keep an eye on the government and watch the president’s body language like a hawk.

This style of conspiracy theorizing—leaving the details for people to figure out on their own—is advantageous because it gives people less to disagree with. What I have found in my research is that the more details there are to a conspiracy theory, the more reasons there are for people to take issue with it. This is one reason why JFK assassination conspiracy theories continue to be so popular compared to others. There is no established villain or plot line; everyone gets to choose the version that makes most sense.

3. Trump is a Manchurian Candidate
Danger: Institutional distrust, political polarization

Criticizing Clinton for her mishandling of classified emails, Trump suggested that the Democratic nominee is now beholden to the Obama administration, which decided not to prosecute her. 

Trump also suggested that other countries now have evidence to blackmail or control Clinton, given that they have been able to hack her private email server. Shooting back, the Clinton campaign put out an ad suggesting that Trump is an agent of powerful Russian interests.

Americans of all political persuasions should be able to trust that the two candidates who could lead the national government aren’t pawns to other interests. When they start to doubt their leaders’ loyalty to the country, institutional distrust can skyrocket. 

It’s also not that easy for a president to shed a conspiracy theory about him or her: The birther theory that dogged Obama during his entire time in the White House has been a distraction for both his administration and the country—and birtherism started with far less fanfare than these current accusations.

These sorts of theories can also be symptoms of, or possibly even contribute to, political polarization. By always calling into question a president’s motives, people on the opposing side never have to engage in meaningful debates over policy.

4. Vast right-wing conspiracy
Danger: Lack of accountability

There are conspiracy theories; and then there are conspiracy theories about conspiracy theories. This particular one was born during the height of the investigations into then-President Bill Clinton’s business practices and personal life. During a Today Show interview, then-first lady Hillary Clinton dismissed the burgeoning Monica Lewinsky scandal: “The great story here for anybody willing to find it and write about it and explain it,” she said, “is this vast right-wing conspiracy that has been conspiring against my husband since the day he announced for president.”

Conspiracy theories aren’t reserved for Republicans. Hillary Clinton has held on to her conspiracy theory that the right wing is in league against her and her family to this day; in fact, she claimed this election cycle that the conspiracy is “even better-funded” now.

Here’s the problem: If followed to its conclusion, this conspiracy theory suggests that every criticism, every accusation and every investigation of the Clintons is nothing but a well-orchestrated and false attack by an enormous network of clandestine operatives—giving Clinton and her supporters any easy way to dismiss any charges leveled against her. The Clintons are likely not guilty of all they have been accused. But they have made mistakes and they should be accountable for those. Appealing to a conspiracy should not alleviate a president or presidential candidate from responsibility.

5. Everything is “rigged”
Danger: Disenfranchisement and alienation

The campaigns of Trump and Sanders repeatedly alleged during the primaries that the nomination process is rigged. Earlier this month, Trump claimed that in states without voter ID laws in place, fraud will be rampant and people will be voting “15 times.” And he asserted that the only way the Clinton campaign can win Pennsylvania is if “they cheat.”

We’ve seen what can happen when people seize on conspiracy theories about fraudulent and rigged elections—despite there being no evidence of mass voter fraud. Over the past few years, similar beliefs have led state legislatures across the country to enact restrictive voter ID laws. But rather than fix a system that wasn’t broken to begin with, these efforts have been shown to disenfranchise minority voters. This year, if Trump deploys supporters to polling stations across America to monitor for fraud and challenge voters’ legitimacy as he is promising to do, the results could be similar.

But such claims about election fraud pale in comparison to the larger allegations that the entire system is rigged. Sanders and fellow Sen. Elizabeth Warren frequently claimed during this election cycle that the economic and political systems are entirely rigged. Here’s the problem with that theory: The United States has a $20 trillion economy and a political system that is widely diffused across different branches and levels. Being familiar with the failure rates of conspiracies, I can say that there is no group—not hedge-fund managers, not big bankers, not politicians—who could possibly rig our political and economic systems on any large scale and get away with it for long.

Far from being helpful, this sort of rhetoric is dangerous. 

First, it allows for scapegoating (“my lot in life is the fault of the one percent”) and indictment (“the rich and powerful have gotten that way only through illicit means”). It also brings about hopelessness and alienation—the feeling that we have been locked into an unfair and degrading system by a few people who wish to abuse us. These sorts of conspiracy theories also serve to depress the vote, as those who believe that elections and governmental processes are rigged will most likely stay home; this weakens our democracy.

HONORABLE MENTIONS
Pharmaceutical companies are hiding the connection between vaccines and autism
Danger: Death

This conspiracy theory claims that vaccines cause a series of illnesses, and that these adverse effects have been covered up by pharmaceutical companies to maintain profits. In fact, vaccines have saved millions of lives. Using the bully pulpit as both Trump and Green Party candidate Jill Stein have done to spread this conspiracy theory and undermine vaccine science will cost lives. Some people will listen to these candidates and skip vaccines for themselves and their children. We already have seen the consequences.

Big agricultural companies are hiding the negative effects of genetically modified foods
Danger: Higher food costs, damage to the environment

Sanders and Stein have both engendered GMO conspiracy theories, which claim that big agriculture and biotech companies are hiding the negative environmental and health consequences of farming and consuming genetically modified foods. This is despite the overwhelming scientific consensus that genetically modified food is safe to eat, similar to the alternatives, better for the environment and cheaper.

The dangers of these conspiracy beliefs are currently playing out in Vermont, where new legislation requires burdensome labeling of foods made from genetically modified crops (a $1,000 fine is levied per day per unlabeled product). Food choice is going down, and food prices are going up. Increased food costs can be absorbed by upper-class budgets; but they have a disproportionate impact on the budgets of people with midand lower incomes.

Ted Cruz’s father took part in the assassination of President Kennedy
Danger: A trip down the rabbit hole

It would be difficult to create any list of conspiracy theories and leave this one out, just by virtue of its creativity. Looking to deal a death blow to Ted Cruz’s campaign, Trump suggested that Cruz’s father was in a picture taken in 1963 with Lee Harvey Oswald, and therefore had a role in the assassination of JFK. Trump further claimed that the media was covering up the story.

The danger here is a bit esoteric: If people were to take Trump at his word that a sitting senator and presidential candidate’s father was involved in Kennedy’s assassination and that the media all knew about it but were purposely hiding it from the public, then nothing in this world could be taken at face value. What else would the media be hiding from us and what other horrific crimes are linked to our government officials? There would be no end to the conspiracy theorizing.

Maybe the advent of the upcoming debates will give Trump and Clinton an incentive to leave the conspiracy rhetoric behind and focus on issue-oriented politics. The likelihood, however, is that they will continue to push the country toward a conspiracy theory fueled delirium (some polls suggest an uptick in conspiracy beliefs as of late). And if they do, the results could be dire.