On Saturday Night Live this weekend, a popular skit was one
of those mock-advertisements that the show executes so well. This time, they were advertising a community
of shallow, liberal-minded people, who can’t stand the oncoming reality of a
Trump Presidency that’s bolstered by strong-enough majorities in the Senate and
House of Representatives. The proposal
is a hipster paradise in Brooklyn, complete with surface-deep character and
Disney-development, corporate prices, all within the safe confines of a literal
bubble that keeps out dissenting opinions.
This concept comes on the heels of nearly two weeks of the
so-called “liberal media” chastising liberal people for living in elite bubbles
and being entirely unaware of the “real world” around them.
At this point, let me take a little step back. First of all, let’s not kid ourselves. This “liberal media” that people keep talking
about is nothing more than a marketing invention of those on the far right to try
to explain why facts and statistics don’t support their claims. The “liberal media” is why the Oxford English
Dictionary has given us a disturbing new word: post-truth.
They define post-truth as “relating to or denoting
circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public
opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief”.
Post-truth is what happens when a candidate who is widely
reported by independent fact checkers to be the most honest Presidential
candidate in memory gets labeled as a liar, and a candidate who those same
independent fact checkers discover to be one of the most dishonest candidates
in memory gets a pass. Post-truth is
what happens when wide swaths of the populace decide that when a candidate says
something they like, he’s telling it like it is, but when he says something
obscene, he’s either being misrepresented, or shouldn’t be taken
literally. Post-truth is what happens
when scientific realities are dismissed as ideology. Post-truth is what happens when the insights
of historians warning us about the similarities between our current politicalclimate and elected leaders and the rise of Adolph Hitler are ignored.
There is no “liberal media”.
The ones most widely decried as the “liberal media” are – to put real
names to it – MSNBC and NPR. While it’s
true that MSNBC does tend to have a more progressive editorial bias than other
commercial news networks, let’s not kid ourselves: their programming and news
reporting over the past couple of years contributed mightily to the rise of
Donald Trump as a serious candidate.
They loved the shock value that he brought to their network, and they
capitalized on it to squeeze ratings out of us.
He was constantly covered, and rarely questioned. Meanwhile, his main opponent, Hillary
Clinton, was minimally covered in comparison, but nearly all of that coverage
was devoted to questioning her and looking for scandals (which, let the record
show, never materialized). They bought
in to the post-truth era wildly and eagerly.
NPR, on the other hand, has a reputation that is marred by
the post-truth era. Federal funding in
support of public broadcasting is constantly endangered because politicians and
members of the public on the right are quick to accuse them of liberal
bias. The problem, however, is that
facts – real, tested, peer-reviewed, factual truths – tend to have a liberal
bias. If a network is reporting truth,
and not just post-truth, those who only care about post-truth think they’re
hearing liberalism.
It is a fact that the budget for the United States military
is larger than the combined budgets of the next 9 largest militaries in the
world. It is also a fact that of those
next 9 largest militaries in the world, 7 of them are nations that we consider
to be our allies. So, any reasonable
analysis of the facts would suggest that we could drastically cut our defense
spending, still maintain the most significant and powerful military in the
world, and have funds available to provide much needed improvements to our
failing infrastructure, support public education, provide a host of services
that would strengthen and empower the struggling middle class, and still have
room left over for tax cuts and deficit reduction.
EVERYONE can get what they want and live a better life. But the military-industrial complex has
defined the narrative through fear mongering to convince people of a post-truth
reality that their lives would be endangered if we cut defense spending. In fact, the only reason they oppose these
cuts, however, is that it would cut into their exorbitant corporate profits.
These are the real costs of living in a post-truth world,
and the “liberal media” isn’t doing anything about it. It may be true (and I suspect it is) that most
on-air personalities and behind-the-scenes content generators in the media do
have a liberal bias. Liberalism often
accompanies education, and most people in the media are well-educated. Even so, the bosses and shareholders benefit
from post-truth broadcasting, and bosses and shareholders always win in the
end.
So, enough of the “liberal media” and post-truth rabbit
trail – let’s move on to what I’m really here to talk about: that bubble that I’ve
been chastised for living in.
It is true that I live in a liberal enclave in the Northeast. It is true that I am highly educated and have
a decent job (though I’m not wealthy by any American standard). All of this makes me a part of the so-called “coastal
elite”.
But, when I say that I can’t believe that American would
actually elect Donald Trump to be the President of the United States after the
campaign of hate and division that he ran, that doesn’t mean that I’m a part of
some bubble that I should get out of so that I can better relate to the “red
states”. I am educated. I am a Southerner by birth. I travel to and through those “red states”
multiple times each year. I have friends
and family members who not only live in “red states” but who thrillingly
embrace the post-truth reality.
I’m not in a bubble.
They are.
I understand their lives a lot more than they understand
mine. I can’t tell you how many times
over the past two weeks I’ve heard my post-truth compatriots exclaim, “I just
don’t understand why those people are so afraid!” (Take a look at my previous post on this blog for some insight into that.) When I’ve
tried to explain it to them, or to explain why I’m angry that they voted for
Donald Trump, I get talked down to, delivered phony rationalizations, and
self-righteous ignorance portrayed as a virtue.
I understand them, but they show no interest in
understanding me, my concerns, or anything other than post-truth
assertions. When I back up my claims
with articles from reputable news agencies like the New York Times or the
Washington Post, they think that a post from Brietbart is a fair
refutation. When I point to evidence
from scientific journals and crime statistics, they fire back at me with the
website, The Federalist Papers.
This issue here is not that we’re both in our own
bubbles. This has been the year of the
false equivalency, and I’m on a crusade against them. We’re not both in bubbles. I’m in the world, and not just my corner of
it. I travel and read and talk to people
who bring me new perspectives and learn and grow through the arts. Meanwhile, they’re uninterested in anything
BUT their corner of the world – as seen from only their perspective. We aren’t just coming from two sides of the
same coin.

So let’s pop the bubble.
Not so “we”, of the “liberal elite”, can understand “them”, the “ignorant
masses” – but so that understanding more generally can grow. Let’s pop the bubble so that opportunity can
be available to everyone, not just those of us already outside.
Like lancing a boil, it will probably hurt. It’s already hurting me. But it’s the only hope for our country to rid
itself of the post-truth infection, going forward.
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