Disinformation. How apropos that it’s derived from Russian, when Russia has been such a key figure in the landscape of US Elections over the past four years. Stalin’s “dezinformatsiya” was used as a propaganda machine in his version of Soviet Russia. A century later, we Americans find ourselves no better off than than the citizens experiencing World War I when it comes to being informed.
Somehow technology has created the opposite effect of what it intended: 24 hour news cycles, social media, and the eruption of so many places to source your media means that people like me, a virtual nobody, can write things that other people will take as blind truth and share amongst their families and friends until it’s accepted as fact. Never has this been more frightening than the last 3 days. If I thought 2016, a year when I was adamantly unaffiliated with either political party and considered myself mostly Libertarian, was fraught with animosity and the ending of friendships over differences of political opinions, I had no idea the cocoon of oblivious bliss I was living in. I didn’t vote for Trump, but I was accused of “losing the election” by not voting for Hillary. I disagreed with friends that decried the Electoral College process, still believing in it’s fairness. I decided to accept the results and give Trump a chance, hoping maybe he could change things for the better by being something different, a new face, a go-getter, anything but the same stale bipartisan gridlock I’ve watched with dismay for most of my adult life.
I’m not afraid to admit that I was wrong. So what changed for me that didn’t change for so many Americans? Well, a lot. Let me start here: we’re selfish. Compared to many other societies, Americans value individuality and free expression. These aren’t intrinsically bad qualities, as they help us to be leaders in fields that require innovation and creativity. They allow us to be more accepting of those that are unlike us, or at least they should in theory. I know we have further to go, but many of the societies that cling to tradition and respect of an aging population and putting community before yourself levy much harsher penalties on the LGBTQ community. They prefer women to remain uneducated and unseen, in the home, caring for their children and their husband and attending to their elders. They restrict freedom of speech and speaking out against their governments is not allowed. In the Western world, we’re allowed to be WHO we are and who we want to be without persecution from our governments. But with that freedom comes a sense of entitlement, or self-absorption. Most of us want to help others, but we often don’t understand or truly empathize with what others are going through until we experience it ourselves. I’m guilty: never have I wanted socialized healthcare or a single-payer system until I NEEDED IT. Until I found myself waiting to schedule a follow up mammogram because I’m divorcing, losing my insurance, and I wanted to be sure I don’t have any pre-existing conditions “in case Trump wins.” Suddenly my white suburban middle-class ass understands how unfair it is that I have never had to worry about going to the doctor because I can’t afford it.
Another thing that has continued to stick with me this year is the stock market. I studied economics, and I work in the financial sector. What I have watched happen this year is unlike anything I’ve ever seen. To boil it down to the most simple terms: no one knows what the fuck is going on. Economists disagree on pretty much everything, except that 2020 feels like an anomaly in so many ways. From my personal perspective, though, watching all of the traditional indicators of a healthy and robust economy go gangbusters while I see more and more people struggling to make ends meet has been eye opening. I’ve long wanted to disprove the economic theory, “a rising tide floats all ships,” as it relates to gentrification, but never have I seen the “Two Americas” concept more clearly than in 2020. In January, the Pew Research Center confirmed that income inequality was continuing to widen. After watching the way people with means to invest have been able to capitalize on some of the less-discussed measures taken in the CARES Act to address economic fallout from Coronavirus, it’s apparent that the economy thriving does not mean AMERICANS are thriving. We are losing our middle class, and the strongest economies are those that work to make the middle class the largest and most successful one.
The last part of what some would call my radical shift in political leanings is disinformation. I never imagined a US election where my country could draw comparisons to a newly emerged democracy trying to hold a fair and uncontested election for the first time: men openly carrying guns and blocking routes to polls, a president encouraging people to vote twice, downtown areas in nearly every major city boarded up in case of riots, and a ballot counting process that has been frustrating for everyone. What hasn’t helped this? A media intent on sensationalizing every moment of this election, tying into our fears on all sides about what this election means for the next 4 years. On the flip side, seeing people share information on Facebook and Twitter from second and thirdhand sources, including old screenshots, skewed data, and “my brother’s girlfriend’s aunt Gloria is a poll observer and she said no Republicans are allowed to observe ANY counts in (insert county)” anecdotes, and it’s no wonder we seem hell bent on civil war. Watching people I know and trust lean on heavily biased news sources to somehow prove their argument is disconcerting at best. Someone tried to argue with me last night about the “139,000 mysterious Biden votes” that showed up overnight Wednesday in Wisconsin. I gave her three sources that fact-checked her claims, but she refused to believe me when I said it was inaccurate and had been fixed already. She also tossed up a screenshot of the “more votes than registered voters” claim and again, I refuted her ‘evidence’ by going to the same website referenced in HER screenshot and showed her how that person was using old voter registration numbers, and gave her the accurate 2020 numbers. She responded by telling me she didn’t want to engage anymore.
We are a nation so focused on our own internal moral compasses that we refuse to hear any perspective that doesn’t align with our own. And we have (had?) a President that feeds into that belief, and fuels half the nation with propaganda, misinformation, and rhetoric that people blindly accept as accurate. Why? We all have the same tools I have: unbiased fact-checking sites, legitimate news sources, data compilation and analyzation websites, and even sites that rank news outlets on a scale from left to neutral to right leaning. Yet over and over I see people sharing highly opinionized articles from the same players: The Guardian and Slate to support those on the left, The Federalist and The Washington Times from the right. No one who voted for Biden is going to be swayed by a piece in The National Review, okay? So stop that. I know that I’m speaking mostly to conservatives in this piece because right now, from the research I’m doing, that’s where the majority of the disinformation is coming from. I get it. You’re mad, and hurt, and scared that things are going to change and you won’t like them. Feel those feelings. It’s how I’ve felt for basically every election since I could vote, as an unaffiliated voter whose views aren’t represented by any party. Feel those feelings, but stop trying to claim that election fraud is rampant and this election is stolen. YOUR President is the one in charge of the process, after all. He’s been setting this up for months, ramping the base up, preparing you for the outcome he knew was inevitable, making sure you were “standing by” to fight.
But the fact is, 3.5 million more people in this country agree that the world cannot handle another Trump presidency. And just as you told liberals to suck it up when Trump won in 2016, it’s now your turn to stop listening to the voices that have been lying to you, and start paying attention to all 331 million people in this country that need you to put down your guns and listen. We cannot fix what is broken by continuing to insulate ourselves into our own political bubbles. We have to start listening to scientists, and economists, and teachers, and writers, and creative thinkers, and social workers, and PEOPLE, and stop listening to lawyers, politicians, and those that hedge their survival on sensationalism and unrest. And FFS stop following the Kardashians.
