Deconstructing the American voter
By: B Kumaravadivelu
Tags: Democratic Party, Propaganda, 2020 Presidential Race, Outreach, Republican Party

Let’s not underestimate the enduring power of propaganda

Monday, November 16, 2020. By B. Kumaravadivelu

Writing in 1922, Walter Lippmann, one of the most influential journalists of the 20th century, cautioned us against two kinds of “uninstructed” voters.

“There is the man,” he observed (let’s overlook the dated gendered usage) “who does not know and knows that he does not know. He is generally an enlightened person. … But there is also the man who is uninstructed and does not know that he is, or care. He can always be gotten to the polls, if the party machinery is working. His vote is the basis of the machine.”

What Lippmann wrote nearly a century ago is true even today. The party machine is still alive and sick.

As results of the 2020 Presidential election started pouring in, a recurring comment we heard was how Trump managed to get 72 plus million votes, more than any candidate in American history, except Barack Obama in 2008 and Joe Biden in 2020. The comments were made sometimes in bewilderment and sometimes in resentment. Examples:

A Pulitzer-winning historian informed us that Trump is “the first full-scale demagogue” and that the Founders knew that “republics were uniquely vulnerable to demagogues, because they were dependent on popular opinion, which was easily manipulated by fear-mongers brandishing conspiracy theories with potent appeal to the uneducated.”

A political scientist was amazed that Trump got so many votes in spite of his “constant effusion of lies and disinformation; his relentless assaults on the media, the courts, the career civil service, and the political opposition; his efforts to politicize and demand personal loyalty from the military, the intelligence apparatus, and federal law enforcement; his misuse of presidential power and discretion for political and financial advantage; and his gestures of sympathy and support for racist right-wing extremist groups have no parallel in the annals of the American presidency.”

A New York Times columnist wondered why there was no “moral wave” after the nation “experienced four years of the most divisive and dishonest presidency in American history.” He felt that the country was the loser because there should have been a widespread rejection of that kind of leadership.

From London, a journalist from the Guardian summarized the general reaction in some countries outside the USA. He said, “if voting for Trump was truly a test of America’s moral standards, the country has failed.”

Whether we agree with these sentiments or not, what’s not disputable is that it’s easy for a demagogue to sway public opinion and make “the uninstructed” dance to his tune. Even more depressingly, once people are swayed one way or another, the disinformation they are exposed to remains etched in their minds. Very few of them change their opinion even if they are presented with irrefutable facts.

History is full of such instances. Just a couple from recent memory:

Not long ago, a birther movement became a cottage industry spreading disinformation among a large segment of the American population: that President Barack Obama was a Muslim and was born in Kenya. As we all know a billionaire real-estate businessman with political ambitions was one of the prime movers.

Even after Obama was elected and re-elected as President, a Gallup poll conducted in 2015 found that 43 percent of the Republicans, 29 percent of independents and 15 percent of the Democrats thought he is a Muslim.

The sad part is, even after Obama’s birth certificate from Hawaii was produced, there remained a significant percentage of the American public who persisted with the falsehood.

Yet another example relates to the fabricated report about Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction which led to a devastating war in the Middle East. In what has become an infamous presentation to the United Nations Security Council, the then Secretary of State Colin Powell made a case for war based on false evidence. Later, when the truth became public, he called his presentation “painful,” something that will “always be a part of my record.” A year after the war, President George W. Bush admitted: “We all thought there was weapons there.”

In spite of the retractions from the President, the Secretary of State and other officials, according to a poll conducted by Fairleigh Dickinson University in 2015, more than 51 percent of Republicans and 32 percent of Democrats continued to believe that Iraq had WMD.

What we see here is the long-lasting power of propaganda. The unmistakable lesson we need to draw from it is clear. We need to cultivate an enlightened citizenry. An “instructed” citizenry, as Lippmann would say.

There certainly are several voter education websites with useful outreach programs. However, they seem to be mostly limited to election-eve information, informing the public about candidates and their views, explaining ballot measures, etc.

There are also University-based public opinion centers. They are mostly focusing on academic goals such as researching political and public opinion trends. No doubt, they maximize our knowledge-base.

These steps are necessary but not sufficient.

What we need are consistent and coordinated efforts to foster in our citizens a critically reflective mind that can tell the difference between fact and fiction, between ideas and ideologies, between information and disinformation, between a demagogue and a statesman.

In the prevailing sociopolitical environment, such a task seems to be easier said than done. We are faced with a deadly combination of fact, fiction and faith that seems to be bringing out the worst in some of us.

Participatory democracy is not designed to handle an unending barrage of fake news and evidence-free claims especially from people in high places. Nor can it handle special interests and lobbyists, patronage and pork, spin doctors and sound bites, tweets and trolls.

We have no choice but to come up with strategies and tactics that can help us all overcome the prevailing deficiencies in our electoral policies and practices.

To paraphrase an old tenet: a nation gets the leaders it deserves.

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