This is the conclusion. It’s generally best to follow the advice given to Alice and the White Rabbit in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland: “Begin at the beginning, go on to the end, and then stop.” But if you must read out of order, here are all the links:
- Part 1: There are no Yankees here.
- Part 2: Creating the Conditions for Mainstream Conspiracy Theories.
- Part 3: The Perils of Legal Punditry.
- Part 4: Social Media Makes it Worse
- Part 5: Get the Fighters Fighting and Keep Them Fighting
- Part 6: Invented Narratives and the Outrage Industry
- Part 7: The Outrage Machine Strikes Again: The 14th Amendment Section 3 Debacle
- Conclusion: What To Expect Going Forward
Conclusion: What to Expect Going Forward
The situation is getting worse
Because the MSNBC commentators dig in when they find they are wrong, the misinformation they spread becomes more entrenched. At this point, the Garland hecklers and the “there are no real consequences” people are so far beyond the realm of reality that I fear there is no reaching them.
This is the cycle on social media:
- The partisan pundits spread misinformation
- Nonlawyers amplify the misinformation, adding more hype and hysteria
- The hype and hysteria (aided by bots and troublemakers) is reflected back to the partisan pundits, encouraging them to elaborate on the narratives they have invented.
As the echo chamber becomes more unhinged from facts, sensible and reasonable people will distance themselves. The echo chamber will tighten and become more unhinged.
The solution is to educate a new generation to understand how social media and political pundits manipulate their viewers. Professors of communication and rhetoric are currently doing this at the college level.
The solution is not to try to debunk each lie. Because the commentators dig in when they are wrong, the task of debunking lies becomes a sisyphean task. The solution is to put raincoats on the population.
Untruths build on Untruths
The first untruth told in what I’ve been calling the cable-news-shows left-leaning-social-media echo chamber was that “accountability” and “consequences” for Trump and his minions would come through the criminal justice system. (For how I answered this, please see this criminal law FAQ page.)
This led to another untruth, which was that indictments would bring accountability. It’s hard to believe it now, but for almost 2 years, big names on social media and regular cable talk shows guests were telling people indictments means accountability and consequences.
(I said this was not true: Indictments are the start of a long harrowing process. Courts and juries don’t always get things right. Not all guilty people can be charged and not all guilty people who are charged are convicted.)
Another untruth was that Garland was “slow walking” the investigation for a year.
If you believe those things–and if you are prone to conspiracy thinking–literally anything that goes wrong during the stage of pretrial motions and the trial itself is Merrick Garland’s fault for “slow-walking” the investigation. This is happening in the spring of 2024.
Trump complained that he didn’t get discovery until too close to the trial. The conspiracy theorists erupts with: “It’s Merrick Garland’s fault!”
The Supreme Court schedules oral arguments for April instead of March. Instead of looking for mundane explanations, the conspiracy theorists erupt with: “It’s all Merrick Garland’s fault.” (If you’re like me, it will take you a few minutes to figure out how that could be Merrick Garland’s fault. The answer: If he hadn’t “slow-walked” the investigation for a year, the month difference wouldn’t have mattered.)
If Trump does something bad, it’s Merrick Garland’s fault for not having him in prison already.
You get the idea.
A lie told a hundred times becomes the truth
Initially a number of social media users and liberal cable news viewers were skeptical about the claims that Merrick Garland is the Bad Guy responsible for everything, but after hearing the 101th reason for Merrick Garland being responsible for whatever bad thing happened, they say, “Okay, at first I defended him. But now I’m finished.” And they jump on the band wagon.
Why Merrick Garland?
Because the rules of ethics prevent him from responding. Because he is deliberately not being partisan and that is enraging partisans. Someone in my mentions thinks there is some anti-semitism at the root. My theory was appearance: he looks weak and timid and “owlish” and (without realizing it) even good people are prone to a little bit of strongman worship. (Then it occurred to me that these two things might be related. The Garland haters love Jack Smith. If you compare their appearance, one looks tough and the other looks like a law librarians. Put another way, one looks husky and muscular and the other looks like a meek Jewish law librarian. I choose to go with the subtle strongman worshp instead of anti-semitism.
The two men actually behave the same way. They are cryptic in front of the camera. They don’t offer public justifications. They speak through the indictments. They keep their heads down and ignore the chatter.
The Promise of Magic Bullets
Much of the rage comes from promising a magic bullet (Mueller will haul Trump off to jail and we will be rid of the problem) and then redirecting rage when the promised magic bullet doesn’t arrive like this: “The reason Trump wasn’t immediately hauled off to prison is because the prosecutors are corrupt or incompetent or fearful!”
There are no magic bullets. Democracy is hard work. Maintaining a democracy is constant work. There will always be anti-democratic forces working against democracy.
For more on that, see The Democratic Opposition and The Perennial Problem of Demagogues.
But What About Fox?
When I posted a link to this series on social media, at least a dozen people commented with some form of:
Doesn’t Fox do the same thing or worse? Why aren’t you talking about them? Aren’t you dishing up some bothsidesism?
“But what about fox” is an example of Whataboutism, a propaganda technique made famous in the former Soviet Union. No matter what criticism was leveled against the Soviet Union, the response was “But what about lynchings in the American South?”
Whataboutism essentially says, “What about them? They did it too,” or “what they did was worse.” The fact that one person has engaged in wrongdoing does not give license for others to engage in the same wrongdoing. “Fox is worse,” doesn’t excuse others.
The illustrator of my recent graphic book on disinformation illustrated this point:
The frequent use of “whataboutism” in Soviet Russia became a joke:
One person, evidently distressed by evidence that her favorite pundits were misleading her, even said, “Didn’t Fox start the outrage industry?” Even if that were true (both networks were founded at about the same time in response to the same changing market conditions) “he started it” also does not absolve a person of wrongdoing.
Concluding Thoughts
As I said earlier, there is nothing wrong with outrage based on facts. Democratic voters are properly outraged by the Supreme Court overturning Roe v. Wade and that outrage has driven Democrats to the polls in large numbers.
But outrage based on misinformation and conspiracy theories is bad for democracy and bad for the victims of the rage peddlers.
For years I was perplexed by what I was seeing on Twitter. At first, I thought the problem was social media algorithms. It wasn’t until I began reading books by scholars who specialize in political communications that the light bulbs started coming on. I came to understand that the victims of the rage machine, in addition to being manipulated and misinformed, are fueling a lucrative industry.
Many of these pundits are having a great time. They are riding high. Everything that they say is headline-worthy. It is the ultimate ego rush. One bragged to me in private about how many followers he has (close to a million.) A million followers! Imagine that!
Lawyers are not accustomed to being public heros and hailed as the fount of wisdom and knowledge. Remember all of those lawyer jokes?
Prosecutors who would probably not have been invited to be on Merrick Garland’s team were on TV persuading millions of people that Merrick Garland was doing it all wrong. The athlete on the bench probably thinks he knows better than the coach. And maybe he does. But why assume he does?
Some pundits are making bank. I haven’t done the math, but I assume a former prosecutor getting hundreds of thousands of hits on a podcast or YouTube video and TV appearances is making more money than he or she made as a line prosecutor. The work is certainly better. He doesn’t have to deal with his bosses telling him he’s wrong. And he has tens of thousands of adoring fans.
A person spreading rage-inducing simplifications has an easy task. It’s easy to say, “Garland slow-walked the investigation for a year.” Consider how much work went into researching and writing this DOJ Investigation FAQ page.
The solution to the Firehose of Falsehood is not to try to debunk each lie. Debunking each lie wears out the fact-checkers and they can never keep up. It’s like trying to put out a forest fire with a squirt gun.
Because the solution to a Firehose of Falsehood is to put raincoats on the population, I write nonfiction books on the law and American constitutional history for young readers. They are the future and the future is theirs.
Writing books about the law for young readers is a good use of my time. Debunking the next wave of left-wing conspiracy theories circulating in a relatively small echo chamber is not.
Stay out of rabbit holes. Stay off ledges. Be like the heroes of the past. Be like Thurgood Marshall and Susan B. Anthony. Great leaders have a dream and act on that dream. They don’t pull people into a rabbit hole of speculation and fear-peddling. (Dr. King probably had a few nightmares as well, but he talked about his dreams.)
What to Expect Going Forward (and a few resources)
From now until the election: The outrage and panic will be over polls, reports of voter suppression, and threats of violence. If liberal cable news shows also start talking about the threat of authoritarianism and a second term, this is good: It means they decided to redirect the rage of their viewers against the other side. (This is better than continuing to stir up anger against members of Biden’s cabinet in an election year. Ignore any speculation and predictions and focus on what (if anything) you can do to help with the election. Click here for my To-do list.
We are in an election year, so the focus will change from attacking Garland to attacking Trump
This will put all anti-Trump people on the same side again. The agent provocateurs will build trust among Trump supporters by attacking Trump. Then if Biden wins and they return to attacking someone in the Biden administration (because they have to attack) they will have built the trust to do it effectively.
As long as the Trump trials are going on, there will be rage and anger directed against the criminal justice system. If you choose to remain in the Outrage Industry, keep my Criminal Law FAQ page handy.
If you extract yourself from the outrage industry, and you have friends there, and they start telling you things like, “Rich white guys are never held accountable” you can click open this FAQ page and help them see that they are being fed rage-inducing simplifications by people they look to as legal authorities and that their fear is fueling a lucrative industry.
If Trump wins and the extremists come to power (unlikely) the panic will be nonstop. It won’t be good for the country, but it will be good for CNN. Panic doesn’t help. Even in an actual airline emergency, a cool head can save lives. For more, see No Time to Panic.
Democracy isn’t all or nothing. There is a thing called “competitive authoritarianism.” For more on that, and how to save a dying democracy, see this post.
In the event of a Trump presidency, don’t help the rage merchants profit. Get involved with local politics. The Tea Party came to power from nothing because they understood that all politics are local.
If Biden wins again . . .
You will see rage directed against the Biden administration for not moving quickly enough or solving all of our nation’s problems. It took years for Roosevelt to get his New Deal legislation past a hostile Supreme Court. The rage machine will say, “It has been 3 months!” and even “It has been one year!”
After all, the talk show hosts will need something to talk about and the day-to-day grinding work of democracy is not thrilling. For how progress is made in complex democracies, see this post about Thurgood Marshall and this post about Susan B. Anthony.
I am basing these predictions on what I have seen happen repeatedly over the past 6 years.
Talk Shows and Punditry is Not News
When you turn on the TV or log into your social media account and see a bunch of people talking about the news, you are not watching the news. You are watching commentary, speculation, and spin.
You are being entertained, not informed.
If you feel you need legal “explainers” to understand what is happening in the news, I suggest it is because partisan pundits are confusing you. You cannot learn about criminal law and how the legal system works from partisan pundits carrying on a conversation on a cable news show or from scrolling through their social media feeds.
As I explained in the last section, not everything on a cable news show is wrong.
This is from Part 2:
Sensible, fact-based opinions are placed alongside the rage-inducing material. The problem is sorting out which is which. I suggest that non-lawyers are not able to sort out which statements from legal pundits are incorrect and which are not. Because emotionally-laden incorrect opinions are placed alongside unhinged opinions, it seems to me that nonlawyers are left more confused than before the watched the program.
At the end of this post, I will offer some book recommendations for people interested in learning more about the legal system and criminal justice.
Well, Teri? Can democracy work in America?
I don’t know because I don’t know the answer to these three questions:
- Do enough people want democracy with all of its flaws and frustrations?
- Can enough people who want democracy hold on to facts (and reject baseless conspiracies)?
- Will enough people who want democracy do the actual work required of citizens in a democracy
Maintaining a democracy is never easy. Here are just a few of the perils facing any democracy:
- Democracy always contains the seeds of its own demise. At any time, a majority of voters can elect officials who promise to dismantle democratic institutions.
- Democracy is in constant danger of tipping toward oligarchy if groups within the democracy give in to the temptation to consolidate power and pass laws that benefit themselves. When one group or an individual accumulates too much wealth or power, democracy itself is threatened.
- Liberal democracies—defined as rule of law governments in which the majority is held in check by constitutional checks and limitations—guarantee individual freedoms, but unscrupulous people can exploit those freedoms for personal gain.
- Democracy is messy and always uncertain. Spreading around power and creating systems of checks and balances designed to prevent any one person from accumulating too much power naturally leads to gridlock, which can be frustrating and discouraging. Thus the appeal of a demagogue or strongman who promises to cut through the rules and get things done is perennial.
Here’s the thing to remember about democracy in America: We’ve never had a truly representational multicultural and multi-racial democracy.
During the past few decades, we have been moving toward one and this has triggered a powerful backlash. What we are seeing in the Republican Party is the backlash.
We are currently experiencing an information disruption. Another such disruption was the invention of the printing press. New technology, like the Internet, can move us forward in new ways. It can also create a crisis of information: People are suddenly bombarded with. more information than they can process.
Communications and rhetoric professors in universities are trying to train a new generation about how to access and evaluate information in the new age of the Internet and fragmented media audience. They are doing heroic work.
Here are a few good books that illustrate how our laws have developed:
Simple Justice by Richard Kluger purports to be a history of Brown v. Board of Education, the case that desegregated schools in America, but in fact, it is a history of the struggle of Black Americans to achieve equal rights. It also provides an excellent account of how our laws can change. A must-read for anyone interested in racial equality and the legal system.
Make No Law by Anthony Lewis offers an in-depth look at New York Times v. Sullivan and a landmark First Amendment case. After you read it, you will cringe when you hear people asking why the liars are not all put in prison.
I’m putting one of mine on here. A history of women’s rights in America, how they evolved, and how the legal system can be used as a vehicle for change.
Reading history helps put the current era into perspective. People who are familiar with the era of slavery and racial segregation are less likely to look at today’s right wing extremists and say, “OMG nothing like this has ever happened before in America.”
I am recommending Heather Cox Richardson’s history books because she makes lots of interesting points including this one: We have had two oligarchies: The era of slavery and the era of robber barons. We are now tipping toward a third. This perspective is vital because people tend to think “OMG nothing like this has ever happened before,” which leads to panic and despair. History offers perspective on our current politics and teaches ways forward.
Obviously, there are a lot more, but those should get you started.
Thank you for sticking with me to the end. If you have friends or relatives still stuck in the Outrage Industry, I hope this series will offer you tools for helping them emerge. Constant fear and panic is not emotionally healthy for anyone.
Subscribe and I’ll promise to write about something more interesting than the latest panic in the Outrage Chamber: