Rage-Inducing Simplifications
Simplifications take a complex situation and boil it down to something that seems true and perhaps has some truth in it, but is not true.
A rage-inducing simplification is a simplification that triggers rage.
Timothy Snyder created this video:
What I call “simplifications” or “rage-inducing simplifications” Snyder calls Internet Triggers.
He said he can tell from an email whether the person writing to him has read a book or is repeating an Internet Trigger, which he defines as something the person saw on the Internet, felt triggered by, and is now repeating.
He talked about how dangerous these Internet Triggers are for democracy because they prevent us from thinking complex thoughts. People see these Triggers on the Internet because they are directed at them. The people are then transformed into repeaters of targeted memes. Snyder finds this terrifying because democracy depends on us having “some sense of time beyond our immediate outrage.”
Think about that phrase: A sense of time beyond our immediate outrage.
Snyder also talks about how, in Orwell’s 1984, the fictionalized totalitarian government worked on reducing the number of words in the language.
Having each of us become repeaters of Internet Triggers accomplishes the same thing by reducing our ability to have complex thoughts.
WHY ACCURACY AND FACTS MATTER
Put another way, rule of law requires a shared truth, or what sociologists call a public sphere. In a functioning democracy, people agree on the facts, and the disagree on the best way to respond to the facts
The problem now is that people don’t agree on the facts — and I am not just talking about the right-wing media bubble. I’m talking about people who are (or claim to be) opposed to right-wing extremism and the Trump-DeSantis-FOX-GOP.
Here is an example, from July 7, 2022, in response to calls for investigations after the reporting that the IRS investigated two of Trump’s political enemies:
This was after these people (and the Trump Org) were either indicted or pleaded guilty or were convicted:
- Peter Navarro
- Steven Bannon
- The Trump Org
- Allen Weisselberg (Trump Org CFO)
- More than 860 people charged so far in the Capitol insurrection
- Joshua James, the leader of the Alabama Chapter of Oath Keepers
- A bunch of other leaders of White Supremacy groups who stormed the capitol
- Michael Flynn
- George Papadopoulos
- Rick Gates
- George Nader
- Paul Manaford
- Michael Cohen
- Lev Parnas
- And LOTS more. This is not a complete list.
When I try to counter that particular rage-inducting simplifications with facts, I encounter resistance. “None of those indictments count because__”)
People who resist the facts are pushing an agenda.
Question: What do you call a person who isn’t interested in facts, but is pushing an agenda?
(I’ll let you answer that.)
In November (my how time flies! feels like yesterday!) a person with hundreds of thousands of followers tweeted this:
Notice that the tweet has more than 48,000 “likes.”
This was a stunning tweet. I’ll point out one error: On the date of this tweet, Trump’s tax returns were already in the hands of the New York prosecutors. They were never going to be made public. This guy was furiously waiting for something that was never going to happen.
As far as the other items on his list, this person truly doesn’t understand how anything works.
Who had any authority to promise that Trump would be arrested when he left office?
The Constitution says that a president who is impeached and removed can then be brought to trial for crimes. The person who tweeted the above seemed to think that this was a kind of promise: Because the Constitution allows for it, it will happen.
The person who posted the above was absolutely enraged, and he spread his rage to others. The problem: His rage was based on a misrepresentation of the facts.
My premise: Widespread misrepresentation of facts is always destructive.
Here is what happens on social media:
- A large account throws out a rage-inducing simplification
- People repeat it and it spreads far and wide
- The rage-inducing simplification throws everyone into a spin
- When people are in a spin, they can’t pay attention to facts and what is really happening.
Here is a fact, also from Timothy Snyder: The way to create fascism is to destroy truth so that myths and lies can take hold.
Yes, democracy is in danger, but it seems to me people are worried about the wrong stuff.
Everyone thinks the problem is whatever the latest outrage happens to be.
I think the problem is that a constant stream of rage-inducing simplification causes us to miss the facts.
If enough people miss the facts, they cease to have relevance and we enter a post-truth world.
