I was fascinated by this post from Ilya Somin on The Volokh Conspiracy concerning the role of foreign political misinformation on the 2016 Elections. In particular was this:
What is true of Canada is even more true for the United States: The fake news generated by Russian and other foreign plants is trivial compared to that produced by our own political parties and their homegrown partisan and activist allies. John Sides, Michael Tesler, Lynn Vavreck’s new book Identity Crisis, the most thorough social science analysis of the 2016 election, concludes that the impact of Russian-generated fake news was virtually undetectable in the data, and certainly trivial compared to that of homegrown misinformation, xenophobic attitudes and partisan polarization, which helped Trump eke out a narrow victory.
I haven’t read the cited work, so what do I know? Still, I was intensely disappointed that Somin didn’t address questions of linear vs. non-linear responses to misinformation in the electorate. Consider the simple tactic of encouraging the continuing disbelief in science, on which I tend to blame a plethora of today’s ills. It might not show up in the collected data at all, particularly if there are American proxies to carry the foreign agents’ water, because it only takes a little bit of a nudge to keep unthinking hostility going. Simply prop up a particularly zealous opponent of evolutionary theory, or vaccinations, or pick your position. This applies to the elections because it fosters a disbelief in science, which in turn has been an overriding theme of those who controlled Congress until recently – and has appealed to a citizenry already ridden with anti-science positions on both sides of the political spectrum.
Still, this is all speculation on my part.
But it’s also worth cogitating on his failure to differentiate sources of political misinformation in terms of motivations. An American politician or political group using misinformation to gain power is certainly not a desirable behavior, and dumping them on their collective asses, or even in jail, is certainly a good source of satisfaction. However, there is little reason to think that such activity has, as a base motivation, the goal of destroying or degrading the United States.
But misinformation distributed by foreign actors should be placed in a far more dire categorization, because their goal isn’t to guide the United States to a positive goal, but to open opportunities for their own country at the expense of the United States. They are agents of a foreign government, whether or not they’re on American soil, making statements while digitally disguised as American citizens.
We can at least hope that an American politician will operate with American interests at heart, even if she or he lied their way into the job. We can have no such hopes when a foreign agent tries to manipulate us into electing a politician of their own selection. And I think the idea that we’re supposed to assume that those statements didn’t have as much effect as those of American political groups discards the differences in desired outcomes.
All that said, I take, and have made in the past, Somin’s points about the ignorance that the electorate sometimes displays concerning governance. Our distraction from the important job of self-government can be quite distressing.
But his conclusion bothered me in an odd way:
There is no easy solution to these problems. Individual voters can do a lot to better inform themselves and curb their biases. But I am skeptical that many will do anytime soon. In my view, the better approach is systematic reform to limit and decentralize the power of government, so as to reduce the potential harm caused by voter ignorance and bias. There are a variety of other possible solutions, as well. Regardless, the beginning of wisdom on the issue of fake news is to recognize – as Andrew Coyne does – that the root of the problem is demand, not supply. And as long as the demand remains high, there will be plenty of willing suppliers.
See, I’m of a split opinion on the matter. The social animal part of me believes Somin has a workable approach in decentralizing government, although “… reducing the potential harm …” can be validly rewritten as “… reducing the potential good …” There’s a reflection of the general libertarian worries about the strong central government, and that’s certainly something to bear in mind. Still, one cannot hope to forget the old Revolutionary warning slogan, Either We All Hang Together, Or We’ll All Hang Apart. Together, we’re a far stronger entity than as a few dozen smaller entities – but, implicitly, there’s implied a central organizing entity.
But putting that trivial point aside, the faux-scientist part of me wants to remember that our democracy is, from an objective point of view, just another evolutionary experiment in how to run a human society. I can argue, at this point, that modifying how we’re running things is a violation of the rules of the experiment; but I also see and acknowledge the rejoinder, that there are no rules that say we cannot adapt to circumstance. Perhaps the very act of discarding our present form of government, predicated on a citizenry learned and sober, and transitioning to a decentralized form of government that permits its citizenry to continue on their undereducated, merry way is the condemning act for how we are now. Perhaps that’ll quiet that damn faux-scientist side of me.
But I do feel that permitting an uneducated citizenry, one that dismisses the best science has to offer as being anti-God or a vast conspiracy by thousands of climate scientists, to select its own rulers will lead to a disaster, regardless of how decentralized the nation might be. It might work in a world where communications takes days, and people’s travel beyond their own towns is a chancy business, but in a world where travel is so cheap and safe that, contrariwise, it has become a menace to the very ecosphere which once individually menaced us, and instant communications halfway around the globe raises nary an eyebrow, the consequences of decisions made by the incompetent – not to mention the mendacious, incurious, ignorant politician with incredible power at his command – does not augur well for the future peace and prosperity of the nation, be it piecewise or in unity.
Of course, it would be uncouth of me to suggest those that have experienced democracy to transition to some other political system, since most such would be best summarized as professional rulers. Not only would it be taken as an insult to the intelligence of the average voter (as if Trump weren’t enough of an insult), but most such professional ruler systems, primarily those of monarchical systems and authoritarian systems, have for themselves a fatally poor track record.
Such is the nature of our conundrum, if we do not rededicate ourselves to making education a cherished goal – not something that we buy and sell as if it was another capitalistic good, of no particular moral value.
