He keeps promising, and he keeps failing. Erick Erickson’s free missive, in contravention of his promises to stop sending mail to non-paying subscribers, of a couple of days ago manages to hit a point of vital importance, expressed cogently – while trying to blame anyone but the conservatives for it:
COVID-19 is exposing the greatest threat to our republic — a lack of trust in people, institutions, and the press. No one believes anything anymore unless it confirms their prior views.
That part is known. What is not really appreciated is that the people, institutions, and the press deserve the loss of trust, but now people are putting their trust in people and memes even more untrustworthy than those who came before. People are trusting those who now have a financial or political incentive to shape information. That not only amplifies the distrust in existing institutions but fosters even more distrust and uncertainty.
Look at CNN. If you have not heard, Joe Biden’s accuser’s mother called in to Larry King Live back in the early nineties about the assault on her daughter. It is real-time corroboration of Tara Reade’s story. CNN took the video down off the internet and conspiracists immediately presumed CNN was complicit in helping Biden.
Except CNN didn’t really take it down. They own the copyright to it and now if you want to see the clip you have to go to CNN, watch an ad, then you can see the clip. CNN didn’t take the ad down. They monetized it.
And there’s more. Yet, he doesn’t wish to go back in time and talk about how conservative media has consistently presented incomplete news – as Bruce Bartlett has documented. Or address the change in politics that came with Newt Gingrich, from mature governance to blood sport. Or the transformation of a simple medical procedure into a climactic moral issue, complete with polarizing, fight-or-flight trigger words (baby-killer, if you’re wondering), used as a litmus test when evaluating candidates. The actively malicious crap that swims in the conservative mail stream, as I’ve documented on numerous occasions – and is done much better by other commentators. (For me, it’s sport.)
Or the embracing of the toxic strategy of team politics by the Republican Party (and more and more by the Democrats, if only because other choices are dismaying), resulting in candidates who can sing the ideological tune demanded of them, but give us blank looks when we ask them about their incompetent actions, fallacious information, and, less and less surprisingly, corruption.
I fear Erickson, so long as he looks to blame external forces, will continue to be baffled that his own side refuses to take expert opinions and scientific fact seriously. The fact of the matter is that this is the result of long training; he’s just getting the tail end of the consequences.
