Americans have a right to be proud of our democratic government and our free market economy, despite its many flaws. We defend that democracy against near-constant assault by self-serving and predatory politicians, election manipulation by large financial players, and now by foreign opponents meddling in information, elections, and even privacy. But the newest assault may be the worst: information control, the attack against knowledge itself.
US citizens and voters have the responsibility and role to protect our Democracy. We ask direct questions and expect direct answers. If we don’t get full answers, we ask – repeatedly – until we do. The GOP spent decades building false narratives to undercut those democratic controls, only to have their fictions exposed. But now, the Republican party, in cooperation with China and Russia, are attacking our entire system of information, with the open complicity of agents or even branches of the government. Their short-sighted attack against inconvenient facts threatens our democratic system itself.
In February 2017, the Washington Post adopted the motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” In 2018, I’m expanding the definition: democracy also dies in committees, slashed budgets, eviscerated government departments, laws buried in omnibus legislation, and regulation changes performed late on Friday, before a holiday weekend. Democracy also dies behind a shouting, heavily manipulated, dedicated base of support that listens little, supports their politicians blindly, without question, and with near-religious fervor.
What is a “free market” exactly?
The basis of the US economy is the free market system. A “free market” must meet the following minimum conditions:
- A reasonably large number of firms,
- Different firms offer products that are reasonably similar (say, cheddar cheese),
- Businesses can join or leave the market freely,
- Market information is relatively cost-free, accurate, and complete.
That fourth one looks problematic these days. Hostile actors feed us too much misinformation and cover stories.
Information Gets Hijacked
In Trump’s modern versions of information spin, democracy dies with misinformation and misdirection, a death in stages. The GOP political machine takes care of that.
First, the hijacking of conservatism by the Republican Party. Libertarians and advocates for minimalist government, bless them, love the current destructionist wave. Hopelessly naïve, the conservative voter base, including small government advocates and (sorry to say) true believers in conservatism got hijacked by the GOP. Their naiveté is nothing new; conservatives want to believe in their champions. In 2016, Donald Trump and his strategists (a.k.a. Kushner) identified conservative voter issues, pressed all the big red voter buttons, wrangled the large, available voter base, then ran a flimflamming campaign to create a “conservative religion.” This dogmatic religion efficiently replaced real understanding and fair questioning by the lay community (voters), who converted over the course of the campaign to unquestioning, zealous faith in Trump and the Republican party. With a little help from Russian hackers and FBI Director James Comey, Trump pulled off the upset victory.
Who Are the Real Customers?
Second, with the support of the conservative voter base, the Trump administration turned election victory into a machine of pandering to their financial base: wealthy donors, industry-lobbying PACs, and the largest companies in trillion-dollar industries like petroleum and national defense. These are their REAL CUSTOMERS, not their voters, and the GOP is indeed selling a product: influence and favors, in return for donor support.
Information Dies Loudly
Third, commence the media campaign.
Give credit to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell for ruling his Senate colleagues with an iron fist. The Trump media machine rhetoric, while loud and witless, gets accepted by the conservative voter base as gospel. The GOP Leadership maintains solidarity among Republicans by requiring 100% allegiance to the cover stories they serve up to conservative Americans. Credibility or validity of the rhetoric has no value. Media campaigns target acceptability rather than believability. GOP members dutifully repeat the same party rhetoric to the press, time and again. Even bald lies sound believable when most Republicans echo them. Fostered by manufactured paranoia, their supporters accept every word without question. Twitter fills with less nuanced but reinforcing versions of that new party rhetoric.
For the GOP information hijacking system to work, Republicans must keep to the pirate code (with apologies to pirates). Public statements stick to similar cover stories. Newspapers and other commercial media outlets start to fall in line, as they feel increasing pressure to remain centrist. For example, “Democrats caused the government shutdown, then caved.” Under pressure from owners, boards, and financiers, mainstream reporting increasingly and tacitly accepts more and more media campaign rhetoric. Signs of the power of the GOP media machine, on Mitch McConnell’s watch, result in weakened resistance in the Washington Post, CNN, Reuters, the NY Times, others.
Other media outlets, sympathetic to conservatives but supporting the hijacking effort, enthusiastically (and loudly) repeat the same scripted rhetoric provided by the GOP media campaign. They even add some flair of their own.
Mitch McConnell and President Trump make strange GOP bedfellows, though Mitch lately appears more comfortable with the arrangement. Broad success of the hijack seems to have overcome his discomfort with bedfellow Donald Trump. In 2018 the stakes remain critical. Control of the conservative narrative means nothing less than GOP survival in the House and Senate, come Fall elections. Most importantly, allegiance to the White House provides Mitch McConnell his best chance of survival as GOP majority leader in the United States Senate.
Trump Appointees Join the Business of Government Favors
Trump begins the sell-off of government influence.
Appointee Scott Pruitt, head of the EPA (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency) and top environmental official in the U.S. national government, brings a destructionist and revisionist agenda to the Agency. Among the many disturbing actions and events recently at EPA, Pruitt invites oil industry leaders and other environmentally challenged industries to meet at EPA to discuss their interests and needs. Pruitt declared these industrial reach-outs more important than meeting with heads of his own EPA departments, against usual protocol for a new EPA chief. Yes, the EPA chief meets with leaders from the industries it regulates, and especially the sectors with the worst environmental impacts, to ask them what they want him to do.
Erosion of government regulation and oversight
Scott Pruitt appears bent on doing just what the industry leaders want. Federal regulations the EPA worked very hard to enact, protecting millions of acres of land and seashore? Weakened, made non-binding, or removed. The EPA, our most important environmental safeguarding agency, turned into a heavy-polluting industry country club. Sarah Palin famously promised, in her 2008 GOP Vice Presidential bid, to allow oil companies to Drill, Baby, Drill in protected Alaskan waters. Trump appears to desire this for Alaska, the entire US East Coast continental shelf, and elsewhere. Trump’s minion Pruitt, 100% Trump-loyal, performs his bidding with enthusiasm.
Free Markets Fail
Information failure destroys the free market system. Especially when that failure provides cover for backroom pandering by the very government agencies designed to protect against market subterfuge by dominating and dominant firms and industries. Adam Smith, the (accepted) founding father of laissez-faire” and free markets, railed against the “political economy” that plagued England in the 18th century. Exclusive rights to produce, favorable licensing, the government approved supply-chain monopolies, all endorsed by government agents.
Today, will GOP control of House, Senate, and White House result in a similar version of Smith’s political economy? The GOP political media campaign provides means to that end, and the move towards industry favoritism by regulatory agencies already has begun.
