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Prior to last week’s “Common Ground” event, I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be a guest at a dinner with the function’s two speakers, Karl Rove and David Axelrod. When I saw that I was seated at Mr. Rove’s table, I scrambled to come up with scathing topics with which to grill the former top adviser to President Bush, my mind racing with Iraq War platitudes and antagonistic observations on the Electoral College. Before I could unleash my oncoming diatribe, however, we began to eat, and my previously inflamed demeanor settled as I listened to this master of conservative politics as he opined on everything from the state of the Trump presidency to the relative strengths and weaknesses of Hamiltonian and Jeffersonian theories of government.
Much to the chagrin of my pre-dinner self (and no doubt many readers with a preconceived notion of this man from his time at the helm of the Bush administration), I found Mr. Rove to be personable, humorous, and whip smart, especially when it came to American history. To this point, I was struck by a comment he made when discussing the prospects for the country after Trump leaves office. Referencing his 2016 book,
The Triumph of William McKinley: Why the Election of 1896 Still Matters,
he noted the unmistakable parallels between our current political climate and that of the late-19th century. Then, as now, issues of immigration, income inequality, and the effect of new technologies opened up a sharp divide between conservatives and liberals, leading to a toxic, polarized environment not unlike the one created by the 2016 election and its aftermath.
In the book, Mr. Rove paints then-candidate, soon-to-be president, William McKinley as “a great unifier,” someone who sought to appeal to a wider range of voters and issues while shifting his party’s message to reframe the topics that had so embittered the country in a more appetizing light.
Back at dinner, Mr. Rove stated in no uncertain terms that America is in need of a modern McKinley — a leader that will once more appeal to both sides of the political spectrum and seek to mend the gaping wounds that drove them apart. When pressed to predict who could fill the role of this “neo-McKinley,” he offered no clear answer, though he did say that he believes the Republicans are better positioned to produce such a figure, given their robust “farm system” (I think he was referring to the Republicans’ 4,170 seats in state legislatures nationwide, compared to just 3,129 for the Democrats, according to
The Hill
).
While I might not agree with Mr. Rove’s assessment on the effect of state legislature composition with regards to the larger issue of national reunification, I do think there is considerable merit to the notion that what America needs is not a liberal counterbalance to the extremes of Trumpism, but instead something — anything — that seeks to find (and I am sorry for this) “common ground.” The next question, of course, is how?
I believe what is needed is not an individual, or even a party, that is willing to take on the challenge of remedying our polarized state. Instead, we should look at the differences between America in 1896 and America today and identify what has changed that has led to our current predicament. Because although McKinley became president in a time of great divide, there is no question that we face hurdles in the modern world that he did not. Namely, I am talking about our enhanced abilities of communication.
Between email, texting, calling, FaceTime, and social media, we can now reach those we know (and those we do not) instantly, and without many of the caveats that physical proximity affords. It is hard to understate the effect these leaps forward in technology have had, whether that is in terms of how we interact with each other, our access to information, or, most importantly to this article, how we form opinions.
In 2016, the Pew Research Center reported that 62 percent of American adults get their news from social media, with 66 percent of Facebook users and 59 percent of Twitter users getting their news from each respective site. Compare these numbers to a similar study from Pew in 2012, when only 49 percent of US adults obtained their news on social media, and the growing dependency on this medium (even in a span as short at four years) is evident. At the same time, Pew reports that political polarization has drastically increased on both sides of the aisle. In 1994, 64 percent of Republicans were more conservative than the median Democrat, but in 2014, 92 percent were. The numbers are virtually the same for Democrats over the same period. As the use of social media has boomed, so has polarization, and while this theoretically could be an instance of correlation and not causation, it is also not hard to see how the increasing number of partisan news outlets, comment section firestorms, and inflammatory media personalities could have played a sizeable role in our growing discontent with “the other side.”
The current media environment seems to incentivize disagreement while ignoring issues where consensus exists. This seems to create the impression that every issue is one in which people are at odds, and, in many cases, that there is a right or wrong position to take.
The practice of headlining the dramatic — high-speed chases, celebrity divorces, ad-hominem attacks, etc. — is nothing new; local newspapers and news stations perfected this art long ago. What has changed is the volume and accessibility of such information. With bigger audiences, user-friendly platforms, and worldwide range, there is every incentive to amp up the provocativeness of news, especially news of a political nature, and social media has provided the fertile ground. Furthermore, anyone with the right combination of ambition and willingness to compromise his or her reputation can rise to relevance simply by pushing political discourse to the extreme. No longer does one need journalistic integrity, experience, or credibility to reach millions, all you have to do is incite at every turn. The more people who hate you, the better. Look no further than Tomi Lahren.
Joe Mande, a comedian and prolific Twitter user, outlined this scourge of social media toxicity in a post announcing his departure from Twitter. Mande wrote, “Years ago, I watched a CNN report hosted by Serena Altschul about a group of people in New Haven, Connecticut, who all did a drug they called ‘Wet.’ Doing ‘wet’ was the act of smoking cigarettes, or blunts, that had been pre-dipped in embalming fluid. […] What I learned is that smoking embalming fluid is terrible for two notable reasons: first, it’s incredibly addictive, and second, the high it produces was described as ‘dysphoric.’ As in, the opposite of euphoric. People who smoked embalming fluid were guaranteed to have a horrible, nightmarish experience every single time…and they couldn’t stop doing it. Twitter is the internet’s version of smoking embalming fluid.”
Mande gets it exactly right. Amid cries for sensible, open-minded discourse, we are unable to look away from the very source of our woes. And while Twitter, Facebook, and other social media platforms might offer plenty of content that is decidedly non-political, constructive, and uplifting, the time has come to ask ourselves if this tradeoff is worth it. Having just elected the first “social media president,” we have collectively dipped America in embalming fluid and are drawn further into the chasm as the country is consumed by smoke.
In the wake of President Trump’s threats of nuclear war on Twitter, some called for his account to be suspended. I would go a step further and suspend Twitter altogether. While we are at it, we should pause Facebook too, and all the other platforms that have led us to this point.
But what about television, you might ask, or any other media outlet with a website? Surely they have the ability to further polarize just as much (if not more) than social media. In response, I would return to that original idea of modern communication. Social media is a content deliverer that has unlocked the ability for hateful and unconstructive media to truly flourish. Take that away, and I suspect we will see the tone of the media change as well. In the absence of Trump’s latest Twitter rant, Russian propagandists infiltrating Facebook, or a “viral” video from a little-known radical personality, what will there be for CNN,
The New York Times
,
The Wall Street Journal
, and others to report? Perhaps the news?
We could try to regulate Twitter and Facebook, but despite the power to do so, neither company has made any true effort to curtail the increasingly-visible hate that germinates on their platforms. When Mark Zuckerberg struggles to even acknowledge the role that Russia-funded news and advertising had in influencing the election, it reveals just how far away we are from a solution. It is doubtful that we can rely on the barons of social media to police themselves and their services, especially when so much of their decision-making is driven by investors and profits.
Rather than tailoring their content to whatever is most likely to go viral or whatever will elicit the greatest reaction (positive or negative) from viewers, the media, in the absence of social media, will be compelled to report on much more pertinent topics. This does not mean that inflammatory or unconstructive content will suddenly disappear; after all, this has existed since before social media. But perhaps we will no longer be oversaturated by this pounding negativity. Imagine a world where Trump is unable to control any story he wants by tweeting out some virtual trail of breadcrumbs for the media to faithfully follow, where we no longer have to play the children to his Pied Piper, and where substance, not shareability, drives the narrative.
This alone will not solve our problems, but it is a vital first step. The moment we show ourselves that we do not need to be constantly stimulated by an ever-escalating slew of political drama by way of social media is the moment that we extract ourselves from the embalming fluid and are finally able to assess the state of the country without a veil of nightmarish, ever-present conflict.
So to Mr. Rove I say, we do not need a modern-day McKinley to unite us. What we need is not the addition of any figure or ideology at all. Instead, it is the subtraction of the platforms that were supposed to connect us all, but have actually driven us apart. Change the way we communicate and it will change the way we interact with and perceive the world. For the sake of restoring some semblance of rationality and value to our news, we should rid ourselves of the toxic force pulling everyone in the opposite direction.
