As I write this, election day is a week away. It is clear that many Americans will be voting in favor of fascism. What is not clear is if fascism will win the day.
Our heartbreak is not so much that we are divided on issues, priorities, and values. Although that is challenging enough on its own, that isn’t the main source of our collective distress and anxiety, I don’t think. I think our real distress is that we have differing opinions about what is “truth” and “reality.” (Just look at that chaotic sentence: we have opinions about truth and reality.)
Our distress is not just that fascism is on the rise. It’s that each side says the other side are fascists. Who is telling the truth and how do we know? These are the core political questions of our times.
Where we get our information is more important than it has ever been. Misinformation and lies abound on the internet, and AI (artificial intelligence) has made it even easier for people to create fake photographs and videos.
This crisis of information sourcing has been escalating over the past decade. We have gone from believing we could get our news for free on the internet to not being sure where and how to get reliable news anywhere.
In a 2017 sermon, I said, “News media have been revealed to be sensationalists, needful of income like other institutions, and willing, it seems, to write almost anything to keep us clicking and reading. More and more, many of us do not know if we can trust what we read, even from the most reputable sources.”
We have learned that the work of news providers is not only to provide accurate information, but also to determine what information is worthy of our time and attention. The internet, and the desire for our eyes and clicks, has dissolved many of the criteria that were previously in place to determine what made something newsworthy. These days a handful of posts from random internet people are enough to make a news story: “Some commenters are saying…”
We just learned last week that two major newspapers—the Los Angeles Times and the Washington Post—had prepared their endorsements for president and then had those endorsements quashed by the papers’ owners, each of them billionaires. It is suddenly all too apparent what life under fascism might be like.
Oh, and in case I seem to be fearmongering in using the term fascism: it is General John Kelly, who served as Trump’s chief of staff, who has warned us in recent weeks that Trump meets the definition of a fascist and would govern like a dictator. After his comments, more than a dozen former Trump administration officials signed onto an open letter applauding Kelly’s comments and cautioning us to heed his warning.
I know I am not the only one so grateful for the tireless work of political historian Heather Cox Richardson, who summarizes the political news for us every day. Her posts are available on Facebook and on her substack “Letters from an American.” Her work is invaluable for helping us see what is important and worth our attention in the deluge of news/gossip/entertainment that avalanches our way every day.
However the election turns out, this is a stressful time. Take extra good care of yourself if you can. Stay away from the news if you can. Be with friends and family. Go for a walk outdoors. This is a time to distract ourselves from all that we can’t control.
Bright blessings,
Sharon