CONSENSUS: Citizens say the darnedest things!

MONDAY, JUNE 10, 2024

Large nations require consensus: Sunday morning, at 7 a.m., C-Span's Washington Journal posed a sensible question to its viewers.

The question was especially sensible under current circumstances. For richer or poorer, for better or worse, the question, presented in a chyron, went exactly like this:

IS CAMPAIGN 2024 THE "MOST IMPORTANT IN HISTORY?"

Is the current election the most important ever? At present, people routinely say it is, on both sides of the national aisle.

Puckishly, C-Span's host played videotape throughout the hour in which politicians declared that some particular past campaign was "the most important" ever.

(Actually, most said the election in question was "the most important in our lifetime," or something to that effect.)

The moderator was stretching a bit. But many people really are saying that this year's presidential campaign is the most important ever.

It's being said in Blue America, but in Red America too. Yesterday, so it went as C-Span viewers made phone calls to Washington Journal.

Is this really the most important election ever? Sunday morning's third caller quickly said that it is. The caller then proceeded to say some of the darnedest things.

At times of intense political division, people say and believe such things! For better or worse, as his presentation began, the third caller offered this:

DENNIS FROM HUDSON, INDIANA (6/9/24): Yes, it is the most important election in our history because in another four years under Joe Biden, we will not have a republic...

Say what? If President Biden gets re-elected, we'll no longer have a republic?

Stating the obvious, that resembles what's being said, in Blue America, about the nation's fate if Candidate Trump gets elected. But why did the caller say that? 

Why did the caller say that? His fuller statement started as shown below, with the caller making a wide array of angry, familiar remarks:

DENNIS FROM INDIANA: Yes, it is the most important election in our history because in another four years under Joe Biden, we will not have a republic. 

He's trying to get us in a war with Russia. He's holding back one of our staunchest allies in Israel from finishing a job that is imperative for them to finish. He's destroying our economy. He's letting millions of illegals into this country which are taking the jobs of Americans.

They're talking about this jobs report Friday. What they're not telling you is there are less Americans working in this country today than there were the day that Joe Biden took office. All of the jobs, all of the wealth, he is transferring to the illegals. The man is a pedophile and he needs to be removed from office immediately.

Yes, he even said that! 

According to the angry caller, the current president is trying to start a war with Russia. He's trying to destroy the economy. 

Plus, the president is a pedophile. Let's not forget to say that!

In accord with standard procedure on C-Span, its host didn't challenge any of these remarks. Instead, his exchange with the caller continued in the manner shown:

MODERATOR (continuing directly): But Dennis—Dennis, don't we face issues every four years in this country, or continually in this country?

DENNIS FROM INDIANA: Yes, we do. But this man is trying to take away our Second Amendment rights. He and his administration have tried to take away our First Amendment rights by restricting what people can say on social media. 

This man is a danger to this nation. He is senile and he is a moron. 

In fairness, it seems that no one has eliminated this caller's First Amendment rights. He was allowed to make these claims, without interruption, on C-Span's Washington Journal!

"That's Dennis in Hudson, Indiana," the moderator said at this point, as he ended the call. So it went on C-Span this Sunday morning, at 7:09 a.m.

In truth, the caller had offered an array of familiar remarks. To cite one major enterprise, his assessments are commonly offered on the Fox News Channel, except for the remarkable claim about pedophilia. 

On Fox, that claim is only made, in disguised fashion, on that channel's most disordered show, the primetime Gutfeld! program. On that program, the host and his guests will slide that claim in, though only in disguised form.

That C-Span caller was full of assertions. As you may know, American discourse frequently sounds like that at the present time. 

Just a guess! Conversations of this general type have occurred in every election campaign in American history. That said:

Not long ago, you had to go to a corner bar, on a very bad night, to hear someone spouting in some such way. Or you had to send away in the mail, seeking literature from some relatively invisible organization

Today, you can hear conversations like that at "news" and propaganda sites all around the clock. At C-Span, the moderator made no attempt to fact-check the welter of claims which were advanced in this call. 

In truth, any such attempt would almost surely have been useless. For example, the claim about American jobs involves a level of complexity which lies well beyond the reach of our journalistic powers. 

(Kevin Drum has addressed this emerging claim in this fairly complex post. We first heard this general claim being advanced several months ago on—what else?—the Gutfeld! program. All the new jobs are going to immigrants, the program's host has declared.)

At present, our American discourse is built upon the promulgation of such angry, uncheckable claims. In this instance, the caller was just a regular citizen calling in from Indiana—but people are paid very large salaries by very large "news orgs" to make similar angry claims.

It used to be hard to hear such rants. Today, they're hard to avoid—though we'll also tell you this:

The caller's claim about the border wasn't completely nuts. Also, it isn't crazy to suggest that President Biden may seem to be diminished in some significant way.

That said, American discourse is currently built on The Crazy. It's also built on that entity's near cousins—on The Highly Selective, on The Flatly Inaccurate and on The Baldly Misleading. 

(Also, on The Highly Irrelevant—on the "Yes, But Please Look Over Here.")

That C-Span caller's claims came from Red America. In our view, the discourse in our own Blue America often runs on shaky claims too, producing a type of Red and Blue Babel.

Can a large modern nation really function this way? Once again, we'll suggest that the answer is no.

Large modern nations can't expect to function without a degree of consensus. We refer to some degree of consensus about basic facts. We also refer to some degree of consensus about who a citizen can trust for reasonably accurate information and for reasonably sensible analysis.

Today, our nation benefits from no such consensus.  We'll revisit this problem all week long as the phone calls to C-Span roll in. 

Tomorrow: What C-Span's next caller said