Babel is as Babel does!

THURSDAY, JANUARY 11, 2024

Do siloes rule the world? A front-page report in today's New York Times describes a certain type of Trump supporter. 

We were struck by an early element in the report. Principal headline included, the news report starts like this:

Trump Is Connecting With a Different Type of Evangelical Voter

Karen Johnson went to her Lutheran church so regularly as a child that she won a perfect attendance award. As an adult, she taught Sunday school. But these days, Ms. Johnson, a 67-year-old counter attendant at a slot-machine parlor, no longer goes to church.

She still identifies as an evangelical Christian, but she doesn’t believe going to church is necessary to commune with God. “I have my own little thing with the Lord,” she says.

Ms. Johnson’s thing includes frequent prayer, she said, as well as podcasts and YouTube channels that discuss politics and “what’s going on in the world” from a right-wing, and sometimes Christian, worldview. No one plays a more central role in her perspective than Donald J. Trump, the man she believes can defeat the Democrats who, she is certain, are destroying the country and bound for hell.

“Trump is our David and our Goliath,” Ms. Johnson said recently as she waited outside a hotel in eastern Iowa to hear the former president speak.

Stating the obvious, Karen Johnson is free to believe in the way she believes. She's also free to vote in the way she wants to vote. 

In her case, she's an evangelical Christian. There's nothing especially new about that. What's somewhat new is the highlighted passage—the passage describing where her news and information seem to come from.

According to the Times report, Johnson seems to get her information from "podcasts and YouTube channels"—in this case, from podcasts and YouTube channels "that discuss politics and 'what’s going on in the world' from a right-wing, and sometimes Christian, worldview."

Stating the obvious, podcasts and YouTube channels are free to do that. That said, not so very long ago, no such podcasts or YouTube channels existed. 

In fact, there were no podcasts or YouTube channels at all! There was Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley, along with a much more limited array of entities promulgating viewpoints, news and opinion.

The Times report doesn't name the podcasts and YouTube channels in question. The report gives no sense of what sorts of material those entities include.

That said, the political landscape is rapidly changing as the "democratization of media" expands. Many people—not just evangelical Christians—now form their political viewpoints based on entities which  come at the world from highly specialized points of view.

In theory, there's nothing "wrong" with any of this—until such time as there is. At present, we'd have to say that certain things are very wrong with (a great deal of) the bullroar being churned by the Fox News Channel. Meanwhile, we've been struck by a certain observation about blue tribe cable of late.

Our observation is this:

Increasingly, it seems to us that almost everything we hear about Trump on Morning Joe has been substantially embellished. The anger of that program's host has been growing. So has the license frequently taken by him and his cast of sidekicks and like-minded guests.

Tomorrow, let's talk about Trump's forthcoming trial in D.C. For today, we'll leave you with this:

A wide range of silos are sifting the world. Babel is as Babel does, Mother Gump frequently said.