Mass Media and the Culture Wars

I.

A report by the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center last year analyzed news coverage of Donald Trump in early 2017.[1]  According to the analysis, eighty percent of news reports by major outlets depicted the president negatively.  These results inspired reaction from the president’s allies and critics.  His allies conclude the report is evidence of mainstream media bias.  His critics suggest it is the result of failed leadership and popular disapproval.  The president provided an original reaction on his preferred social media platform.  His response describes ‘ninety percent’ of news reports as depicting him negatively.  This references the television reports included in the study.  There are several questions.  Does this analysis vindicate the president?  Is this administration misrepresented by the mainstream media, and misunderstood by the general public?  Are the president’s condemnations of the media justified?

There are many explanations.  First, the relationship between news outlets and audiences.  Seemingly, media outlets provide news reports as a product to consumers.  However, most people do not pay for the news they consume.  Since most news reports do not require subscription, news outlets resort to advertising to fund their expenses.  In this circumstance, audiences are not simply consumers.  They are also a product.  Audience’s attention and preferences can be sold to advertisers.  The nature of these relationships and their various implications are explored in scholarship by Noam Chomsky.[2]  Most importantly, media outlets have incentives to strategize their content to fulfill the needs of both audiences and advertisers.  Media outlets are obliged to provide enough information to make audiences feel they are generally informed.  However, media companies must also be intentional about satisfying the preconceptions and biases of their consumers.  Audiences with conditioned attitudes are predictable and respond more consistently to advertisements.  Without conditioning, media outlets risk the departure of their audiences, and subsequently, the departure of necessary advertising revenue.  Given these conditions, media outlets are generally discouraged from challenging the predispositions of their audiences.  Instead, they are incentivized to tell audiences what they want to hear.  This partially explains why eighty percent of reports by major news outlets depicted Donald Trump negatively in early 2017.  According to polling aggregation by RealClearPolitics, more than fifty percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the president.[3]  In addition, Gallup polls report that over sixty percent of Americans have a negative opinion of Donald Trump as a person.[4]  It is unsurprising that over forty percent of news stories in early 2017 were about Donald Trump and that most of them were critical.  Audiences respond to sources that confirm existing perspectives.

The aforementioned scholarship also describes how media institutions can more often serve as ‘echo chambers’ rather than be sources of original commentary.  This phenomenon has increased in recent years.  Media outlets are in constant competition for attention, views, clicks, and engagement.  There are costs to creating original narratives.  It requires effort and they may fail.  Instead, media outlets tend to replicate the narratives of similar institutions.  Narratives that are proven effective with certain audiences can be appropriated by institutions with comparable audiences.  This creates the ‘echo chamber’ effect, where multiple media outlets produce consistent reactions to the same events.  This ‘echo chamber’ is exacerbated by social media.  Recent scholarship has also described these phenomena as ‘network effects.’  Essentially, popular social media platforms must attract additional users to maintain popularity.  The same concept is applicable to news content shared on social media.  A popular reaction may be shared because it is popular, and since it is shared it becomes more popular.  In the context of social media, there is no allegiance to truth or neutrality.  Content generating algorithms only exist to keep users engaged.  This assures that users only see what they want to see and stay engaged in the platform.  News shared on social media may only further entrench the biases and preconceptions of its users.  Social media platforms little reason to challenge an established perspective.  Since these platforms are dependent on engaged users, there is a significant cost to challenging the views of the audience.  Challenging ideas may taint the user experience, or even worse, cause users to disengage from the platform entirely.  Therefore, the ‘echo chamber’ effect of the mass media and the ‘network effects’ of social media cause common news perspectives to become generalized and widespread.

Does this expose the ‘fake news?’ Is this presidency generally misrepresented by the mass media?  Is this president correct in dismissing his criticisms?  It is likely that much of the negative reporting can be attributed to the convergent nature of monetized mass media.  Media institutions are and will continue telling audiences what they want to hear.  Since the average American has a negative attitude toward president Trump, it is unsurprising that the average news report is critical of the president.  However, this does not explain the negative news trend entirely.  If it did, all news reporting would correlate directly with approval ratings.  They do not.  If there were perfect correlation, each popular president would always be praised, and each unpopular president always vilified.  They are not.  While noteworthy, the motivations of profit seeking news outlets and social media networks have limited ability to explain media trends.  It does not fully account for why eighty percent of news reports depict this president negatively.  Perhaps some media outlets are engaging in actual journalism.

There is a second explanation.  Are media outlets providing actual commentary on this president’s performance?  This invites an attempt to evaluate the performance of the president to confirm or deny the legitimacy of critical reporting.  This is difficult.  According to the polling data, over sixty percent of Americans have an unfavorable view of the president personally and over fifty percent disapprove of his policies.  This may skew any evaluation of his competence.  In evaluating job performance, it is also important to differentiate executive actions from the perception of character traits.  There are many individuals that view the president as an extension of individual or collective identity.  Presidents, especially during campaigns, are sometimes perceived as cultural change agents.  Fervent supporters expect their president to excite visionary change and provide liberation from anguish.  This expectation has never been fully realized.  The first years of a new president are nearly always sobering.  For this evaluation, it is more instructive to evaluate the president as a meager manager of bureaucracy.  It will perceive the president as a limited decision maker in a vast, entangled, inefficient institution.

Furthermore, it should be clarified that executive action, and therefore judgement of success or failure, are constrained by a multitude of factors.  Foreign policy requires presidents to anticipate and react to a network of foreign entities.  Each of these entities are also dependent on multiple other actors.  Each nation advances its own interests with a combination of deterrence and cooperation.  Nations are entangled by treaties, agreements, and multi-national institutions.  There are often disparities between stated and actual objectives.  Rhetoric does not always correspond with reality.  Presidents are often asked to make predictions with limited information and are bound to make misjudgments.  Domestically, the office is also gauged by its ability to work within the three federal institutions, two of which have explicit powers to inhibit the executive agenda.  Although criticism is necessary, the executive cannot always be held fully responsible for circumstances it cannot control.  Any evaluation of the president will also invite claims of bias or partisanship.  This evaluation will attempt to dismiss ideology.  This is impossible.  However, there are some things that are explicitly the president’s job.  Independent of liberalism or conservativism, Republican or Democrat, the president has duties and expectations that transcend partisan squabbling.

Is this president effective?  Has Donald Trump succeeded in delivering campaign promises?  A frequent statement during the campaign was “I hire the best people.”  Has this materialized?  According to a report by the Brookings Institution, Trump’s advisers resigned at three times the rate of his immediate predecessor, and at twice the rate of all other presidents during their first year.[5]  In addition, the adviser turnover rate in 2017 was the third highest single year on record.  This is using nearly forty years of data across six presidential administrations.  There are competing explanations for what has been described as ‘record-setting’ turnover.  They include disorderly characterizations of the administration, advisers struggling with uncertain or incoherent messaging, and the number of positions that are nonfunctional until appointments are filled.  The Partnership for Public Service, a nonprofit nonpartisan organization, and the Washington Post maintain a presidential appointment tracker.[6]  It indicates that Donald Trump has filled fewer vacancies in his first year than any of the last four presidential administrations.  In the meantime, temporary appointees have filled these positions out of necessity.  Federal regulations limit the length of many temporary positions to one year.  This administration has appointed many positions just weeks before the temporary terms expired.  It is the duty and responsibility of the executive branch to implement and enforce federal law.  This is becoming increasingly difficult as advisers and cabinet members depart the administration and key positions remain unfilled.

For those that remain in the president’s administration, there has been consistent difficulty in formalizing policy.  There is a too frequent discrepancy between the president’s messaging and the administration’s ability to articulate an agenda.  The cabinet, and subsequently the public, are often scrutinizing ambiguity.  This is exacerbated by the presidents use of social media.  It is still unclear if the presidents Twitter feed are official statements.  Independent of press secretary clarifications, these quips have authority.  They can also have serious ramifications. There were numerous instances where former Secretary of State Rex Tillerson was forced to politely contradict his boss when speaking to the press.  These instances were not unique to Mr. Tillerson.  National Security Advisor John Bolton has contradicted current Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Ambassador the United Nations Nikki Haley on multiple occasions.  Most noteworthy, this occurs when officials are speaking about North Korea.  At times, they reiterate an interest in diplomacy in contrast to things said or tweeted by the president.  At other times, they express in interest in using violence as a deterrent.  There was much confusion in the weeks leading up to the first summit meeting with Kim Jon-Un.  The details of the event were unclear.  The administrations’ diplomatic goals and strategy were communicated with ambiguity or equivocation.  The administration’s policy towards North Korea is just one example of uncertainty.  There is also disparity between the extension of aid to Ukraine and the president’s personal rhetoric towards Vladimir Putin.  It demonstrates a larger point.  Uncertainty is a feature of this administration.  When advisors and officials cannot communicate the policy and preferences of the administration, it may indicate that the official position of the administration is not firmly established.  This is possible since the president likes to change his mind. Equally likely, it could indicate that the official position of the administration is established but cannot be learned from its leader.  Is there no official position or is it unknown to the person responsible for setting it?  Either outcome is dissatisfying.  It is also possible the president is surrounded by incompetent advisor’s incapable of expressing his ideas in terms of policy.  However, it is the presidents’ responsibility to hire these individuals and he rarely provides articulate clarification.  Clarity is important when discerning the safety and security of millions of people.

It is easy to forget, or tempting to ignore, that this ambiguity is not contained locally.  The contradictory messaging is also imposed on the international community.[7]  Further complicating matters, this president is in the habit of flattering foreign dictators by praising their strength and conviction.  An especially notable example, that of Hun Sen of Cambodia, was discussed by the Economist in December of 2017.[8]  After learning that several bothersome news outlets were excluded from a White House briefing, President Hun Sen was inspired to mimic the American president in his own campaign against fake news.  His interpretation was more literal.  Two radio journalists were charged with espionage and face up to fifteen years in prison.  In responding to the issue, Mr. Hun Sen expressed partnership with Donald Trump and their shared frustration with journalism.  This was compounded by Cambodian officials expelling an organization with American funding that promotes fair elections.  His interest in silencing critics culminated in the arrest of an opposition leader on charges of treason.  Remember, Donald Trump regularly entertained chants of ‘lock her up’ at his campaign rallies.  The State Department urged Cambodian officials to release the opposition leader in the interest of a fair election.  Mr. Hun Sen decided to appeal to Mr. Trump directly.  He was rebuked with an indistinct statement from the White House.

This demonstrates that impact of the presidents messaging and how it can be received by the international community. The lack of articulation is consequential.  The United States has a president who compliments dictators, denounces journalists, and threatens extrajudicial apprehension of political opponents.  One of these dictators was so emboldened by this messaging that he imitated the president by jailing journalists and jailing a political opponent.  This prompted the State Department to threaten punitive measures.  This is the same State Department that is led by Donald Trump.  The executive branch is both entertaining and denouncing the suppression of journalists simultaneously.  There are numerous examples of discrepancy and incoherence within the administration, but few are as plain as this.  These circumstances demonstrate that the president may have a general lack of awareness, or possible misunderstanding, of the very institution he is directing and the principles of the very nation he is serving.

The struggles of a new executive are unsurprising.  Any new president must adjust to the office.  Perhaps it is a result of Mr. Trump’s lack of experience in government.  He campaigned on the merit of being an outsider by aggrandizing his innovative thinking and entrepreneurial insight.  So far, there have been many challenges and few innovations.  These challenges cannot be fully excused by inexperience.  Perhaps this is indicative a simpler truth.  High turnover in the White House, the slow rate of appointments, ambiguity in policy, and contradictory messaging all suggest a common conclusion.  Dysfunction.  Perhaps it is that simple.  Donald Trump is not very good at being president.

This assessment attempted to isolate the explicit duties and responsibilities of the office of the president.  The difficulties described above are strictly contained within the executive branch.  Although many administrative positions depend on Senate confirmation, that does not explain the ‘record-setting’ turnover nor the slow rate of appointments.  Neither of those challenges are entirely the result of opposition party obstruction.  Furthermore, when considering diplomacy, that depends only on the administration’s ability to determine, implement, and communicate policy.  This responsibility does not depend on foreign actors.  The incoherence within this administration is chiefly the responsibility of its leader, the president of the United States.

It is important to clarify that these conclusions in no way contribute to the assertion that Donald Trump is ‘mentally unfit’ for office, nor does it suggest a diagnosis of a personality disorder.  This evaluation was an assessment of a bureaucrat’s ability to do a job.  There is little value in remotely performing psychiatry.  If that type of assessment is in fact necessary, it should be exclusive to the professional process and not fallaciously speculated about on the internet.  In considering these conclusions, it is yet unknown if Donald Trump has some psychological peculiarity inhibiting his ability to lead.  What is known is that his current tenure is characterized by a consistent pattern of incompetence.  He’s probably not crazy, he’s just bad.

II.

Still, eighty percent of news reports depicted Donald Trump negatively in early 2017.  What are the implications of negative news?  Are news outlets justified in their criticism?  Surely, this president deserves criticism.  However, media outlets are not fully absolved.  Current trends in the news have consequences.

First, this administration has contributed to a general misunderstanding of news, bias, and neutrality.  The president’s recurrent ‘fake news’ mantra has an error.  It is contradictory and irreconcilable.  According to the president, there are two types of news outlets.  Outlets that criticize are disloyal and fake.  Outlets that praise are authentic and patriotic.  This is a disappointingly shallow assessment of what may have been genuine insight.  It suggests that journalistic merit is either true or false and never in between.  Journalistic integrity exists on a spectrum.  On one end, there is a commitment to neutrality through fact checking, sourcing, and a mitigation of values.  The other is blatant and subversive propaganda.  Both extremes exist in the United States, but the news that most Americans generally consume exists somewhere in between.  There are even variations within outlets and between journalists.  No media source can be perfectly generalized by a single correspondent or a single piece.  It is a mistake to generalize all media sources as entirely real or entirely fake.  A better accusation would be to expose the harm of hyperbole and the danger of bias, no matter the source.  Even better would be to acknowledge that two truths can exist at the same time.  Every president deserves criticism, but there is harm in sensationalism.

Second, sensationalism is compounded by volume.  Other than stories about natural disasters, stories about Donald Trump were the leading stories of last year.  According to Chartbeat, an organization that tracks international online readership, Donald Trump’s inauguration, the announcement of his first travel ban, and the bombing order in Syria were the most widely read stories of 2017.[9]  Many Americans can confirm this anecdotally.  It is difficult to watch videos, read articles, or browse the internet without encountering some position on Donald Trump or his actions.  The captivation is not unique to his detractors. Supporters are equally fixated.  Donald Trump obsession has a cost.  Otherwise informed individuals may disengage from crisis fatigue.  Furthermore, it normalizes the abnormal.  Consider an incomplete summary:  a failure to condemn neo-Nazi’s, an endorsement of police violence, a sharing of classified intelligence with foreign adversaries, an incitement of war with a nuclear weapon wielding adversary, an inconclusive voter fraud commission, an unfounded accusation of wiretapping against a political adversary, an affair with adult film actress, and a complicated association with sexual harassment accusers and personal lawyers.  There are more examples of abnormality.  Many more.  With impressive consistency, Trump supporters react in two ways.  Headline stories are cited as victories or dismissed as falsehoods.  His critics, and most often the press, deride them as failings.  Most importantly, each of these moments succeeded in making international headlines.  Several times last year, the president’s approval ratings increased by several percentage points only to decrease several days later.  Commentators speculated that a ‘lack of headlines’ or ‘slow news’ contributed to the increase in approval.  The United States may soon have an electorate that has simply become complacent with an executive that fails to make international headlines, rather than expecting one that executes authority productively.

A negative report about Donald Trump was a daily occurrence in 2017.  2018 was comparable.  The amount of reporting and the nature of the criticism are significant.  Journalism has a role in democracy.  That role is becoming misunderstood.  Alas, news outlets will continue to satisfy their audiences.  Current popular opposition may normalize overtly critical reporting. As media outlets and social media platforms compete for audience’s attention, the most sensational headlines will succeed.  Individual journalists can often justify their criticism.  However, the generalized trend risks causing audiences to disengage.  This may eventually result in an electorate that is largely complacent and apathetic.  This may already be happening.  A successful democracy depends on informed participants, not ignorance and indifference.  These reasons are enough to cause concern, but the current trend of negative news have even greater consequences.

Consider the minority opinion.  It is important to remember that over sixty million Americans voted for this person in a constitutionally legitimate victory.  In the last year, Trump supporters have been curiously loyal.  His approval ratings have barely wavered since the inauguration.[10]  This yields several more important questions.  What is the impact of negative news trends on Trump voters themselves?  How does the media ‘echo chamber’ impact his base of support?  What reconciles the disparity between negative popular disapproval and the loyalty of his base?

Imagine the experience of Trump supporters since his inauguration.  Their champion is vilified by news correspondents every single day.  Unsurprisingly, many adhered to their leader’s advice and disengaged from mainstream news altogether.  This is unlikely to shield them from adverse opinions.  In the last two years, political ideology has permeated into nearly every element of popular culture.  Late night talk show hosts, awards show presenters, standup comedians, professional sports athletes, musicians, actors, advertising campaigns, and others provide regular and consistent political commentary.  Trump supporters can reject the maligned ’24-hour news cycle’ but still be confronted by unwelcome political messaging.  Any online search feature imposes an exhaustible amount of politically charged content on its users.  Video sharing tools yield ideologically aligned commentary for nearly any interest.   A particularly amusing example is a YouTube channel that reviews video game box art and film posters with an ideological premise. The comments sections of such videos do not inspire confidence.  Name-calling, slurs, and excessive capitalization are a frequent occurrence.  Commentators commonly refer to these phenomena as examples of the ‘culture wars.’  Just as search results and content generating algorithms amplify trends in news, these same mechanisms magnify politicized popular culture content.  For any frequenter of the internet, ideological sparring is both ubiquitous and relentless.  Unless a particular viewpoint is intentionally sought and safeguarded, all are exposed to culture war messaging.  The danger is familiar. It is disengagement, apathy, and complacency.  For the most fervent of Trump supporters, there is a greater danger still.

Since Donald Trump’s inauguration, loyalist media outlets have increasingly used the ‘deep state’ in their commentary.  For the unfamiliar, deep state theory hypothesizes an unseen network of government officials, private financiers, and public advocates that determine the direction of government.  Currently, this direction is at the expense of voters and their popular mandate.  To subscribers of the theory, liberals in the ‘deep state’ are undermining the conservative victory.  Conveniently, it also serves as an alternate explanation to the presidents disappointing first year in office.  Supposedly, the ‘deep state’ has obstructed the president from delivering on campaign promises.  This conveniently makes Trump less responsible for his own incoherence and inexperience.  For believers, the president is not inept.  He is inhibited.

Deep state theory did not originate with Donald Trump or his campaign supporters’ chants of ‘drain the swamp.’  For decades, scholars and journalists have condemned bureaucratic inefficiency and institutional dysfunction.  These criticisms have persisted historically through many presidential administrations and various crises.  There are several familiar themes.  To fiscal conservatives, government is profligate with taxpayer dollars.  To libertarians, large institutions are impediments to individual civil liberties.  To strict constitutionalists, regulators are often exceeding their legal authority.  These grievances are historically consistent with conservativism.  In some ways, the deep state narrative is a contemporary interpretation of existing ideas.  Is it legitimate?

At first glance, it appears so.  The president of the United States is chief bureaucrat of the executive branch.  This is one of many competing presidential responsibilities.  The bureaucratic role of the executive branch requires more attention than a single president or administration can possibly manage.  According to the Mercatus Center at George Mason University, the United States has over one million legal restrictions in the federal code.[11]  Since the president is necessarily constrained by time, capacity, and other demands, enforcing regulations requires large institutions.  The executive branch employs thousands of employees across dozens of departments and agencies.  It is the bureaucrats within these agencies that are primarily responsible for interpreting and enforcing federal law through rules, regulations, and investigations.  While the president should theoretically provide goals and guidance, the actual implementation of policy is largely the responsibility of bureaucrats.  Furthermore, each agency is specialized and compartmentalized for specific functions and are employed by individuals with specific knowledge and skills.  It is impractical for a president, or its cabinet, to have full comprehension of the subtleties that define each agency’s operations.  This forces the president to defer to expertise.  Given these realities, the president cannot be expected to have direct involvement in each decision of each agency.  Bureaucrats largely operate with autonomy.  This autonomy confers power, and that power can be subverted.  Special interest groups, lobbyists, and financiers have more access to regulators than the president could ever have.  The presidents limited influence in guiding its own branch of government is a reasonable concern for commentators.  Of additional concern, independent agencies are as likely to be guided by orthodoxy as subversion.  New presidential administrations may have negligible impact on the daily operations of agency staffers.  Unless an agency receives explicit instructions or new directives, they are likely to continue functioning as they always have.  In some ways, this legitimizes the fears of deep state obstruction espoused by conservative commentators.

Unfortunately, most commentary on the deep state fails to provide this nuance.  Dysfunction, inefficiency, and orthodoxy are observable phenomena.  The legitimacy of deep state theory diminishes when there are claims of conspiracy.  Currently, most conservative correspondents are implicating such conspiracy.  There are common accusations.  First, there is a generalized ‘liberal agenda.’  Depending on the author, it seems nearly any person can be a jackal of the supposed liberal agenda.  It includes journalists, advertisers, philanthropists, executives, producers, actors, musicians, comedians, athletes, scientists, educators, and more.  It is difficult to catalogue an allegation so comprehensive.  Currently, the only qualifications are popular influence and opposition to the administration.  If everyone is the deep state, then no one is the deep state.  Ask enough questions, and nearly every person can find something to disagree with the president about.  This generalized ‘liberal agenda’ is just a description of most Americans.

The more consequential deep state accusations are the second kind. They are more specific and more conspiratorial. Apparently, Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, or sometimes just ‘the Democrats’ are coordinating internal espionage.  They achieve this by directing nameless national security deputies within the FBI and other agencies to subvert the presidency.  They are also accused of instigating numerous White House press leaks and enabling the resulting journalism.  A similar narrative includes the administrations’ military personnel, such as HR McMaster and Jim Mattis, and their alleged connection to the military industrial complex.  Deep state theorists recognize there is nearly pervasive opposition to this president.  To them, it is evidence of the depth and reach of the liberal establishment.  Trump supporters must reconcile the disparity between their democratic victory and two years of nearly universal criticism.  Hence, the deep state exists.  What else can explain the instability of the White House?  The president must be at war with a deliberate and intentional campaign of obstruction by liberals.

This is nonsense.  First, purveyors of deep state theory consistently fail to present compelling and consistent evidence.  Second, the most specific allegations of deep state theorists depend on conspiracy.  This is what differentiates deep state theory from past incarnations of conservative argument.  It is impossible for one presidential administration to monitor thousands of government decisions and abate the influence of lobbyists, financiers, and special interests.  If it is impractical for a presidential cabinet, it is equally impossible for a secret liberal cabal.  There is a more likely explanation for the perceived internal obstruction.  It is the aforementioned argument. In the Donald Trump era, bureaucratic orthodoxy is compounded by an inconsistent or incoherent agenda, sluggish presidential appointments, and the high turnover of administrative staff.  Furthermore, as several advisors and press secretaries have repeated, the president likes to change his mind.  If he is not beholden to any ideology he can be flexible when making decisions.  It also restricts government from being effective.  It is impossible for bureaucrats to adapt practices and update policy when the agenda is unclear and changing.  While there may be some internal obstruction and there are certainly external adversaries, this turbulence is not orchestrated by deep state actors.[12]  This administration is encumbered by its leader.  It is also important to remember that individuals in government serve the office of the presidency, the constitution, and the people.  Loyalty to the individual serving as president is not a requirement.  It is possible for an individual in government to personally oppose the president and still be competent and lawful.  This reality does not align with current conservative commentary on the deep state.

Why acknowledge this conspiracy theory only to rebuke it?  The significance of deep state theory lies not in its truth, but in its support.  Support for this president during the election correlated with an inclination to believe in conspiracy theories.  This is according to poll data from YouGov in December 2016.  Climate change skepticism, fear of vaccines, denial of Barack Obama’s domestic birth, belief in widespread voter fraud, and others, all strongly align with support for Donald Trump.  This may seem unsurprising and obvious, but these results are instructive.  Analysis revealed that ‘likelihood to believe in conspiracy theories’ was a stronger predictor of candidate support in 2016 than other common indicators like education, income, age, or gender.[13]  Donald Trump did not author these conspiracy theories, but he makes his position clear.  He frequently engages in non-committal speculation when speaking to the press or typing from his phone.  This behavior has been mimicked by aides and advisors.  He was also intentional about aligning himself with conspiracy theory advocates during the campaign and even hired some as campaign staffers.  At rallies, he never discourages the chants of his supporters and often fails to condemn the most militant members of his base.  Shortly after the election, he announced a commission on election fraud that was later abandoned without results.  Donald Trump’s victory in 2016 harnessed a demographic with a propensity to subscribe to these sorts of ideas.  Donald Trump may or may not be a conspiracy theorist himself, but he certainly is the conspiracy theorists’ candidate.

This illustrates the danger of trends in the news.  Mass media and the culture wars have normalized critical news reports and cultural backlash.  Opposition to this president has become so pervasive that presidents’ supporters have adopted extreme ideas.  Conspiracy theorists used to congregate in obscure corners of the internet in dedicated chatrooms and forums.  Now, the culture wars have inadvertently elevated them to the mainstream.  The culture wars exist through the internet, television, and newspapers.  Its combatants include actors, athletes, comedians, hosts, journalists, and musicians.  Through mass media and the culture wars, the deep state has materialized.  It is not the conspiracy suggested by conservative commentators.  It is more dangerous.  It is a social construct that cultivates false and irrational ideas.

What are the implications? They are numerous and cumulative.  Trump sympathizers cannot avoid regular confrontations with the culture wars unless they completely detach from all mainstream media and entertainment.  For those that remain engaged, it can eventually seem that all of society are agents of liberal propaganda.[14]  Once the entirety of entertainment and media are labeled as liberal propagandists, the corollary is to dismiss all information that is not propagandized for conservative audiences.  This legitimizes extreme and baseless perspectives.  Examples include widespread voter fraud, falsified birth certificates, or the denial of climate change.  Faith in these ideas depends on ignorance, misunderstanding, or outright fabrication.

Furthermore, when mass media and the culture wars authenticate ideological propaganda, it risks polarizing individuals, institutions, and information.  This is well documented.  For several decades, researchers have described a ‘widening political polarization’ among the American electorate.  In a culture that is increasingly attentive to issues of diversity, privilege, and oppression, many conservatives are reacting with feelings of persecution.  Donald Trump was intentional and successful in satisfying this self-victimization.  There are several motifs: middle-America is ignored by coastal elites, college educated professionals dismiss working class industry, and overly sensitive progressives misunderstand traditional values.  There are members of the population, often some combination of white, working class, Christian, or rural, that have convinced themselves they are a disrespected and misunderstood minority.  By constantly reminding these individuals of their antiquity, mass media and the culture wars strengthen this conclusion.  It risks further isolating a subculture that identifies as isolated.  It risks further ignoring perspectives that complain of being ignored.  Polarization may not have originated with mass media and the culture wars, but these trends do catalyze its penetration and influence.

III.

Trends in mass media and the culture wars have compounding and cascading consequences.  Beyond authenticated conspiracy theories, it has imposed a harmful social construct on American political culture.  For many, information is invalid unless authored by an ideologically aligned source.  Information designed to satisfy ideology entrenches communities defined by their polarization.  Some commentators have observed this polarization with concern.  Some suggest that the United States is divided beyond repair.  Others dramatize that the United States is at war with itself.  This invites further scrutiny of the culture wars.  Many of these ideas are observable, measurable, and testable.  They are also refutable.  American tribalism, and American democracy in general, are misunderstood and misrepresented.  There are at least three examples.

First, the culture wars have failed to motivate democratic participation.  According to the United States Census Bureau, approximately 323 million people lived in the United States in 2016.[15]  Many did not vote in the 2016 election.  The United States Election Project, using an unofficial estimation composited from Federal Election Commission data, states that approximately 250 million Americans were of voting age in 2016.  Some voting age Americans are ineligible, including non-citizens, those in prison or on probation, or those in states that disenfranchise felons.  This leaves approximately 230 million voting eligible Americans.  136 million people cast a vote for president in 2016.  Using these parameters, voter turnout was nearly sixty percent of the voting age population, or forty-two percent of the total American population.  Culture war language suggests that polarization is ubiquitous.  It pretends that every American takes one side or the other.  It dismisses moderate or alternate opinions.  Sensationally, it insists on an ever-worsening conflict.  If this were true, why did so many Americans not participate in 2016?  And why was voter turnout consistent with historical trends?  Midterm election statistics further defuse the extent of the culture wars.  Only thirty-six percent of eligible voters participated in the 2014 midterm election.[16]  This represents less than twenty-five percent of the total American population.  The 2018 midterm election had higher turnout, but more than half of voting eligible Americans still declined to participate.  The primary election process is even less inspiring.  The New York Times created a useful interactive graphic.[17]  Just five percent of Americans, or 17 million people, voted for Hilary Clinton in the primaries. For Donald Trump, only four percent of Americans, or 13 million people.  Fewer than nine percent of the population selected an eventual candidate as their first choice.  The culture wars are not explicitly or completely about presidential elections.  However, if they were as intense or as broad as described they would compel more Americans to express their perspective by participating in democracy.  Most do not.

Voter participation is not a perfect representation of popular opinion.  There is a second reason the culture wars impact on politics are exaggerated and misunderstood.  Some Americans do not participate in elections but still maintain party loyalties and policy preferences.  Political party self-identification can provide insight on perspectives that are not expressed by votes.  Have the culture wars made an impression on party identification trends?  They have not.  According to Pew Research Center surveys conducted in 2017, thirty-seven percent of registered voters identified as independent.[18]  This exceeds identification with either major political party.  In the same survey, thirty-three percent identified as Democrat and twenty-six percent as Republican.  In other words, when a typical American voter is invited to express support for a major political party, they are more likely to decline and select the equivalent of ‘neither.’  These data have been generally consistent for the last twenty-five years.[19]  Culture war participants are convinced they are embroiled in a conflict for the future of American prosperity.  The language describes a conflict is that is all encompassing and increasingly competitive.  The data contrasts this.  The culture wars may continue to increase in fervor, but they have not attracted more Americans to align with a major political party.

There is a third reason why the impact of the culture wars on politics is misunderstood.  The culture wars assume that passion equates comprehension.  That is not always true.  Research reveals that there is sometimes a gap between ideology and knowledge.  The American National Election Study (ANES) publishes a report each presidential election cycle.[20]  It reveals that some American voters are generally ignorant of the relationships between politics, party, and policy.  Eligible voters can usually determine which candidate or party they support.  However, fewer can connect their preference to policy or principle.  This research suggests that the culture wars are a competition of convictions instead of an expression of preferences.  It also questions how encompassing the culture wars can really be.  The electorate cannot be genuinely polarized if most people do not know what they are talking about.

There are many examples.  The ANES asks eligible voters through surveys to identify which major party is more likely to favor a stronger federal government.  For decades, Republicans in the White House, Congress, and the Supreme court have championed states’ rights and criticized federal overreach.  Most recently, many Republicans have lambasted Obama era programs like the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA) or the Clean Power Plan for being constitutional infringements on state sovereignty.  In several states lawsuits successfully challenged the legality of Obamacare.   In opposition, Democrats have argued the authority of federal laws since the Civil Rights Act.  Yet, seven out of ten Americans surveyed failed to recognize that Democrats are more likely favor a stronger federal government.  Most revealing, five out of ten responded with ‘Don’t Know/ No Interest,’ suggesting that many simply have not thought about it.  State sovereignty has been a core principle of the Republican party for a generation.  The typical American voter seems ignorant of this.  Another revealing example from ANES surveys asked eligible voters to identify which major political party is more conservative.  Nearly three of ten eligible voters failed to identify the Republican party.  This is despite it being the self-proclaimed party for conservatives.  Only several questions earlier, the survey invited participants to self-identify as conservative or liberal and then Republican or Democrat. Nearly every survey participant selected a political identity, with only eight percent refusing to respond.  These are just several examples of many.  These data reveal that many American voters are willing to offer perspectives they do not fully understand.  According to the surveys, these voters are as likely to participate in elections as voters that are generally well informed.  The ANES verifies this with pre-election and post-election reports.  The results indicate that political understanding does not correlate strongly with political participation.  More simply, many Americans cast a confused ballot in the 2016 presidential election.

These conclusions are instructive.  Most Americans do not vote, many do not identify with either major political party, and some cannot articulate the core principles of those parties.  The culture wars appear pervasive, but they have failed to motivate political participation and understanding. Therefore, the culture wars cannot be as they appear.  The culture wars are the result of an identity competition rather than political divisiveness.  However, the identity conflict is also misunderstood.  The rhetoric of many pundits, commentators, journalists, bloggers, and content creators make presumptions about the nature of these conflicts.  They presume that all political issues are divisive.  They presume that everyone participates.  They presume that each identity group is united.  There are refutations to each.

First, the culture wars imagine that all issues are divisive, and that most are irreconcilably so.  This perspective is maintained by sensationalist rhetoric and an omission of moderate commentary.  As discussed in the book Culture War? the Myth of a Polarized America, abortion is an especially illuminated example of culture war hypocrisy.[21]  It is difficult to imagine an issue in American politics that is more contested or more controversial than abortion.  This is partly the result of misleading commentary.  Gallup polls have been asking Americans a binary question for many years.[22]  Is the respondent ‘pro-life’ or ‘pro-choice?’  This yields seemingly polarized results.  For thirty years, half the country has identified as ‘pro-life’ and the other half ‘pro-choice,’ with never more than a slight majority for either option.  When presented in isolation, these results appear conclusive.  It seems that Americans are genuinely polarized about abortion.  However, a similar question with different framing yields different conclusions.  Gallup polls also ask participants to consider the health of the woman, the health of the baby, and other circumstances such as sexual assault.  These questions reveal a different consensus.  Most Americans agree that abortion should be legal in specific cases.  This is confirmed in additional survey data.  Participants are given three options: should abortion should be legal in all cases, legal in certain cases, or illegal in all cases.  In most surveys, nearly sixty percent of Americans choose circumstantial legality.  Fewer than thirty percent support full legality and fewer than twenty percent favor a full ban.  For this issue, public opinion convenes at a more moderate consensus when given the option.  This contrasts the narrative of intensifying polarization.  Mass media and the culture wars profit from sensationalism and conflict.  This results in the moderate perspective being underrepresented or ignored.  Furthermore, the primary electoral process over-represents extreme perspectives on this issue.  Impassioned single-issue voters are committed participants in the primaries.  It forces politicians to take a firm stance on abortion or risk jeopardizing a nomination.  In reality, most Americans prefer to maintain a version of current policy.  Full legality or full prohibition are minority perspectives.  Abortion is not even the most important issue to the typical American voter.[23]  The culture wars presume that all issues are divisive.  This is most often not the case.  Upon further investigation, even an issue as contentious as abortion can be exaggerated.

Second, the culture wars presume the interest and participation of everyone.  They presume that the identity competition is all encompassing.  Currently, the identity war has numerous incarnations: Bi-coastal elites ignore middle America, urban cosmopolitans disrespect small town charm, the rich and the college-educated abuse working-class resolve, or young progressives view ageing conservatives as encumbered by tradition.  There are generational, educational, geographical, racial, and religious ways to characterize identity conflicts.  And there are more.  These conflicts are partially confirmed by social science research.  Measurable factors like income, education, gender and age are predictive of voting behavior and political identification.  However, just as before, these divisions are exaggerated, over-represented, and cultivated by mass media and the culture wars.  The commonality in these scenarios is that they are used to assert the participation of the entire population.  According to the culture war rhetoric, all are involved.  An especially grievous example was produced by the mass media echo chamber before the most recent holiday season.  Anchors shared concerns about nervous Americans preparing for family gatherings.  Statistics cited the dread of celebrating holidays with family members of opposing opinions.  Correspondents provided commentary in the form of self-help guides, ‘How to avoid political arguments with difficult in-laws.’  Bloggers provided strategies on how to quickly change conversation topics or how to safely exit in an ‘emergency.’  This is absurd.  There is likely truth in individual cases, but the prevalence is overstated.  Most American families can make it through brunch without a political shouting match.  The culture wars are not fought in American homes every day.  Typical Americans do not have daily confrontations with political opponents.  Most conflict exists online, on social media platforms, and are illuminated by the mass media.  These are the institutions that create and cultivate the culture wars.  They are still the principal contributors.  It is a mistake to presume mass media, social networks, and online communities are representative of public opinion.  They are not.

When discussing a culture war conflict, commentators often indicate ubiquity with online behavior trends.  A ‘controversial’ video may receive millions of views, or a tweet may be ‘trending.’  How conclusive are these indicators?  Are they representative of popular opinion?  Unfortunately, these indicators have limited value despite the popularity of their use.  Researchers began studying user participation and interaction habits in the early days of online communities.  The original research was conducted using message boards and forums in the early 2000s.  There were consistent trends across communities.  Most users never interacted or created content.  A smaller group, sometimes just ten percent of the community, provided most interaction but infrequent content.  Most content and interaction were provided by just one percent of the community.  Researchers nicknamed this trend the ‘one percent rule.’  Others called it the ‘ninety-ten-one-rule,’ referencing the ratio between three trends of activity.  Since the early 2000s, this research has been replicated with similar results.  Michael Wu of Lithium Laboratories aggregated data from over two hundred online communities to test the consistency of the ‘rule.’[24]  While the ‘one percent rule’ is a not a rule, recent research does confirm that most content and interaction within online communities are provided by a small group of ‘hyper-contributors.’  Most users are ‘lurkers,’ or those that view and consume content but never contribute.

Modern tools like Reddit, Wikipedia, and YouTube have comparable user behavior trends.  Billions of unique users have watched YouTube videos.  This represents nearly the entire internet using population.  Interaction is far more limited.  YouTube professionals depend on views, comments, likes, and subscriptions for sponsorship and advertising revenue.  There are strategies to maximize interaction.  Sometimes, it is directly incentivized with giveaways or prizes.  The most consistent and interactive YouTubers yield only hundreds of comments for videos with many thousands of views.  There are also questions about the validity of these indicators.  Many YouTube comments have questionable relevance to the content.  Dramatic or humorous comments are featured.  Moderate or reasoned ideas are unexciting and buried.  Comments that are shorter and easier to read are more likely to receive attention.  YouTube interaction is just one example, but it demonstrates a universal tendency.  There are limits to what can be learned from social media interaction.   Across platforms there is a consistent disparity between interaction and consumption.  These platforms provide a poor representation of conventional wisdom.   Likes, comments, and retweets represent a very small fraction of the total audience.  Sorting algorithms are inequitable.  They feature the most opinionated ideas and the most interactive users.  Moderate ideas by passive participants are unrepresented.  Social media is not an effective venue for public discussion.

View, follow, and subscription metrics can also be questioned.  There is evidence that most viewers exit videos before finishing, with many exiting in the first few seconds.  Many users exit pages or scroll through content that fails to load immediately.  There are also reports that many social media accounts are fake.  Fake accounts, sometimes run by automated bots and sometimes by individuals with many accounts, attempt to exploit or manipulate indicators and sorting algorithms.  Twitter and YouTube have shared that some users have not accessed their accounts in months or years.  Some users follow many thousands of accounts.  Their feeds generate more content than they could possibly consume.  Each of these trends are simultaneous and complementary.  Fake accounts, inactive users, content skimming, and content sorting collectively invalidate the utility of social media metrics.  Together they demonstrate the limits of evaluating popular opinion through social media and online communities.  Journalists will continue to use online interaction to legitimize their commentary, but investigation reveals there is little to be learned from these numbers.

It is also a presumption that the content itself is representative of popular ideas.  Most online content is created by hyper-contributors and sorted for users.  Early online behavior research revealed that hyper-contributors, sometimes less than one percent of a community, are responsible for over ninety percent of content creation.  YouTube does not share these statistics publicly, but analysts have provided estimates.  According to Berstein research, less than one percent of YouTube videos are responsible for over ninety percent of views and view minutes.[25]  This is by design.  YouTube’s monetization accelerated in 2006 when it was purchased by Google.  Like other mass media platforms, the primary goal is to keep users engaged.  The most popular videos are featured and projected to the widest possible audience.  Users are recommended videos they are likely to click and watch based on their history.  This affirms preconceptions and circumvents unwelcome ideas.  It is an effective mechanism for monetization, since maximizing views and watch time also maximizes users’ interaction with advertisements.  Consequently, it makes the platform an inauthentic venue for public discourse.  Content that is unlikely to engage a critical mass of users will not be featured by sorting algorithms. It conceals perspectives that are unpopular, unexciting, or unpolished.  Users that wish to pursue new perspectives must actively seek them out.  Most users accept the mental shortcut and click what is recommended or featured.

Hyper-contribution and content sorting are used by comparable online tools like Facebook, Twitter, and Reddit.  These companies claim their platforms make society more open and connected.  They also claim that content sorting gives users the freedom to customize their experience.  These are praiseworthy objectives, but they have not been achieved.  In their current form, social media tools give tremendous power to a small number of users.  These platforms are susceptible to exploitation and audiences are vulnerable to manipulation.  These vulnerabilities were not discovered by foreign actors attempting to influence election outcomes.  For the last decade, a new specialty has developed within the marketing industry.  Common terms include ‘search engine optimization,’ ‘social media optimization,’ and ‘viral marketing.’  It is a mistake to presume that the internet is an equitable and representative free market of ideas.  Most content consumed online is arranged and directed by profit-seeking institutions.  There was a time that democracies embraced the potential of the internet.  Idealists anticipated the benefits of easy access to information and nearly free expression.  Instead, current tools are designed for addiction and consumption.  Over time, content sorting may result in more censorship than free expression.  It makes social media incompatible with public discourse.  The culture wars presume that everyone is a participant.  They assert that all are involved in a nation-wide identity conflict.  A casual user of the internet may agree with this perception.  However, that presumes that social media, and much of the internet, accurately represents conventional wisdom.  They do not.  Most are not interacting.  Few are creating.  Many metrics are exploited, inflated, and distorted.  The culture wars may be fought online, but they are not being fought by everyone.

There is a third refutation to the presumptions of the culture wars.  Culture war rhetoric presumes that identity groups are united.  This assertion is especially frivolous.  Not every conservative, Trump supporter, or Republican agrees with every other conservative, Trump supporter, or Republican.  The same is true for liberals, Democrats, or any other identity group.  City dwellers do not share opinions and perspectives on all subjects.  Rural communities across the country do not produce individuals with an identical worldview.  Reality is always more nuanced.  Often, there is as much diversity of opinion within each identity group as between them.  There are several ways to demonstrate this.

Theoretically, political parties are comprised of individuals united by common ideas.  The most recent presidential campaign provided little evidence of unity.  Few voters were loyal to their eventual candidate from the start of the primary process.  Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton were uniquely unpopular presidential candidates.  According to Pew Research Center, Donald Trump never achieved more than fifty percent of likely Republican voters’ support until just weeks before his official nomination.[26]  The same is true for Hillary Clinton.[27]  Just months before the presidential election, many voters described themselves as ‘dissatisfied’ with their choices.[28] [29]  Many eventual voters cast their presidential ballots with disappointment.  More recent poll data reveal some continued disappointment within the conservative base.  According to Gallup, eighty seven percent of Republicans agree with the president on the issues, but only seventy five percent think he has the personality and leadership necessary for the office.[30]  Other survey data reveal that some voters may continue to support the president in approval polls despite having reservations.  Some voters are reported to have an unfavorable view of his character or agree that he often does not tell the truth.  The culture wars presume consensus within each group.  This was not true for either ideological group during the most recent election.  Also, these data reveal that Republican reluctance has persisted into the presidency.

Diversity of opinion is evident among public office holders.  The most contentious and most defining issues have dissenters within each party.  For example, there are congressional Republicans acquiescent to abortion.  There are Democrats that defend gun ownership.  There are more exceptions at the state and local level.  Some candidates in rural southern states have strategically praised Mr. Trump but condemned Mitch McConnel and other ‘establishment Republicans.’  In contrast, there are cohorts of ‘never-Trump’ Republicans that confirm their conservative principles while refusing to swear allegiance to the White House.  Trump adversaries like John McCain, Jeff Flake, and Susan Collins have inspired emulation at the state and local level.  Newly elected congresspersons like Mitt Romney may further proliferate dissent among elected Republicans.  There is also insular discontent among Democrats.  The Democratic establishment intentionally excluded Bernie Sanders until it was strategically advantageous to indulge his supporters.  Many Sanders supporters continue to believe that their candidate may have succeeded in the general election if primary votes were not appropriated by establishment manipulation.  While the truth of this is difficult to verify, it demonstrates the fragility of party unity.

If career politicians within either party are not unified, then there is likely disparity among the constituents they represent.  This is confirmed by multiple methodologies.  Before the 2016 election, a series of polls by Gallup asked likely voters to identify the single most important issue or challenge for the upcoming president.[31]  Republicans, and especially Democrats, expressed a wide variety of attitudes and priorities.  No single issue or challenge achieved a response of more than twenty percent by Republicans.   For Democrats, there was an even wider disparity.  The most common issue or challenge expressed by likely Democratic voters was ‘the economy’ with only thirteen percent of respondents.  Many other issues and challenges were expressed, further revealing an absence of shared priorities within each ideological group.  A different poll conducted shortly before the election by Pew Research Center revealed that only twenty seven percent of registered Republican voters described their party as ‘united.’[32] Seventy percent described the Republican party as ‘divided.’  The culture wars depict Trump voters as a unified identity group.  As a community, Trump supporters have only one distinction.  These are the individuals that voted for the president.  There may be some commonality, but it is incorrect to project the perspectives of some Trump supporters on all Trump supporters.

More research demonstrates this.  The Democracy Fund Voter Study Group surveyed Trump voters shortly after the 2016 presidential election.[33]  The researchers clarify that verifying voter motivations is impossible.  Survey respondents may express incoherent or inconsistent rationale for their own behavior.  However, the researchers were able to determine that Trump voters express a wide variety of beliefs and preferences.  Researchers also determined variance in the relative priority of beliefs or preferences.  The resulting research categorized Trump voters in 2016 into several psychographic ‘clusters.’  Each cluster has overlapping themes but distinctive characteristics.  For example, researchers identified that many within the Trump base correlated with traditional conservativism.  These individuals were likely to be life long Republican voters.  For many of them, Donald Trump was not their first choice in the primaries.  These historical conservatives tended to favor Ted Cruz early in the campaign cycle.  These individuals prioritize the nomination of conservative Supreme Court justices and the protection or expansion of gun ownership.  For individuals among this cluster, a vote for Donald Trump may have been an expression of political identity and party loyalty.  Other clusters may passively agree with these sentiments but express very different priorities.  For example, a second cluster identified by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group are characterized by a commitment to free market economics and fiscal conservativism.  These individuals were also likely to be life long Republican voters.  Their policy priorities align with the conservative policies of the Reagan era.  Namely, a reduction of corporate taxation, a vague interest in deregulation, and an aversion to deficit spending.  For these voters, Donald Trump may represent the protection of individual and collective financial interest.  A third cluster identified by researchers are characterized by anti-establishment sentiments.  This cluster includes a larger number of first time Republican voters.  These individuals prioritized the fear or experience of economic hardship.  They were less likely to express a loyalty to the Republican party.  Instead, they prioritized Donald Trump’s skepticism of supranational institutions, rejection of globalization, and distaste of immigration.  For these voters, Donald Trump may be a political outsider reforming a rigged system.  The final cluster were the individuals most loyal to Donald Trump from the start of his campaign.  These are occasional voters that may have voted for other parties in the past.  These individuals were characterized by the strength of their religious and racial identities.  They were also the most likely to express distaste for non-whites and non-Christians.  They were likely to agree that there is legitimate anti-white discrimination.  This cluster had few cohesive policy priorities beyond immigration.  However, for these individuals, aversion to immigration is not an economic concern but a cultural one.  They are the most likely to support policies like the border wall or ‘Muslim ban.’  For them, Donald Trump may be the manifestation of their conceived American identity.

The conclusions provided by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group are imperfect.  Researchers surprised by an unexpected election result sought clarity from the voters themselves.  The psychographic clusters identified by the researchers depend on abstraction and interpretation.  Despite these flaws, the research provides insight.  It may help explain the surprisingly consistent loyalty of Republicans and Trump supporters.  Commentators have observed that approval ratings for Donald Trump have barely fluctuated for conservatives and Republicans since the inauguration.  This is unique.  Most presidents begin with high approval.  Historically, approval ratings decline and recover throughout a presidential administration.  What explains the consistency of Donald Trump approval rating?  As discussed earlier, mass media and the culture wars may contribute to this.  Fervent supporters are likely to disengage from mainstream media sources or are indoctrinated by personalized content generating algorithms.  This explanation is incomplete.  The psychographic clusters provided by the Democracy Fund Voter Study Group may provide further explanation.  Trump supporters may celebrate the actions, policies, and rhetoric that most closely align with their priorities.  They may ignore or be unaware of everything else.  The ‘fake news’ campaign provides a convenient way to dismiss unwelcome information.  For example, the anti-establishment, anti-elite members of the Trump base celebrate when Donald Trump rebukes international institutions.  They are likely to applaud the exit of the Paris climate agreement, the threats to dismantle the North American Free Trade Agreement, and the criticism of allies’ defense spending.  The business-oriented Republicans are likely to celebrate the most recent tax bill and environmental deregulation.  Traditional conservatives may cite his Supreme Court nominations has his greatest achievement.  Each of these actions are successful in catering to different priority and preference groups among Trump supporters.  This also explains how the Trump administrations’ sometimes self-contradictory policymaking still satisfies supporters.  Is Donald Trump supporting big business or resisting the elites?  Both.  And neither.  He is both helping corporate interests by lowering taxes and hurting them by imposing tariffs and immigration bans.  He both threatens companies that globalize and deregulates industries in decline.  If Trump supporters remain focused on their priorities, everyone can find something to celebrate.  These conclusions affirm that there is certainly no ‘one kind of Trump supporter.’  It also refutes the false presumptions of the culture wars.  Ideological groups are far from united.  When prompted, ideologues can find as many faulty policies within their own group as the opposition.  The culture wars present identity groups as unified and consistent.  They are not.  Even among the nearly sixty million individuals that voted for Donald Trump, there is a demonstrable absence of unification.

The culture wars are visible and present in contemporary political culture, but the implications are misunderstood.  Critical and sensational news reporting have not motivated a more participatory or informed electorate.  Many Americans do not express partisan identity.  There are more moderates than represented.  Misplaced confidence in social media metrics exaggerate and illuminate fringe perspectives.  Ideological groups have as many internal conflicts as external.  The culture wars suggest that the United States is at war with itself.  Ultimately, this view is not consistent with available evidence.

IV.

Does this mean the culture wars are a complete fabrication?  Not exactly.  There is still the discussion of ‘widening political polarization’ among the American electorate.  Research supports this claim.  Some research groups and journalists have discussed ‘political divisiveness.’  Pew Research Center describes partisanship and political animosity.[34]  Several decades of data demonstrate a clear and consistent trend.  Partisan Americans increasingly express negative views of the opposing political party.  According to Pew in 2016, nearly sixty percent of Republicans and Democrats describe their attitude of the opposing party as ‘very unfavorable.’  This has increased from approximately twenty percent in the mid-1990s.  Also in 2016, approximately half of Republicans and Democrats agreed that they were ‘afraid’ of the other party.  For those highly engaged in politics, such as political donors or campaign volunteers, they express fear and unfavorability to an even greater degree.  This interactive chart visualizes what has been described as increasing partisan animosity.[35]

It may be unsurprising that partisan Americans view the opposing political faction with contempt, but it is important to put these results in context.  As mentioned earlier, the American National Election Study (ANES) surveys voters before and after each national election cycle.  The results indicate that American voters, even the most partisan, are frequently uncertain of the policies and principles they support or oppose.  According to most surveys, more than half of voters fail to identify changes in congressional power after an election.  More than half of voters cannot determine which party favors strong government in Washington.  Many voters fail to determine which party is the conservative party, despite many self-identifying as ‘conservatives’ on the same survey.  How can this generalized political ignorance be reconciled with the trend of increasing polarization?

Animosity is the defining feature of the culture wars.  A comparison of political ignorance and partisan animosity have stunning ramifications.  Currently, the American electorate contains more voters fearful of the opposition than aware of election outcomes.  There are more voters contemptuous of the opposing party than informed of core party principles.  These realizations provide an account of the typical American voter that is not present in other forms of research.  The typical American voter has more confidence in whom they oppose than what they oppose or why they oppose it.  Partisan animosity exposes the hypocrisy of the culture wars.  The critical nature of the current political climate is not determined by ideological principles or policy preferences.  It is determined by feelings, attitudes, and emotions.  The current political climate is defined by its fear, contempt, and distrust.  It contains emotionally charged tirades masked in the language of political commentary.  Much of mass media content is more successful at expressing fear and paranoia than conveying a coherent or consistent policy position.  This is observed in the behavior of political pundits that argue on television, journalists that write sensationalist opinion pieces, and popular social media personalities that document their outbursts.  Few of these authors succeed in creating a more informed and more rational audience.  Few of these authors succeed in examining the intricacies and nuances of issues.  Few of these authors succeed in providing well researched sources or counterargument.  What do they succeed at?  These authors succeed in triggering emotional responses. They succeed in reminding audiences of their enemies.  Audiences respond.  According to a recent paper from computer scientists at Columbia University and the French National Institute, at least thirty percent of all internet traffic is channeled through social media tools.[36]  These researchers also discovered that sixty percent of users share and comment on links they have not viewed.  Similar behaviors are confirmed by the American Press Institute.[37]  According to the surveys, six out of ten Americans acknowledge that they get their news, information, and perspectives exclusively from headlines.  This demonstrates that the contents of these media sources are mostly unimportant.  What matters are the emotional responses they trigger, and that a community shares those emotions.

This illuminates the collective psychology of the culture wars.  Much discussion about ‘widening polarization’ or ‘political divisiveness’ suggests that the culture wars are symptomatic of ideological divisions.  They are not.  American voters do not express enough consistent or coherent policy priorities to sustain a general political divide.  Instead, current divisions are the result of collective dissatisfaction and group psychology.  Pew Research Center has reported an increase in ‘negative voting’ in the last two decades.[38]  Recently, as many voters are expressing their choice as ‘against the opposition’ than in support of a candidate.  Furthermore, voters were reluctant to agree that either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump would be successful presidents.[39]  The American electorate is generally dissatisfied.  Individual voters may not have the interest or capacity to investigate the subtleties and details of each issue position.  However, individuals are experts of their own experience, and voters are expressing their dissatisfaction.  The current political divide has frustratingly little to do with government.  Instead, unhappy voters are guided into blaming political adversaries.  Currently, these attitudes and feelings are directed by social cues that manifest through mass media and the culture wars.

The 2016 election was unique for many reasons.  Principally, it may be remembered as the first major presidential election where more people received political news through social media than television or print media.  It is a mistake to presume that this shift is without impact.  Pew Research Center shared that over sixty percent of users get their information primarily from one website, and that most users are simply encountering this information unintentionally.[40]  A minority of users describe themselves as ‘news-seekers.’  This is what differentiates social media from traditional media sources.  Currently, the electorate is primarily informed by headlines they do not read, from unverified sources, in a manner that is organized or arranged to satisfy pre-conceptions and addiction.  Additionally, most information is presented in the context of social networks.  Many individuals share and comment on links they do not read or watch.  This imposes consequential incentives on users.  Individuals may casually access their social media accounts to discover their friends and family share a mutual aversion to a candidate, party, or idea.  Individuals are incentivized to adopt that perspective to maintain relationships and affirm group identities.  This imposes a social cost on social media users.  Users must choose between forming independent perspectives based on information or responding to social cues provided by their networks.  Like the behavior that results from content sorting algorithms, it seems that many users will accept the mental shortcut that satisfies their group identity.

It is possible that this phenomenon will continue to increase in prevalence.  Social media use and smartphone use are increasing.  It is changing the way individuals consume information, develop perspectives, and adopt identities.  Previous generations required social interaction to experience influencing social cues.  Smartphone users, meaning nearly everyone, are exposed to social cues nearly every time they operate their devices.  These devices are adaptive and addictive by design.  It is not an accident that increasing social media and smartphone use coincides with increasing partisan animosity.  Social media tools may become more addictive and more personalized.  They may impose greater social costs on users, and it may continue to warp the political culture.

Partisan animosity is harmful to all participants.  Voters cannot express policy preferences when candidates are distracted from reasoned debate.  Rather than focus on facts, issues, or policies, elections can become contests of personality and competitions for truth.  Candidates and parties may be more inclined to participate in tribalism than provide coherent and consistent platforms for effective government.  For an observer of the 2016 presidential election, these concerns are surely familiar.  In addition, increasing partisan animosity impedes effective governance between elections.  Radicals tend to succeed in primaries and noncompetitive districts.  They are often disappointingly ineffective in office.  Recent presidential administrations have complained that the opposition party is primarily concerned with obstructing the presidential agenda.  Minority parties that prioritize sabotage over compromise inhibit the progress of each party platform.  It also takes moderates to run a country.  They are becoming a rarity.  Washington and the two-party system already receive criticism for uncompromising partisanship.  Increasing partisan animosity will only aggravate problems of political intransigence.

Partisan animosity inhibits democracy.  Votes, elections, politicians, and governance are all constrained by ideological competition.  Public discourse has limited discussion of ideas and information. Instead, political dialogue has become who or what can be blamed for current problems.  These conditions enable and normalize irrationality.  Ideological interpretation can distort statements of fact or dismiss the truth.  To an ideologue, loyalty is more important than evidence.  Partisans are capable of grand delusions.  There are many recent examples of partisan delusions.  Two examples best demonstrate the harm of ideological interpretation.

In 2017, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel shared survey results of Wisconsin voters from the Marquette University Law School.[41]  Researchers asked registered voters to identify if the economy had ‘gotten better,’ ‘gotten worse,’ or ‘stayed about the same’ over the course of the previous year.  Voters were asked to respond to this survey in October of 2016, just weeks before the presidential election.  According to the report, fourteen percent of self-identified Republicans identified a general improvement in the economy.  Later, in March of 2017, researchers conducted a similar survey and asked an identical question concerning the state of the economy.  In March, after the presidential election, fifty-nine percent of Republicans stated the economy had improved.  In four and a half months, there was a forty-five percent increase in retrospective economic confidence among Wisconsin Republicans.  Is this a reasonable conclusion?  Republican voters are likely to support Republican candidates, and subsequently Republican economic plans.  They also are likely to expect Republican economic management to be superior to Democrats.  Between October 2016 and March 2017, Republicans were elected to the White House and Congress.  From the perspective of a Republican voter, since Republicans had taken political power, the economy must have improved or be improving.  This may seem like a harmless inference.  However, it demonstrates the delusions of ideological interpretation and partisan animosity.  Economic growth is measurable and demonstrable.  This survey question was not an assessment of economic confidence, future predictions, or an evaluation of personal economic fortune or misfortune.  This question asked voters to retrospectively assess the previous years’ economic growth.  Seemingly, Republican voters in Wisconsin projected their satisfaction with election outcomes onto an assessment of the economy.  What is the harm of allowing partisan identity to influence perceptions?  Well, it can be wrong.  The state of the economy does not automatically improve when a preferred candidate takes office.  Furthermore, this ‘partisan inference’ circumvents an evaluation of empirical economic indicators.  It also fails to assess the impact of legislative developments or policy changes.  At the time of the March 2017 survey, Republican leadership in the White House and Congress had barely begun to establish a comprehensive economic agenda.  There had yet to be any major policy announcements or legislative enactments.  According to most economic indicators, the United States economy was generally improving in both 2016 and 2017.  However, forty-five percent of Republicans in Wisconsin only acknowledged this when members of their preferred party had assumed political power.  Determining economic growth should be the result of objective analysis resulting from empirical indicators.  In this case, it was subject to personal interpretation resulting from partisan identity.  This demonstrates the harm of growing partisan animosity.  A political culture characterized by its animosity inhibits opportunities to understand policy implications and outcomes.  Partisans, motivated by subjective interpretation, can develop very different understandings of the same reality.

There is a second example of the harm of growing partisan animosity.  It originates from the summit meeting between the United States and North Korea in the summer of 2018.  The circumstances of this event were bizarre.  The meeting was announced, cancelled, and rescheduled just weeks before.  The context and details of the negotiations appeared subject to change.  The resulting ‘comprehensive agreement’ received criticism for its vagaries and many unanswered questions.  Military strategists have disparaged the White House for not achieving discernable outcomes.  Surely, this form of in-person dialogue between diplomats is preferable to the Twitter-feuding that preceded it.  This meeting had many flaws, but a de-escalation of tensions between nuclear wielding adversaries is welcome.  Hopefully, this summit succeeds in deterring the violence that may have resulted from previous miscommunication or misinterpretation.  More importantly, this meeting was very popular with domestic audiences.  In the subsequent weeks, the summit received a high rate of approval from polls in the United States and South Korea.  The state sponsored media in North Korea also praised the summit.  From a public relations standpoint, the meeting was a success.  According to an Ipsos poll in June, nineteen percent of American Republicans expressed approval for the Supreme Leader of North Korea, Kim Jong-Un, in the days after the summit meeting.[42]  This exceeds the approval of another individual on the same survey.  House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi achieved just seventeen percent of Republicans approval.  Kim Jong-Un is consistently rebuked by human rights organizations and the United Nations.  The North Korean dictator rules with extreme brutality.  People are arrested without trial and forced to work in internment camps.  Often, entire families are punished for the alleged crimes of individuals.  Murder, enslavement, torture, rape, and starvation are all commonplace.  The United Nations allege that thousands of individuals have been publicly executed since Kim Jon-Un assumed power.  Few individuals in modern history are responsible for a comparable amount of human suffering.  These acts of violence exist in coordination with propaganda and censorship to ensure the loyalty, obedience, and indoctrination of the local population.  Nearly one in five American Republicans expressed a favorable attitude towards this individual.  In contrast, Nancy Pelosi is an aging, flawed, female politician whose primary relevance is her vocal opposition to Donald Trump.  Partisan animosity has produced a demographic more approving of a tyrannical demi-god than an inept opposition politician.  Clearly, these individuals are incomparable.  Yet the results of these surveys indicate that loyalty can be more important than violence to many voters.  This demonstrates how partisan animosity and ideological interpretation have warped partisans’ perception of reality.  A handshake and a press conference became more relevant than facts and truth.  The summit with North Korea, while possibly making the world slightly safer, demonstrates the harm of growing partisan animosity in American politics.

These examples demonstrate the immense consequences of ideological interpretation and growing partisan animosity.  While these examples involved Republicans, the phenomenon is not unique to conservatives.  Liberals and Democrats are equally capable of grand delusions.  When a democratic society uses elections to express animosity, rather than policy preference, the entire society suffers.  Thomas Jefferson is famously misquoted as stating ‘democracy depends on an enlightened and informed electorate.’  While there is no evidence he ever stated or wrote this phrase, the sentiment is somewhat representative of some of the founders’ ideals at the time.  Growing partisan animosity is an impediment to this ideal.  Equally relevant, many founders wrote extensively about the growing harm of partisanship and party politics.  Currently, these fears have manifested.  Democracy in the United States is in a state of crisis.

In this view, confidence in election outcomes are diluted.  In a sense, Donald Trump did not win the 2016 presidential election.  Hilary Clinton did not lose.  Too many Americans are voting against a fabricated enemy.  Too many are guided by group psychology.  And too many are disaffected and disengaged from politics altogether.  The real victors of the current political climate are apathy, anger, and fear.  In this system, everyone loses.  Therefore, mass media and the culture wars demand a response.

V.

According to the Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center, approximately eighty percent of reports by major news outlets in early 2017 depicted Donald Trump negatively.  This is an unsurprising result.  Democratic societies depend on free press to scrutinize the actions and decisions of political leadership.  Free press manifests through monetized media institutions.  These institutions service both audiences and advertisers.  Audiences seek information and advertisers seek predictable consumers.  This incentivizes media institutions to cultivate preconceptions and biases.  The growing popularity of social media tools exacerbate ‘echo chambers’ and ‘network effects.’  A majority of Americans disapprove of this administration and a majority of news outlets criticize it.  The results of the Harvard study are consistent with expectations.

However, these trends are symptomatic of greater issues.  Media bias is just one consequence of partisan political culture.  The culture wars have resulted from generalized political ignorance, mainstream conspiracy theorizing, growing partisan animosity, and ideological interpretation of facts.  These phenomena interdependently and collectively contribute to the degradation of the democratic system.  American political culture is a competition of group psychology at the expense of politics and policy.  The intensity of partisan animosity and group psychology are matched only by the apathy and indifference of nonparticipants.  American democracy has become dysfunctional.  These challenges will not be overcome without action.  Therefore, reaction is necessary.

What are the solutions?  Privileged individuals have power.  As argued by Noam Chomsky in The Responsibility of Intellectuals, privilege allows individuals to make choices.[43]  Choices confer responsibility.  Privileged individuals have the responsibility to make choices that are moral and rational.  In the context of mass media and the culture wars, responsible choices manifest through votes, content consumption, and social interaction.  Modern technology has commodified each of these behaviors.  Despite temptations to do otherwise, choices must be made responsibly.

First, privileged individuals should use voting an opportunity to be moral and rational.  Political social norms suggest that votes are an expression of identity or preference.  Many individuals express individual and community identity by remaining loyal to a political party for many elections.  Rhetoric praises these behaviors.  However, voting choices are consequential.  By selecting a candidate or political party, individuals impose consequential circumstances on society.  This obliges privileged individuals to attempt the most rational and most moral choices when voting.  Unfortunately, these choices are constrained by the limitations of the two-party system.

In nearly two hundred and fifty years of American political history, there are countless examples of depravity and violence.  Each major political party has contributed to immeasurable human suffering.  They include the attempted displacement and enslavement of an entire continent, the organized extermination of indigenous civilizations, the continued segregation and discrimination of certain communities, and more.  Members of each ideological coalition were equally capable of committing these crimes.  Neither party ideology can claim moral superiority.  Rational voters, making moral choices, must acknowledge the hypocrisy of sustained party loyalty.  These atrocities cannot be dismissed as historical antiquity.  There are modern examples of foreign and domestic oppression.  In the last seventy years, the United States is responsible for hundreds of direct military interventions in dozens of nations.[44]  Current military occupations are responsible for hundreds of thousands of civilian casualties.  Many estimates do not include military arms assistance, intelligence sharing agreements, or training operations.  When considered collectively, it is possible that several million human lives have been expended in the defense of American interests since the end of the second World War.  Domestically, the United States has institutionalized social control through mass incarceration of the population.  Forty years of aggressive imprisonment has produced both the largest prison population in the world and highest incarceration rate in the world.[45]  The criminal justice system disproportionally arrests and convicts racial minorities from low-income communities.  These foreign and domestic campaigns of oppression are maintained and sustained by members of both political parties.  In the American democratic system, expressions of sustained party loyalty fail to condemn the many crimes of political leaders.  There is a moral responsibility to resist blind partisan allegiance.  Violence should be condemned independent of its ideological source.

Moral failures are complemented by ideological inconsistencies.  This further complements the constrained choices of rational voters.  There are many examples of historical and logical inconsistency.  What is the historical position of each major political party on foreign military intervention?  This is nearly an unanswerable question.  Both political parties have supported undeclared foreign wars.  Both parties have opposed such wars.  There are times the same political party has both supported and opposed the same foreign conflict.  Military aggression in Southeast Asia had mostly bi-partisan support in 1963.  The Democrats, at that time the majority party, advocated for the conflict’s necessity even as public support waned.  Republicans, then the minority party, reversed position and opposed the war when campaigning for the 1968 election.  After the Republican victory in 1968, the Democrats began vehemently criticizing Richard Nixon and Republicans.  In preparation for the 1972 presidential election, Democrats complained that Republicans had not ended the war quickly enough and were committing major strategic errors.  This is despite their support for the conflict’s continuation just four years prior.  A simplified history of one major military conflict provides two examples of major political parties reversing a policy position.  History provides a similar circumstance forty years later.  Shortly before the September 11^th attacks, Republicans in Congress expressed interest in aggressive sanctions against the Iraqi government.  This was mostly met with skepticism by Democratic committee members.  In the aftermath of the attacks, military invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq achieved mostly bi-partisan support.  Republicans, the majority party at this time, advocated for the invasions’ necessity despite declining public interest.  Democrats campaigned as the opposition in 2006 and 2008 and began to criticize the ‘war on terror’ for its strategic shortcomings.  The Democrats gained control of the federal government in 2008 on the pretense of reducing American involvement in the Middle East.  Shortly into its first term, the Obama administration implemented a ‘surge’ of additional American military personnel to expedite the conclusion of the conflict.  The implementation of this strategy was criticized nearly immediately by Republican strategists, and the ‘surge’ was considered a failure by congressional Republicans as early as 2010.  By 2012, the most common position of Republican congresspersons was that American military forces should transition to a supervising role in both Iraq and Afghanistan.  These examples demonstrate the typical tendency of political parties to reverse major policy positions to achieve political advantage.  In each of these cases, the minority party criticized the majority party for strategic incompetence.  Political parties are capable of vehemently denouncing policies that they recently implemented and supported.  This demonstrates that political parties are primarily concerned with accruing political advantage.  This is often at the expense of policy consistency or moral rationality.  Blind, consistent, and loyal party voting contributes to this hypocrisy.  Partisans voters may unknowingly support regular policy reversals by sustaining support for a political party.  Rather than blindly support changing policy positions, rational voters should regularly review and update their voting intentions as candidates, positions, and circumstances change.

Policy inconsistency constrains the ability of rational voters to make responsible and moral choices.  Ideological inconsistency also manifests in domestic policy.  There are many examples.  Shortly after reconstruction, Democrats in southern states implemented and sustained a campaign of deliberate and intentional voter suppression.  After the conclusion of the civil war, Democratic party leadership sought to reinstitute political domination.  This policy objective is documented in notes from the Virginia constitutional convention in 1902.  According to these notes, the deliberate disenfranchisement of black voters was a stated goal of the party.  A generation later, many Democrats in northern states and in Washington became reluctant and unwilling champions of the civil rights movement.  By 1972, many Democrats in the south had abandoned the party in support of Richard Nixon’s suppressive ‘law and order’ campaign rhetoric.  This is a famous and well documented example of political realignment.  Most interestingly, local segregationists and integrationists were both supported by Democratic party leadership before civil rights became a national issue.  In this circumstance, a political party expressed simultaneously opposing positions on an ideological principle.  Parties are also capable of simultaneous campaigns of oppression and liberation.  Rational voters, attempting to make moral choices, are constrained by contradictory and inconsistent party policy.  American political history has produced many examples.  Each major political party supported and opposed the prohibition of alcohol sales.  In many counties in the south, the prevention and restriction of alcohol sales has persisted.  Currently, many historically Republican communities ban the sale of alcohol or prevent its sale on Sundays or holidays.  In other parts of the country, Republican voting communities support alcohol consumption with specialized tax benefits for breweries and wineries.  In this case, the Republican party is both inhibiting and supporting the alcohol industry.  There are many more examples of contradictory party policy.  Parties respond to local preferences and pursue political opportunities.  Like other institutions, they are subject to dysfunction.    These shortcomings constrain the ability of voters to make rational, responsible, and moral choices.

Political parties often claim historical authenticity.  However, they have few, if any, historically consistent positions.  Political rhetoric often includes reference to ‘ideology’ or ‘principle.’  However, politicians from both major parties have demonstrated the capability of abandoning principle and ideology.  A current example is the national debt and deficit spending.  For decades, the Republican party has claimed to govern with principled financial conservativism.  A common campaign pledge is to exercise government funds with fiscal responsibility.  According to economic research from the Federal Reserve, only one presidential administration since 1974 reduced the national debt as a percentage of GDP.[46]  The second Clinton administration, mostly Democrats working with a mostly Republican Congress, balanced the budget and reduced the national debt for a few years.  Each other Republican president and each other elected Republican congressperson failed to deliver this campaign promise.  Perhaps these politicians were constrained by partisan obstruction.  Or, perhaps these principled ideologues were compelled to embrace pragmatism during especially adverse economic circumstances.  More likely, politicians characteristically abandon party principle and ideology when seeking political advantage.

There is a prevailing theme in each of these examples.  Politicians and political parties are opportunists.  They regularly and consistently reverse policy positions, support self-contradictory ideas, and obfuscate the ideological principles they promote.  Politicians maintain the guise of ideological principle because voters reward ideological rhetoric.  However, politicians circumvent inconvenient principles when there are opportunities for political advantage.  This is demonstrated during campaigns.  Politicians are keen to criticize opponents for lack of ideological purity but are more pragmatic when defending their own voting records.

Rational voters, compelled to make responsible and moral choices, must acknowledge and respond to this hypocrisy.  Neither major political establishment can claim moral superiority, ideological purity, or logical consistency.  Conventional wisdom suggests that voters choose between two political factions with opposing ideological platforms.  This is fallacious.  When American political history is examined comprehensively, there is consistent hypocrisy and contradiction.  Rather than two opposing political factions, one power structure appropriates and exploits all susceptible individuals and institutions.  Both political factions have employed the same strategies and tactics, both have committed the same crimes, and both have served the same interests.  In this view, sustained party allegiance is ultimately irrational.  Party loyalty is the result individual or collective identity.  It is not a rational or logical expression of policy preference or ideological principle.  Since politicians and political parties are opportunists and are united only by their common pursuit of opportunism, rational voters must also be opportunists.  Each election cycle, politicians and political parties provide a revised set of solutions to new and familiar problems.  This results in a political landscape that is always changing.  It is unreasonable for voters to maintain blind party loyalty when circumstances continually change.  Voters sometimes use retrospective arguments to express prospective preferences.  For example, many lifetime Republican voters cite the economic policies of Ronald Reagan when rationalizing current and future party allegiance.  This contradicts the efforts of political strategists who revise and update policy priorities in preparation for each election cycle.  Campaign promises from Democrats in 2008 have many distinctions from those in 2018.  Rational voters must be vigilant and observant of these changes.  Each election cycle prompts voters to update their choices in reaction to changing circumstances.

This contrasts most voting behavior and most political rhetoric.  Partisan allegiance is generally encouraged in political commentary.  Many prominent commentators idealize ideological purity and criticize pragmatism as traitorous.  Rational voters, compelled to make responsible and moral choices, should reject these interpretations.  Ideological principles may appear intellectually attractive.  However, the political establishment cannot credibly claim to consistently uphold and defend such ideals.  Even if this were the case, expressing idealism does not supersede the rational individual’s responsibility to make moral choices.  Sustained party allegiance can be morally compromising and intellectually hypocritical.  Ideological principles cannot be defended with sustained partisan voting.  Furthermore, idealism is always subject to criticism.  Social and economic theories, when extending to their logical conclusions, are always limited in utility.  Defending flawed ideals, through flawed institutions, should not supersede the rational individual’s commitment to morality and responsibility.

These conclusions do not suggest that the major political parties are synonymous.  While the major political factions are similarly reprehensible, but they are not always equally so.  Voting choices are consequential.  Election outcomes have the potential to greatly mitigate or exacerbate human suffering.  Each election provides an opportunity for moral and rational individuals to condemn or praise policy platforms.  It also allows individuals to condemn or praise each politician.  These choices should be exercised with scrutiny and may occasionally require voting for both parties.  The goal should be to mitigate harmful outcomes, even at the expense of partisan loyalty.  Party loyalty has little inherent value.  It can tempt well-meaning individuals into states of cognitive dissonance.  Partisans are too reluctant to commend their opponents and too willing to praise their allies.  Violence, neglect, and incompetence must be condemned independent of its ideological source.  Privileged individuals have a responsibility to resist blind partisan voting.  Instead, responsible individuals should use each election as an opportunity to make responsible and moral choices.

Second, votes are not the only way individuals can exercise power.  Elections are relatively infrequent.  As consumers, individuals make choices every day.  Consumer power represents the choices individuals make when purchasing goods or services.  Privileged individuals, compelled to be moral and responsible, should make deliberate and intentional choices as consumers.  The purchase of a good or service is essentially an endorsement of a company or product.  In contrast, avoiding goods or services are indictments of companies or products.  By exercising consumer power responsibly, privileged individuals have power to influence the structure and organization of society.  Consumer power may be more influential than votes.  Market forces may have more impact on more individuals than the outcomes of elections.  Access to goods and services are more often the result of market forces than the result of deliberate organization by government officials.  Privileged individuals, exercising consumer power, can influence supply and demand.  Providing support to harmful entities can enable harmful outcomes.  Supporting praiseworthy institutions can incentivize other institutions to modify practices, change policies, or create better products.  Thoughtful and organized use of consumer power can have great societal impact.  Privileged individuals have power to make choices.  Voting is just one way to express preferences.  It can also be expressed with consumption.

Currently, consumer power takes many forms.  Before the monetization of the internet, consumer power was mostly expressed through the purchase of goods and services.  Modern technology has changed this.  Consumer power is now expressed through online behavior.  In the last decade, technology companies have gathered, organized, utilized, and sometimes sold users’ personal habits and information.  Companies like Facebook and Google track product purchases, browsing history, browsing time, clicks, comments, shares, location, likes, dislikes, and whatever other activities and information users are usually unaware they agreed to share.  Facebook and Google categorize these data and behaviors into user profiles.  User profiles are constructed to inform advertisements and content recommendation.  For example, typing a phrase into a search feature will influence future searches and future advertisements.  Eventually, commonly searched phrases can yield distinct results for different user profiles.   User profiles are much more comprehensive than a search history.  It has been speculated, with questionable evidence, that Google has tracked user’s mouse movements to better inform the placement of advertisements.  Amazon successfully lobbied for the legal capability to sell individual products for varying prices depending on user’s data profiles.  Theoretically, Amazon can artificially raise prices for impulsive user profiles and lower prices for cautious user profiles.  Amazon has yet to implement this feature, but it has acknowledged the legal and technical possibility.  Currently, users of any platform have very limited ability to understand or influence their personal data profile.  It is difficult, and often impossible, for a user to know exactly what information is being collected and how it informs their online experience.  Facebook, Google, Amazon, and the other major technology companies have defended data collection.  They claim that data collection makes online experiences more personal and individual.  From the consumers’ perspective, online behavior is commodified.  These practices often receive criticism.  Activists argue that the pursuit of profits has violated user’s privacy, and that technology companies fail to be transparent.  Commentators also accuse technology companies of cultivating addiction.

In this context, there is greatly expanded opportunity for consumer power.  Individuals make many choices as online consumers.  Privileged individuals should be intentional and deliberate when making these choices.  This is especially difficult.  It is nearly impossible to specifically evaluate the impact of online choices.  The major technology companies do not publicly disclose the detailed intricacies of their algorithms.  User’s choices influence content recommendation, advertisements, and monetization, but the specific impacts of each individual choice are unknown.  There are limits to current understanding, but responsible individuals should acknowledge the consequences of their online behavior.

This is the context of most individuals’ interaction with the culture wars.  Searches, views, comments, likes, and follows each contribute to the damaging impact of mass media and the culture wars.  The culture wars are cultivated by the major technology companies that service online applications.  In the pursuit of profits, these companies have commodified user’s behavior.  Consequently, they have commodified the culture wars themselves.  These technology companies, and the individuals that use their services, are complicit in the development and continuation of the culture wars.  This places a profound moral imperative on individuals that use these online services.  Choices have impact, and many users are reprehensible for contributing to damaging and harmful institutions.

Privileged, moral, and rational individuals must resist participating and contributing to the culture wars.  The culture wars perpetuate conspiracy theories, propagate disinformation, reinforce stereotypes, exacerbate polarization, and contribute to the generalized degradation of American political culture.  The most harmful content manifests online through videos, articles, posts, comments, retweets, and shares.  Most users do not seek this content.  Content recommendation algorithms ensure users encounter it.  Responsible users should resist the temptation to interact with culture war content.  Each click, each comment, and each minute spent watching and reading influences future content recommendation.  By avoiding interaction with extreme content, users can decrease the frequency of propaganda in their content feeds.  Disciplined choices can also impact the experiences of others.  For example, some social media services like Facebook use friends and family to recommend content.  By mitigating interaction with disinformation and propaganda, responsible users can also decrease the frequency of this content among the individuals they most commonly interact with.  Boycotting extreme content can also inform the personal data profiles that were constructed by major technology companies.  Individuals that avoid interaction with culture war content may eventually influence the recommendations and advertisements of any individual with similar interests and behavior patterns.  Essentially, the circulation of culture war content depends on circumstantial encounters with individuals, networks, and data profiles.  Privileged individuals can acknowledge their consumer power and avoid interaction.  By doing so, users can mitigate the impact of the culture wars and influence the collective content recommendation experience of all users.

There are additional arguments for responsible choices.  Consumers can influence the behavior of authors, journalists, and influencers with consumer power.  These sources depend on audiences.  Many persistently invite consumers to like, subscribe, comment, or interact with their articles, posts, videos, and tweets.  Most online content is monetized, and creators require user interaction to authenticate their audiences for advertisements.  In some cases, content creators prioritize user interaction at the expense of accuracy.  Highly interactive audiences yield greater attention from advertisements.  This incentivizes content creators to create provoking content.  Accuracy and authenticity are not requisites for advertisements and monetization.  This provides an opportunity for exploitation.  Sources can knowingly create and share false or misleading content in order to maximize interaction and profit.  Some sources cultivate interaction with automated accounts.  In many cases, advertisers are ambivalent.  In this infrastructure, content creators and advertisers collectively benefit from the creation and distribution of propaganda and disinformation.  More views and more clicks lead to more advertisements and more sales, even if it is channeled through false or exaggerated information.  These are the consequences of monetized online experiences.  Profit seeking individuals and institutions can exploit audiences to the detriment of truth.

This is another opportunity for rational and moral individuals to exercise consumer power.  Rational individuals should identify and avoid sources of propaganda and disinformation.  Some individuals may be compelled to rebuke false information or rebuke sources of propaganda.  This is misguided.  There is little value in contributing thoughtful commentary to thoughtless disinformation and propaganda.  Any interaction with this content legitimizes and encourages it.  In many cases, content creators are seeking negative responses.  Each additional click, view, comment, or minute contributes to monetization.  Furthermore, social media tools discourage reasoned and thoughtful commentary.  Algorithms ensure that short, sensational, and humorous comments are featured, while neutral, moderate, and researched perspectives are hidden or ignored.  Responsible individuals, making rational and moral choices, should avoid consumption of culture war content and avoid interaction with its creators and participants.  These sources do not require audiences to believe or agree with their ideas.  They seek consumption and interaction in the pursuit of profits.  Responsible individuals should recognize their consumer power and deny these sources their time and attention.  Intentional boycotts are the best means of mitigating their exploitation.  The culture wars are enabled and serviced by the mass media and major technology companies, but they are also cultivated by audiences.  Audience engagement and participation allows disinformation and propaganda to be profitable.  Responsible individuals, making rational and moral choices, can hold content creators accountable by refusing to contribute.

Conversely, consumer power can be used to promote truth and accuracy.  Some content creators prioritize fact checking, sourcing, and neutrality.  Consumer behavior can validate these practices with deliberate choices.  By directing consumption and attention to reputable sources, users can increase the exposure and legitimacy of accurate information.  Furthermore, consumer power can influence content recommendation, user data profiles, and monetization from advertisements.  Just as audiences enable propaganda and disinformation, audiences can also promote authenticity and integrity.

Unfortunately, distinguishing credible content from deceptive content requires vigilance and scrutiny.  Responsible individuals, compelled to make moral and rational choices, must maintain rigorous standards for quality information and sources.  Currently, too many sources are reprehensible and too few are commendable.  Widening partisanship and technological capability have discouraged journalistic integrity.  Most mainstream news sources and content creators fail to maintain accuracy and neutrality.  This is most evident when examining news reports about president Donald Trump.  The Harvard report referenced earlier reveals the shortcomings of mainstream media (link).  According to the report, eight of ten news reports and nine of ten television reports were critical of the president in early 2017.  Currently, most reporting maintains overtly partisan perspectives and subjective judgments.  Journalists and pundits often condemn the president before facts and details are confirmed.  At times it seems that opposition to the president is so immediate and practiced that it is the default response to all new information.  This is dangerously thoughtless.  Rather than comprehensively review all available information, discuss the implications of policy, and provide reasonable alternatives, most correspondents associate all new policies with the president’s personal faults.  By conflating the president’s moral failings with his administrations’ policies, analysts fail to inform their audiences.  Instead, the rhetoric suggests that who supports a policy is more important that what results from a policy.  This contributes to the polarizing tribalism that inhibits truth and understanding.

Thoughtlessness is not deserving of rational consumers attention.  Instead, consumer power should be directed to legitimate sources.  Criticism of Donald Trump and the administration should be dispassionate and specific.  Informed, rational, and reasonable perspectives should be developed based on policy implications.  Though most mainstream media sources fail to deliver empirical analysis, there are some commendable examples.  Responsible individuals should discover and engage with these sources.  Deliberate and intentional use of consumer power can promote sources with journalistic integrity.  By endorsing these sources, audiences can incentivize other sources to adopt standards of accuracy and neutrality.  Intentional consumer power is the best means to combat the ignorance and misunderstanding of the culture wars.  By cultivating factual sources with consumer power, audiences can contribute to factual political discourse.  Privileged individuals have power to make choices.  As consumers, individuals can choose to engage, participate, and contribute to the culture wars.  They can also choose to combat disinformation and propaganda with consumer power.  Responsible individuals should only engage with content deserving of their attention.

Social choices are a third way to respond to mass media and the culture wars.  Privileged individuals have power to make choices when voting and consuming.  Individuals also have social capital.  Responsible individuals are compelled to exhibit rationality and morality, but social circumstances may result in confrontations with irrationality and immortality.  Privileged individuals can choose how to respond.  Social norms often suggest acquiescence.  To build social capital, individuals must be accepting of diverse ideas and worldviews.  However, some social situations result in confrontations with ignorance or prejudice.  Tolerance of diverse perspectives should not extend to affirming irrational and immoral ideas.  This is especially relevant for political discourse.  Illogical reasoning is an impediment to empirical understanding.  There is complicity in affirming immorality.  Responsible individuals should not confirm incorrect or harmful ideas in pursuit of social capital.  Responsible individuals are compelled to be moral and rational.  Irrational ideas should be refuted, and immoral behaviors rebuked.  In the context of political discourse, confrontations with ignorance, prejudice, and overt partisan tribalism are opportunities to advocate for empiricism and objectivity.  In response to ignorance, responsible individuals can challenge unsubstantiated claims.  In response to prejudice, responsible individuals can expose biases and preconceptions.  Responsible individuals should not refute partisan tribalism with opposition partisan tribalism.  Ignorance cannot be refuted with ignorance.  Tribalism should only be refuted with empiricism and objectivity.  In social contexts, refuting ignorance and advocating for empiricism can promote rational political discourse.  The culture wars are dependent on misunderstanding and fallacy.  Rational political discourse can expose the many presumptions and falsehoods of partisan political culture.  Privileged individuals have the power to make choices.  Social circumstances may result in moral and rational choices.  By advocating for morality and rationality, responsible individuals can cultivate more empirical and more objective political discourse.

Mass media and the culture wars demand a response.  Privileged individuals can make choices.  Choices provide power, and power confers responsibility.  Individuals make choices by voting, by consuming, and during social interaction. In each circumstance, responsible individuals should make rational and moral choices.  Responsible choices are the best means of combating the damaging influence of mass media and the culture wars.

VI.

2019 begins another period of divided government in the United States.  Newly elected congresspersons have assembled into various congressional committees.  Some have professed their intention to investigate the legitimacy and legality of the current president.  Others have announced their intention to directly challenge the presidency in the upcoming election.  Impeachment has already been discussed.  The next two years of American democracy will be especially precarious.  It is typical that political commentators describe their subject matter with hyperbole.  However, in this instance it may actually be true.

Many congressional Democrats seem hellbent on removing Donald Trump from office.  Many liberal partisans support this effort.  Most Republicans, and the loyalists they appease, seem willing to defend the legitimacy of their president at nearly any cost.  These obsessions are remarkably short sighted. There are several potential outcomes.  Donald Trump may be impeached and convicted.  This is unlikely.  He may be challenged and defeated in the 2020 presidential election.  Or, a possibility that too few are willing to admit, he may win another constitutionally legitimate election in 2020 and serve as president for an additional four years.  Partisans pursue their preferred outcome with hysteria, but by doing so reveal themselves to be hopelessly myopic.  Each outcome fails to address the greater issues of American democracy.  Donald Trump’s departure from the office of the presidency is inevitable.  Ultimately, his fate has little influence on the continuation of partisan political culture, mass media, and the culture wars.  His departure will not address the power structures that placed him there.  Democracy after Trump will still have institutions that abuse the power of the media and the internet.  Users information, attention, and behavior will still be commodified.  Voters will still be susceptible to disinformation, propaganda, and internet addiction.  Donald Trump’s departure will also fail to account for the millions of Americans that voted for this president and supported him despite his shortcomings.  Most will likely continue to do so irrespective of investigative evidence or electoral defeat.  Donald Trump’s departure will not de-radicalize partisans and will not make American voters less susceptible to manipulation.  Essentially, the future of Donald Trump has limited significance.  The future of American democracy is at stake.  This system depends on much more than one person.

Perhaps partisans of each political affiliation should admit some uncomfortable truths.  Liberals should concede that sometimes Republicans will control the government.  Conservatives should concede that sometimes Democrats will.  Is it possible that millions of Americans are complicit in electing an underqualified, mentally unstable, racist individual that is harming untold millions of people with his ineptitude and ignorance?  Yes, that is possible.  It should be condemned.  However, twenty years from now there will still be Republicans.  They will still vote for Republican candidates, and sometimes they will control the government.  Perhaps disaffected liberals can take a more proactive role in reforming political discourse instead of projecting all of Trump’s worst characteristics on his millions of supporters.  Perhaps a more productive response would be to explain the consequences of behaviors and policies while providing reasonable alternatives.  Furthermore, disaffected liberals would be wise to acknowledge the many legitimate grievances raised by Trump supporters.  Liberals should concede the many failures of Democratic lawmakers.  Conservatives may also need to accept some uncomfortable truths.  Disinformation campaigns and propaganda have been extremely successful in cultivating belief in falsehoods.  Eventually, many conservative sympathizers may have to admit they were wrong.  Eventually, the irrationality of conspiracy theories will be exposed, and conservatives will have to return to empiricism and objectivity when developing policies and positions.  Finally, conservatives must acknowledge that future of conservativism will be without Donald Trump.

The most important concession for everyone is that Donald Trump did not author political toxicity.  He is a manifestation of it.  His exit from power, and his legacy, are not the most pressing issues in contemporary American politics.  Rather, the question is what comes next?  What is the future of truth and empiricism?  What is the response to disinformation and propaganda?  Can modern technology be used to promote rational understanding rather than addictive misinformation?  These are large questions that may require many election cycles to answer.  They will require answers that are multifaceted and comprehensive.  They may require coordination and collaboration from multiple political ideologies.  Americans of all affiliations may at times need to renounce their identity tribe to work collectively towards a healthier and improved democracy.  This is not wishful thinking.  Partisan tribalism has revealed that there is a collective desire for change.  Many are dissatisfied with the status quo and wish for circumstances to improve.  Antiestablishment rhetoric demonstrates there is a desire to hold reprehensible institutions accountable for abuses of power.  However, institutional reform will first require individual reform, and ultimately it is the responsibility of regular people to initiate change.  People created the culture wars, people enable the culture wars, and people can destroy the culture wars.  Responsible individuals can stop engaging, stop enabling, and stop being a part of the problem.  By doing so, only then can they be part of the solution.

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