Donald Trump and the tyranny of the ill-informed

Democrats continue to point fingers at why Donald Trump won the presidential election. Bernie Sanders, the independent senator from Vermont, thinks it's because Democrats are out of touch with the economic issues that matter to the American working class.

It's no surprise that a Democratic Party that has abandoned the working class would find that the working class has abandoned them, he said. This is a rather condescending view from someone who claims to be an advocate for workers.

Sanders believes Kamala Harris lost the election because Democrats didn't speak to the working class with enough empathy and concern. But these voters are not five-year-olds who need to be cajoled into good behavior. When you respect people, you also hold them accountable for the choices they make.

This election was not about politics. These were fundamental principles, and voters knew exactly what they were voting for. The choice was clear between a candidate who pledged to defend America's founding values, democracy and the rule of law, and a populist demagogue who indulged in resentment and promised to lower the price of food. 'grocery store.

It’s infantilizing to assume, as Sanders does, that the working-class voters he champions aren’t or shouldn’t be interested in things like America’s democratic traditions. The founders of the Americas were largely self-taught farmers and traders. George Washington had virtually no formal education. The Federalist papers were anti-Federalist papers and were also debated by ordinary people in coffeehouses, homes, and public meetings. It is often said that the working class built America, but they also helped lay its intellectual foundation. We have remained faithful to this tradition for much of our history. The generations who fought two world wars to defend democracy would have booed a candidate like Donald Trump off the stage. They certainly would never have elected him president.

Now things are different. Voters elected an authoritarian party because they were unhappy with the price of eggs. This is unsustainable. If a majority of Americans are willing to trade democracy for the promise, mostly illusory, of some economic security, then the American experiment is over.

However, there may be hope. I said earlier that voters knew exactly what they were voting for. They certainly could have known if they had made a little effort to find out. But maybe not.

In a recent poll, despite two years of often spectacular growth, 56 percent of voters thought we were in a recession. Half of voters thought the unemployment rate was at its highest level in 50 years when in reality it is at its lowest level in 50 years. Half of voters thought the stock market was down for the year, even though at the time of the survey it was up more than 25 percent.

In other words, Americans live in two different worlds, with different realities.

Why is this? If you are a news junkie, it is possible to compare several online sources and find out the truth. But most people get their news from just a handful of sources. A recent study found that more than half of Americans get their news from social media. Worse yet, 20% of Americans get their news from social media influencers. But even more traditional media organize the news to satisfy their viewers. News is now just another form of entertainment.

If, for example, you watch Fox News, you will have a very different view of the world than if you watch MSNBC. In a trial in which a jury found Donald Trump civilly liable for the sexual assault of E. Jean Carroll, MSNBC mentioned the controversy 440 times in the first five months of 2023, leading up to the May 2023 verdict. Fox News mentioned it seven times. This pattern repeats for a whole series of questions.

And when negative stories about Trump are brought up on Fox, it's often in an attempt to explain them away. In some cases, the channel simply lies to its audience-seeking viewers. Fox News famously paid $787 million to settle a defamation suit stemming from its false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.

So, incredible as it may seem, many voters, especially in rural areas where there are fewer media outlets to choose from, may not fully understand what Trump has said and done. The data confirms this. For example, only one in five voters knew that Donald Trump said his claims of voter fraud in the 2020 election were grounds for him to repeal the Constitution.

As dire as this sounds, it's also good news, because it's something we can fix.

If you voted for Donald Trump in November and understood that he plans to undermine the rule of law and destroy American democracy, then you are the problem. In one survey, one in four Republicans said that if Trump loses the 2024 election, he should declare the results invalid and do whatever is necessary to take office. It's not American. If you're one of those voters, you can dress in red, white and blue and wave the flag all you want. But you are not a patriot. You are a danger to everything this country stands for.

But if you're just confused or unaware, you're not beyond repair. And if there are enough of you, there may be hope that Trump's victory will not spell the death knell for the American experiment as it appears to be at first glance.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Our commitment to press freedom is one of the things that makes America great, so whatever the cure, it's not censorship.

But something must be done before the rot becomes incurable. To borrow a phrase from the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan (D-N.Y.), we can all live happily together in a country where everyone has their own opinions. We cannot live together in a country where everyone has their own realities.

Chris Truax is an appellate lawyer who chaired John McCain's Southern California primary campaign in 2008.

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