There’s Glenn Beck pitching gold as a hedge against nonexistent hyperinflation. Fred Thompson hawking reverse mortgages. The acolytes of direct-mail pioneer Richard Viguerie setting up operations that scare the bejeesus out of old people but use most of the money they raise to pay themselves and their consultants. The talk radio hosts who repeatedly insinuate that Hillary Clinton murdered Vince Foster—and then quickly break for a commercial. Mike Huckabee peddling diabetes cures and Ben Carson praising the glories of glyconutrients to their evangelical fans. The endless production of simpleminded right-wing books as a handy income stream, some of them with more than the usual whiff of corruption. …KevinDrum,MoJo
Here’s the thing as it appears to someone who lived far from America — home — during the two decades between the start of the Kennedy presidency and the start of the Reagan presidency. During that period the media — from TV news to the quantity of published books of all kinds to the numbers of new magazines and Hollywood films — expanded in all directions and covered all kinds of human behavior. The ability to con huge numbers of people is a well-paid industry that goes way beyond Madison Avenue. Take violence. How much violence — real and fictional — did your mother witness between the ages of (say) 20 and 40? How much have you seen during the same period in your life? Or just daily? Start by asking yourself how much TV you’ve watched over a lifetime…
Yes, I mean all real killings on TV news as well as handheld video clips caught by passersby? plus all fictional murders? plus descriptions and still photos from (say) on-the-ground media during the Vietnam war or in Iraq? plus the repetitive videos we saw on 9/11 and continue to see intermittently? How likely is it that you will now be a reliably sensible voter when the issue is the use of force by police? Are you more likely to give ’em all the rope they need because you’ve “seen” all the violence they have to deal with? How reliable would you be on a jury?
What about the alleged murder of a White House lawyer by the president’s wife? Remember? Was that fiction or fact?
If a murder is seen in a gritty, realistic Hollywood drama, how is it remembered? Does some part of your memory treat it as “real”? Fiction? or representative of “the world we live in”? What roles do age and education play in one’s understanding of the distinctions between fiction and fact? When a political commentator or a contemporary novelist suggest that “we don’t know the whole story,” isn’t that a hint from someone “on the inside” that, yes, it was probably Hillary who finished off Vince Foster? And if someone who is “clearly’ guilty of murder disguised as suicide is now running for the presidency, aren’t we in “real trouble”? How many Iraqis is it rational to kill in view of their (fictional) “weapons of mass destruction”? If Alice was hallucinating about rabbits, should we let our children read about her? I mean, where do we draw the line?
In the end, Trump took a look at the conservative movement and decided that they were amateurs. The big con needs more than talk radio or direct mail or scary ads. It needs national TV provided willingly and often—and Trump knew exactly how that game worked. He’s not running his con any differently than conservatives always have. He just knows how to pull it off way better than they do. …Drum, MoJo
Americans — thank you, media! — are ripe for not only mass delusion but for any lip-smacker of a con. Thanks to our habit of blurring the line between fiction and reality, we are vulnerable to cons at all times of the day and at all levels of our lives. Right now it’s the freedom of speech con and the Trump con! The media make it so easy! And we pay them so much for the privilege of being conned!