The virus targeting democracy
The old proverb “A lie is halfway round the world before the truth has got its boots on” has been widely attributed to Mark Twain or Winston Churchill. This attribution, like Ron DeSantis’ recent Churchillian drift is, ironically, fake. Neither man said it. But a similar phrase can be traced back to Virgil’s Aeneid: “Fama, malum qua non aliud velocius ullum.“ which the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs translates as “Rumour, than whom no other evil thing is faster.“ So it’s safe to say that fake news is nothing new: ancient, in fact. What is new is the scale, speed and possible impact of spread.
Quick refresher: a virus, biological or technological, spreads by propagating through nodes in a network (or cells in a body), converting them one-by-one into attacking adjacent nodes until they outnumber the incumbent nodes and can seize control. The modes of attack are remarkably varied and innovative - I remember a doctor at school recommending a book on viruses as a “fascinating treatise on weaponry”. There is no cure for any biological virus. Vaccines are preventatives, to mitigate the effects of the virus should you catch it, and anti-viral treatments are designed to alleviate symptoms, attempting to give the body sufficient support to reverse the virus’ effects. So how does this apply to democracy? Well, viruses subvert the body’s own ‘machinery’ to their agenda. So the electorate is the body with us as the cells…yes, but how?
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Thought and idea viruses are, arguably, similar. A fun example: if I tell you not to think of an elephant… you’ve just thought of an elephant. Now you’re substituting another object, possibly another animal, but the elephant was there briefly. Seth Godin coined the term “viral marketing” to exploit this and a number of other, more subtle, psychological effects to market products and services. Allegedly, there is no known cure for marketing viruses, either.
Wait, is that a fact, or did I just make that last statement up? I did say “allegedly” which means I can deny stating it as a fact, but you still might have read it as a fact and, due to the declarative impact of the statement (“no known cure!!“), might be inclined to quote it to a friend in the cafe, with or possibly without the “allegedly”. And so it spreads. News media outlets use this clickbait trick often, in their headlines or bylines. Often, one finds that the meat of the story is nowhere near as succulent as the sizzling headline led you to believe.
Technology is an amplifier, augmenting good and bad with equanimity. Social media give everyone on the planet with a phone and an internet connection a platform to say whatever they like to whomever they like. AI simply adds a veneer of eloquence. We all have a potential thought virus (elephant?) for anyone to pick up and propagate, if it gets their attention. It just needs to get their attention. It needs to grab them. By the p*ssy if necessary, as long as it’s my message and not the other guy’s.
This amplifier has been loud for years, but in this record election year the noise, the clamour, the outrage will likely be fearful - quite literally.
Viral politics
Politics has always been corrupt: even in the hallowed demos of ancient Athens orators used cunning rhetorical tricks to persuade or distract citizens. It’s arguably why ancient Greek democracy barely lasted a century. The West is so distant from major conflict and demagoguery that most of us have forgotten that democracy is not an entitlement. It is a surprisingly fragile privilege that must be vigilantly monitored and defended. From physical encroachment, sure, but mostly from thought viruses: lest we become the instruments of our democratic body’s own destruction, like viral cells.
Politics should appeal to reason, but in the clamour of shortened media cycles and social media, it has become more urgent, more visceral. Our most visceral motive is, of course, fear. Fear and anger are far more stupefying than love and happiness, let alone reason. If you want a crowd to follow you, urgently, then either get them fearful or angry, or preferably both. This is the method of the demagogue. Appealing to reason is simply too slow: let them think and you’ll lose momentum, reducing their fear or outrage.
In this way most of our frenzied, urgent media favors the demagogue, the politically-charged populist, not the reflective liberal or conservative, who will either be shouted down, literally, or seem antithetical to the overall energy of a TV debate.
The antivirus
The standard anti-viral response is “you don’t have to listen/watch/read”. This is not wrong but it is weak. It’s the equivalent of advising you not to click on any email links or attachments. It works, but somewhat impedes your ability to communicate. Similarly, how often have you heard someone complain about the info-sewage on X (formerly Twitter), repeatedly? It’s like complaining about a candy habit. To lesser and greater extents none of us can resist rumour, or fama as Virgil would say, if it provokes sufficient interest. A good friend of mine is a professed non-gossip, but get him talking about golf and he’s off like a proverbial fisher wife. We are social animals and we all have our triggers.
So, what’s the remedy?
1. Regulate your exposure
Western news media, particularly in America, is increasingly “infotainment”: news conflated with entertainment - opinions, debates, and spicy tidbits of gossip padded around important but more dull news to keep our attention, like a parent with a bored toddler.
Don’t be a bored toddler! Stick to topics that interest you, gauging the level of interest and regulating appropriately. Trump’s court battles and possible re-election are a dramatic storyline, but, as with any drama, if the script is crap, the dialogue overwrought and the scenes too long, which they invariably are in the current news cycle, then switch shows.
2. Media diet vaccine - a small dose of opposition
A vaccine works by giving the host a small dose of the virus in order to stimulate the host’s natural immune responses. So, get a small dose of the virus: see what the opposite political spectrum looks like. No, not what your side is telling you the opposite view is, because your side (whichever side, I’m afraid!) exaggerates the opposition’s extremes to activate you. Don’t fall for it. Seek the actual opposite views, plural.
They will likely have extreme, shouty views that could confirm your own media bias, so seek more moderate voices. Assume that they have sensible people like you and try to understand why they hold an opposing view. If you’re assuming they’re all idiots then you’ve likely succumbed to the virus.
3. Abstain until the fever reduces
If you find yourself ranting at the media, replying to news threads that nobody will read or notice friends exchanging glances while you’re in full caffeinated news flow at the cafe, it may be time to detox. It sounds facile, but it really is remarkable how much difference a few days away from the media cycle can make. Here are the steps to start and finish your basic news detox:
With over half the planet going to the polls in 2024, we need to guard our media nutrition and try to maintain a moderate perspective, regardless of where we sit on the political spectrum, or we risk our fragile democracies being subsumed by the clamour and propaganda of demagogues.
Hands-on Generative AI Senior Architect | Senior Lead Engineer | Enterprise | ChatGPT | LLM | Cloud | Big Data | Customer Success | Systems Integration | Technology & Business Modernization
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