By Ande Jacobson
2024 is shaping up to be a year to remember. Watching the chaos swirl across the country with respect to our upcoming election in combination with the extraordinary legal proceedings in play is at times maddening, and at other times hopeful. One way to stop being affected by the highs and lows is to disengage from the rage merchants. That means ignoring pretty much every news show – be it on cable, broadcast television, streaming video, or radio. In most cases, the news isn’t actually news but is instead a compendium of rage mongers trying to outdo one another to gain audience. The hosts are performing for their audiences, intentionally angering them because high emotion sells and keeps people coming back for more.
Teri Kanefield recently released a book on disinformation called A Firehose of Falsehood. I wrote two separate reviews of the book here and here because it’s an important one that everyone should read. It’s in a graphic novel format, and it tells the story of how disinformation has evolved through time. Most importantly, it not only provides insights into how to recognize disinformation, it instructs readers on how to construct their virtual raincoats to protect themselves from it. Beyond her most recent book though, Teri also has written an excellent blog series about what’s going on with respect to the rage industry. Yes, that’s what the news has mostly become. It’s why she doesn’t watch but instead chooses to read her news from reputable sources, ignoring opinion pieces and focusing instead on fact-based reporting without the hype.
Teri’s blog series can be found here:
- Part 1: There are no Yankees here.
- Part 2: Creating the Conditions for Mainstream Conspiracy Theories.
- Part 3: The Perils of Legal Punditry.
- Part 4: Social Media Makes it Worse
- Part 5: Get the Fighters Fighting and Keep Them Fighting
- Part 6: Invented Narratives and the Outrage Industry
- Part 7: The Outrage Machine Strikes Again: The 14th Amendment Section 3 Debacle
- Conclusion: What To Expect Going Forward
It’s best to read the series in order although the articles do work as standalone pieces if one chooses to skip around. In the series, she not only discusses how disinformation is used to foment rage, she shows readers how so-called experts provide greatly simplified “hot takes” to hype their audiences and keep them enraged. This is especially true with a glut of legal experts who have large social media followings and/or cable news viewership. She’s tried to educate people for quite some time now about the dangers of getting pulled into this self-feeding rage cycle, but as she points out in her series, it’s a never ending battle to tamp down the rage stoked by rage-inducing simplifications extolled by the so-called pundits. Instead, she’s chosen to stop that battle and focus on writing thoughtful, well-researched pieces on various aspects of our history and the legal system.
Personally, I used to follow a number of sources that have degraded over time becoming far too entrenched in the rage machine. While there are differences between the political poles, there is rage mongering across that ecosystem, on the hard right using lies and false narratives to enrage their followers, and on the left making simplifications and predictions that cause rage when they don’t come to pass. This doesn’t mean that there’s no difference between the ideologies or policies. Democracy is being attacked from the right in this election year with the goal of ending our democratic form of government in favor of authoritarian rule. The middle and left are trying to strengthen democracy to allow it to continue, but with the advent of social media and news as entertainment, all are engaging in tactics to gain and retain viewership that are unhealthy and detrimental to the public at large.
That said, I agree with Teri and prefer to read my news from fact-based sources rather than watch it, and I appreciate well-researched in-depth analyses as well while trying to avoid opinion slant. I follow a few reputable sources on social media or though newsletters as well such as Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American, Jay Kuo’s The Status Kuo, Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse, Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist, and a few others. I also read a couple of reputable newspapers, like Teri, ignoring the opinion pieces most of the time.
This year is an extremely political one for those caught in that ecosystem, but rather than running around with our hair on fire 24/7, it’s also important to focus on other aspects of life. The issues surrounding this year’s elections at the federal, state, and local levels are important and deserve time and study so that we can all vote responsibly, but it’s also important to take time out to do something else. To eat healthfully. To exercise. To take care of our health and medical needs. To socialize with friends and family either in person or remotely depending on our comfort level and health. To help our neighbors. To get our taxes done. To take care of our homes. To take care of our families. To work and/or study. To learn something new. To support the arts for intellectual and creative stimulation. To get away from our screens and read a book. To learn something new. In other words, to live our lives.
And yes, we do need to follow current events responsibly and not pass on hype and disinformation. As Teri has mentioned in numerous posts, articles, and books, the advent of so much information at our fingertips makes it incumbent on us all to vet the information we consume. We can’t assume that everything we hear or read is true. We have to verify it and be responsible about what we put out there ourselves. If we hear or read something that triggers a strong emotional response, take a step back and really consider why we had that response.
The unprecedented events happening around us provide an opportunity to learn. Learning how our government and legal system works is not a bad thing, but we also need to do so with realistic expectations. Things don’t always go the way we want them to, but we can still learn from them, and that learning works better if we do it calmly, without succumbing to the rage machine based on mind-numbing simplifications.
References:
https://agoodreedreview.com/2023/08/25/wear-a-raincoat/
https://agoodreedreview.com/2024/02/13/book-a-firehose-of-falsehood-2/
Heather Cox Richardson’s Letters from an American
Jay Kuo’s The Status Kuo
Joyce Vance’s Civil Discourse
Katelyn Jetelina’s Your Local Epidemiologist
https://terikanefield.com/
Teri Kanefield’s blog series on disinformation:
- Part 5: Get the Fighters Fighting and Keep Them Fighting
- Part 6: Invented Narratives and the Outrage Industry
- Part 7: The Outrage Machine Strikes Again: The 14th Amendment Section 3 Debacle
- Conclusion: What To Expect Going Forward
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