- Paul Krugman’s last NYT column, in part about what has changed in the past 25 years, including the collapse of trust in the elites;
- Helen Lewis echoes Fareed Zakaria yesterday: the mainstream media is part of the “elite” system that has given way to podcasters like Joe Rogan, institutions giving way to tribal leaders;
- Americans are less happier than other nations, especially the Nordic ones, because of Americans’ antipathy to anything perceived as socialist, like national health care;
- And a problematic OnlySky piece that begs the question of what “faith” entails.
Two items today relate the Zakaria piece noted yesterday, about the collapse of trust in institutions in preference to individuals. First is this, relevant somewhat indirectly, but important journalistically.
NY Times, Paul Krugman, 9 Dec 2024: My Last Column: Finding Hope in an Age of Resentment [gift link]
Paul Krugman is retiring from writing his column for the NY Times, which he’s been doing since January 2000! So what does he have to say about what’s changed in 25 years?
What strikes me, looking back, is how optimistic many people, both here and in much of the Western world, were back then and the extent to which that optimism has been replaced by anger and resentment. And I’m not just talking about members of the working class who feel betrayed by elites; some of the angriest, most resentful people in America right now — people who seem very likely to have a lot of influence with the incoming Trump administration — are billionaires who don’t feel sufficiently admired.
Back around 1999, he says, most Americans felt pretty good. But that was before 9/11, and the financial crisis of 2008.
Why did this optimism curdle? As I see it, we’ve had a collapse of trust in elites: The public no longer has faith that the people running things know what they’re doing, or that we can assume that they’re being honest.
He makes this particular point:
…some of the most resentful people in America right now seem to be angry billionaires.
…
So is there a way out of the grim place we’re in? What I believe is that while resentment can put bad people in power, in the long run it can’t keep them there. At some point the public will realize that most politicians railing against elites actually are elites in every sense that matters and start to hold them accountable for their failure to deliver on their promises. And at that point the public may be willing to listen to people who don’t try to argue from authority, don’t make false promises, but do try to tell the truth as best they can.
Yes, the point is that the politicians should be held accountable — and the way that is traditionally done is through the checks and balances of our system of government, or what Jonathan Rauch calls the “constitution of knowledge,” which conservatives dismiss as the deep state that they would like dismantled. So that their politicians can get away with anything.
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More to the point of Zakaria’s piece.
The Atlantic, Helen Lewis, 5 Dec 2024: The ‘Mainstream Media’ Has Already Lost, subtitled “The newspapers and networks of the 20th century are ceding ground. And the people taking their place aren’t playing by the same rules.”
This is another way of talking about, as Zakaria did, the decline in trust in institutions, in preference to individuals. To me this is precisely analogous with the preference among many for tribal morality and politics, where a single strong leader tells everyone what to do, and away from a consensus of “experts” from a coalition of tribes, and never mind evidence or facts.
Lewis begins with an anecdote about Joe Rogan declining to interview Kamala Harris, because he rejected *her* schedule. While Rogan and Trump managed to meet, with an interview racking up 40 million views, Harri’s Fox News interview drew only 14.5 million views.
Those figures demonstrate the absurdity of talking about the “mainstream media” as many still do, especially those who disparage it. According to a 2021 Pew Research Center survey, Americans with a wide range of political views generally agree about which outlets fall within this definition: newspapers such as The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal and television networks such as CNN. Everyone else who’s disseminating information at scale is treated like a couple of hipsters running a craft brewery who are valiantly competing with Budweiser.
Rogan and Elon Musk are the “mainstream media” now, Lewis says. Then some background about how the idea of “mainstream media” was in part a technological artifact.
The concept of the mainstream media arose in the 20th century, when reaching a mass audience required infrastructure—a printing press, or a broadcast frequency, or a physical cable into people’s houses—and institutions.
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Somehow, the idea that the mainstream media is made up of major corporations has persisted, even though the internet, smartphones, and social media have made it possible for anyone to reach an audience of millions. Two of the most important information sources of this election cycle have a job that didn’t exist even a decade ago: Acyn Torabi and Aaron Rupar, who watch hours of political rallies and TV appearances in order to clip them for social media. These “clippers” can drive days of discussion, particularly when the context of a remark is disputed—such as when Vance’s 2021 remarks characterizing Democrats as “childless cat ladies” went viral.
And,
The main beneficiary of our outdated ideas about the “mainstream media” is the political right. Not so long ago, conservatives resented their exclusion from the MSM, because they thought it painted them as extreme: Sarah Palin complained about the “lamestream media,” while the late Rush Limbaugh preferred to call it the “state-controlled media” or the “drive-by media.”
But that’s changed. Being outside the mainstream is, today, seen as more authentic, more in tune with Real America.
And so on, with many details and examples. Once again, the gist as I see it is a retreat from Jonathan Rauch’s “constitution of knowledge” (review of his book here) and its assumption of a shared objective truth, to a preference for tribal leaders who tell their followers whatever they want to hear.
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Why are Americans less happy than many other nations, especially those in Northern Europe?
AlterNet, Alex Henderson, 9 Dec 2024: ‘Only high-income nation without it’: DC insider explains why Americans are so miserable
According to The World Happiness Report, the United States fell to #23 in terms of happiness earlier this year — way behind Norway, the Netherlands, Denmark, Iceland and other countries in Europe.
The gist:
“The happiest countries have capitalist economies and democratic governments,” Becker argues, “but they provide their people with essential tools for success — tools that American conservatives brand as ‘socialist.’ Universal health care is one. The United States is the only high-income nation without it.”
Becker continues, “Americans pay nearly four times as much for prescription drugs and higher costs for hospitalization and doctors than people in other developed countries. More than 27 million Americans still have no health insurance.”
What is the big picture explanation here? Why are Americans so resolutely individualistic that they brand as “socialist” policies that make everyone happier, raise all boats as it were? And would be less complex than our current health care system, which is so resented by many (see the recent CEO killer).
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This piece begs the question of what “faith” means.
OnlySky, Bruce Ledewitz, 5 Dec 2024: The rehabilitation of truth, subtitled “You cannot build a secular civilization into the future without a kind of faith.”
Well, erm, he finds the source of attacks on truth with postmodernism on the left, in the late 20th century. Nothing is real; everything is a social construct. There’s the philosophical issue of how we know anything is so, which entails a kind of “faith” about our knowledge of the world; but citing it invites the “faithful” to conflate that use of the word with their notion of religious faith. “The argument that science is an ideology and the dismissal of claims of objective and universal truth…” Maybe, but this was an academic fad that no one takes seriously any more.
The writer is a lawyer. I find this piece mostly incoherent. Here’s his gist:
Our goal should be the building of a secular civilization. But you cannot build a secular civilization without a kind of faith. Granted, it must be defensible faith. But if truth is real, then faith—in expertise, for example—can be warranted. Even without my knowing anything about science, I can have faith in the pronouncements of scientists about vaccines and climate change because the scientific tradition is worthy of respect.
As I suspected, he is conflating various meanings of the word “faith.” (Philosophically, we can argue about whether we have “faith” in our senses, or whether to what extent what we perceive is real.) He waffles, but “faith” is not the right word to use about truth, or science. The word to use is “confidence” based on past results.
