The Media and Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” Speech
Have an opinion? Hold that thought.
Plenty of outrage has been flying about President Biden’s “Soul of the Nation” speech delivered last week in Philadelphia. Critics on the right have been saying he went too far by characterizing Republicans in general as violent firebrands brainwashed by his predecessor.
Except he didn’t actually do that. (Video here. Transcript here.)
That wasn’t literally the message. Nor was it the tone—although I would have written his words differently. He did pay respect to Republicans doing good. He did separate them from their lawless far-right counterparts. He did acknowledge that all Americans are entitled to disagree peacefully. As to those lawless counterparts, who are hardly an imagined threat, how could he possibly have addressed that growing problem without calling a spade a spade?
After years of GOP “gerrymandering on steroids” (REDMAP) and increasing Trump-emboldened intimidation and violence, I think most Americans needed to hear the president come right out and say it. On the other hand, Mr. Trump’s base isn’t a vestigial organ. Mainstream Republicans matter. And of course, let’s not forget the politically homeless moderates tired of both sides.
Meanwhile, critics on the left have been saying he was too soft on Republicans at large because of the left-wing perception that the entire GOP has been intentionally enabling treason. They’re not wrong about certain far-right extremists. But it’s tricky to decipher how much of the rank-and-file GOP really comprehend what the party of their ancestors has been devolving into.
For the millionth time, I find myself feeling grateful I don’t have the president’s job.
But here are two questions: Can we, as everyday American moderates, open the elusive back door to national unity? And can we reign in the media to help us?
Because most Americans don’t pore over the news for hours every day, sifting through facts objectively, and in detail, they rely on cultural cues to form their impressions—which then solidify into opinions. Sprinkle (or gush) on some emotional attachment and distrust in turns, and voters are making choices according to what intuitively feels “true,” without objectively understanding how particular issues work. That happens across the spectrum while the rival “Stepsisters” vie for power. And it places the media’s content decision makers (called “gatekeepers”) in a place of tremendous responsibility far exceeding their accountability. When financial stakeholders unethically exert influence over content creators, money and influence drive content decisions.
Independent media outlets (especially the small and/or “boring” kinds), and sensible words by emotionally intelligent public figures, are both like nectar to people who don’t want to be washed along in a populist current. But is characterizing “big media” or “big politics” as giant, nebulous machines helpful to any of us? Or is there a better way of framing them up—especially while some good players remain standing on the field? (Heaven help them.)
As commentator Robert Reich wrote for The Guardian, referring to media coverage of the president’s speech (emphasis added by me):
“This was a rare primetime address on the most important challenge facing the nation.
“But the media treated the speech as if it were just another in an endless series of partisan volleys instead of what it was – a declaration by the president of the United States that America must choose between democracy and authoritarianism…
“It is dangerous to believe that ‘balanced journalism’ gives equal weight to liars and to truth-tellers, to those intent on destroying democracy and those seeking to protect it, to the enablers of an ongoing attempted coup and those who are trying to prevent it.”
He’s not wrong. His reference to false balance in journalism is sometimes called “bothsidesism.”
By objective standards, Mr. Reich’s assessment of the threats to democracy we’re facing in the U.S. is not exaggerated. His assessment that former President Trump’s cloud of debunked lies has been a dagger in the heart of national unity (not to mention democracy and national security) is absolutely correct. He’s right that objective reality demands acknowledgment, and that enabling wildly false perceptions is dangerous.
But what do we do if millions of regular people have already culturally normalized a false narrative (by way of prevailing mood more than verified facts) and are too suspicious of tribal outsiders, too burned out with politics, and too convinced they’ve had a raw deal to revisit critical facts objectively? What if the cost of admitting they might have been had is too high for them to consider? And what if they’re too tired of being belittled by the left to distinguish between unfair trolling and real warnings from people who know and care?
What if the entire U.S. is ultimately being held hostage by one lie so perfectly suited for a party culturally groomed (by its own sense of distrust) to accept it like a familiar friend? What if a growing number of far-right Republicans have become so worked up—so convinced of their own side’s conspiracy theories—they’re ready to wage violent warfare against an “enemy” they still don’t realize is staring them down from a mirror?
Does that mean Americans who’ve figured out what the con is should stop trying to clear the smoke? Absolutely not. But what do we do with the truth we have?
The fact that political violence and intimidation are so high these days, and coming so disproportionately from the far-right, is an important element of the landscape for everyone to understand. If we have to pick our information battles, that might be a good one to emphasize. It’s an area where the emperor’s new clothes are starkly on display.
To quote from an October 2021 article in the Journal of Democracy (emphasis added by me):
What is occurring today does not resemble [the] recent past. Although incidents from the left are on the rise, political violence still comes overwhelmingly from the right, whether one looks at the Global Terrorism Database, FBI statistics, or other government or independent counts. Yet people committing far-right violence—particularly planned violence rather than spontaneous hate crimes—are older and more established than typical terrorists and violent criminals. They often hold jobs, are married, and have children….These are not isolated “lone wolves”; they are part of a broad community that echoes their ideas.
However, let’s not shy away from declaring that human beings are human beings all around and that the same logical fallacies can potentially run amuck on either side.
Because the big three networks dumped the president’s speech, millions of everyday Americans of all political stripes, who might have heard it in context, are missing the whole point of it as angry misquotes more easily dominate the narrative. In the end, flaws in the address itself, but especially the abrupt loss of media access, combined to blow an important opportunity to positively boost a rising and much-needed national cultural shift.
Sarah Longwell of The Atlantic wrote in April of this year (emphasis added by me):
“Some 35 percent of Americans—[but] 68 percent of Republicans—believe the Big Lie, pushed relentlessly by former President Donald Trump and amplified by conservative media…They think that Trump was the true victor and that he should still be in the White House today.
“I regularly host focus groups to better understand how voters are thinking about key political topics. Recently, I decided to find out why Trump 2020 voters hold so strongly to the Big Lie.
“For many of Trump’s voters, the belief that the election was stolen is not a fully formed thought. It’s more of an attitude, or a tribal pose. They know something nefarious occurred but can’t easily explain how or why. What’s more, they’re mystified and sometimes angry that other people don’t feel the same.”
I’m going to interject here that if I took for granted that a presidential election had been stolen, I’d feel violated, angry, troubled, etc. myself, regardless of whom I’d voted for.
Feelings are justified even when perceptions are inaccurate. And with a giant deception so thoroughly and expensively manufactured by a set of elite opportunists posing as cuckoos in a Republican nest—Mr. Trump stands for himself, not traditional Republican ideals—Americans in the know on this head might consider being less rancorous toward fellow citizens who were defrauded, no matter how tired the former are of being accused of outlandish things.
Politically-inspired misperceptions are what have had so many Trump supporters going out of their way to look for media and theories that seem to justify the misdirected anger they feel. Newly empowered conspiracy theorists have been having a field day. The ripple effect in conservative culture at large has been explosive, creating painful rifts—but nothing to compare with the deeper, long-established left vs. right chasm. As an outsider seeking to divide an old tribe already wary of Democrats, President Biden might as well have been stepping between a mother bear and her cub. That doesn’t mean he shouldn’t have spoken.
While President Biden serves the entire U.S. and had choices to make about things that needed to be said, it was never possible for him to separate “mainstream Republicans” from “MAGA Republicans” without offending more Republicans than he could possibly have won over. If I may nitpick a little, he should never have used the “R” word. It would have been better for him to have cut the head off the beast by generously courting good-faith conservatives and progressives together (without reference to party affiliation) while rendering Donald Trump as someone forgettable, and then decrying threats, violence, and incivility as behaviors all Americans can unite against.
Add that to the larger problem of inadequate press coverage, and what an opportunity lost!
Among regular Republicans, the MAGA approach reminds me of an affinity scam, which exploits existing feelings of solidarity in a group. Among more extreme Republicans with more advanced feelings of ill will toward the left, the MAGA approach is like a cross between an affinity scam and a “Kansas City Shuffle,” a bait-and-switch that takes advantage of the mark’s feelings of superiority, despite them being aware that they, themselves, are involved in something underhanded. Obviously, not every Republican who’s supported Mr. Trump falls into that category. But enough of them have to become a cultural force to be reckoned with.
So what now? Buried beneath all the manufactured victimhood gone viral under Trumpism, there can fester legitimate human stressors worth examining. Politicians, media creators, and the public should all take note of what made Trumpism so popular among Republicans in the first place: The practice of misdirecting blame for existing stressors upon an easy, already distrusted scapegoat (the government at large and the political left, followed by the political center, followed by the moderate right, who are subjectively perceived as being on the “left”). When Mr. Trump entered politics, the pump had already been priming gradually, at least since Ronald Reagan’s departure from office and the rise of Newt Gingrich as speaker of the House.
Sometimes I wonder how the left would look today if their own version of the Donald had slipped into the spotlight. Not everything would have been the same given inherent cultural differences. But no angry, fed-up person on either side should consider themselves protected from easy manipulation. It’s the emotional attachment to one pre-packaged ideology that does us in.
Only by understanding, respecting, and constructively addressing real stressors Republicans experience can moderates from either side talk the far-right down from the ledge.
The only way to topple Mr. Trump’s false claims from their protected altar in Republican culture is to court the entire conservative base diplomatically. But it must be done without legitimizing what isn’t true or fair. After years of MAGA damage, it’s a careful combing process—not unlike the task of sifting meticulously through the rubble at Ground Zero. But even those suffering from self-inflicted wounds are among the precious living. And pain is pain—which is what’s driving so much distrust.
More about the influence of Mr. Trump’s false claims of election fraud: To quote a paper by the University of Texas at Austin’s Center for Media Engagement (emphasis added by me):
“The Center for Media Engagement interviewed 56 people who believed that Donald Trump most likely won the 2020 presidential election to talk about their political outlooks, how they constructed their picture of what happened in the election, and what sources they trusted to tell them the truth.
“Perceptions of widespread fraud didn’t hinge on a specific piece of evidence or a report from one particular source. Often, participants relied on an accumulation of suspicions to support their conclusion, instead of outlining how the election could have been skewed in Biden’s favor. The interviews made clear that there is a crisis of trust among this group, leading many to feel they had to do their own research in order to find out the truth and some to doubt whether the truth is available to them at all. Further, their identities were often more complex than zealous Trump loyalists; there was variation in how deeply held people’s beliefs about election fraud were and many people reported using a range of sources to learn about politics.”
Politically, the timing of any speech calling out Donald Trump was excellent when President Biden spoke. By numerous measures, most Americans at large already believed Biden really won in 2020. And following so much damning evidence revealed by the Jan. 6 Committee, plus the public’s discovery that Mr. Trump had improperly taken classified documents, and primary elections where more members of his resistance within the party weren’t just defeated but threatened by the MAGA crowd, Mr. Trump’s credibility nationally was suffering as never before. And it continues to suffer.
Perhaps most importantly, loyalty among his less certain supporters was becoming more shaken, and therefore more addressable.
And what of the media? Independent journalism and commentary are both vital and diminishing rapidly as the pool of information gatekeepers becomes tinier. Trolls dominate social media with the help of algorithms lucrative to the companies running them. Most subscription news feeds marketed to save users time are programmed in a way that deepens information bias rather than offering balance or quality control. None of this is new. But how do we get micro solutions to catch up with macro problems?
Censorship isn’t the answer. Smart, organized responses are.
If we spend our lives blaming the media exclusively, then we toss away our own empowerment to change things, as well as our ability to strategize as effectively as we must to make a solid difference.
As media consumers, we can become more aware of the biases we encounter, but especially the biases in ourselves. We can educate each other about—and thus inoculate ourselves against—a whole catalog of logical fallacies, manipulation tactics, propaganda red flags, etc. we’re constantly being bombarded with. We can support independent sources. And we can avoid the mistake of thinking we aren’t susceptible—after all, profit is profit and human beings are human beings.
Moderates must unite to replace generalized distrust on both sides with greater savvy about how information and the mind work. And let’s help greater humility and cross-partisan social identities become more popular.
We can be supportive of any progress made. Never say, “too little too late” to anyone doing a good thing. Let’s be grateful for courageous Republicans of conscience willing to stand up against MAGA fury with firmness, despite ostracism, threats of violence, and the machinations of a would-be despot. Let’s be grateful for honest Republicans willing to comb through evidence objectively rather than simply running with popular suspicions. And let’s be grateful for conservatives from all walks of life realizing that the far-right’s disproportionate rage is perhaps the greatest proof there is that Trumpism was never grounded in reality, to begin with.
I’m also grateful for many people left of center for showing extraordinary restraint and still seeing the good in conservatism despite the terrible examples the attention-getting far-right have been setting and the far-left caricaturing. Not everyone is part of the peanut gallery. I’m grateful for moderates of all stripes still trying to keep the discussion civilized.
We’re at a time when kindness and restraint are nation-saving skills. It’s never too late to connect with our fellow Americans on both sides. Even the most hard-headed people are still part of the national tapestry and our own human family. We can make peace. And we can gently—ever so gently—for as long as we breathe, maintain objective truth.
