From the Top
No, Trump supporters, I’m sorry to burst your disinformation bubble, however many of you are still sticking to Trump’s 2 main threads of falsehoods regarding the election and the current Covid-19 pandemic.
First, the election. Where to start?
To take just one glaring and anxiety-inducing example: In the middle of last month, Reich-wing blogger Dan Bongino pissed kerosene on the fire of nutjob conspiracy theorists by posting that members of the Democratic Party will attempt a coup on election day in order to instill their chosen nominee in the White House, overriding election results and nullifying the ballots of Republicans. On Facebook, the video was viewed 2.9 million times as of October 141. Of course, it is not true, but that doesn’t stop a good bad made up story from uncritically spreading through the rumor mill, gaining a life of its own and growing. Now, there are multiple loud calls for election day violence, all coming from the right-wing of the Republican Party2. To him and his trigger-ready followers, Bongino wasn’t engaging in dangerous rhetoric, he was ““exposing LIBERAL violence.” Yeah, right, and the people wanting to kidnap and kill the governors of Michigan and Virginia were liberal lefties with guns, hand grenades and plots to run sham kangaroo courts to justify their murder of democratically elected officials. Within the sweep of the stoked calls for violence3, even with Trump’s dog whistle to his Proud Boy, KKK and Nazi followers “Stand back and stand by” shows his true colors.
I only chose 1 specific instance here, but there are literally thousands of persons — Trump supporters being the vast majority — who are spreading disinformation about the election, dissuading the citizenry from participating, and robocalls to voters in Florida and a few other states leaving menacing and threatening messages against those who would vote for Biden. In Michigan, minority communities received calls from 2 Repub pundits who gave recorded information to voters which was patently false, trying to trick voters into not voting, making listeners think their votes would not count. The bullshit is so thick you would think it was fertilizer for money trees. Election rumors also include the illegitimacy of mail-in ballots. Not to say mail-in ballots don’t have a legitimate basis for concern and care — nobody would say the system is perfect — but creating uncertainty and the spreading of falsehoods among an ill-informed public is a central recipe for election chaos — and certainly voter suppression. Some hypothesize that should Trump seem on election day itself to be leading, he will call for election officials to stop counting mail-in ballots, and seemingly put the election is stasis, cementing a win before all cast votes are counted. A recent long but important article in The Atlantic cements the case for this possibility, wrangling behind the scenes being vividly exposed and documented within. We can only hope civic and state election laws may be victorious in preventing back-handed attempts to create Trump’s desired coup from within.
The article can be found here: https://bit.ly/3kKrebD and can be found in easily readable and printable form here: https://bit.ly/3hY5mYI
Glen Beck (along with pundits and politicians on Fox News and OAN) is also pushing the baseless idea that Democrats are plotting a coup. Of course this is from the very same mindset who think there is such an organization as “Antifa” (which is an idea, not a group) and that they are violent, while justifying the actions of and failing to condemn violence from Right-wing groups, paramilitary/survivalists and Christian Nationalist groups, the Proud Boys and similar. Has a single Repug with a considerable audience made a loud condemnation against the Michigan militant Republicans who wanted to kill their governor? Take a guess.
We should also not forget that in CA, the official state Fuckublican Party is suing to be able to put false mail-in ballot collection boxes in low-income and minority neighborhoods. A political party which itself admits4 must suppress the commonality of voting to win political seats, in my opinion doesn’t deserve to have those seats. Trump himself accidentally told the truth for once and admitted to this very fact out loud, saying “…you’d never have a Republican elected in this country again…”5 if it weren’t for voter suppression.
Are we supposed to conclude this is a bad thing?
When it comes to the election information crisis, there is a cozy partner in the bed of disinformation: Covid-19 and the pandemic — particularly what we can all do to save lives. Millions of Americans are blissfully ignorant of the safety and reliability of simple procedures to prevent acquisition and transmission. At anti-mask rallies, people have been yelling out against the invasion of liberties at the request to simply be considerate of others, doing so as if they are standing up like heroes against a creeping tyranny. The number of conspiracy and anti-scientific hypotheses which have been bandied about in the past several months include “masks cause Coronavirus” (even Congressman Louis Gohmert (R, {shock}, who contracted the virus, spread this one)6, that if you don’t have certain conditions — diabetes, obesity, etc. — you won’t catch the virus, that it’s “no worse than the flu” and that you cannot catch it twice. Not one of these, surprisingly, is true.
Scientific American magazine7 released an article paring down the thousand of confusing and even sometimes competing misinformations spreading faster than Covid-19 itself. These include that it was manufactured in a lab in China, it was intentionally released in an elite power grab, that #BLM protests are to blame for the increased spread, an FDA-approved vaccine will be worse than the Coronavirus itself, and let’s not forget Hydroxychloroquine. Refer to the article, free online, for more information on each of these subjects and their mythbusting.
A recent study by 4 media and social researchers for Cornell University published a study called “Coronavirus misinformation: quantifying sources and themes in the COVID-19 ‘infodemic’”. They looked at the viral [pun intended] campaign of dangerous information being spread and re-spread, mostly on social media. It’s eye-opening — but entirely expected — conclusion?
It is especially notable that while misinformation and conspiracy theories promulgated by ostensibly grassroots sources, such as anti-vaccination groups, 5G opponents, and political extremists, do appear in our analysis in several of the topics, they contributed far less to the overall volume of misinformation than more powerful actors, in particular the US President.
That’s right. The most powerful person on the planet (arguably, as Putin is up there), the person with immediate access to the most knowledgeable professionals on the planet, the person who could have actually put in motion the processes which could have significantly reduced the spread of the virus, instead is spreading misinformation about it. This is dangerous, has led to more infections, has led to more hospital admissions (even taking some hospitals into critical capacity) and led to more deaths. Considerably more deaths.
I am perpetually interested in the subject of population dynamics and statistics. See my previous blog post regarding this. So the question I want to examine here is: “How bad is the situation right now?” Consider that the US has only about 4.8% of the world population. Yet we have nearly 21% of the world Coronavirus cases. Let’s look at that graphically.
Data as of Oct. 21, 2020
The orange areas are the US. So, less than 5% of the world population, but 16% of the global Coronavirus deaths. That’s not a comparison of hospital admissions or infections, that’s deaths. In this, what is supposed to be the world’s most advanced, monied and technologically sophisticated 1st world country. This, in and of itself, shows there is clearly something wrong with the application of the technology and healthcare resources which needs attention. (As a separate issue, this is also causing many to re-evaluate the bass-ackward way America does healthcare, leading more and more to — thankfully — look at alternatives which will replace our current system with a single-payer or Medicare for all system or similar.)
Now let’s look at China, compared to us.
Once again, orange is us, and this time, blue is China. The US has 16% of the population of China, yet 98% of the deaths between the two countries.
There are 2 things to consider here.
First, I know many will argue that China underreports their Covid deaths. The source, however, uses information provided by the WHO (no, Trumpers, they are not “pro-China”. Duh). Yet even if we double the blue area (highly unlikely), the overall slice would be so tiny that if it were a blueberry pie, you would have trouble even cutting and serving it.
Second, it is easy to show that the current administration totally FUBAR’d the response, something I covered in a previous post back in April.
Here’s a very brief timeline:8
Jan 22: When asked by a CNBC reporter about the danger involved, he said “We have it totally under control. It’s one person coming in from China, and we have it under control. It’s going to be just fine.”
Feb 14: “There’s a theory that, in April, when it gets warm — historically, that has been able to kill the virus. So we don’t know yet; we’re not sure yet.”
Feb 24: In a Tweet “The Coronavirus is very much under control in the USA. We are in contact with everyone and all relevant countries. CDC & World Health have been working hard and very smart. Stock Market starting to look very good to me!”
Feb 27: “It’s going to disappear. One day — it’s like a miracle — it will disappear.”
Mar 7: Asked about the progress of the pandemic’s spread, he actually said
“I’m not concerned at all. No, I’m not. No, we’ve done a great job.”
All of this after saying in a knowingly recorded interview with journalist Bob Woodward, that “This is deadly stuff”. The date? February 7.
And on March 19, admitted that he played it down. He says he didn’t want to cause panic. Nearly 250,000 dead Americans is fine, but a sell-off on Wall Street cannot happen.
In Trump’s final interview with Woodward, comes the following: “The virus has nothing to do with me. It’s not my fault. It’s — China let the damn virus out.”
No, Mr T, it’s about our response. And the response has been, like almost everything he has done since Jan 20, 2017, a total failure. This line about it being China’s fault is a line he repeated at the 2nd Trump/Biden debate.
So back to our (failed) response and the Cornell study.
The study notes:
We found that media mentions of US President Donald Trump within the context of COVID-19 misinformation made up by far the largest share of the infodemic. Trump mentions comprised 37.9% of the overall misinformation conversation, well ahead of any other topics. We conclude that the President of the United States was likely the largest driver of the COVID-19 misinformation “infodemic”.
The paper is an absolute beauty of scientific prudency and the organization of information. I suggest a careful reading of it’s 13 pages, as it can be found here.
What does all this mean? The head of the Fuckublican party is officially condoning and supporting and even the main source of voting misinformation and voter suppression efforts, as well as the font of dangerous misinformation. If we but imagine a foreign adversary spreading similar deadly misinformation and undemocratic actions in their country, what would we say about them? Yet nearly 40% of the American public still want this man to have a second term in the highest office in the world.
From the Cornell report:
Both misinformation and disinformation center on the dissemination of false information, with the difference being that the former is shared without malice while the latter is spread with the intent to deceive. Though we use the term misinformation in this study, it is clear that some of the nine main topics that emerged do include elements of disinformation in that they appear to have been shared intentionally, primarily to advance political agendas, and others are a combination of misinformation and disinformation.
The current threats to democracy through the purging of voters, limitations on voter access, purposeful spread of disinformation and other ways the right to vote and be counted is being limited by the Fuckublican party, access to voting and legitimacy of votes is a danger to each of us in this representative republic. Even worse, during a pandemic information is validity:
Misinformation about COVID-19 is a serious threat to global public health. If people are misled by unsubstantiated claims about the nature and treatment of the disease, they are less likely to observe official health advice and may thus contribute to the spread of the pandemic and pose a danger to themselves and others. Health protection strategies such as hygiene, sanitation, social distancing, mask wearing, lockdowns, and other measures will be less effective if distrust of public health authorities becomes sufficiently widespread to substantially affect public behavior. Specifically, misinformation about treatments for COVID disease can prompt people to attempt cures that might harm them, while fears and distrust about a possible vaccine could undermine the uptake of any vaccination campaign aiming to immunize the public at a later date.
And that, it is clear — unfortunately — is coming from the top. Maybe, I would argue, this means we need to change who it is at the top.
Agree? Disagree? Have a different perspective? Leave a comment below.
header image c. 2020 https://static01.nyt.com/images/2020/09/30/us/politics/30dc-virus-disinformation/merlin_177865905_2a60a903-61c9-4986-9282-d6b68afb8e2e-superJumbo.jpg?quality=90&auto=webp used WOP
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- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/14/technology/four-election-related-falsehoods.html ↵
- See, for a few instances, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/technology/viral-misinformation-violence-election.html and https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trumps-call-for-poll-watching-volunteers-sparks-fear-of-chaos-and-violence-on-election-day/2020/09/30/76ce0674-0346-11eb-b7ed-141dd88560ea_story.html and https://theconversation.com/election-violence-in-november-heres-what-the-research-says-146548 and https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-election-violence/meet-the-americans-standing-by-for-possible-election-violence-idUSKBN26U15I ↵
- https://www.nytimes.com/2020/10/13/technology/viral-misinformation-violence-election.html?action=click&module=Top%20Stories&pgtype=Homepage&action=click&module=RelatedLinks&pgtype=Article ↵
- Frank, Thomas, What’s the Matter with Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America, 2005 ↵
- https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2020/mar/30/trump-republican-party-voting-reform-coronavirus and https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2020/08/13/trump-confesses-voter-supression/ ↵
- https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/politics/2020/07/29/rep-gohmert-attributes-covid-19-diagnosis-wearing-mask/5536431002/ ↵
- https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/nine-covid-19-myths-that-just-wont-go-away/ ↵
- Timeline sources include https://www.courant.com/coronavirus/ct-nw-nyt-trump-quotes-covid-19-20201002-4gdxkic4gra7pccvqap2llp54a-story.html, my previous post about the pandemic, and ↵