During the Kennedy Administration, when the tube was king, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Newton Minow made headlines with his description of television programming as “a vast wasteland.” Decades later, social media is taking shape as a vast clutter of misinformation, bombast, and division. We are witnesses to the demeaning of democracy, a rot that begins at the head.
Donald Trump has used posts in pursuit of vengeance. He used a Tweet to fire his first Secretary of State, and to call Federal Reserve Chairman Jerome Powell “an enemy.” He has borrowed from the Joe Stalin playbook in calling even modest dissenters enemies of the people.
The Defense Intelligence Agency, in a preliminary report, found that U.S. air strikes did not totally destroy Iran’s nuclear facilities. News organizations dutifully reported its conclusions, contradicting Trump’s triumphalist claims. The President’s recourse is abuse on social media: “We just caught the failing New York Times, working with the fake news CNN, cheating again. They tried to demean the great work our B-2 pilots did and they were wrong in doing so. These reporters are just BAD AND SICK PEOPLE.”
Social media has become a forum on untruth, disinformation, and abuse. When critics in Congress called for due process before deportations, White House deputy chief-of-staff Stephen Miller sneered: “Once again, Democrats leaping to the defense of illegal alien child sex predators.” So much for the vast majority who pick our crops, tend to the elderly, and work the night shift at hospitals. Lacking is any sense of civility and basic decency.
One more example. John Bolton served 16 months as Trump’s National Security Adviser. After being fired (on social media) he’s become a vocal critic, especially of Trump’s bromance with Vladimir Putin. On Friday, the FBI raided Bolton’s home, and Roger Stone, a top Trump consultant, gloated on X: “Good morning, John Bolton, how does it feel to have your home raided at six o’clock in the morning?”
Social media has been deployed as a weapon against an independent judiciary. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Amy Coney Barrett was hit with a barrage of abuse when she strayed from the reservation earlier this year.
Seattle has become a MAGA social media target. The right is conjuring up a crime wave (and demonizing immigrants) when the crime rate is actually falling. “Seattle looks like sh-t,” opined Jonathan Choe, journalism fellow with Discovery Institute. Choe makes and posts scary videos in which our city streets are populated exclusively by “antifa militants,” “far left lunatics,” deranged addicts, and squalid homeless encampments. The theme is relentlessly stressed locally on KOMO, mouthpiece of right wing Sinclair Broadcasting, as well as Fox News, whose pundits are now helping to run the country.
Donald Trump, Jr., speaking on Newsmax, suggested on Friday where this is headed: “Maybe we should roll out the tour to Portland, Seattle, the others what we’d call craphole cities of the country.”
The authoritarians have us in the crosshairs, and we’re a target-rich environment. As our state’s Attorney General, Gov. Bob Ferguson successfully flummoxed the first Trump Administration on numerous fronts. Current AG Nick Brown is a former U.S. Attorney and is resisting Trump in court. We have laws against discrimination and enforce them.
Citing claims made on social media as reality, claiming a crime spree and breakdown in social order, Trump could turn Seattle into a REAL occupation zone, replicating, in this Washington, the National Guard deployment scenes seen in D.C.
This article also appears in Cascadia Advocate.
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OK, so let’s run with this scenario, Joel. Trump somehow (probably illegally and unconstitutionally) manages to deploy National Guard troops to Seattle. We’re kinda far from DC, and Trump might not trust our WA National Guard. Maybe from Idaho??
Anyway, the military trucks and Humvees disgorge their people onto the streets…I’m thinking they’d go to the federal buildings down town, probably stating their mission as “security”…against what? Pigeons and seagulls? Commuter traffic?
Anyway, that probably draws a few protest demonstrators, mostly older folks with sign-making chops and time on their hands, marching around for the news cameras. Nothing much happening here, so eventually they move on back to Idaho, no great harm done except to civic pride.
Pike Place is too crowded to deploy the vehicles and troops, and it’s hard to believe they’d want to mess with Mariners or Seahawks traffic. An NG presence on the UW campus would generate a great deal more noise and better footage, though, so maybe that’s the target.
If the Guardsmen want to spend their time in Seattle doing some good, maybe they could goon graffiti-cleaning duty and clean off or overpaint some of the crappy-looking tags along I-5 through town. That could even make an old-timey liberal like me think the exercise was worth it.