An angry mob breaking into a government building and halting an election processes isn’t an out of the ordinary scene. We’ve seen it on the evening news many times. Just not in America, not the “shining city on a hill.” No, this sort of thing doesn’t happen in America. Until it did.
It’s exactly the harrowing scene that ran through my head that November day in 2016 when Trump was elected the 45thpresident of the Unites States. The day felt apocalyptic because it was. For the last four years this man has degraded and debased American democracy, especially the institution of the presidency, with his constant spew of lies and disregard for the Constitution. He also tore apart one of our two political parties, the Republican Party, once called the Grand Old Party.
But while Trump bears enormous responsibility for this nightmarish ending to his tenure in the White House, he is merely a symptom of the bigger problem of political polarization. It is a problem that he has exploited mercilessly.
We tend to describe this phenomenon as two Americas or parallel universes. The feeling of arguing with someone who is working with a whole different set of facts is like stepping into quicksand. I experienced it with my own father as Fox News became a bigger and bigger presence during the 1990’s and our familial political arguments became more and more frustrating. I know many of my fellow Americans have experienced this.
The Republican gripe with the media goes back to the Vietnam War and, since then, they’ve become convinced that all of what was once considered “mainstream” or even “neutral” media favors the left. Fox filled the supposed void with questionable facts to fit the narratives they and the Republican Party wanted to push.
But cable news now seems like child’s play compared to what the internet did to political discourse. Little by little, we’ve been able to wall ourselves off into online worlds where we only have to read news that confirms what we already think and interact with the people we agree with. And while there are conspiracy theories, lies, and just bad information coming out of both sides of the political spectrum, the right has taken it to new heights in the U.S.
It’s nothing less than surreal to see so many people believe so fervently that this election was somehow stolen from Trump and handed to Biden. It doesn’t matter that many of the states in question were led by Republicans who have failed to find any evidence of fraud. The truth no longer matters once you fall down this rabbit hole of paranoia.
Trump couldn’t have started this cult of personality without Fox News, the right-wing blogs and online publications that came afterwards, and then finally the social media. Too many people are stewing daily in this gurgling cauldron of lies. How we come to a place where we can again agree on (at least most of) the facts is perhaps the biggest question facing democracy. It’s a concern not just for the U.S. but the world.
This op-ed was published in Spanish in El Español.