Keith Burris: The fire this time

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May 16—Jon Meacham is a former journalist turned pop historian. Highly respected in both fields he has emerged as a TV talking head who actually thinks before he talks.

Mr. Meacham has also become an informal adviser to the president and the unofficial Biden whisperer: The man who can tell us what Joe Biden is really like and how he thinks.

In a recent interview with the Guardian, the Biden whisperer told us that: A) What you see in public is essentially the way the President is in private. B) To "get" Mr. Biden you need to understand that he is 78 and thought his political career was over in 2016. C) The President truly believes that democracy itself is being challenged today and that democracy and autocracy are in a dramatic and perhaps ultimate battle.

Now, all three are interesting observations. But the third is the most interesting. And while I am grateful to have a President who thinks about such questions, I wonder: Is it true?

Many believe that, as in the 1930s, there is a rising tide of authoritarian sentiment in the USA and that the failure of representative government, and positive government, to deal with our problems — pollution and plastic, not enough manufacturing and good jobs, public health, you name it — will doom us to the loss of democratic faith, the loss of our liberties, and maybe a strong man dictatorship. Hence the Biden, and Meacham, comparison to FDR at this moment.

Mr. Biden is also worried about China, Russia, Turkey, and other autocracies coming at us from without. They are efficient and respond to events efficiently. Democracy is messy and slow.

This is an argument from the 1950s, and the insecurity we sometimes felt during the Cold War, just as the FDR analogy, and fear of demagogues from the right in our own land, is from the 1930s — when people like Huey Long and Father Charles Coughlin were on the rise.

But I think both comparisons are a bit off, a case of fighting the last battle and not this one, which I think is more about us than Russia.

I do think that democracy is on trial and is fragile. But this has always been so, as the Founders knew so keenly.

I agree that we are going through a crisis right now, but it is a different fire this time — more specific than cosmic.

I don't think the internal threat is authoritarianism. The fringes, left and right, the organized haters, left and right, are not sophisticated, or consistent enough to be authoritarians, either fascist or communist.

The current threat is ignorance. Stubborn, willful, arrogant ignorance. The threat is resistance to fact, data, changing data, and changing our minds.

The first component is echo chambers. Americans are not listening to each other — especially fellow Americans who may see the world differently. We choose the political conversations and affiliations that reinforce what we already think. We watch and read the news with the tilt we can absolutely depend upon. We filter out, or or refuse to initially listen to, what might contradict.

We choose affirmation over information.

This is not new. There have always been hard-core lefties and reactionaries.

What is new is that the hard core has expanded — so that it is a large part of the left and the right, the Democrats and the Republicans. What we used to call the fringe is now the critical mass of each tribe.

And now the echo chambers reach into middle-class kitchens and family rooms. Where once politics was taken with humor and a grain of salt, it is now the same blood sport that it is for people who live for and from politics.

The fringe has expanded and engulfed millions of what we used to think were ordinary folk. So an otherwise perfectly normal person will tell you he only watches Fox, or will never watch Fox; or that every Trump voter is a racist and misogynist; or that Joe Biden's presidency is failing spectacularly and is already over.

This phenomenon is political narcissism. We only want to see and hear reflections of ourselves, no matter how ill-informed or half-baked our views.

Second, among professional politicians — the people who legislate and run our cities and states — there is, increasingly, no center. And there are no gradations, like liberal Republican or conservative Democrat.

This leads to three related things: political executions for nonpurity, as just happened to Liz Cheney; an era of bad feeling, suspicion, and intolerance, which we are living in; and extreme difficulty in legislating and governing. Hence, senators like Pat Toomey and Rob Portman call it quits and governors like Mike DeWine are frustrated and may face primary challenges.

Third, we cannot, as a debating polity, agree on the grounds for debate, aka facts. We cannot agree that the election was not stolen, so we can't get to whether cascading federal debt is a remedy for joblessness, poor training and education, or faith in democracy.

Fact has to precede value in any real debate. But we cannot agree on whether wearing masks helped fight the pandemic or whether we should still be wearing them.

I suppose some still maintain that Barack Obama was born in Kenya or illegals gave Hillary Clinton her popular majority in 2016.

We cannot agree about facts, and that is highly problematic. Worse, I am not sure a majority of Americans firmly agree that establishing the facts matters.

Finally, the press has lost its way.

During the last election I met an older man at a gym. He accosted me almost in the manner of an Old Testament prophet: "You know how you guys could survive? And maybe still matter? ... Just call balls and strikes."

We don't do that any more. Or even try. The American press long ago became players in the game. But Donald Trump made us so crazy that we became cheerleaders in the echo chambers.

I respect Liz Cheney for her guts. I am appalled that she is so alone.

I also respect journalists like Bari Weiss and Andrew Sullivan and Matt Taibbi and Jennifer Rubin, who stand up to left and right correctness and bullying.

It is astonishing to watch the Grand Old Party, almost en masse, grovel before Donald Trump and either repeat or silently accept his big stolen election lie. And then eject those who will not.

It is equally astonishing to watch leftists and progressives take the pledge: America is a racist county; built on racism. That, too, is a big lie.

No, fascism is not the real threat today. The lack of clear thought and information is.

If you want to call that dumbbell fascism, OK, but we have to break it down.

And there is hope if we do that and do the obvious, sensible things to correct. For ignorance can be overcome, perhaps more readily than autocracies or fascists.

With more listening, respect for fact, an honest press, and a rebuilt political center, we can heal, and progress.

Keith C. Burris is editor and vice president of The Blade and editorial director of Block Newspapers (kburris@theblade.com).