The Impact of Divisive News and Social Media on American Democracy and Global Politics

The media has played a pivotal role in helping to create such a divisive environment

Disagreement and personal opinions have always been a part of American life; A healthy democracy thrives even in the face of stark disagreements and opposition. It's perfectly healthy to have opposing opinions on how things should get done.

What isn't healthy is when opposing ideas no longer have respect for each other. A democratic society is one where the people ultimately have the power. When a government no longer listens to the people, then that is a major problem.

When people no longer feel as though their opinions, their votes, and their needs are being met by a govt that is supposed to be working for the people, many problems arise. A kind of cynicism arises where the people stop paying attention to who is leading, because they no longer feel they are being listened to.

This can lead to low voter turnout, and people tuning out the govt, and paying less attention to what's going on. When this happens, the problem snowballs and becomes an increasingly dangerous situation where fewer and fewer people are engaging in the their civic duty.

Democracies only work when people believe in them, for they are nothing but an ideal and a social contract we all agree to. When people stop believing in that unsigned social contract, that's when dictators can take hold of power. That's exactly what we are seeing in America today.

This division is years in the making, and is now being amplified to levels we're not accustomed to. Even though the problem is not necessarily created by media corporations, they have played a significant role in driving a wedge between people in the US and beyond.

The reason why they started all of this is simple. After WW2 Americans were tired of fascism, and they saw what evil it could create. We, as a country, wanted to make sure the decades leading up to the war never happened again. This meant creating social safety nets, breaking up large monopolies, preventing banks from making shady deals, and making sure the working class was treated as equals to the ultra rich.

During the 60s the American people had as much power as they ever had. Unions were strong, with more than 60% of the workforce unionized. Big corporate CEOs made far less than they did today adjusting for inflation. Human rights were being granted to the people like never before, and when the govt declared war on Vietnam, the people knew it was rotten.

That uprising of the working class terrified the wealthy elites around the world and the backlash from the 60s was immediate and very effective. Their plan was to begin eroding away the rights we had just won. The ultra wealthy fear one thing more than anything else.

They fear the people will realize they are being taken advantage of, and come for their money. They don't want to let people get their money.

As they began to erode away the laws put in place following WW2, they wanted to stomp out any form of social uprising anywhere else in the world too. So they began a terror campaign to use the war machine to do just that.

When it came to the American people they couldn't use the army and so Ronald Regan spoke to Margaret Thatcher in the UK, and a wealthy Australian man who moved to America and was given immediate citizenship named Rupert Murdoch. Have you ever heard of him?

He's the owner of Fox news. The plan was simple, eliminate the law that made sure the media in America couldn't be one sided and had to report on stories in a fair and balanced way. Once it was repealed Fox news could say just about anything they wanted. And they did.

The fault that media has played in the past, and is still guilty of today is feeding us propaganda instead of information. Even though they aren't the cause of the decline of western civilization, they helped perpetuate its decline.

Today's media is made up of two very different, and often opposing views. Even though Fox news isn't the only one who pushes their political narrative, they are just about the only one who is lying to their viewers. Only now it's not only Fox, it's any right wing media corporation.

They have become so invested in lying to their viewers they are stuck in a perpetual cycle of misinformation and lies. MSNBC has been much more liberal leaning in their messaging on the left, and Fox pushes the conservative narrative on the right, only one of these channels outright lies, spreads misinformation, teaches hate, fear, and the dehumanization of anything they label as left leaning.

This has been particularly effective in America as Fox has leaned away from political and policy discussions, and leaned heavily into a blend of ideological, religious, cultural belief systems that have been strategically and purposefully manufactured. Because they've been able to successfully group people in all of these separate belief systems, it has created a dual reality in America.

By manufacturing a constant message of hate, fear, and outrage towards the other side, by repeating lies, misinformation, or simple opinionated coverage of what sort of looks like news, people who are already right leaning, end up as extremists who refuse to acknowledge anything that disagrees with this message.

To learn more about what's happened to America, and the state of our democratic republic, we need to examine what drives political viewpoints, ideals, and the division in America, and around the world.

Many ideas in this article can be attributed to a number of sources, and in particular, Flavia Roscini, in her writing on a similar topic in a Boston University journal of global affairs article.

In her article she mentions the role social media and cable news have in exacerbating this divide, and why it's so dangerous for democracy.