THE POWER OF MISINFORMATION TO HARM

by Ruth A. Sheets

NPR’s Morning Edition again presented a report about the “urban-rural divide.”  The implication is that everyone except Donald Trump has forgotten the rural people.  Only Republicans have done anything for those folks.  Even Democrats are now ruminating over this supposed fact. 

Where does this set of beliefs come from?  Well, first of all, it does not come from reality.  Donald Trump has expressed distaste for his supporters.  He installed tariffs against China claiming China would pay, but it was the rural farmers who mostly paid, then he used taxpayer money, mostly contributed by those urban people he hates, to pay off those farmers so they would vote for him, a bribe, but the message he presented to rural America in their distress was that he is the only one who cares about them and they believed. 

Rural people, over time have been forced to embrace coal mining and oil and gas extraction.  These are not healthy, even deadly occupations, but they paid well over the past 50 years or so.  Due to global warming, those occupations are going away.  Hilary Clinton proposed that those losing their jobs due to the move to renewables would receive government assistance to develop new jobs and skills.  She in no way spoke disparagingly about those workers, but the Republican message, Clinton will take away your jobs and leave you with nothing, resonated.  That message got out, and I heard it over and over on mainstream media as well as in political ads.  Why?  It wasn’t true but it was a powerful message of supposed discrimination and fed their feeling of being abused by the city folk.

How is it Democrats can’t get out the message that most of the progress made in and for rural communities has come from programs proposed and passed by Democrats?  Electrification, farm subsidies, SNAP, health care, and so much more were Democratic programs, and, the Democrats have proposals out there to get good internet service to every American.   That is among the programs Mitch McConnell, the man who would be president has blocked without a hearing or vote in the Senate.  How is it Republicans like McConnell, from rural areas are not held responsible for that? 

The rural interviewees keep claiming Donald Trump is their hope.  On what do they base that?  None of the interviewers ever ask.  Perhaps if they do, the response is left on the “cutting-room floor.” Then the interviewees chosen are from the “white states.”  These are the states Sarah Palin claimed were the “real Americans.”  Well, perhaps so.  They are white.  They are rural or small town.  They are uninformed.  They are easily misled.  They can’t even name one thing Trump did for them besides the bail-out welfare check Trump gave them to win their votes.  They can’t even acknowledge that it was Trump who caused the hardship that brought down their businesses in the first place.

How is it that NPR, the most balanced of the news media is OK with pumping out this nonsense with no follow-up.  It is the thing, to interview Trump supporters as though there is something more we can learn from them.  I think we have learned all we can.  They aren’t interested in truth.  They seem to care only for the information that tells them over and over they have been mistreated, ignored, while those awful city people (code for Black people) are getting everything. 

They choose to “stand up for their rights” by not wearing masks or social distancing while their hospitals (the few that there are) are filling up and having to pass their sick neighbors on to cities for care.  The lack of hospitals is not a Democratic thing either.  These rural citizens are also not eager to consider getting a vaccine for COVID-19 because it comes from cities or some other such nonsense. 

Factory owners in rural and small town areas care little for the health of their workers because that is forcing regulations on them that they should not have to follow; it gets in the way of their profit or whatever.  Where is the outrage among rural communities related to this abuse of their people?  The Democrats did not do this.  It is the Trump administration that has been working very hard to ditch regulations employers don’t like no matter the impact on people’s health and lives.

I used to be one of those liberals who believe truth could persuade anyone to do the right thing.  I no longer believe that.   What I do believe is that we need to put the truth out there, stand for the right, and keep trying, but when I hear those rural white people whining that they have it worse than anyone else and that Democrats are the cause, I shrug and acknowledge I can persuade them of nothing.  I don’t have the bluster and ability to lie and misinform as Rush Limbaugh, Alex Jones, Laura Ingram, Donald Trump, and the rest of Republicandom do, and I don’t want to.  If the rural people continue in their foolish cleaving to lies, disinformation (deliberately put out there to generate chaos and distrust), and conspiracy theories, I can’t stop them, but I don’t have to listen.  For my own mental health, I will turn off the radio every time one of those ridiculous interviews comes along, and they happen several times a week, and have for nearly five years. 

The racism and misogyny that  put people into a place where they would choose misinformation over thinking can only be cured by the misinformed denying THEMSELVES of the poison that is crippling their communities, their families, their lives.  I am OK with providing aid when it’s needed, but I just don’t need to be caught up in hearing about their chosen lack of vision. 

I used to want to blame teachers for the stifled condition of deliberately misinformed people, but I suspect their history and science books were similar enough to mine, that is if they attended public schools.  They learned about the scientific method.  They read some of the good and bad parts of U.S. history.  They learned to add, subtract, multiply, and divide.  They mostly know how to read (unless perhaps they have a disability).  There is no excuse.  If they wanted the truth, they could find it, but the misinformers have found entry points and keep plugging in, feeding dissatisfaction and hatred like electric current.  The negative emotions produced seem real and righteous but are manufactured by those who manipulate folks for their own often nefarious purposes.

I don’t want to imply that urban and suburban people have a lock on truth.  We don’t, but we, at least some of the time, try to look for it, by choice. 

So, all of us need to stand against the deliberate misinformation (disinformation) and promote what is true as much as we can and try to avoid the poison of misinformation either giving or receiving it.