3 days ago
In America, is the brouhaha all about Epstein? It depends on the reality you live in
Tintin fans will never forget the funny exchange between General Alcazar and his rival, the just-deposed General Tapioca, in Tintin and the Picaros. After Tapioca has surrendered, his ADC asks Alcazar what should be done with the old fellow; whether he should be executed promptly by firing squad. Alcazar refuses to do so, having promised Tintin that there would be no bloodshed in the coup. A seemingly disappointed Tapioca and a grouchily determined Alcazar then talk like a couple of serious elder figures about how the youngsters like Tintin have no respect for traditions like firing squads these days!
The bitter brawl in America between the Democrats and Republicans, or between the pro-Trump and anti-Trump forces, has acquired all the twists and turns of a 'Picaresque' adventure. Critics of President Donald Trump had a triumphant run for a while watching the growing split among his supporters over his seeming backtracking on the long-running saga of the notorious 'Epstein files'. However, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard's announcement that former president Barack Obama's actions over allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 election were tantamount to an attempted 'years-long coup' has swung the pendulum once again.
But unlike a pendulum that eventually seeks a position of quiet rest in the middle after having expended its energies at the extremes, the experience of living in American democracy continues to feel frantic, feverish, and fragmented for all camps concerned. It is not just political opinion, but one's sense of reality itself that seems polarised. Since the rise of social media, friends, family members, neighbours, students, everyone seems to be living in a different silo now as far as their knowledge, or even impression, of what is happening in the world is concerned.
For those who consume National Public Radio and The New York Times, the news is still about the alleged troubles in the MAGA world over Epstein. Few of my friends in the Bay Area, for example, had even come across news of Gabbard's statements on Obama. But for those who follow a different set of sources, the news, and its implications for their sense of faith in the Trump presidency, will be very different indeed.
Two differing tales will now unfold, much as they have these past 15-odd years. Critics of Trump will perceive what they see as a witch-hunt being unleashed against Obama. Trump's supporters, in turn, will see, or hope to see, their faith vindicated that 'Russiagate' was a hoax, and Obama-Biden-era officials who persecuted Trump and his supporters will be called out now for their actions. In one silo, the Democrats will wonder aloud at how their record of fair play and decency all these years has not been reciprocated at all by the Republicans. They will say that Hillary Clinton had the grace to concede in 2016, while Trump refused to do so in 2020. In the other silo, Trump's supporters will argue the opposite; they will point out that the Democrats relentlessly sought to deny legitimacy to Trump and his voters from all the way back in 2016, and that the Biden administration unleashed a witch-hunt on a former president and tried every nasty trick it could to keep him from running again in 2024.
The real divide in America, as one of my old students once pointed out, isn't just between political loyalties, but simply a function of whether one is consuming editorialised news from 'legacy media' or long-form, direct, videos in the form of podcasts, campaign speeches, and interviews. For people who do both, the contradictions between these two worlds are astounding as is the possibility of a change, a halt to the onto-epistemological hostilities, a reality-reconciliation, if you will. Forced, or incentivised into performing their opinions on social media constantly, people have become incapable of humility, of a pause in their belief-torrents, of an opportunity to consider they may have been lied to, or at least misled in their understanding of things by partial pictures and frames in their news and social media feeds. And the institutions that might have played a role in helping to elevate real-life interactions and conversations over virtual reality-traps, schools, colleges, media education in particular, have themselves lost the plot, or at least a sense of memory about how we got here in just a few decades.
Was it the victory of attention-seeking communication tactics over the soporific calm of political platitudes that marked the end of not just civility, but a shared sense of political reality? Was it the technology that came so fast no one had anything to work around it except for technocratic (pseudo) solutions of the 'Ministry of Truth' kind? It is fascinating to recall that even the complicated 2000 presidential election result did not end with supporters of Al Gore and George W Bush marching off into different sunsets. But by 2016, everything was different. Now, as the second decade of the Trump era unfolds, and the possibility of an ex-presidential inquisition once again lurks around the corner, the idea of how winners and losers, leaders and followers, can live together once again after the fall that was digital media remains a mystery.
To conclude with a lesson from Tintin and the Picaros, let's remember that in the end, whether the sign over the slum says 'Viva Tapioca' or 'Viva Alcazar,' the reality of the mess there will still remain. But so will the hope that truth and loyalty, whether in Tintin or in real life, will win the day, too.
The writer is professor of Media Studies, University of San Francisco
