Requiem for 2016
There are definitely parallels to be drawn between the demented furor around Russia which currently pervades U.S. political discourse and the furor which preceded and enabled the Iraq War in 2002/2003. I’m at something of a disadvantage because I was not a conscious adult during 2002/2003, so I am inhibited from making any direct comparisons via firsthand experiential knowledge. Further, social media was in its infancy in 2002/2003, and didn’t come anything close to driving the wider “discourse” like it does today — Twitter didn’t even exist. So there are some ways in which the two situations are obviously dissimilar, and one should resist the temptation to posit simple analogies.
One key dissimilarity is that the real beating heart of the 2002/2003 furor was the hyper-patriotic warrior right-wing crowd, who wanted to Get The Terrorists Good after 9/11 — even if that meant randomly invading and occupying a country which had nothing at all to do with 9/11 and posed no threat whatsoever to the United States.
G. Greenwald writes,
The level of group-think, fear-mongering, coercive peer-pressure, and über-nationalism has not been seen since the halcyon days of 2002 and 2003. Indeed, the very same people who back then smeared anyone questioning official claims as Saddam sympathizers or stooges and left-wing un-American loons are back for their sequel, accusing anyone who expresses any skepticism toward claims about Russia of being Putin sympathizers and Kremlin operatives and stooges.
Though I agree with this in broad strokes — the present climate is by far more deranged and hysterical than anything I’ve ever personally witnessed — there are some who would dismiss such parallels on the ground of, “UGH, you’re a one-trick pony. Not EVERYTHING is the Iraq War reincarnate. Get over it.” That’s why I think it’s necessary to be clear on what about the current mania really is different.
**Aside: Not coincidentally, those who’d level rebuttals of that kind also tend to be people who passionately promoted the Iraq War (cough, Jonathan Chait, cough) and still have never given a full accounting of what they got wrong or what steps they’ve taken to change their behavior.
Greenwald recognizes the imperative of noting these dissimilarities:
A large percentage of journalists sit on Twitter all day. It’s their primary window into the world. Because of how intense and raw the emotions still are from Trump’s defeat of Clinton, the social media benefits from tweeting and publishing unhinged claims about Trump and Putin are immense and immediate: thousands upon thousands of re-tweets, a rapidly building follower count, and huge amounts of traffic.
A radically different set of incentives governed how the media operated in 2002/2003 — it was such a different world back then that I think grasping too eagerly for any kind of neat analogy is foolhardy. In 2002/2003, sophisticated liberals wouldn’t be guaranteed to be rewarded with massive social media plaudits whenever they rattled off a cheap Trump/Putin barb. There were some rewards to be had for ginning up Pro-War fervor in those years, but the way Twitter functions has upended the incentive structure completely.
Rather than rabid right-wingers, this time around it’s liberals and Democrats driving the hysteria, with occasional assists from sympathetic neoconservatives and maybe a grumble of approval here or there from Mitch McConnell types. And the fundamental reason for their frenzy is frothing anti-Trump animus, not any sincere aversion to Russia, given that they just spent the better part of Barack Obama’s presidency cheering his attempt to forge better relations with Putin.
Also, I don’t think Greenwald would say that spending a lot of time on Twitter is per se “bad.” Nor would I. I mean, I do spend quite a bit of time on Twitter, and I’ve derived huge benefit from it in a variety of areas. The difference is that I try to always remain cognizant of the distortive potential of my Twitter usage, and take steps to address that. It seems like so much of the media class has no awareness whatsoever that when they are swept up in a 24/7 Twitter panic, they are experiencing politics in a way that is astoundingly distant from how most Americans experience politics. Heck, most Twitter users don’t even follow politics on there; they’re talking about football and beauty tips or whatever.
This also goes for niche Twitter subcultures who think that they are so above groupthink and confirmation bias, such as “Weird Angry Ironic Left-Wing Anono-Twitter” (for lack of a better term). People within that hazily-defined cohort often behave as mindless herd, even while they simultaneously chastise others for insularity and obliviousness. Heck, there are most certainly instances in which I too have been guilty of herd-behavior; it’s human nature to some degree. But Twitter amplifies one’s susceptibility to it exponentially, and the point is that one really needs to take tangible steps to guard against it. For the most part, I don’t see any desire out there to do that.
Twitter is of course not synonymous with real life, but some of the most influential people in the country spend an incredible amount of time on that website, and it’s most certainly the driving force behind the “current” which underlies the present media landscape. Although the Too Cool For School Irony crowd loves to feign disillusionment with the social mechanics of Twitter, they are nevertheless emotionally invested in it — and for some good reason. It’s a really significant medium. It has given lots of people careers; it has helped to effect political change. So why wouldn’t you be invested in it? Just be honest for once, and drop the pretense of ironic detachment. I’ve said this before and I’ll say it again, but this pose of 24/7 ironic I’m So Above It All superiority is not a sustainable form of politics. Eventually it’s going to corrode the core of your political convictions, because you can’t talk about anything consequential without resorting to Funny Memes And Jokes That Only Approximately 40 Of Your Closest Online Friends Will Get.
For certain Twitter denizens, constantly condemning Trump as a Horrible Shocking Evil earns you a steady stream of accolades from your little milieu, and as such the “Trump factor” has totally overwhelmed how these people view Russia/Putin. Accordingly, a central facet of U.S. foreign policy is now colored inextricably by how one feels about Trump, which is a horrible prism through which to assess the U.S. relationship with a nuclear-armed power. It sort of reminds me of how some conservatives worked themselves into a lather about Iran because they loathed Obama so much — their main goal was undermining Obama, therefore they viewed the Iran Deal as Inherently Bad largely on that basis; not because they had any real problem with the Deal on its merits, they just didn’t want Obama to get credit for anything.
I know this mini-essay is slightly disjointed, but whatever. None of the aforementioned dynamics are going away any time soon. 2016 as a whole was also disjointed. I do think it really was an enlightening and interesting year in many respects, and I say that not because I want to offer up some facile contrarian “Actually, 2016 Was Good” take. Genuinely, I am of the opinion that whatever you think about any one particular event that took place in 2016, such as the election of Trump, the year as a whole provided a window into a very marked long-term shift in U.S. politics — for good or ill. It’s still a decaying and decadent empire, and maybe the collapse is accelerating. But my hope is that with diligence, reason, and cheer, we can make something good of it. Happy New Year.
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