While watching all six-plus hour of yesterday’s impeachment inquiry hearings I was continually struck by Carl Bernstein’s recent assertion that the U.S. is now in what has been describing as a “cold civil war.” (A mere eight months ago he was only saying we were close to “ignition” of said war.)
There are probably a dozen or more ways to describe this conflict: Liberals vs conservatives. Elites vs. real Americans. Urban vs. rural. Professionals vs. amateurs. Serious vs. silly. B-students and higher vs. C- and lower. But at some point this new civil war can be distilled to something closer to: Fact vs. fiction.
Some Things That Actually Happened vs. Some Things That Didn’t.
How else to you describe the contrast between the open and shut case of presidential extortion presented by Adam Schiff and the Democrats with the scattershot, “Oh hell, let’s spitball this” hodgepodge of guffaw-inducing nonsense thrown up by Devin Nunes and Jim Jordan? (What? “Nude pictures” of Donald Trump? What?)
Okay, yes, we understand that even Nunes and Jordan understand that Trump did it. And that it isn’t “heresay” when you’ve got first-hand witnesses. And that their only viable line of defense is to cloud up the story with a torrent of strange names lacking any bona fide connection to the extortion at hand, all in hopes of selling the idea that every government everywhere is such a sewer Trump was merely honoring a long, sordid tradition.
But the question, to Bernstein’s point, is who are they selling this sewage to? What sort of people would ever even begin to believe, to use just one example, that Trump was vitally concerned with corruption in Ukraine because, (after he said he was considering recognizing Crimea as Russian territory), a few Ukrainian officials said mean things about him on social media in 2016?
The short answer of course is that they’re selling this and every other absurd, baseless concoction to a remarkably lazy-minded (and large) constituency. The side of the civil war eager to accept that the Ukrainians have the actual physical server containing Hillary’s e-mails. That a Politico story about a few Ukrainians’ outraged over Paul Manafort’s role in gross corruption tipping Democrats off to that fact “proves” the country was aligned to undermine Trump’s campaign … and on and on, including of course the Trump-hating whistleblower and those nude pictures of Donny.
Try as I might to be generous, the constituency for this flagrant claptrap just is not very bright. Or, put another way, it’s a crowd, an upswelling or revolution you might even say, of people adamant that they know a lot but who have plainly — plainly — done way too little to actually know what is true and what is not.
As I’ve suggested many times before, this fundamental laziness explains a lot about why these very same people feel “left behind” in a fast-moving 2019 world.
In that context — and without going all science-fictioning here — the outlines of the divide in this new “cold civil war” become even clearer and more ominous.
Over the past couple years I’ve become fascinated with the quantum advances in Artificial Intelligence (AI) and the warnings about it from people with thoughtful, first-hand experience, not only with what AI may (likely) do to human society but … how soon it will happen.
An algorithm-driven world, where our personal preferences and antipathies deliver more (and steadily more virulent and intoxicating examples) of those preferences is already well upon us. Think your Facebook feed, the rabbit hole of YouTube where every new video is weirder and more provocative than the last.
As noxious and culturally contorting as that is today, with precious few people fully understanding how this stuff works, its sophistication and application is increasing … rapidly.
One effect, say people like writer-philosopher Yuval Harari, is a further hardening of the tribal bubbles we see so much of today. And that is bad enough.
But, he and others also forsee the stark divide between people fully appreciative of facts — of science and sociology, etc. — and those ignorant of reality adding to the creation of a class of what he describes harshly as a “useless” citizens. People, who because of their ignorance of relevant knowledge are of little to no value to the people, companies and institutions propelling a pretty Darwinian society based on algorithms, machine-learning and other forms of AI.
In his book, “Homo Deus” (i.e. “Man God”), Harari notes that where cultures until now needed vast numbers of people of no great talent to populate armies and operate factories, neither is true today. Machines are already doing all that better, more reliably and less expensively. Ask any American auto worker, if you doubt it.
The “civil war” point then becomes clearer.
The appeal today of the Trump-era GOP’s sewer of nonsense and hysteria may be rooted in class and racial animus — the “left behind” feeling ever more marginalized and “disrespected”.
But let’s project — as Harari and others do — ten to fifteen years into the future, when the perpetuated ignorance of this large bloc of citizens leaves them even less relevant and employable.
Who are they going to blame then?
Probably not Sean Hannity or Devin Nunes.
I like to remind friends anguishing over “the state of things” that — at least until we hit the fatal tipping point — there is a counter-balance to the stupendous landfills of venality and criminality choking the headlines. And right now there’s no story making that counter-balancing effect clearer than Devin Nunes suing … Devin Nunes’ Cow … and Devin Nunes’ Mom.