Trump; or, The Modern Prometheus

The scariest part of Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein isn’t that the Doctor’s creation is a monster.  That’s just not something that figures into the story very much.  The green-skinned, plodding, moaning terror which we usually imagine, the irrational, man-child walking with arms outstretched, is entirely at odds with the events of the novel.  In the book, Adam (that’s the monster’s name) is eloquent, thoughtful, and athletic.  And he goes about ruining the life of his creator in precise, surgical ways, destroying everything young Victor Frankenstein holds dear.

It’s scarier that way, I think.  The terror at the heart of the book is the way it puts reanimated corpse flesh on the old idea that we create the means to our own destruction.  Not only that, but our creations can destroy us in more painful and personal ways than our enemies could ever imagine.

I’ve been thinking about this because of Donald Trump.  The internet is full of commentators right now who are convinced that the entire natural order has been turned on its head.  Cats and dogs are living together, hot snow is falling up, and Donald Trump continues to lead the Republican primary race.  Everyone is astonished.  From the very moment Trump declared his candidacy and simultaneously called all Mexican immigrants rapists and drug dealers, his implosion has seemed imminent.  But right now, with the first debate out of the way, The Donald is still going strong.  And Republicans and Democrats agree, he is doing lasting harm to the GOP.

Trump is a monster, but I don’t think he’s an idiot.  I don’t think he is a rampaging corpse, terrified of fire, derailing more feasible candidates through sheer brute strength.  No, I think Trump is the other kind of monster – one perfectly created by the right wing to destroy itself.

It’s a clear fact that conservative media is an echo chamber.  It’s easy to find analysis of how often people who rely on Fox News, Breitbart, talk radio, and the like as their main source of news have wildly erroneous or counterfactual beliefs.  Fox News reports extreme opinions and distorted versions of events so consistently and often, it begins taking those things as fact.   Bruce Bartlett, who was an advisor for Reagan and a Treasury official for Bush 41, calls it “self brainwashing” in this excellent scholarly article, which offers lots of good examples.  If you’re interested in what an ideological echo chamber looks like, read his analysis.  I can’t describe it better.  But I really don’t think the far-right ideology Fox News generates as it consumes itself is what created the success of the Trump campaign.  For that, we have to look deeper into conservative media.

There is another echo chamber in the world of Fox News, one that both undergirds and parallels the political one.  A rhetorical echo chamber.

By creating a machine with the dual aims of political indoctrination and ratings generation, conservative media has developed a unique flavor of hyperreal bombast which is very easy to recognize.  The main assumptions of this mode of dialectic are these: that mainstream media lies, that rudeness is synonymous with honesty, that political correctness is an insult to freedom, that complexity is a form of weakness, and (most importantly) that the loudest voice is always correct.  It is such a clearly defined style, Stephen Colbert was able to satirize it for 1,447 episodes straight. “Fox is not really about politics,” media critic Michael Wolff noted way back in 2002. “Rather, it’s about having a chip on your shoulder; it’s about us versus them, insiders versus outsiders, phonies versus non-phonies, and, in a clever piece of postmodernism, established media against insurgent media.”

Donald Trump quickly found a home as a frequent Fox News guest and contributor, because, let’s be honest, the man can play just as good a caricature of a conservative blowhard as Colbert ever did.  He jumped into the rhetorical echo chamber with both feet.  And as the years went by, the mechanics of conservative media taught more and more of the Republican faithful that tact was disingenuous, that diplomacy was for cowards, that apologies were never necessary, and that shouting your opponent down is the purest form of debate.  Watch Fox News, and you’ll understand – this is a constant subtext present in everything from their interviews to their graphic design.  It used to be a ratings conceit for the network, something to set it apart from stuffier news sources.  But now, for millions of Americans, that Fox News tone is what “brave” and “honest” is supposed to sound like.

It’s hard to blame conservative media for trying to be entertaining.  Fox News has succeeded in spreading panic and paranoia as a means of energizing a dwindling conservative base in the US, keeping the Republican party a major national force even though they have become estranged from women, minorities, and young people.  The network injected some nitrous into the sputtering engine of conservativism, and now the whole thing is on the verge of blowing out.

The GOP has moved into positions which reasonable people are having harder and harder times supporting.  Fighting equal rights.  Ignoring scientists.  Causing a government shutdown.  Spending hundreds of government hours attempting to take healthcare away from people.  Rubio and Walker both think abortion shouldn’t be legal, even if the mother’s life is in danger.  But Trump doesn’t seem to share those crazy ideas exactly.  In fact, it’s hard to know what Trump believes in, other than himself.  The only thing we know for sure, and the only reason Trump has been so successful, is that he speaks and acts like Fox News incarnate.

The Donald is running a high-risk campaign as the pure truthiness candidate.  It could, as people have been predicting, fly off the rails at any moment.  But it is a calculated risk, and a very solid political play.  The Republicans have to counter him by trying to sound rational and diplomatic (which, conservative media has taught us, is how losers sound), or trying to out-crazy him, which is impossible for anyone with self respect. Fox News may eventually decide they want to stop him, but right now he is just too good for ratings.  I don’t doubt that Trump could win the nomination.  He couldn’t win the presidency, not by any means.  But he has good odds of beating any current GOP opponent.  And with that, the days of the Republican Party as a viable choice for rational men and women would come to a sad, if entertaining, end.

David Frum, a speechwriter for Bush 43, told ABC News, "Republicans originally thought that Fox worked for us and now we're discovering we work for Fox. And this balance here has been completely reversed. The thing that sustains a strong Fox network is the thing that undermines a strong Republican party."

The archconservatives and GOP talking heads behind modern far-right media built a machine of misinformation and spectacle, in which it was better to be mean and loud than thoughtful and nuanced.  And the monster that machine made possible won’t just lumber around and frighten the villagers.  It’s coming for the Republican Party.