The Age of Absurdities

 

By David K. Shipler 

              In the last week, both Vladimir Putin and Donald Trump have treated the world to fantasies and fables so pernicious in their implications for global freedom and security as to defy satire. Both men, aided by sycophants, have anchored us firmly in an era practically unmatched in modern times, where completely fabricated narratives cause wars and shape governments.   

In a televised speech, Putin declared the West guilty of designs on Russia’s very existence, implicitly threatened nuclear war if Russian territory is attacked, then made sure it would be attacked by orchestrating a forced “referendum” to annex Ukrainian territory in the Donbas region, thereby converting it into Russian land worthy of the ultimate defense!

Trump told Fox News that he could declassify the nation’s most sensitive secrets just by thinking to himself that they are no longer secret, and that the FBI—in its raid on his luxury club Mar a-Lago—was really after Hillary Clinton’s emails! And, of course, elections should not be trusted (unless he wins), because the 2020 election was stolen.

Late-night comedians cannot laugh away this parallel universe, because millions of Russians believe Putin, and millions of Americans believe Trump. We are on the brink of a wider war between Russia and the West because of Putin’s imaginary tale of American and European preparations for attack. We Americans are on the brink of losing our precious democracy because of Trump’s imaginary tale of election fraud and his Republican Party’s calculated program of placing partisans in official positions to create actual fraud next time around.

It almost doesn’t matter whether Putin and Trump are convinced of their own lies, or whether they are just clever manipulators. Enough of their citizens are spellbound by their rhetoric and charisma to intoxicate the two men with the illusion of broad and righteous support. Neither the recent cracks in Russia’s enforced unanimity nor the polarized hostility of American politics has induced moderation in either of the fabulators. Each has doubled down into his manufactured world of unreality.

Dogmatic fictions are endemic to human foibles, of course, and some have impeded knowledge, inflamed hatreds, and produced warfare. The earth is flat. The sun revolves around the earth. This or that ethnic or racial or religious group controls, schemes, exploits, corrupts, rapes, or betrays and must be imprisoned, expelled, or exterminated. Witness China, Myanmar, Rwanda, and on.

Nazi Germany’s phantasmagoria about Jews as the clandestine, all-powerful force behind the country’s interwar hardships defied all facts. But many people—including Germans then, Russians and Americans now—have efficient fact-filters to purify their perceptions according to their predilections.

Russian families have fractured because relatives in Russia have refused to believe what relatives in Ukraine have seen with their own eyes. Americans enthralled with Trump are unwavering in their devotion even as his wrongdoing is documented by the January 6 committee and his unlawful possession of classified documents.

Polls show Trump’s 44 percent favorable and 53 percent unfavorable ratings stable as the investigations unfold. The testimony of his own Republican aides that he was told clearly that he had lost the election, and the carefully reasoned rejection of his fraud cases by more than three score judges—including some of Trump’s own nominees—have not shaken the conviction by about 70 percent of Republicans that they were cheated out of a presidential win.

Acceptance of such enormous fictions is the product of careful methodology. In both Russia and the United States, the groundwork for the people’s credulity is laid by contaminating the sources of information with chronic lies and censorship.

One of Putin’s first acts after his February 24 invasion of Ukraine was to threaten and close the remaining independent (hence skeptical) news media, block certain truth-telling websites, and enact a 15-year prison sentence for disputing the virtue of the “special military operation.” Russians and foreigners in the country risk prison time for calling the war a war.

In the United States, where government doesn’t control the press, private businesses have undermined the modern tradition of fair journalism. The profits are in the polemics, and Fox News has been the most successful in reaping the bounty of aggrieved alienation, tribalism, and powerlessness among the mostly white working class.

Trump seems to understand, perhaps instinctively, that to cultivate credulity for his fantasies he must dislodge Americans from connections to the truth. He calls the mainstream media by the Stalinist term “enemies of the people,” incites supporters to jeer and menace the news crews covering rallies, and cultivates a miasma of skepticism about traditional (read: elite) sources of accuracy. When you’re adrift, you hang onto whatever flotsam you can grab.

Every demagogue surely knows that controlling information is a key to power. And if you can make people feel good in the process, if you can make them feel as if they are really streetwise and smart enough see through the pretenses and self-serving deceptions of the powerful, you’ve got them.

So, the mass media are first. Then come the schools. The Russians have imposed a Russian curriculum in the Ukrainian schools they have occupied. Ukrainian national history is taboo. The rightwing Republicans are imposing  curricula in bright-red states where teachers are being silenced by new laws barring discussions of sexual orientation and the legacy of racism. The stains of American history are being scrubbed clean. Books that don’t fit the dogma are being removed from school and public libraries.

Anyone who has watched the working of autocratic systems can see the pattern clearly. Ignorance is taught, and into ignorance flow fantasies. And now, on the surge of Putin-Trump fantasies, ride the peril of war and the fragility of democracy.