Alien nation
Trump's America doesn't exist. Where are the truth tellers?
When I was a hair over 26 years old back in 1999, I struck south for the journalism riches of Sydney. I planned to skulk out of Queensland’s The Courier-Mail, as it’s always been my thing to arrive quietly and leave the same way.1 For whatever reason, though, the newspaper’s then editor, Chris Mitchell, decided a newsroom farewell was appropriate and there I was, a deer in headlights but the grateful recipient of a fantastic caricature of me fleeing the Murdochs for the nubile siren that was Fairfax.2
I was obviously unprepared to give any kind of speech. What I haltingly tried to convey was my gratitude to the small but mighty business section in which I worked; a group of journalists and editors that regularly broke national stories and punched well above its weight. What came out was a diatribe about the newspaper’s obsession with blood and gore, capped by a line that went something like: “If you looked at the front page, you’d think we’re in the grip of a permanent crime wave.”
What I’d actually said became clear as everyone dispersed and my colleague John McCarthy told me, “Geez mate, you really don’t want to work here again!” Oops. I’ve wished for 25 years those words had come out a little differently, but I wasn’t wrong: mainstream media have always been, and remain, in thrall to the rule that if it bleeds, it leads. And that has an obvious impact on the fact we view our world not as the most peaceful and prosperous in history, but a crime-ridden hellscape.
Which gets me to America under Donald Trump.
More than half the country that didn’t vote for him—his vote total is now less than 50%—woke on November 6 wondering what the hell had happened (again) to America they thought they knew. What most don’t realize is they’re surrounded by people who don’t actually know their country. At all. The America Trump supporters voted to change doesn’t exist.
A poll by YouGov two years ago—helpfully resurfaced by The Bulwark this week—underscores the problem. Here are some, er, highlights of responses when people were asked a string of questions starting with: If you had to guess, what percentage of American adults …
… are transgender: 21% (the actual percentage is 1%)
… are Muslim: 27% (1%)
… are Jewish: 30% (2%)
… are gay or lesbian: 30% (3%)
… live in New York City: 30% (3%)
… are atheists: 33% (3%)
… are bisexual: 29% (4%)
… are Asian: 29% (6%)
… are Black: 41% (12%)
At the end of a long list of this craziness, YouGov simply noted “small subgroups of the population seem much larger to many Americans,” but The Bulwark’s Jonathan V. Last got straight to the absurdity.
“1-in-3 are gay/lesbian? Muslims and Jews make up 57 percent of the country? Blacks are 40 percent of the population?” he said. “Not to be crass, but if a third of the population is gay/lesbian then where are all the kids coming from? If a quarter of the country is Muslim and a third is Jewish, then mosques plus synagogues would outnumber churches. Does anyone see more mosques and synagogues than churches as they drive around? If 40 percent of the country is black then wouldn’t there be a lot more black people in Congress? I mean, there have only been 12 African-American senators ever.”
On one hand, the complete and utter delusion is laughable. But think about it for longer than a nanosecond and it becomes profoundly worrying, as The New Republic noted in an essay titled: “Why Does No One Understand the Real Reason Trump Won?” After presenting the usual laundry list of reasons why Trump was manifestly unfit to be president, editor Michael Tomasky said the fact so many people seemed unconvinced often sees “people throw up their hands and say, ‘I give up.’”
“But this line of analysis requires that we ask one more question,” Tomasky said. “And it’s the crucial one: Why didn’t a majority of voters see these things? And understanding the answer to that question is how we start to dig out of this tragic mess. The answer is the right-wing media.”
From Murdoch’s Fox News to Newsmax, One America News Network, Elon Musk’s X (nee Twitter), and podcasters like Joe Rogan, half the country has been fed “a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.” If you think a third of Americans are transgender or Jewish or Muslim—and the media bubble you live in not only does nothing to inform you, but actively works to convince you it’s a threat to life and liberty as you know it—you’re going react a predictable way.
“I asked [Media Matters’ Matthew] Gertz what I call my ‘Ulan Bator question.’ If someone moved to America from Ulan Bator, Mongolia in the summer and watched only Fox News, what would that person learn about Kamala Harris?” Tomasky said. “‘You would know that she is a very stupid person,’ Gertz said. ‘You’d know that she orchestrated a coup against Joe Biden. That she’s a crazed extremist. And that she very much does not care about you.’
“Same Ulan Bator question about Trump? That he’s been ‘the target of a vicious witch-hunt for years and years,’ that he is under constant assault; and most importantly, that he is ‘doing it all for you.’ To much of America, by the way, this is not understood as one side’s view of things. It’s simply ‘the news.’ This is what people—white people, chiefly—watch in about two-thirds of the country.”
My distant view is that a similar phenomenon exists in Australia—while I’ve never expected anything other than a right-wing bias from the Daily Telegraph or Herald Sun, any glance at The Australian has me shaking my head in dismay at its evolution—but the countervailing forces are stronger than here.3 America has a public broadcaster but it’s not even a shadow of the ABC or BBC, and its major newspapers—such as the New York Times and Washington Post—are increasingly drowned out, tarred as left-wing rags by the Trump side when the sad reality is they bend over backwards to avoid being seen as too liberal.
So, we have a rapacious, ethically bankrupt media complex on one side, and a “liberal” media desperate to appear objective on the other. We can wring our hands about the cynical abuse of power for ends that are ultimately assisting the destruction of this great experiment in democracy. We can feel smug about our liberal moral superiority. But the left needs to mobilize as a counterbalancing force, with media proprietors willing to act boldly, stand by their beliefs, and more forcefully call liars liars.
“The readily visual analogy I use is: Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the right-wing media was a golf ball,” Tomasky said. “Today, the mainstream media (what with layoffs and closures and the near death of serious local news reporting) is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the size of a basketball, which, in case you’re wondering, is bigger.
“This is the year in which it became obvious that the right-wing media has more power than the mainstream media. It’s not just that it’s bigger. It’s that it speaks with one voice, and that voice says Democrats and liberals are treasonous elitists who hate you, and Republicans and conservatives love God and country and are your last line of defense against your son coming home from school your daughter. And that is why Donald Trump won.”
A note about whatever this is …
After writing a few thousand articles for newspapers and magazines, I spent a long time trying a bunch of other stuff. I guess I figured what came (relatively) easily must by definition be less valuable, so I wandered in the corporate wilderness, becoming increasingly frustrated and doing work that felt increasingly lousy.
Sometimes with age comes wisdom, and I’ve realized finding something (relatively) easy ain’t a bad thing. So, this is a space where I’m resurrecting writing for myself, on topics weird and wild and wonderful, all from the perspective of an Australian living in the United States.
Posts will appear when the mood takes me, but I do try to be consistently inconsistent—sometimes it’ll be a couple of days between drinks; sometimes a week. But if you subscribe, you’ll get a email letting you know I’m ranting. Again.
This applies to jobs, office functions of any description, gatherings with friends, etc. I think of it as an all-purpose Irish ciao, which reflects (a) the fact “ciao” works leaving and leaving and (b) my deep belief I’m meant to be Italian.
This drawing by the great Brett Lethbridge—which shows me jumping off a mega-yacht helmed by Rupert and Lachlan in the direction of a comely mermaid labeled “Fairfax”—has pride of place above my desk, right next to the front page of the Australian Financial Review with my splash on the terror attacks of September 11.
As I always have to remind myself, Australia is the equivalent of a decent US state: its 27-million-odd population ranks it behind California (39 million) and Texas (30 million) but ahead of Florida (almost 23 million) and New York (around 20 million), while its economy would rank it fourth, behind California, Texas, and New York. America’s right-wing-o-sphere is huge and dispersed—and tougher to counter in any cohesive way.