It must produce an odd feeling in an author to write a book like The Fate of Rome, especially given the fact that this book was first released in 2017. On the one hand, Kyler Harper gets to stand up and say that his thesis for the book has been proven 500% correct. On the other hand I’m sure Kyle Harper and the rest of the world would rest easier if he were wrong.
I hope I can accurately capture the essence of the Fate of Rome while reducing it to a few sentences. At its heart, the Fate of Rome is a book about the constant struggle between humanity and the environment. On the one hand, humanity as a species has had a larger impact on shaping the natural world to our own devices than any other species on the planet. Even ancient civilizations demonstrated immense talent and effort at literally reshaping the landscape to suit its purposes. However, the story of humanity on earth is also one in which nature constantly reminds us of its powerful dominion over us. The instruments of nature’s dominion stressed in The Fate of Rome are changing climate and the evolution of diseases. Climate change, whether natural or man-made, and evolving viruses and bacteria that can cause pandemics have the ability to send destabilizing shockwaves through the societies living through these phenomena. I don’t know about you, but there have been a lot of events since this book was published in 2017 that make me agree with these ideas.
While The Fate of Rome is a story about man’s constant struggle with nature, it is also a fascinating new perspective on a story that has been lovingly examined by fans of history since the events in question occurred. The rough timeline of the book begins with the Roman Empire in the second century CE and continues to the early Muslim conquests at the beginning of the seventh century CE capturing much of what remained of the Roman Empire (I don’t exactly know when it is appropriate to start referring to it as the Byzantine Empire). The Fate of Rome examines the question that has been asked a billion times: Why did the Roman Empire (especially in the west) collapse? People have been coming up with theories to answer that question for thousands of years. Some of them have been so overused and overdone that they have become cliches that contemporary scholars scoff at. Theories like the inevitable moral and decadent decline of empire’s and their leaders as they get older. The Fate of Rome is not a book that discounts any older theories out of hand. Instead, Kyle Harper asserts that there is an essential puzzle piece in this story that has always been missing, or if not missing at least underemphasized. Thanks to modern science, however, this missing piece can finally be highlighted and its significance appreciated. What makes this book so exciting is how much science has progressed since it was published, and how much more we will be able to learn in the future.
In a very brief nutshell, The Fate of Rome lays out the climatic conditions that made the rise and success of the Roman Empire possible. Then the book demonstrates how overtime the so-called “Roman Climate Optimum” ended, and the climate started to become fickle and unpredictable leading to drought here or flooding over there, ultimately leading to periods of intense food scarcity or uncertainty. On top of that, as the world started to enter the “Late Antique Little Ice Age,” there were also massive volcanic eruptions that helped blanket the planet with ash at a time when the sun was producing less radiation to heat the earth’s surface. All of these climate factors, and the disease component I will talk about in the next paragraph all made contemporaries literally believe the world was about to end.
The Fate of Rome also discusses some of the first widespread pandemics in world history that each in their own turn wiped out millions of people in the Roman Empire, and in the case of the plague of Justinian, would recurrently wreak havoc somewhere in the empire for more than two hundred years after the initial outbreak. Additionally (and this has a lot of modern parallels), the Roman Empire was a victim of its own success, as its interconnectedness and systems of trade made it easier for diseases to spread across continents. The plague I found most fascinating (in a morbidly curious way), was the plague of Justinian, because it was the first outbreak in history of the bubonic plague. Discovering the culprit behind the plague of Justinian means that historians and scientists can reconstruct, at least partially, what happened during the bubonic plague’s first prime time appearance to humanity. In a strange way the history of pandemics, especially recurring plagues like the black death, connect people across time and space better than almost anything else. People centuries apart on other sides of the planet could commiserate on their shared experiences as they watched helplessly as the bubonic plague spread through their communities and societies. New and old pandemics might be able to connect people in the future as well, because, as The Fate of Rome points out, the threat of systemic shocks from climate change and disease has not ended.
If anything, the threat could be increasing in the coming decades as man-made climate change forces people to become refugees and as more the environment is destroyed or made uninhabitable more wildlife will be forced to live closer to humanity, increasing the threat of bacteria or viruses jumping species. What The Fate of Rome does so brilliantly, and why I recommend it to everyone, is remind us that the threats to our civilization would be familiar to people for pretty much all of human history. Despite humanity’s increasing interference, nature still has dominion over us.
The books I have reviewed and recommended on my blog in the past have all been books that have been published recently. And the next book I plan to review is also less than six years old. So why for this piece am I discussing a book that was first released more than a century ago? Hopefully, in my own small and inconsequential way I wanted to draw more attention to what I think is an important and overlooked book that more Americans absolutely need to read. In fact, much of this piece will be lengthy quotations from the book, to hopefully let the book’s merits speak for itself. And I hope that the readers will reflect on and imbibe the wisdom that Eastman offers us.
To give a very brief summary of the author; Charles Alexander Eastman (also known as Hakadah or Ohiye S’a) was a Santee Dakota born in 1858 and who lived until 1939. He was a doctor, writer, and social reformer. His first book, Indian Boyhood, was published in 1902, recounting his early life among the Dakota Sioux. According to my edition of From the Deep Woods, it was published in 1916 and to quote the foreword to the book: “…the story has now been carried on from that point of the plunge into the unknown with which the first book ends.”
From the Deep Woods recounts the author’s life from his early years among the Dakota Sioux, through his early education both in the Midwest and college in the eastern US and his embrace of Christianity, onward through his career as a doctor on different reservations. As the book progresses Eastman also recounts his spiritual and intellectual journey, and how he comes to question just how Christian of a nation the United States really is. There are certainly events both big and small in Eastman’s life that could change his perspective. For example, he was on a reservation very near to the site of the 1890 Wounded Knee massacre and treated many of the injured victims.
I first heard of Eastman and this book when I was watching The Great Courses lecture series called Native Peoples of North America (which I also recommend). I greatly appreciated the series for presenting the history of North America in a new perspective, one that emphasized Native Americans’ agency, adaptability, and resilience. The series also gave me a greater appreciation of Native American contributions to American culture. Even better, the series introduced me to Charles Eastman and his writing.
So why do I recommend this book, and why do I think more Americans should read it? Because I find it depressing. This sounds like a counter intuitive reason to endorse something, but let me explain. The more I study history, especially modern and early modern history, the more I find people who make poignant and cutting critiques of the world in which they lived. And most of the time, I find that these people’s wise counsel was ignored. The same can be said for From the Deep Woods. This book was published more than a century ago, but if it had been published yesterday it would still be just as relevant now as it was in 1916. While I find this book depressing in a strange yet inscrutably harmonious way I also find it uplifting. It gladdens me to see that there are people who can take a step back from the cultural milieu they are engrossed in and make an objective assessment of what they see. If others can do so hopefully in my own way I can do the same. And maybe the reader can as well after they read a few passages of From the Deep Woods.
A quick note, unless I specify otherwise, any italics you see in the quotes below are my own emphasis.
-This first quote is Eastman recounting an exchange he had with an instructor during a summer while he was in college in Massachusetts. I don’t know if other readers will find it as amusing as I do but I laugh every time I read it.
“One morning as we walked together, we came to a stone at the roadside. “Eastman,” said he, “this stone is a reminder of the cruelty of your countrymen two centuries ago. Here they murdered an innocent Christian.”
“Mr. Moody,” I replied, “it might have been better if they had killed them all. Then you would not have had to work so hard to save the souls of their descendants.”
-Below is the first paragraph of the chapter titled “The Ghost Dance War” about different Native American spiritual movements at the beginning and end of the 19th century. I’m by no means an expert on this topic or period so I don’t know if scholars would agree with Eastman’s assessment. But nonetheless I think it’s an interesting idea.
“A religious craze such as that of 1890-91 was a thing foreign to the Indian philosophy. I recalled that a hundred years before, on the overthrow of the Algonquin nations, a somewhat similar faith was evolved by the astute Delaware prophet, brother to Tecumseh. It meant that the last hope of race entity had departed, and my people were groping blindly after spiritual relief in their bewilderment and misery. I believe that the first prophets of the “Red Christ” were innocent enough and that the people were generally sincere, but there were doubtless some who went into it for self-advertisement, and who introduced new and fantastic features to attract the crowd.”
-The next quote is from the chapter “War with the Politicians.” In the paragraphs before this quote Eastman is describing corruption on the Pine Ridge Reservation and his initial disbelief at what was being done to rob or mislead the Indians who lived there.
“To me these stories were unbelievable, from the point of view of common decency. I held that a great government such as ours would never condone or permit any such practices, while administering large trust funds and standing in relation of guardian to a race made helpless by lack of education and of legal safeguards. At that time, I had not dreamed what American politics really is…”
-This next quote I first heard watching The Great Courses lecture series I mentioned above. I have never forgotten a phrase that Eastman used and as soon as I heard it I knew I had to read the rest of this book, a decision I did not regret.
“I seriously considered the racial attitude toward God, and almost unconsciously reopened the book of my early religious training, asking myself how it was that our simple lives were so imbued with worship, while much church-going among white and nominally Christian Indians led often to such small results.”
“A new point of view came to me then and there. This latter was a machine-made religion. It was supported by money, and more money could only be asked for on the showing made; therefore too many of the workers were after the quantity rather than the quality of religious experience.”
-Eastman spent much of his time proselytizing the Christian faith during his travels to different reservations, but he quotes several people during the book that pointed to the obvious gaps between Christian faith in theory and how Christian faith is expressed in reality. Here is one such example of someone speaking to Eastman as he was explaining the tenets of Christianity.
“I remember one old battle-scared warrior who sat among the young men got up and said in substance: “Why, we have followed this law you speak of for untold ages! We owned nothing, because everything is from Him. Food was free, land was free as sunshine and rain. Who has changed all this? The white man; and yet he says he is a believer in God! He does not seem to inherit any of the traits of his Father, nor does he follow the example set by his brother Christ.”
-This next excerpt is Eastman once again quoting someone else. It’s a short quote but crucially important in early 21st century America when we are tottering on the edge of “Christian” Nationalists dominating our governmental system, and proves my point that From the Deep Woods continues to be relevant.
“Then American Horse spoke up.” “The missionaries tell us a man cannot have two masters; then how can he be a religious man and a politician at the same time?”
-This last section I’m quoting at length and it’s the last couple pages of the book. Obviously it’s a long quote but as a way to end a book I think it is an absolute slam dunk. Quick note: the words might and right in this section are italicized in the original.
“From the time I first accepted the Christ ideal it has grown on me steadily, but I also see more and more plainly our modern divergence from that ideal. I confess I have wondered much that Christianity is not practiced by the very people who vouch for that wonderful conception of exemplary living. It appears that they are anxious to pass on their religion to all races of men, but keep very little of it themselves. I have not yet seen the meek inherit the earth, or the peacemakers receive high honor.”
“Why do we find so much evil and wickedness practiced by the nations composed of professedly “Christian” individuals? The pages of history are full of licensed murder and the plundering of weaker and less developed peoples, and obviously the world today has not outgrown this system. Behind the material and intellectual splendor of civilization, primitive savagery and cruelty and lust hold sway, undiminished, and as it seems, unheeded. When I let go of my simple, instinctive nature religion, I hoped to gain something far loftier as well as more satisfying to the reason. Alas! It is also more confusing and contradictory. The higher and spiritual life, though first in theory, is clearly secondary, if not entirely neglected, in actual practice. When I reduce civilization to its lowest terms, it becomes a system of life based on trade. The dollar is the measure of value, and might still spells right; otherwise, why war?”
“Yet even in deep jungles God’s own sunlight penetrates, and I stand before my own people still as an advocate for civilization. Why? First, because there is no chance for our former simple life anymore; and second, because I realize the white man’s religion is not responsible for his mistakes. There is every evidence that God has given him all the light necessary by which to live in peace and good-will with his brother; and we also know that many brilliant civilizations have collapsed in physical and moral decadence. It is for us to avoid their fate if we can.”
“Because there is no chance for our former simple life anymore.” There is so much in the last couple of pages of Eastman’s book that is brilliant. However, this is the part I find myself thinking the most about. I wonder how Eastman felt when he said that there was no going back to their simple lives anymore. Was it a forlorn longing for something that is forever out of reach? Was it a grim acceptance of reality? Was it a hopefulness that a better world might yet be built? Was it all of these things, or none of them? I find myself wishing I could ask.
Two predominating myths have colored how other Americans view Native American societies for the past couple of centuries. One has been extremely negative and the other extremely positive. Neither of those extremes is true, and extremes rarely resemble the truth. People like overly negative or positive portrayals of something because it makes life simple. It reduces people and events to one dimensional caricatures. Native Americans were not and are not some trope for savagery or for a lost Utopian society either. They were people, with their own complex societies of languages, cultures, religions, systems of trade, modes of warfare, and family and community dynamics.
In my view, every society has its own good and bad aspects and we could all benefit by trying to adopt or adapt the good from other societies into our own, while dispensing with the bad. That sounds simple in theory, but the devil is in the details and everyone will have a different idea of what is good and bad. For example, what I consider to be the best aspects of many Native American cultures, many of which Eastman points out in his writing, is a respect for nature and a more egalitarian community that does not glorify materialism and property.
Also, I always think it is wise to engage with people from other cultural backgrounds. Not only do they provide a fresh perspective, they can point out problems within your culture that might be blindingly obvious to them, that are not clear to you. That’s the thing about cultural rules and norms that we often forget. They are arbitrary, made up, based only on popular consensus. They absolutely can and should change over time, especially to correct flaws and injustices. However, to correct a flaw, the first step is to recognize and point out that flaw, and that’s why books such as From the Deep Woods are so important.
From the Deep Woods to Civilization is an underappreciated book that, unfortunately, is still just as relevant as when it was first written and published. I hope you found the quoted passages above enlightening. If you did, I encourage you to read the rest of the book, and to recommend it to friends and family for them to read as well. As usual I will post some links for the book if you want to purchase it, and I will link The Great Courses series I mentioned a couple of times as well.
Quick Note: If you see the series at full price, yes it is way too expensive, probably hundreds of dollars. However, The Great Courses is always running some kind of sale and they always knock down the price to around 50-70 dollars. So I, like everyone else probably, just wait until the series I want is on sale, and if interested I would recommend you do the same.
How Data Happened: A History from the Age of Reason to the Age of Algorithms is one of those books I am happy the authors thought to write, because it asks a basic question that many of us are too busy or thoughtless to ask. How did we get here? As the title makes clear, the book tries to trace the roots of our current data-obsessed global society back several centuries to find out what people, ideas, and concepts helped make the modern 21st century world of surveillance capitalism possible. The story told in the book is sometimes amusing, like how Guinness wanted to use data to make better beer more reliably. At other times however, the story is much more sinister and helps highlight the dangers of how data can be gathered and used to reinforce prejudice, like when eugenicists set out to use data to prove the inferiority of certain races.
Overall, How Data Happened is an illuminating book that helps explain how we came to live in a world that is monitoring us constantly, to gather data on us so that companies and politicians can sell us their products or opinions. I highly recommend this book to everyone. Every once in a while it is beneficial for us to take a step back from our busy lives and ask ourselves how we got here. Just as importantly and what I will be discussing in a moment is another question that we should all ask ourselves. Does it have to be this way?
Discussion:
To continue the discussion first I want to quote two of my favorite passages in the book, one quite long and the second only part of a sentence. (In the second quote my own emphasis is added).
“Powerful forces often are reticent to investigate the historical genesis that made them possible–or even dominant. Complex histories unsettle the obviousness, the legitimacy, of their power. In looking at the far from obvious ways technologies come to prominence, history unsettles the idea that the growth of certain technologies themselves drives history, a view called “technological determinism.” It has been very lucrative for many interested actors, for example, to claim that older views of privacy are outdated in the age of the internet, even that the internet itself causes the decline of privacy. Neither claim is true. But such stories offer a potent version of history, ubiquitous in debates around the internet, that legitimates the current order of things as necessarily so.”
“Date is made, not found…”
The passage I just quoted above was probably my favorite in How Date Happened. Partly because it relates to ideas and concepts that I talked about in my own book. Obviously the quoted passage is referring to government and corporate surveillance and the erosion of privacy in the 21st century. Wiggins and Jones are making the point that the current model of the internet built on data gathering for targeted ads is not inevitable, and that studying the history of data and technology shows us that it’s not a straight road to the present. Rather, there were an infinite number of forks and divergent paths along the history of data, and we could have gone down any number of those divergent paths at different points in time.
I firmly believe this idea that nothing is inevitable applies to all human events and decisions, not just to the history of data. This is a point that I will harp on until I am blue in the face. Nothing being inevitable and everything being contingent is both a good and a bad thing. It means that had people acted differently in the past, things might have turned out worse, but it also means things could have gone better as well. If everything that happened in the past is contingent, that means that it can be changed for the future. This doesn’t mean we should blindly hope for a better tomorrow, but it does mean that we have a chance of creating a better tomorrow if we work to achieve it.
Take for example, the subject of How Data Happened. Just because we live in a world of surveillance capitalism doesn’t mean we are doomed to always live in one. If everything in the past was contingent, that means the present is as well.So maybe with enough effort, we can live in a future with a renewed emphasis on our right to privacy, our right to our own data, and the right to know who is gathering data on us and why.
“Date is made, not found.” I’m sure the authors would agree with me when I say that if you only remember one thing from How Data Happened, it should be this statement. Because these five words capture the essential problem with how many people perceive data. There is often a mistaken assumption that conducting a study or a survey automatically produces some universal truth that we are forced to recognize. Even more importantly, many people assume that data contains no bias; and by extension, the institutions, algorithms, and AIs that use this data contain no bias.
The complete opposite is true. Data is created, collated, interpreted, and presented by people. Data can absolutely reflect and reinforce the bias of the people creating it. Wiggins and Jones demonstrate in their book that many of the early and enthusiastic creators of data in the 19th and 20th centuries were eugenicists. If a bunch of eugenicists published data that purported to “prove” the biological inferiority of different races, should we accept that data as unassailable truth? Or is it more likely that these eugenicists gathered their data and then interpreted and presented that data in a way that reinforces their preconceptions?
Taking eugenics and phrenology seriously in the 21st century might sound silly. However, it was treated as a science by some people up until the relatively recent past (and still is taken seriously by some up to this day). Furthermore, this racist pseudoscience led to some truly horrifying policies being enacted such as forced sterilization in the United States (which was done until the 1970s by the way). In the US we are still living with some of the structural and institutional discriminatory practices that can trace their direct lineage to eugenics.
The point of this, and the point made in How Data Happened, is to remember that data is not inherently unbiased. Data in fact has the potential to reinforce and legitimize bias and discrimination. With this in mind we need to be extremely careful what data is being fed into algorithms and AIs to ensure that discrimination is being eliminated rather than supported.
Conclusion:
How Data Happened is an excellent resource for anyone wondering what confluence of factors led us to the digital environment that we are mired in today. As it said in the passage I quoted above, unraveling the history of a topic can help dispel the illusion that things have to be this way, and that we don’t have the power to change in the present. As usual if you are interested in the book I will have links for it just below.
To start with I want to make clear that The Declassification Engine is a fantastically well written and engaging book. However, it is a book designed to make the reader concerned, to draw their attention to an issue in the American governmental system that most people might not be aware of, despite this issue’s grave importance to our understanding of the past, present, and future.
The Declassification Engine demonstrates the growth of government secrecy beginning in WWII, and the growing refusal of Presidents, advisers, security agencies, and the military to declassify records long after any protest of “protecting national security” can be justified. So why hide or destroy records that are inconsequential to national security? As Connelly makes very clear throughout the book, too often government and military officials use the cloak of secrecy to hide crimes committed, cover up incompetence or miscalculations, or to mask the needless waste of taxpayer money on inefficiency and harebrained boondoggles.
On top of all of this, the book also points out two other crucial issues created by this cult of over-classification. 1. The over-classification of information is damaging to both democratic accountability, and genuine national security. When presidents use secrecy to try to control the narrative of politics, or the CIA uses it to hide all the illegal things the agency has done throughout its history, it becomes so much easier for actual sensitive secrets to be leaked in this confusing quagmire. And 2. The deluge of needlessly classified government records, especially in the digital age, is making it literally impossible for the undermanned and underfunded National Archives to sort through it all. If we don’t put more emphasis as a nation on declassification and accountability, then we are at risk of huge numbers of documents being “lost” or just deleted because no one can sort through them all. The potential loss of our history and the possibility that corrupt or incompetent officials might be able to escape the scrutiny of future histories should be a worrying prospect for us all.
The one big ray of hope in The Declassification Engine is that many of the tools that the government uses to classify and surveil us can be used to help uncover what the government doesn’t want us to know, why they don’t want us to know it, and who in the government keeps the most secrets. Connelly describes in this book how he and different groups of data scientists can use algorithms and machine-learning to look for patterns in government documents. With these tools one might be able to find out what topics in a given time period receive the most classification, or whose name does or doesn’t appear often in top secret documents. This kind of examination, if properly developed and used correctly, could unlock a whole new avenue of approach to how historians research American political history.
I absolutely loved reading this book. A couple of years ago I started using a notebook to mark down pages numbers of books I read so I can quickly return passages that I thought were exceptionally well written and thought provoking, or if the author has an interesting primary source quote. Since I started doing this I’ve read dozens of books, and it’s become an informal but demonstrative way to see how much I liked a book or how eye opening it was, the more page numbers I write down, the more I enjoyed it. And looking at how many page numbers I noted when reading The Declassification Engine, I really liked the book. On average I made a note for one out of every ten pages, far more than most of the other books I’ve read since I started doing this. What I love about books of this type is that not only are they well researched and informative, they also broaden your horizons and provide fresh perspectives for those reading them. Even if you don’t necessarily agree with everything said in the book, it’s reasonable and thoughtful enough to appreciate its convictions.
For example, in one chapter of the book Connelly discusses programs the CIA conducted during the Cold War like MK Ultra that investigated whether mind control through new drugs was possible. MK Ultra was a hair-brained scheme from the start, demonstrating how secrecy often fosters incompetence rather than creativity and progress. But MK Ultra has become a monolith for conspiracy theorists for two important reasons, 1. The CIA was willing to conduct experiments on American citizens without their consent, proof that the government is willing to violate our fundamental rights if they feel as if it will serve their interests. And 2. Much of the documentation about MK Ultra was deliberately destroyed to cover up what was done.
Connelly speculated that programs like MK Ultra when they were revealed to the public have fostered a mistrust in the government and science in general that can help explain why there was so much hostility to science about climate change or to vaccines during the COIVD-19 pandemic. I had never considered this perspective before. But after reading this idea I believe it is very plausible and to an extent helped alleviate some of my own bafflement to the rampant and vicious anti-scientific views held by so many Americans.
This fear of the government’s intentions is especially understandable from Black Americans and other minorities. Reading this book reminded me of incidents in American history like the Tuskegee Syphilis Study, where Black Americans with syphilis were treated like lab rats to measure the effects of untreated syphilis. How much harder is it for a black man to trust the CDC now when they know that their lives have been treated like disposable petri dishes in the past, and systemic racism is still alive and well in the US today? This is the kind of long-term harm that government secrecy can do, especially when it is used to shield the guilty from consequences.
Conclusion:
I believe that The Declassification Engine is an important book that needs to be read by as many Americans as possible. America desperately needs to rethink its policy of official secrecy. Our current system is bloated and unwieldy, making it next to impossible to have democratic accountability while also failing to safeguard legitimate secrets. The Declassification Engine is part wake up call, and part warning. This book makes readers aware of the flawed regime of secrecy we have been living in since the Second World War. And it’s a warning of the history that could be lost if we don’t act soon to change what the government keeps secret and why.
I would describe The Declassification Engine as a book that takes an honest look at American history, as opposed to the whitewashed history every student learns in school (government secrecy plays its part in that whitewashing). If you’re interested in other books that take an honest look into America’s recent past I would recommend two other brilliant books to pair with Connelly’s. The first is Reign of Terror: How the 9/11 Era Destabilized America and Produced Trump, by Spencer Ackerman. The second book is Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire, by Jonothan Katz. I’ll provide links to all three of these books below.
In recent months thanks in large part to the settled lawsuit from Dominion voting systems, we have learned a great deal about the inner workings of Fox News and how many of its most important news anchors feel about their viewers, their colleagues, and the people they are supporting on the air. And the culture and priorities of Fox News have become clear as well. Basically, Fox News is and always has been a conservative propaganda wing of the Republican party, and they are more than willing to sacrifice any principles or integrity in the name of profits and retaining their audience. Now this has been a relatively big news story, and at the time of this writing it is still a developing story. But my question is, why isn’t this an even bigger story? Why aren’t these Dominion lawsuit revelations shaking American society and forcing us to question how we produce and consume news? This question I will discuss in Part 1 of this piece, and in Part 2 I will engage in a bit of shameless “I told you so” to Fox News and the strategy conservative media has been using for at least the past 25 years.
Part 1:
Why haven’t the revelations brought to light by the Dominion lawsuit about the inner workings of Fox News been a huge event that immediately and fatally damaged the legitimacy of Fox? I think there are two key answers to the question.
The title of this piece, outrages exhaustion. I don’t know if this was actually planned or if it was accidental but one of the brilliant things about Trump and his presidency was to create so much controversy, with every single day bringing new crimes and new scandals, that it made people exhausted to the point of apathy just to keep track of everything. Now imagine trying to do anything about all those scandals and outrages on top of that. In addition, the lack of real consequences for people in power when they commit crimes is also depressing and exhausting. Trump has done a brilliant job of demonstrating how much the justice system protects the rich through the example of his own life. Trump has been getting away with crimes his entire adult life and no one can fail to notice how money and power equals immunity from punishment (his recent indictment at the time of this writing notwithstanding). Returning specifically to Fox News, not only are Americans apathetic to scandal now, but I would also use the analogy of a vengeful wife slowly poisoning her husband over a period of years by adding arsenic to his coffee. If Fox News started their network as fascist insurrection apologists America might take more notice. But since Fox has been incrementally increasing the amount of poison over the past 20 years we fail to notice the cumulative damage it has had on our society.
For many (myself included), when we learned what the Dominion lawsuit revealed we all said “no shit.” It was less of a revelation and more of a confirmation. “So, you’re saying that Fox News is an evil corporate megalith concerned only with money and propaganda? That’s so obvious it’s like saying the sun rises in the east or that water is wet.” What has baffled me for years and is still true even after all of this has come to light is that Fox seems to have won its own war for legitimacy. It is still the case that in polite society we all have to pretend as if Fox is some impartial and credible news organization, when the truth is that it has always been a blatant propaganda machine concerned only with pushing their own agenda. Fox “News” has always reminded me of a scene in the Silence of the Lamb film when Hannibal Lecter cuts off that guy’s face and wears it to escape. Well Fox cut off the face of real journalism and has been ghoulishly wearing it for decades.
Anyway, another reason that these Dominion revelations have not gotten the reaction that they deserve is because that reaction of “no shit” was only felt by people who already disliked Fox. However, for those who watch Fox their reaction is much different. Mainly, most of them didn’t react at all, because they haven’t heard about any of this. Because guess which network didn’t cover the Dominion lawsuit or its aftermath? Or, if Fox viewers have heard about this they either don’t understand what the Dominion lawsuit was about, or they just ignore it.
Part 2:
Now if you’ll forgive my moment of bragging I’d like to take a quick victory lap and say that I was at least partially right about how Fox News’ strategy of peddling conspiracy and paranoia could backfire. One interesting thing that was brought to light by the Dominion lawsuit was the discussions had by Fox News pundits right after the 2020 election. Fox telling the truth about the election, especially when Biden won Arizona, made a lot of Fox viewers very angry. Telling the truth hurt the Fox brand and this is the dilemma that Fox has made for itself. It has spent decades creating an audience of ignorant and fearful people to make money, but Fox has had to become ever more radical to appease their increasingly irrational audience. But if they keep getting sued by companies like Dominion for the insane things they spew on their network they might not be able to afford to make one huge settlement after another to make the problem go away. But if they don’t keep their rhetoric insane enough, then their audience might leave to find someone who will say the things they want to hear. So, Fox is caught between trying to keep their audience and avoiding constant and costly legal headaches.
In my book that was released in 2022 I made a short story about a conservative political party whose strategy to keep voters and stay in power was to brainwash as many people as they could with a cocktail of conspiracy, ignorance, and paranoia. In this short story I asked whether this paranoid and ignorant monster could ever bite the hand that feeds it, or even eat the hand that feeds it. Watching Fox’s dilemma, I need to adjust that imagery slightly. The paranoid and ignorant monster isn’t biting Fox’s hand, it’s becoming unsatisfied with what Fox is feeding it, so it’s looking for a new hand to feed it what it wants.
Conclusion:
Fox News has been a malignant cancer destroying American society from the inside since the moment of its horror filled conception. A thousand ancient curses to everyone who created Fox, perpetuated it, and still make money off of it. The End.
