In The Nation’s final issue before the results desks across electronic media univocally confirmed the reality of The Once and Not Future King’s electoral ouster, Eric Alterman assessed the danger represented by the man’s epic dishonesty and the press’s broad inability to call it what it was. Mr. Alterman was on the money and an unpublished letter said so. A perusal of Edward S. Herman and Noam Chomsky’s Manufacturing Consent would do the press corps a world of good.
Eric Alterman, “The Plot Against America,” The Nation, 16-23 November 2020 (www.thenation.com/article/politics/the-plot-against-america/).
Eric Alterman’s critique of the press’s coverage of the Trump administration was fully on point. Authoritarian wannabes will vie for Mr. Trump’s mantle and base; they likely will be more strategically and less pathologically mendacious than the departing president and consequently will pose a continuing threat to democratic governance. Hiding behind the evasion of “only reporting” will neither inform the citizenry nor hold officeholders to account nor ensure the fourth estate’s long-term health. “Truth will out” only when public exposure of dishonesty and malfeasance is swift and assured.
My regard for Eric Alterman cannot be higher. When he took aim at Facebook for its exploitation of users’ data, it was an opportunity to roll out a short-form version of my spiel on social media. On this topic, consistency is categorically not the hallmark of a hobgoblin-infested small mind.
Eric Alterman, “The Social Menace,” The Nation, 28 January/4 February 2019, 6 (www.thenation.com/article/archive/facebook-spies-alterman/).
Thanks to Eric Alterman for his incisive assessment of the arrogance, avarice, and mendacity of Facebook’s top executives and of the platform’s toxic impact on the nation’s politics.
Equally troubling is Facebook’s sociocultural effect. Years ago, a friend – a recent Facebook hire – pressed my wife and me to join the nascent social media behemoth. I demurred because the enterprise seemed narcissistic, an invitation to drown in the trivial. My Facebook-free existence has been in no respect inimical to personal fulfillment. Mark Zuckerberg’s vision of boundless “connectivity” paradoxically leaves people atomized as, stricken by “fear of missing out” and grasping for “likes,” they tap, tap, tap and curate their lives for a faceless electronic throng rather than living them. Immersion in social media is not inherently bad but there are so many better things to do.