Jonathon Rauch wrote a readable thesis concerning our society’s foundation of establishing knowledge. He likens this to the constitution of our government, the rules and procedures to establish our governing system are the same as those to establish knowledge that engenders trust in the resultant body of work.
Today our foundation is being eroded by those who don’t mind lying, manipulating facts, creating their own facts, punish anyone who decides to disagree with you, etc. Both the right and left use methods unique to each to control the messaging.
He wrote this during the first Trump administration and gets off track by only giving examples of misdeeds by him and his folks, openly admitting he does that, page 180. My opinion is that takes away from the argument as both sides of the aisle are equally guilty.
He follows this with a condemnation of cancel culture, a creation of the left, and does a good job doing so. The left totally owns this disease of our society.
He uses quotes from folks that have been exiled to the trash bin of history in a positive fashion. FBI director Comey. Peter Strzok, FBI agent, who wrote to Lisa Page a FBI attorney in a FBI email that they needed to find a way to stop Trump. Anthony Fauci. Erwin Chemerinsky, law dean at Berkeley who wants to trash the constitution and start all over. All credited with standing up to the Trump administration when they were all actually suppressing the truth.
He mentions with praise many things I respect. Braver Angels. Jonathon Haidt. FIRE. And many more. He spends too much time on gay rights and the struggles he and others faced, he should have given other references.
He credited many supporters, including the Koch’s and other conservative groups amongst the overwhelming progressive supporters. At least they were mentioned.
Both sides of the aisle should be concerned about how our society sifts through information to create truth. Both sides of the aisle should have the courage to admit fallibility, accept empirical proof, work to persuade versus impose ideas–all these strengthen our republic by creating common ground.
Social media has done a great thing bringing everything to everybody, and a terrible thing at the same time. The old aristocratic stranglehold of media has been broken and it appears we must all now find our own trusted sources of truth. Many options are not truth.
This could be a good thing, but we as citizens must step up to this new responsibility. There is a great deal of junk being pushed at us, it could destroy trust in the institutions that hold the republic together.
Let us pray.