This isn’t an earth-shattering conclusion, but it’s still galling to read — or, actually, skip over after reading the headline — most of what shows up in print media or online (TV news, except for the occasional documentary, is an entirely lost cause).
It’s not just the constant games of “let’s you and him fight,” in which reporters generate “news” by asking politicians to react to statements by other politicians, or the overworked field of “doom is just around the corner.” It’s the entire structure of our infotainment media.
Consider, for example, the worse-than-useless polling that gets cited as factual data. This morning, in an otherwise anodyne story, the writer claimed that polling shows a majority of Americans favor bipartisanship and compromise.
This is arrant bullshit on its face. No they don’t. People want their own preferences to carry the day. Nobody, ever, anywhere, says, “I want this, but I’m perfectly happy to not get part of it because you don’t want me to.” Nobody. Ever. Anywhere. But they do if they’re not given a clear choice, as in, “Do you favor getting what your want or splitting the difference with your enemies?” People compromise when they have to. To claim that people prefer it is a flat-out lie. They prefer half a loaf to none, and a whole loaf to a half. This is so obvious that polling on it is a waste of everybody’s time and energy.
But Democratic politicians like Sen. Chris Coons use this dishonest answer to a rigged question to knuckle under to Republicans who want to carry out the Chamber of Commerce agenda — which is exactly what Chris Coons want in the first place. The scientifically useless “data” generated by such polls gives him, and the many quisling Democrats in office, plausible cover for doing just that.