The Internet has Changed Politics, and It’s not Going Back
’Jack and Diane’ painted a picture of my life and my dreams.
Suddenly this crazy world made more sense to me.
Well, I heard it today and I couldn’t help but sing along,
Because every time I hear that song,
I go back to a two-toned short bed Chevy,
Driving my first love out to the levee,
Living life with no sense of time.
And I go back to the feel of a fifty yard line.
A blanket, a girl and some raspberry wine.
Wishing time would stop right in its tracks.
Every time I hear that song.
I go back.
I go back.”
I Go Back - Kenny Chesney (2004)
…..
Those of us of a certain age (that is a euphemism for “old”), remember when almost all Americans watched the same TV shows on one of the three networks. We got our news from the hometown paper, the CBS evening news, Newsweek, or Time magazine and maybe Paul Harvey on the radio. There was a commonality of experience and of exposure to information. Not anymore.
Our politics is divided. Our country is divided. We are now either red or blue. That whole red state, blue state or purple state thing is a fairly recent construct within the last 25 years. Interestingly, that’s just about the same amount of time that the internet has been widely used.
In 1983, the final episode of the TV series M.A.S.H. was aired. Recording tapes were new and expensive then so most everyone had to watch it live. It is estimated that 106 million Americans did just that at a time when the country’s population was about 230 million. So, nearly 1 in 2 Americans watched that show live. No other broadcast since has achieved that much market share and only a couple of recent Super Bowls have garnered a similar audience from a much larger population that can record with ease.
By comparison, do you watch Yellowstone? NCIS? Blue Bloods? American Idol? The answer is probably not. Those are some of TVs highest rated shows, but their viewership runs from 12 million to 6 million in a country of 340 million people. And if you do watch some of these, I bet you do so recorded rather than live.
But, you say you watch streaming now instead of broadcast TV. You are actually making my point. The most streamed show is Stranger Things, but Netflix won’t say how many people watch it. Only how many minutes it is streamed. That is a big number (billions) and so sounds way better for a company that is pumping its stock price because it has no real earnings, but that is a story for another day.
The point I am making using entertainment here, is that Americans, up until the last 25 years or so, had many shared experiences regardless of where they lived. They watched the same shows but also read the same news and the same books and went to church together saw their kids taught the same “reading writing and arithmetic” in school. We weren’t that far apart politically because we weren’t that far apart socially and culturally.
The internet was a driving force, though not the only one, that changed all that.
Now, we get our news from TV, terrestrial radio, satellite radio, newspapers, magazines, podcasts, YouTube, twitter, Apple, websites, and various other formats. There are literally thousands of places to get information where only maybe a few dozen existed in the past. This means we can be selective on what we watch, read and hear. And we are. So, the news consumed by a NY Times, CNN, Daily Beast and person will be entirely different from a NewsMax, Epoch Times, Daily Wire and Twitter user. They don’t often cover the same things and when they do cover the same things, they emphasize different aspects thereof.
Even in sports, I used to know what all the local teams in every sport were doing because it was on the front page of the sports section every morning. Now, I can tell you anything you want to know about NASCAR from my podcasts and websites and apps. But, I don’t even know the team names in the NBA and NFL anymore not to mention which ones are winning. I follow what I want and don’t see what I’m not interested in.
All of this is neither good nor bad. It merely is. We can’t change it. It is what happens when new technology and innovations come along. If you long for a day when we all traveled by horse and carriage, you can lament all you want. But you cannot change it.
In my opinion, this lack of commonly shared information and experience is part of what has created the ever-deepening divide in America between left and right. Since we can’t change it, are we doomed to see the country split apart as it was in 1861?
I don’t think we have to go there. There is a deeper way in which we can stay together. Much more important than what sports we follow, or even your position on the risks presented from climate change, is our shared love of country, the constitution, and our enduring uniquely American cultural values. You and I can disagree on taxes and abortion, but if we fundamentally believe that this is the best country God ever put on this earth and that our system of government, though not perfect, is best as well, we can come up with some compromise and solution to every problem.
But, if half of us believe that this country is bad and not worth fighting for and its constitution needs to be rewritten, then it will be hard to find any common ground on any subject without first fighting over the fundamentals. We did that back in 1861. The country had really only existed since the Treaty of Paris in 1783. So, the “American experiment” was younger than some persons living at the beginning of the Civil War. It wasn’t firmly established. That war did that.
But today, we are nearly 160 years on since the end of that conflict. We are established. The “experiment” worked. It is still working. Many fought and died for it. They thought it was worth it. I think they were right.
That is why I am so adamant that the left’s attack on belief in God, our culture and our history is the most important fight going on right now. If they convince too many people of the lie that the country was founded in 1619 on a platform of white supremacy, oppression and fanaticism, then there will be no “hanging together,” in the words of Benjamin Franklin.
I am on the board of trustees of a non-profit called the American Battlefield Trust. (www.battlefields.org) This group has 46,000 members and we preserve the land, buildings and history of the conflicts of America’s first 100 years that shaped who we are as a nation. The goal of the group is to “preserve, educate and inspire” people today with what our forefathers gave for us. I will make a shameless plug that I hope you will go on the website and join us in our efforts.
Whether it is the American Battlefield Trust or something else, I mainly hope you all will engage with someone or something through a charity, a church, a synagogue, a school, a university, a political action group or something to turn this tide of patriotism, faith and culture in our society.
I have heard from some very reasonable people talk of “Texit.” That is a play on the term “Brexit” and is a word to suggest the secession of Texas from the union. I don’t think we are close to that yet. But I don’t want to get anywhere near that point.
Time marches on as it should. Many things change with time. We all may be in our respective silos and disagree strongly about the border and education. But, as a T-shirt I saw last year said, let us kneel before the cross and stand for the flag. We have been united on a very deep level for 160 years. Let’s not let the leftist fanatics take that away from the rest of us.
I remain respectfully,
Congressman John Campbell
Drive Fast & Live Free