In the weeks before the election a Bible study group I am a part of had one member tell us that she could no longer study with us because “We were evil Christians” She had previously told me that she had never met a Christian who was a Democrat, and that she had never met a Democrat willing to talk about what they believed. I’d offered to do so, but not during the Bible study. When people from the study went out to lunch it became clear that we had no common source of facts to talk from. Haitians were eating dogs and cats—she had seen videos of them doing it. Schools in California send kids home to their parents after sex changes. Isn’t that obviously evil? Democrats are sacrificing babies. Abortion after birth. This stuff seems ludicrous to me (because it is) but there was no ground of facts and place to obtain them that she could meet me at. And by a week before the election how could she even consort with such an evil person as I am to support such evils?
Part of what has stunned me since the election has been realizing that some of my acquaintances stood somewhere in the midst of competing data streams and just concluded that they did not have what it took to sort them out. With those folks I regret that I didn’t talk more and talk more plainly.
Prices and the perception of a bad economy were a big deal but for the devout people in the churches near me it was the “culture wars”—Transgender, homophobic, abortions are child sacrifice…the racism was below the surface—they weren’t white Christian Nationalists—one of the pastors they looked too was a Black man married to a Latina woman—-but they wanted to see a revival of pure Christianity in charge of the nation and they saw Mr Trump as the way to get that.
It wasn't the price of eggs, it was the perceived price of eggs ... and other distortions. When my Trump-supporting brother emailed me a month or two ago to ask why Biden-Harris earned my support, here is one of about 20 bullet points I sent: I appreciate the attention to our country’s infrastructure, low unemployment rate, an inflation rate lower than other developing countries, a healthy stock market. He then switched to perceived moral issues. I suggested he compare the number of times Jesus said anything about abortion or same sex marriage with His frequency of addressing justice issues - the poor, vulnerable, exploited ... Then he replied with what I'm thinking is Fox News talking points. It takes a lot of patience, and research and gathering of thoughts to engage in these civil discussions (as Jemar and you readers well know). I intend to pick this back up with him, even post-election. This proliferation of propaganda that folks - church folks - have been groomed to swallow - hook, line, and sinker - is utterly frightening.
Well said. I think this is a heart problem at its core. As Tim Keller would say, our souls are like piano strings that resonate when the right note is played. I refuse to believe that people are without agency in the media they consume. More often, they (we?) abdicate our responsibility to guard our hearts and outsource our critical thinking.
Personally, this has served to strengthen my resolve to write about issues of character to make it easier for people to discern right from wrong and better understand human nature.
Several family members (most) always imbibe conservative media. I watched my parents deep into Fox world before they died. In-laws and siblings all swim in this as did I as a kid. 50 years of historical study, ministering with non-white groups and slowly watching the fruit of Christian Nationalism pushed me away from the Right Wing.
A dear, Trump voting friend asked me why people are so upset. I shared my top 5-6 reasons, Trumps claim to be a dictator on day one, his new office of retribution, the plan to fire 50,000 civil workers and replace with loyalists etc. She was shocked. Hadn’t heard of any of it.
Thank you for saying this, Jemar. I’ve thought lately that we need to go back to the days of newspapers being delivered to our doors daily so we can all be getting the same (much less biased) information. There are some blessing of the current media environment (I can read your work!), but that’s bc I’ve chosen to and the people who really need to see it never will. I don’t know how we can push back against this current misinformation/disinformation cesspool we’re caught in, but I’m thankful for your work & hope that a solution can be found.
Does this mean that the 67M people who voted for Harris are better at discerning messages being offered? So many times during this election cycle I’ve seen or heard ads by Trump organization that I said out loud or to myself ‘that’s simply not true.’ Discussions with friends I said the same thing. I’m just puzzled, stunned that so many intelligent people would buy in to their messaging. Praying!
I commented more on this below, but I do think this is a heart issue. Algorithms work like heat sensors to find targets for content that resonates. Our education systems and our churches have ill-equipped us for the challenge. But that doesn’t absolve us of responsibility.
What you say is true. I have seen the direct mail disinformation first hand. I believe we are in a situation similar to the prophet Jeremiah. He spoke truth, was opposed by a power structure that gave lies to promote their power. On multiple occasions the popular support went to the false prophets. Zedekiah the king was afraid to align himself with Jeremiah and suffered a horrific end. Jeremiah must have felt devastated and like a failure. I am very sad that the strong tireless efforts by you and the rest of the Convocation group did not change the minds of enough people. To me it parallels the tragedy of Jeremiah's ministry. But I think we see in hindsight that his most important contribution was his writing of books...
That's a really good parallel. I've been reading the Psalms a lot lately (which is also good) but David's situation was different. We really do seem to be more like Jeremiah's time. I will read & pray over this.
I 1000% agree with this assessment. Vast swaths of voters are in serious need of deprogramming … and liberation from a dark world. A friend shared about her mother who is isolated at home with Fox News running all day. She was able to get her mother out of the house for a day-trip to a nearby city. Her mother was amazed at the people walking on the streets without fear, how full restaurants were, and how happy everyone seemed. In contrast to the fake apocalyptic darkness woven by her far-right news sources.
On another note, to your assessment I would add: “mainstream media” (also corporate owned - eg, NYT, WaPost, CNN) who utterly failed us as well. They failed to highlight the SUBSTANCE of Harris’ campaign (her slew of policy proposals, her work ethic, experience, etc). Instead, eg, they highlighted the vibe, rally size…and then how that wasn’t good enough to run on; she was 2-dimensional in their presentations of her. As if that’s all she had. She was so much more. This pales in contrast to far-right outlets but surely contributed to loss of independent voters.
Thanks for this. I think it will take something more than just better funding for progressive news sources. The disinformation coming from the right is a real problem, but just building a better counterattack will only deepen divisions. Somehow we have to capture a public spirit that seeks the truth without condemning those that have been mislead. Joe Biden did a tremendous disservice to the country hanging on as long as he did and denied us a chance for the issues to be vetted in a primary season. Harris offered powerful counter arguments to the more ideological aspects of MAGA but seemed unable to address the practical deficiencies in the Biden presidency( the border, inflation). A primary would have provided a public debate about who was best able to do both.
This post describes my struggles this election season! “Each side has its biases, but one side tends to base opinions on data, facts, and reality and the other side eschews those basic building blocks of information in favor of propaganda and conspiracy.
Yes, each side is prone to their own factual distortions, but not all such errors lead voters to support Donald Trump and the constellation of lies, bigotry, and corruption that comes with his presidency.”
I’ve experienced friends & family sticking with propaganda & conspiracy theories (ie: unaware that Trump was found liable for sexual assault—while admitting they only access pro-Trump resources & distrust other media.)
I try to share my experiences with folks & stories (like Dr Tisby’s The Spirit of Justice: True Stories…”) to help decrease defensiveness with data & facts. It’s hard to share personally with friends, hear they pray for me, & learn they voted for Trump despite my communicating the direct impact on me & my loved ones if he were to become the 47th. And I’ve received strong pushback too. (I noted Dr Tisby’s personal share in the docufilm, “God & Country.”)
I sympathize with your sentiment but the highlighting of disinformation is..selective.
Biden and Harris (and adjacent media outlets) promoted disinformation about 10/7 (beheaded babies, mass SA, etc.) that manufactured consent for genocide. The Biden team was dishonest about Biden's fitness and electoral odds and that ended up being a major blow to possibilities for the Dem candidate. Taylor Lorenz is reporting on Harris supporters saying on social media that the election was stolen and votes weren't counted. Joy Reid suggested Trump wasn't actually shot in Butler. Go back even further and you have the disinformation about Russiagate, p** tape, etc. etc.
These channels of disinformation operate in a dialectic, eroding trust back and forth. If you pour into media outlets that also traffic in highly ideological and polarized spin then the infrastructure of information and trust will only erode further.
Yes, everything that you said. But I also feel that people have been saying that there are a lot of racists in the Democratic party. Ummmmm...I would sum up why we lost as "She's Black." So many white males said that 45 reminded them of Hitler but wanted him anyway? What....??? Many voted in my state for White, female Senator, but not the Vice President. (P.S. I am white. That really isn't relevant, but it is.)
Yes, I faced strong pushback from my sharing the substack posts from TCU & the Drs' individual substack posts. The response was that I was sharing, "racist, hateful, divisive, & condemning emails & prayers (ie: my praying Ps 127 for voters' priorities.) I'm working on better ways to communicate yet de-centering "whiteness" as a way of being superior (regardless of one's hue to protect white privilege) is deemed racist for de-centering whiteness. I learned more with the 2024 election season.
Thank you for this. Are there other groups besides Courier and the New Evangelicals? Quite frankly, a great majority of Christian voters have a conservative sexual ethic, even when they might be quite progressive on other issues if given the opportunity. But that means that most progressive Christian outlets like the New Evangelicals and Sojourners may immediately be discredited.
In the weeks before the election a Bible study group I am a part of had one member tell us that she could no longer study with us because “We were evil Christians” She had previously told me that she had never met a Christian who was a Democrat, and that she had never met a Democrat willing to talk about what they believed. I’d offered to do so, but not during the Bible study. When people from the study went out to lunch it became clear that we had no common source of facts to talk from. Haitians were eating dogs and cats—she had seen videos of them doing it. Schools in California send kids home to their parents after sex changes. Isn’t that obviously evil? Democrats are sacrificing babies. Abortion after birth. This stuff seems ludicrous to me (because it is) but there was no ground of facts and place to obtain them that she could meet me at. And by a week before the election how could she even consort with such an evil person as I am to support such evils?
Part of what has stunned me since the election has been realizing that some of my acquaintances stood somewhere in the midst of competing data streams and just concluded that they did not have what it took to sort them out. With those folks I regret that I didn’t talk more and talk more plainly.
Prices and the perception of a bad economy were a big deal but for the devout people in the churches near me it was the “culture wars”—Transgender, homophobic, abortions are child sacrifice…the racism was below the surface—they weren’t white Christian Nationalists—one of the pastors they looked too was a Black man married to a Latina woman—-but they wanted to see a revival of pure Christianity in charge of the nation and they saw Mr Trump as the way to get that.
It wasn't the price of eggs, it was the perceived price of eggs ... and other distortions. When my Trump-supporting brother emailed me a month or two ago to ask why Biden-Harris earned my support, here is one of about 20 bullet points I sent: I appreciate the attention to our country’s infrastructure, low unemployment rate, an inflation rate lower than other developing countries, a healthy stock market. He then switched to perceived moral issues. I suggested he compare the number of times Jesus said anything about abortion or same sex marriage with His frequency of addressing justice issues - the poor, vulnerable, exploited ... Then he replied with what I'm thinking is Fox News talking points. It takes a lot of patience, and research and gathering of thoughts to engage in these civil discussions (as Jemar and you readers well know). I intend to pick this back up with him, even post-election. This proliferation of propaganda that folks - church folks - have been groomed to swallow - hook, line, and sinker - is utterly frightening.
You write amazing articles. This one will go down as one of my favorites. I can’t say emphatically enough how spot on you are.
Well said. I think this is a heart problem at its core. As Tim Keller would say, our souls are like piano strings that resonate when the right note is played. I refuse to believe that people are without agency in the media they consume. More often, they (we?) abdicate our responsibility to guard our hearts and outsource our critical thinking.
Personally, this has served to strengthen my resolve to write about issues of character to make it easier for people to discern right from wrong and better understand human nature.
Several family members (most) always imbibe conservative media. I watched my parents deep into Fox world before they died. In-laws and siblings all swim in this as did I as a kid. 50 years of historical study, ministering with non-white groups and slowly watching the fruit of Christian Nationalism pushed me away from the Right Wing.
A dear, Trump voting friend asked me why people are so upset. I shared my top 5-6 reasons, Trumps claim to be a dictator on day one, his new office of retribution, the plan to fire 50,000 civil workers and replace with loyalists etc. She was shocked. Hadn’t heard of any of it.
Many Trumpers are going to be shocked about his impacts on their livelihoods and families.
Thank you for saying this, Jemar. I’ve thought lately that we need to go back to the days of newspapers being delivered to our doors daily so we can all be getting the same (much less biased) information. There are some blessing of the current media environment (I can read your work!), but that’s bc I’ve chosen to and the people who really need to see it never will. I don’t know how we can push back against this current misinformation/disinformation cesspool we’re caught in, but I’m thankful for your work & hope that a solution can be found.
Does this mean that the 67M people who voted for Harris are better at discerning messages being offered? So many times during this election cycle I’ve seen or heard ads by Trump organization that I said out loud or to myself ‘that’s simply not true.’ Discussions with friends I said the same thing. I’m just puzzled, stunned that so many intelligent people would buy in to their messaging. Praying!
I commented more on this below, but I do think this is a heart issue. Algorithms work like heat sensors to find targets for content that resonates. Our education systems and our churches have ill-equipped us for the challenge. But that doesn’t absolve us of responsibility.
🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
Much work to do!!!!
🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾🙏🏾
It's soooooooo bad that someone who follows right-wing media did not even know that Trump has been convicted, nor January 6th insurrectionists.
#FoxNews' (and similar outlets) lies, deceit, and propaganda created this. Warfare propaganda.
Unfortunately, they and we all will reap some of the consequences.
I wonder if their playbook came from Putin.... how he gained power.... the slow brainwashing drip of fear, lies & propaganda.
It's really sad.
What you say is true. I have seen the direct mail disinformation first hand. I believe we are in a situation similar to the prophet Jeremiah. He spoke truth, was opposed by a power structure that gave lies to promote their power. On multiple occasions the popular support went to the false prophets. Zedekiah the king was afraid to align himself with Jeremiah and suffered a horrific end. Jeremiah must have felt devastated and like a failure. I am very sad that the strong tireless efforts by you and the rest of the Convocation group did not change the minds of enough people. To me it parallels the tragedy of Jeremiah's ministry. But I think we see in hindsight that his most important contribution was his writing of books...
That's a really good parallel. I've been reading the Psalms a lot lately (which is also good) but David's situation was different. We really do seem to be more like Jeremiah's time. I will read & pray over this.
I 1000% agree with this assessment. Vast swaths of voters are in serious need of deprogramming … and liberation from a dark world. A friend shared about her mother who is isolated at home with Fox News running all day. She was able to get her mother out of the house for a day-trip to a nearby city. Her mother was amazed at the people walking on the streets without fear, how full restaurants were, and how happy everyone seemed. In contrast to the fake apocalyptic darkness woven by her far-right news sources.
On another note, to your assessment I would add: “mainstream media” (also corporate owned - eg, NYT, WaPost, CNN) who utterly failed us as well. They failed to highlight the SUBSTANCE of Harris’ campaign (her slew of policy proposals, her work ethic, experience, etc). Instead, eg, they highlighted the vibe, rally size…and then how that wasn’t good enough to run on; she was 2-dimensional in their presentations of her. As if that’s all she had. She was so much more. This pales in contrast to far-right outlets but surely contributed to loss of independent voters.
Thanks for this. I think it will take something more than just better funding for progressive news sources. The disinformation coming from the right is a real problem, but just building a better counterattack will only deepen divisions. Somehow we have to capture a public spirit that seeks the truth without condemning those that have been mislead. Joe Biden did a tremendous disservice to the country hanging on as long as he did and denied us a chance for the issues to be vetted in a primary season. Harris offered powerful counter arguments to the more ideological aspects of MAGA but seemed unable to address the practical deficiencies in the Biden presidency( the border, inflation). A primary would have provided a public debate about who was best able to do both.
This post describes my struggles this election season! “Each side has its biases, but one side tends to base opinions on data, facts, and reality and the other side eschews those basic building blocks of information in favor of propaganda and conspiracy.
Yes, each side is prone to their own factual distortions, but not all such errors lead voters to support Donald Trump and the constellation of lies, bigotry, and corruption that comes with his presidency.”
I’ve experienced friends & family sticking with propaganda & conspiracy theories (ie: unaware that Trump was found liable for sexual assault—while admitting they only access pro-Trump resources & distrust other media.)
I try to share my experiences with folks & stories (like Dr Tisby’s The Spirit of Justice: True Stories…”) to help decrease defensiveness with data & facts. It’s hard to share personally with friends, hear they pray for me, & learn they voted for Trump despite my communicating the direct impact on me & my loved ones if he were to become the 47th. And I’ve received strong pushback too. (I noted Dr Tisby’s personal share in the docufilm, “God & Country.”)
I sympathize with your sentiment but the highlighting of disinformation is..selective.
Biden and Harris (and adjacent media outlets) promoted disinformation about 10/7 (beheaded babies, mass SA, etc.) that manufactured consent for genocide. The Biden team was dishonest about Biden's fitness and electoral odds and that ended up being a major blow to possibilities for the Dem candidate. Taylor Lorenz is reporting on Harris supporters saying on social media that the election was stolen and votes weren't counted. Joy Reid suggested Trump wasn't actually shot in Butler. Go back even further and you have the disinformation about Russiagate, p** tape, etc. etc.
These channels of disinformation operate in a dialectic, eroding trust back and forth. If you pour into media outlets that also traffic in highly ideological and polarized spin then the infrastructure of information and trust will only erode further.
Yes, everything that you said. But I also feel that people have been saying that there are a lot of racists in the Democratic party. Ummmmm...I would sum up why we lost as "She's Black." So many white males said that 45 reminded them of Hitler but wanted him anyway? What....??? Many voted in my state for White, female Senator, but not the Vice President. (P.S. I am white. That really isn't relevant, but it is.)
Yes, I faced strong pushback from my sharing the substack posts from TCU & the Drs' individual substack posts. The response was that I was sharing, "racist, hateful, divisive, & condemning emails & prayers (ie: my praying Ps 127 for voters' priorities.) I'm working on better ways to communicate yet de-centering "whiteness" as a way of being superior (regardless of one's hue to protect white privilege) is deemed racist for de-centering whiteness. I learned more with the 2024 election season.
Thank you for this. Are there other groups besides Courier and the New Evangelicals? Quite frankly, a great majority of Christian voters have a conservative sexual ethic, even when they might be quite progressive on other issues if given the opportunity. But that means that most progressive Christian outlets like the New Evangelicals and Sojourners may immediately be discredited.