Has the world seemed a bit extra irrational, a bit extra crazy, the past few years? If you feel that way, you are not alone. Russell Muirhead, a professor of politics and democracy at Dartmouth, and Nancy L. Rosenblum, a professor of ethics in politics and government at Harvard, clearly have also felt this way. A Lot of People Are Saying was written when Donald Trump was still president, but its warnings and lessons remain valid today. The authors clearly see the now former president as a major problem, detailing the way he manipulates people by distorting issues and knowingly spreading misinformation. They see this as a major problem that undermines the American democratic system.
To a reviewer, this poses a different problem—one journalists have been grappling with ever since candidate Trump came to national prominence. If the president (or presidential candidate) says crazy, provably false things and a journalist or reviewer labels them as such—knowing his supporters will argue otherwise—does this make the writing biased? What if the supporters argue that the writing is biased? What if this argument consists of statements that are provably false, entirely lacking in evidence, and either originated with or were repeated and spread by the president himself? This is an awkward, problematic situation, and it is the sort of thing the authors dissect, discuss, and analyze. That is why this is an important book.
Its authors were featured prominently in the July 2020 PBS Frontline documentary United States of Conspiracy. Their book gives one interesting insight or observation after another. Here are just a few samples of its important ideas.
Chapter Two, “It’s True Enough,” focuses on the way Trump and some others (Representative Bryan Zollinger is one named) periodically make strange assertions, and when asked if they really believe what they are saying reply along the lines of “it’s true enough” (or, in Zollinger’s case, “I am not saying it is true, but I am saying it is completely plausible”). The result, the authors say, are debates and, worse, policies based on “crippled epistemologies” where no one knows or even cares if a fact is true or not.
The authors point out that most traditional conspiracies are based on stringing together facts (or allegedly factual statements) in strange patterns using unorthodox connections to come to a new perception of reality, society, and politics—something dangerous in itself. But, they argue, if one is forming conspiracies without even trying to use facts and that people then accept them as factual, society and the government are on very shaky, very dangerous ground. Conspiratorial thinking and paranoid patterns of thought become normalized and commonplace once this happens on a regular basis.
Beginning with the premise that the concept of facts itself is being eroded within our government, the authors then move on (and it’s quite an interesting trip) to the premise that faith in the government itself is being eroded in tangent with the erosion of facts. The very foundations of democracy are weakened. If facts are no longer necessary to form opinions and take action, not only does this mean that knowledge-producing institutions are no longer important or valuable, but it also brings into question how citizens can make good voting choices. If the traditional—admittedly idealized—process for voting was for citizens to study the issues and select the candidate with the best response to the issues, how will this happen if people don’t care about the facts of the issues?
While A Lot of People Are Saying predates the 2020 election, we as a nation are now grappling with a situation where a portion of the population still insists, without offering valid evidence, that the results of the election were not officially reported or measured. The authors describe how a culture of policy in the absence of facts and based on an extremely cynical view of the role of government institutions erodes not just political institutions but political parties themselves. The paranoid, random nature of action that stems from this style of thought and behavior erodes the ability to have faith in any long-term institution that uses it.
Read this important book. Bizarrely enough, the future of American democracy may depend on addressing the issues it discusses. Yes, facts are important—or at least they used to be. And, as the authors detail, national policies based on the premise that facts are not important are a dangerous and self-destructive thing.