As distasteful as it may be, we live in an era of narrative über alles, meaning we can all be played easily by those in control of the storytelling. But as Thomas Jefferson noted, “If a nation expects to be ignorant and free, in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be.”
We are wading through a time of deep and warranted skepticism of every American institution, combined with floodgates of information streaming at us every minute. One of the major imperatives of responsible American citizenry is to question every narrative our culture throws at us.
Simply accepting the latest social media-driven narrative is a recipe for ignorance, not freedom. Not trusting until verified is an act of responsible citizenry — a phrase rarely heard these days — required for every major issue. Most recently, that would include Trump indictments. But here’s the catch: To truly avoid ignorance, we must question the narratives of both sides.
We know the corporate media/Democrat/academia/state narrative on the indictments: Saving democracy, and all are equal under the law. They have the biggest bullhorns and both elements are mostly bunk. A nation’s president seeking to imprison his chief rival for office is the opposite of saving democracy. Comparing the Trump treatment to Hillary Clinton undermining the election and democracy, FBI leadership undermining a duly-elected President, the Biden family corruption for years, and there are more displays of a blatant two-tiered justice system, also the opposite of equal under the law.
But in the narrative battle and the infiltration of politics into every facet of life, the imperative of growing conservative media also means the inevitable creation of narrative chambers of our own. This is hard and battles against our tribal and comfort instincts, but it is essential for the independent-thinking American — which today is all but non-existent on the political left.
The other narrative in the Trump indictment dual is that this is destroying democracy, revealing unequal justice under the law, is nothing more than a witch hunt and no crimes were committed. The first two portions seem clearly verified by the fact record. But the last two are not so clear. Yes, it is a form of witch hunt in that it is unequally applied law, but if — if — some of these indictments are accurate, including hiding subpoenaed documents, well those would be crimes. Such relatively minor infractions should never be leveled against a former president for reasons such as “saving democracy” but they cannot be said not to be crimes. If true.
The dueling Trump indictment narratives are an ongoing example of the need to question.
But a recent example of a small narrative that is now largely ingrained as conventional wisdom on both the right and the left, Republican and Democrat, and of course throughout the media, is that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis was burning through cash in his presidential campaign during the first half of the year. The stories were ubiquitous. DeSantis faces “cash crunch” (USA Today); DeSantis “burns through cash” (MSNBC); DeSantis “burns cash” (New York Times); DeSantis “burns” through funds (Business Insider).
The stories were singularly focused on DeSantis, and on his campaign, ignoring or burying the other campaigns and the DeSantis Super Pac, Never Back Down. And that’s what made the narrative of one, lone data point essentially a lie.
A month later, after the narrative was well set and the damage done, Axios reported that the DeSantis’ campaign’s burn rate for the first half of the year was only the fourth highest in the GOP field, less than half of Sen. Tim Scott’s and the same as President Donald Trump’s. Scott, North Dakota Gov. Doug Burgrum and Vivek Ramaswamy all had significantly higher burn rates than DeSantis. Good luck finding that in the July narrative.
And the DeSantis-supporting Never Back Down Super Pac spent about $34 million of its $130 million in the first half of the year, leaving a considerable $97 million in cash on hand. And it must be pointed out that there’s a media sleight of hand on these filings. They are not fixed numbers. The campaigns and PACs are continually raising and spending money.
In response to this narrative, DeSantis did a public campaign shake-up that included reducing staff, quite likely for purposes of appearance. Because in questioning the narrative, does anyone think that the campaign was unaware of their own burn rate when they filed their campaign finance report? And that they then suddenly saw the need to shift when the media and political opponents lied about it? Of course not. But donors are susceptible to narratives, also.
So the narrative won the day on DeSantis burning cash, just as the narrative that the 2020 election was the “most secure in history”, or that the Hillary Clinton “presidency is inevitable”, or that climate change is driving natural disasters, that hate crimes are soaring because of MAGA, or in the cultural realm that American slavery was uniquely evil or that there is some amorphous number of genders depending on feelings, or…you get the point. All of these narratives are or were proven wrong or incomplete, but all except Clinton’s inevitability continue to this day.
There is no easy method for this distrust and verification. For many, it is a matter of finding trusted sources and voices and going with them. That is understandable for people with busy lives who do not live in politics. But politics is no longer some distant, occasional thing we can treat as a sporting event that cycles back and forth among worldviews. It is burrowing into every school, every neighborhood, every movie, nearly every academic institution, and every level of government. As such, politics now invade the individual home. And narratives drive the politics.
The American system is set up for the people to act as the ultimate block against government tyranny — which always starts with a narrative, or a story, about how some group is the enemy of the state and drastic (anti-freedom) measures are required. To stop the growing threat of tyranny, distrust, question and verify or reject every narrative.
As Jefferson said: “An informed citizenry is at the heart of a dynamic democracy.”
To be informed means questioning.
Rod Thomson is a former daily newspaper reporter and columnist, Salem radio host and ABC TV commentator, and current Founder of The Thomson Group, a Florida-based political consulting firm. He has eight children and seven grandchildren and a rapacious hunger to fight for America for them. Follow him on Twitter at @Rod_Thomson. Email him at [email protected].
