An unfortunate reality I’ve been reckoning with is the fact that facts don’t matter. And I say that in the plainest, most literal sense. Facts don’t matter. Maybe they never have, but they really, truly, especially don’t seem to matter now.
It’s been shown that right-wing media essentially has a bigger share of the narrative market pie. I first encountered this idea when I saw this article shared on Reddit. In a quite recent study, it was shown that, by the numbers, right-wing figures had more followers, listeners, and watchers than left-wing pundits.
We’re starting to see similar stories echoing this observational fact with the rise of more extreme right-wing politics, like how young men are drawn to the vile Andrew Tate and “tradwife” lifestyles are rising in popularity. And, more broadly, it’s also been well-known for some time that America’s two-party system has become progressively more polarised this side of the century, as illustrated in this graph from a 2014 Pew Research Centre report.
A lot of non-conservative people have effectively lost all faith in non-Trumpian politicians (myself included). Lots of think pieces and Bluesky threads about how Democrats failed in their “messaging” and continue to do so now. Even more historical renderings of why Hitler was able to come to power and do such terrible things, mostly thanks to “messaging.” And they’re all right—progressive politics have lost their narrative voice while right-wing politicians have been better (albeit insidious) students of the power of rhetoric.
The Hellenistic cultures were onto something when they held up the importance of rhetoric. Because facts don’t matter if their rhetoric falls flat. You can’t win with logic when the masses want down and dirty basic rhetoric. The rhetoric of manipulation is ugly and grimey, but it works. If we want to reason with those entrenched across the aisle, we have to use the weapon of rhetoric. Info-dumping on someone with links and articles, while factual, is not effective. If someone believes everything is “fake news” if it doesn’t agree with what they’ve been told, then we’ve got to tackle the foundation of the problem to extract them from their rotten roots. We might not be able to make them drink, but we should still try leading them to water.
In high school, I remember the general consensus of my conservative homeschool community being that people like Bernie Sanders were wild weird socialists that couldn’t be taken seriously. Now that I’m older and wiser, a testament to multiple “unprecedented” and “once-in-a-lifetime” events, I’m watching the relative success of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Bernie Sanders as they remain some of the precious few who still believe hope is a screamer. They’re not so crazy and far-flung anymore because, well, our current reality is also crazy and far-flung.
For every action there is an opposite and equal reaction. Of course I know that socialism is a majorly flawed political system, but people want something different. We’re desperate for better humanity, something that isn’t arresting innocent people and destroying scientific research. The new visibility of people like Tim Walz, JB Pritzker, and Jasmine Crockett is happening for a reason as they’ve caught on to the importance of rhetoric that can appeal to a large audience.
The deterioration of people’s ability to engage in civics leaves us little recourse. There’s a fine balance between truth, feelings, rhetoric, and the ethical use of those things in combination.
