Kill Hal: 'Numb and dumb is no way to go through life'

Winning trust back in the cold cultural civil war demands a community newspaper campaign that elevates human editors over profit-programmed algorithms

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I am Dave.

If you are online at all, you are Dave. We all are. Human editors, real ones, survive at near-extinction levels. Seeing one at work these days is like watching a bald eagle glide a river canyon, one diving majestically for fish, the other for truth.

For the algorithm is God, we jack-jumped over the singularity, the melding of man and machine, into unwitting roles as the helpless astronaut, Dr. David Bowman, in the movie "2001; A Space Odyssey."

"I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that," the computer Hal tells Dave when the scientist seeks escape from the madness.

Dave's alone in space. The artificial intelligence takes control of the vessel as the other humans are in hibernation — much as millions of Americans today are taking a respite from critical thinking with the soft addiction of mindless streaming shows. They claw finger-cutting grips on dopamine delivery from their cell phones, hand-held devils that carry a heavy side effect of misinformation. Just a spoonful of a vanity to help the lies go down.

To paraphrase Dean Vernon Wormer: Numb and dumb is no way to go through life.

The cascade of election analysis, ranging from blame to political self-flagellation to recrimination, and back again, is nowhere near an end. The confident predictions are only exceeded by the breathless post-scripts. Those who failed in the prescriptions for the body politic are now sure-footed coroners assigning causes of death for White House, Senate and even county commission candidates.

The endless commentaries over the outrages of Trump and the perceived failings of Harris miss the point.

But there are exceptions.

A defining, insightful take on why Donald Trump won the election comes from Michael Tomasky in The New Republic.

The answer is the right-wing media. Today, the right-wing media—Fox News (and the entire News Corp.), Newsmax, One America News Network, the Sinclair network of radio and TV stations and newspapers, iHeart Media (formerly Clear Channel), the Bott Radio Network (Christian radio), Elon Musk’s X, the huge podcasts like Joe Rogan’s, and much more—sets the news agenda in this country. And they fed their audiences a diet of slanted and distorted information that made it possible for Trump to win.

It’s like this. The right-wing media machine is a shock-troop army for oligarchs and the consolidation that has drip-dried our middle class, and the sensibility that sustained our democracy for 250 years, into chronic drought-like conditions.

Tomasky continues:

The readily visual analogy I use is: Once upon a time, the mainstream media was a beachball, and the right-wing media was a golf ball. Today, the mainstream media (what with layoffs and closures and the near death of serious local news reporting) is the size of a volleyball, and the right-wing media is the size of a basketball, which, in case you’re wondering, is bigger.

Democrats, facing this canyon-sized gap in connection to the American people, are in a long Game of Reach, with some calling for a female or liberal Joe Rogan.

The pounding of polemics insisting on personalities and professional portfolios and regional and racial and other identities of the next presidential candidate have breached the anxiety dams and are now soaking us.

Trump, American carbon monoxide, is now with us, with each breath we take.

Only he's not.

The last bastion of collective reality is your community newspaper. We can build trust and reality back from community newspapers up, not The New York Times and presidential candidates down.

Content in these local papers, the news organizations in smaller, rural communities, readers know to be true because they have seen it.

The obituaries. They know their friend or former high school classmate is dead.

The sports. They were at the game, or heard about it at work. They know the score, as the paper reported, was 14-10.

The local government. The report on the road work on Adams Street is true because the reader had to detour from home to work, and back, for a month now.

Stories or ads, just content in general, on state and national news accrues credibility by proximity to the local truth.

Local truth is verified by the eyes. In person.

There’s more.

Often, local issues, while informed by national political polarization, are driven by other factors that connect people across that divide on issues, missions and projects they can see with their own eyes.

Like other communities around the nation that have used a variety of strategies to silence train horns, my hometown, Carroll, Iowa, is split on whether to spend tax dollars to reduce the noise coming from the two Union Pacific Lines crossing seven intersections in our slice of western Iowa.

“It’s one of the constant problems — 50 percent of the people want it, and 50 percent of the people don’t,” said City Public Works Director Randy Krauel.

But unlike so many issues today, in fact, most conversations and topics, the debate over the noise from dozens of daily trains making their way through Carroll on cross-country journeys — with coal and other products — is not remotely partisan.

The discussions here, whether calm or heated, break through the predictable and relentless tribe-gathering politics. The community is balkanized on train noise with advocates and opponents coming from different social classes, races and political parties.

“Oftentimes, they said the natives were not for it, and the new people were,” Krauel said.

I’ve lived here most of my life and don’t notice the train horns. New residents can’t sleep.

All of this leads to a bigger point.

Local government stories, so many of which are being lost in the Great Newspaper Disruption, serve many purposes.

Yes, they inform, of course, but local government binds people together on the actual merits of taxpayer-funded actions: what streets to clear first during snow, where to build a new park, how much to invest in incentives for new homes to fill vacant or blighted spots, and yes, in the case of Carroll, how much, if any money, do we spend to create quiet zones with directional train horns or more crossing protection instead of the conductor-controlled horns.

Often, Republicans and Democrats and independents form coalitions on these local issues having little to do with their parties, save perhaps for some overarching worldview influence on how deeply government should be involved in our lives, for example. But it’s a blend of local issues with political philosophy, generally reasoned, and most certainly expressed respectfully, not the-cult-of-personality politics driving both major political parties into rafter-level battiness.

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(Douglas Burns, founder of The Iowa Mercury and a fourth-generation Iowa journalist from Carroll, is a member of the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative. Read dozens of the most talented writers in Iowa in just one place. The Iowa Writers' Collaborative spans the full state. It’s one of the biggest things going in Iowa journalism and writing now — and you don’t want to miss. This collaborative is — as the outstanding Quad Cities journalist Ed Tibbetts says — YOUR SUNDAY IOWA newspaper. )

Save the Date for a Holiday Party! Friday, December 13, 2024, 5-8 p.m.

The Iowa Writers Collaborative will host a party at the Harkin Institute on the Drake University campus in Des Moines, Iowa. The event will include appetizers and a short program. It’s a great opportunity to meet some of your favorite writers and visit the state-of-the-art home of the Harkin Institute for Public Policy & Citizen Engagement.

Please become a paid subscriber to any of our columns, including this one, and RSVP here. A donation will be accepted at the door for spouses or guests. If you’re traveling, see hotel information on the RSVP form.

Details:

When:  5-8 p.m. Dec. 13, 2024.

Where:  Harkin Institute, 2800 University Ave., Des Moines. 

What:  Appetizers, a short program, and great conversation.

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