KENT, Ohio -- Jan. 6 was a startling reminder of how fragile democracy is, and that ultimately its durability lies with us, the citizens. Public inability (or unwillingness) to distinguish between fact and fiction leaves us vulnerable to manipulation and anti-democratic forces.
Autocratic regimes often rely upon the ability to instill fear in and manipulate the public with lies. Fabricated threats have driven many a population to the hands of dictators thinking they provide safety, when in fact they are the threat.
The United States has evolved from an era when public discourse was sometimes interrupted with unbelievable ignorance (a woman’s body can just “shut that whole thing down” comes to mind) to an era riddled with willful ignorance.
“That may be your opinion” is the refrain of choice for politicians who find it easier to deny that fact is fact than to justify a policy position. Elected leaders have willfully misled us. They should be held accountable for that.
But among the most potent dangers to our country is that many of us have disassociated from fact. Many have developed political positions based on fiction, and left their safety and freedom — and ours — vulnerable to a cause that is simply not real.
Julie M. Mazzei is an associate professor of political science at Kent State University.
We must arm ourselves with tools to differentiate between fact and fiction and use fact as a foundation for our policy preferences.
Climate change is real. We cannot simply deny that human behavior and policy impact the planet. They do. We can and will disagree on how to proceed, given this set of facts, and that policy debate matters.
Systemic racism permeates our country. We cannot, if we wish to act on the fact that Black lives do in fact matter, assert this is a matter of opinion. We can disagree about the best way to approach this, and that policy debate matters.
Women face inequitable pay, harassment, physical aggression. We cannot deny that policy prioritizes men’s careers over women’s bodies; we cannot dismiss boastful pride in committing assault as “locker room talk” as our social media feeds flood with #metoo. We can disagree about how to best promote equity, and that policy debate matters.
But these policy debates are useless if not grounded in fact. Denial of fact leads to collective failure and collective harm.
We need to support a system of education that teaches children how to question, to search, to critique, to identify evidence.
I am privileged to be a homeowner, I love a good DIY project. Before I dive into something new, I consult different “how to” sources, consulting, perhaps, information from a retailer or manufacturer, an at-home do-it-yourselfer, and an “expert” DIY tutorial. When they all align, I go for it. When there are big differences between the at-home-fixer-upper and a retailer, I assume either the individual at home is really off, or the store is trying to sell me something. So I keep looking. I dig until I find consensus about the best approach and I can identify the pieces that were wrong or misleading. So far, the house is OK!
As voters, we need to learn to do the same with our democratic house. Cross-check information across experts, opinion leaders, and other information sources. Use fact-checking outlets and follow their sources.
Over the past four years, our courts, and more recently, security services, have protected our system against vehement and violent threat. For today, our institutions have saved us from ourselves. But our long-term safeguard is a voting population unflappable in the face of the lies of unscrupulous leaders, adroitly discerning fact from fiction, advocating their policy preferences always firmly grounded in the facts.
Julie M. Mazzei is an associate professor of political science and faculty affiliate with the Division of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion at Kent State University, and a member of the Scholars Strategy Network.
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