Slaves to our own delusions
Oct. 3, 2024
By Rev. Rick King
Fifth in a series based on Jim Wallis’ book, “The False White Gospel”
And that polarization is no accident. Both the practice and the publicizing of politics today play on the well-established human tendency to favor the attractive lie over the difficult truth. (Jim Wallis, “The False White Gospel,” 94)
“Then Jesus said to the Jews who had believed in him, ‘If you continue in my word, you are truly my disciples; and you will know the truth, and the truth will make you free.’” (John 8:32)
If you’re on the younger end of the age spectrum and haven’t studied it in U.S. history class yet, you may not have heard of the Federal Communications Commission’s Fairness Doctrine of 1949. It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters.
The Fairness Doctrine was abolished by the FCC during the Reagan Administration in 1987, ostensibly because it hurt the public interest and violated free speech rights guaranteed by the First Amendment. But most media historians trace the party polarization now to the doctrine’s demise.
Wallis recalls the days of three major TV networks, when the evening news was more like a town meeting where everyone received the same news and information and looked at the same arguments, and viewers could trust that the broadcasters’ only agenda was to present the facts.
Power and profits have replaced facts as the primary purpose of media. The dirty backstory to the demise of the Fairness Doctrine includes the fact that the Kennedy and Johnson administrations both used the doctrine to attack talk radio broadcasters whose views they didn’t like.
The result is a public that is less free to consider the facts, make inferences and form opinions based on the facts. In some cases, we’ve become slaves to our own delusions, favoring the attractive lie over the difficult truth.
The apostle Paul wrote to his protégé, Timothy, “For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own likings, and will turn away from listening to the truth and wander into myths.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)
New Testament scholar Tom Wright says of John 8:32, “The way to freedom is through the truth, and what matters is to know the truth. Tyranny and slavery of every sort thrive on lies, half-truths, evasions, and cover-ups. Freedom and truth go hand in hand.”
Did you watch the vice-presidential debate on Tuesday night? Do you feel more free or less free after this airing of policy positions, information, and views? Was there enough fact-checking to suit you, and in your opinion, did it focus on the most important matters?
Yale historian Timothy Snyder’s helpful little book, “On Tyranny,” which came out in February of 2017, devotes the majority of its words and pages to the many big and little ways fascism erodes the truth and facts in order to pave the way for tyranny.
Jim Wallis cites Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s book, “How Democracies Die,” in pointing to four key indicators of authoritarian behavior: rejection of the democratic rules of the game; denial of political opponents’ legitimacy; green-lighting violence, or not stopping it; willingness to curtail opponents’ civil liberties. There is a fear in fascism that if people knew the truth, they would resist.
Wallis quotes John 3:19, in which Jesus tells Nicodemus, a seeker after truth, “Light has come into the world, but people loved darkness rather than light because their deeds were evil.” In other words, Wallis says, bad religion provides easy and self-serving certainty; good religion leads us to deeper reflection. And that is where our true freedom lies.