Pro-Trump protesters can be thieves, too

Clarence Page, Tribune Content Agency on Jan 8, 2021

The Anger Industrial Complex describes the tangle of social, political and media systems that find profit in whipping up public anger. Like the “military industrial complex” that outgoing President Dwight Eisenhower warned us about, it describes a necessary system that over time can be corrupted when pursuit of financial interests undermines the public good.

That’s why TV vet Trump cares so much about “ratings.”

Unfortunately, too many people don’t seem to understand the difference between news and opinion. (Psst, here’s a clue: This is opinion, folks, but it’s backed up by my knowledge of news, for what it’s worth.)

Or even when we do, we can find a bit too much comfort in tuning in only to content that supports our point of view, even when that content pushes paranoid conspiracy theories like QAnon, a goofy but popular notion that includes the viewpoint that President Trump is fighting a secret war against a pedophile ring run by top Democrats. Sounds like a potentially good spy thriller. Or fever dream.

Nevertheless, this president’s claims have long ago hit a nerve with those who were most eager to believe what they wanted to believe.

Small wonder so many people join Trump in refusing to accept his Democratic rival Joe Biden’s election as fair and resounding, even after more than 50 court decisions rejected his persistent but baseless charges of widespread voter fraud.

What to do now? Trump is on his way out, whether he wants to realize it or not, but other aspiring hopefuls like Republican Sens. Josh Hawley of Missouri and Ted Cruz of Texas have been quick to perpetuate Trumpian fantasies about Biden’s “stolen election” in an apparent grab for Trump’s voters.

I hope that effort fails. Maybe only Trump can do Trump. I hope.

But I said that about Trump’s bogus claims about Barack Obama’s birth certificate, too. Trump got elected anyway. He understood a lot about how to appeal to an audience in this media age.

He’s not alone. It’s up to the rest of us to undo the rise of anger media and rediscover the art of persuasion. It may require more homework than most people want to do, but we need to do it.

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(E-mail Clarence Page at cpage@chicagotribune.com.)