Mass Media & Politics
December, 2015
THE MULTIPLE REALITIES OF THE AMERICAN ECONOMY
President Barack Obama recently told The New York Times that if an average person was asked if deficits have gone up or down under his administration, “probably 70 percent would say they’ve gone up.”
In reality, the United States national deficit has declined by roughly 75 percent since Obama took office in 2008, and overall U.S economic growth has outpaced that of every other advanced nation. The data also shows that the Obama administration has succeeded in adding jobs for 73 consecutive months, 14.4 million jobs in all, which is the longest period of job growth on record. Budget deficit has also fallen by roughly $1 trillion over the last year and is now under 3 percent. Unemployment is also down to 5 percent; half of what it was when Obama first took office.
But these facts haven’t been widely shared. What’s going on?
From Obama’s perspective, there was a lot to tackle in a limited amount of time, “we were moving so fast early on that we couldn’t take victory laps. We couldn’t explain everything we were doing,” he said. “One day we were saving the banks; the next day we’re saving the auto industry; the next day we’re trying to see whether we can have some impact on the housing market.”
The fast-paced decision-making has allowed for conservative media sources to create their own narrative, allowing for citizens to understand several different perspectives of the “reality” of the current economic situation.
REALITY AS TOLD BY CONSERVATIVE MEDIA
For example, at a time when the Obama administration was flaunting 71 straight months of private-sector job growth, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan was insisting the president not take credit. “Wages are stagnant …46 millions people are still living in poverty today, among the highest poverty rates in a generation,” he said. “These are not the signs of a recovery, these are not the signs of a strong economy.”
Reince Priebus, the Chairman of the Republican National Committee, wrote, “Obama will likely leave office with one of the worst economic records of any president.”
Bill O’Reilly calls the American economy “a mess,” and so the rhetoric cycles through conservative media.
REALITY AS TOLD BY MARY AND KENNETH WILSON
On a recent Saturday morning, Mary Wilson, 67, was standing in a parking lot next to a large box of undressed Barbie dolls with her arms crossed. She and her husband Kenneth were situated at a table among dozens of other vendors who were selling everything from BB gun rifles to expired lotion.
Wilson considers Fox News her primary news source and believes the economy hasn’t been good for “at least the last 18-20 years,” and blames Obama for making things even worse.
“He’s put this country in so much debt. The next president is gonna take 25 years to fix it,” she said.
TRUMP AND THE ECONOMY
How would a businessman like Donald Trump fair, given the opportunity to run the United States economy? Most people think he’d do just fine. According to a recent Gallup poll, 64 percent of Republicans believe that Trump would be the best candidate for jobs and the economy.
“He’s just gotta let his battleship mouth overturn his tin can ass,” said Mary Wilson, gesturing her hands outward. “He’s gotta get in there and change things.”
Her husband Kenneth chimed in, “He’d do a good job if he calmed down a little bit. He tells it like it is, he’s honest about what he says.”
REALITY AS TOLD BY LINDA ROBERTSON
Linda Robertson, 72, sits on a lawn chair next to her husband. They both wear baseball caps and offer friendly smiles and conversation to anyone who passes by their table of used dishware and jewelry.
Robertson also watches Fox News, and believes that the national debt has increased, a conclusion she’s drawn from what she sees in her own community and what she sees on TV. “Around here, jobs have gone overseas. Alamance County is pretty much dried up,” she said. “The U.S. is behind. We’ve lost control. We’re not being smart. And I agree with Trump that we should make other countries pay us now,” she added. Robertson, like Wilson, agrees that whoever the next president is, needs to start investing more money into the United States, in order to “take care of our own.”
Robertson said that she witnesses the fallout of Obama’s poor decision-making on an almost daily basis, “a lot of people we know are out of jobs. They’re paying higher insurance premiums because of that Obamacare,” she said. “A lot of seniors we know are really struggling. They can’t even afford the drugs they need to take care of themselves.”
This was a response to a question posed about the economy, which suggests that her anger regarding Obama’s overall existence as president is clouding her judgment about his economic decisions.
REALITY AS TOLD BY DONALD TRUMP
Many of us first began associating Trump with politics when he took a leading role in the “birther movement,” demanding that Obama share a copy of his birth certificate. It could be argued that this was foundational in planting the roots of distrust in our most “foreign” president yet.
In fact, polls within the last year show that 1 out of 5 Americans still believe that Obama was born outside of the United States.
Now, Americans have learned to associate Donald Trump with many things, strength, wealth, authority and xenophobic generalizations about minority demographics. What’s been most fascinating to watch is how much American voters are eating it up.
According to polls conducted during the Indiana primary, about 25 percent of Republicans said that they most wanted a candidate who “tells it like it is”, and 87 percent of them voted for Trump. About a third said that they want a candidate who “can bring change,” and 65 percent chose Trump.
UNITED STATES ECONOMY VS. THE WORLD
One of Trump’s most successful tactics has been fitting every situation into a binary. For example, “China’s winning, we’re losing.” This was a common argument by Trump, especially in the beginning months of his campaign.
Donald Trump has said that the United States is “becoming a third-world country,” concluding that the money we spend to help other countries would be better spent in the United States.
“China’s in a better condition than we are. Our country’s credit rating has gone down,” said Mary Wilson. Again, there seems to be a disconnect between reality and the narrative that so many Americans believe.
In reality, the United States GDP, according to CNN Money, is $19 trillion US dollars. Compared to China’s $12 trillion U.S. dollars, Japan’s $4.3 trillion, Germany’s $3.5 trillion, and the United Kingdom’s $3 trillion, the United States’ economy is “ridiculously large,” in the words of the American Enterprise Institute.
REALITY AS TOLD BY BOB
Bob is a 69-year-old, local man who calls Fox “bias as hell.” He’s spent his entire life between North Carolina and Virginia, and remembers when the first black child was integrated into his all-white elementary school.
Now, Bob spends his Saturdays watching over a dozen tables full of trinkets and household items at the Burlington Barber Flea Market. He says that he gets his news from the Burlington Times News, CNN and from his friends, “down at the watering hole.” He explains that when he goes out drinking with them, he rarely speaks up, but instead listens to what the others have to say.
“Here’s the thing, Trump’s a great businessman, he knows how deals are made. But he doesn’t know how to be a politician,” Bob said. “Hispanics don’t like him, black people don’t like him, any woman in her right mind shouldn’t like him. He’s a bully!”
Unlike Robertson and Wilson, Bob believes that Obama has done a “marvelous job” handling the economy over his two terms. “Obama took over a disaster. Bush left Obama with all these damn problems.”
It’s political strategy to build public distrust for your opponent, usually by developing an, “us versus them” rhetoric.
From his experience, Bob believes that the dismissal of Obama’s achievements goes beyond political differences. He thinks the distrust has to do more so with the community’s roots of racism and xenophobia.
“They want to punish us for having a black man as president,” he said. The “they” in this scenario are the people who didn’t support, or refused to support, President Obama because of the color of his skin.
“We get people from all walks of life, all colors, all classes,” he says, referring to the flea market. “Over here people see me sayin’ hello to everyone, making conversation. They ask me why. They say they go over there,” he points to the other side of the warehouse, “They’ll say there’re the meanest people in the world. It’s just that I don’t discriminate like the others do. I see you for you. This is a redneck America right here.”
BEYOND THE ECONOMY
Donald Trump has built his platform on a very specific narrative of nationalism that in turn shamelessly generalizes entire demographics that are different from his own. Perhaps Bob’s theory can’t be proven, but there are certainly hints of evidence that suggest a correlation between support for Trump and xenophobic or “redneck” tendencies.
“I’m not a racist person,” said Mary Wilson. “I’ve had great black friends. But when [Obama] came into office, everything started going downhill. The transgenders came out, the blacks started getting angry. Police officers can’t even do their job no more without fear of getting killed!”
Wilson’s husband Kenneth interjected once more, “He’s brought things to the forefront that shouldn’t have been brought up. They should have been left alone. Before, we got along good on racial issues, but he’s brought it back,” he said.
Linda Robertson went one step farther, “Obama has really, really destroyed this country. And I think that was his intent,” she said.
It’s Donald Trump’s controversial statements that have hurdled him into the spotlight, and for many Americans, his candor translates into trustworthiness.
When Trump makes a statement, his supporters listen. It doesn’t matter what other evidence there might be, it doesn’t matter what the experts say, because his voters don’t trust the experts. They don’t trust people they don’t understand, and they certainly don’t trust a black man whose middle name is Hussein.