Like many people, I really like the writing of Scott Adams, who has posted a piece in the Journal today seemingly about President Trump’s poll numbers. Since Adams is a humorist, almost everything he writes is read with the idea that it will be funny. This isn’t, but it is good.
It has to do with something he calls confirmation bias, which when I went to school was called part of cognitive dissonance. We tend to select things to read that are consistent with our attitudes, values and beliefs. We reinforce those with support, and it takes a long time to change them, because we don’t try very hard. He ends that paragraph with this: “To partisans today, Hillary Clinton and Mr. Trump are a lying, cheating murderer and a crazy, impulsive, lying, racist, homophobic, sexist narcissist. That’s a big gap.”. And, it is not a gap we are going to close anytime soon.
One of the parallels I see in Information War is that folks like the Russians try to reinforce those beliefs with biased information - on both sides of the argument - by choosing devicive issues, and supporting their causes on both sides. That creates churn, driving up the heat, and causing our leadership to spend more time arguing than doing work that might affect them. The Russians funded ads on both sides of the racial inequality arguments, sponsored events of protest, and supported extremists on both sides. They were not trying to help anyone get to a solution. They wanted to keep the arguments going. Look at the number of willing servants they have in that campaign.
On the political front, they did not just favor Donald Trump for President, though you would think so by the rehtoric on Russian interference in the U.S. national election. Putin expressed his dislike of Mrs Clinton several times, and in some of those it sounded personal. Not all the demonstrations they funded were for the Democrats. Mr. Pompeo, in his BBC interview, says the Russians have a long history of interference and he anticipates more of the same in the November midterms. The Russian issue is no longer part of the Special Prosecutor’s case, which has switched over to a new topic. You can be sure the Russians are reinforcing every aspect of that investigation and the manner in which it was initiated. They will have even more fertile ground in local elections. This time, maybe the big social media outfits can reduce the effect. It is hard to do when they are making so much money with each new day.
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