Addicted to Outrage

by Glenn Beck

  When the very basis of all knowledge—what is a fact—suddenly becomes a matter of opinion, everything we believe can be questioned. Most people thought the adoption of the scientific method by the Royal Society in the 1660s, which relied on experimentation, repeatability, and measurable results, gave mankind a reliable method of proving hypotheses on which we have relied ever since. It is this very movement and understanding that gave birth to what is known as the Enlightenment, which in turn is responsible for the creation of America.

  Now postmodernism is destroying it.

  Like Bret Weinstein, who has warned that we are rejecting science when it interferes with what we want to believe. He wasn’t taking a shot at either party; he was talking about those on the right who refuse to accept the reality of climate change, as well as those on the left who refuse to acknowledge that the basis of evolution is that there are two genders. His wife, Heather Heying, who also left the university, wrote, “The left has long pointed to deniers of climate change and evolution to demonstrate that over here, science is a core value. But increasingly, that’s patently not true.”

  We must never become the jailers of Galileo, and yet both sides have. I do reject “climate change” as it is often portrayed by extreme environmentalists as a dangerous new development, as climate is always changing and it always has. If not, explain the Ice Age. So, natural climate change is real, and I can read the thermometer just as well as the scientists. I will even agree as “common sense” that man can affect the planet in a negative way. Here is where we differ, and I believe it is totally reasonable. What I think many on the right reject is the proposed solutions to the problems. This to me is the biggest area where the “science” breaks down.

  So, I agree the climate is changing, I believe that man can have and even is having an impact. I believe we should all do all we can to reduce and reuse and do our part to pursue and support new technologies that actually will make a scientifically provable significant impact. I also believe that the free market is the best way to make a sizable impact. When solar panels actually reduce the cost of electricity usage and can hold a charge with new batteries about to come online, and they are affordable, people will buy them. But if you look to places that have mandated solar panels, such as Germany, you find that after the hundreds of millions of dollars spent to install solar panels on a broad scale, Germans are left with solar panels that are outdated, inefficient, or do not work at all anymore. The only thing that is still working is the payment system, as they will be paying for them until 2028. I read the stories on the “coming ice age” in the 1970s. Numerous articles from that era, quoting leading scientists, covered the pending climate shift thoroughly. Scientists confirmed then that we were indeed entering into a new ice age and by 2015 much of the world would be covered in glacier ice. They went as far as to propose a plan to ensure that we would survive. Scientists at the time fought hard for dollars to be able to do many things, but one that Time magazine outlined was to cover the polar ice caps with black soot, as that would trap the heat and melt the ever-growing and expanding polar ice. Imagine what that could have done if indeed we are entering a time of global warming. So I agree with some of the findings, just not with the spending of trillions of dollars on things that have a good shot of not doing anything other than causing hunger and disease by destroying the economy of the West. Yet as with all things these days, you either accept all of it as it is shouted by the mob, or you are a denier and traitor to the cause.

  After having left Evergreen, the Weinsteins spoke to Joe Rogan about evolutionary science and genders. “We are watching the conversation out in civilization about sex and gender devolve into an absurdity. That’s kind of frightening.” Yes, I would say so! “It’s difficult and bewildering to hear the conversation [when], frankly, there’s a much better alternative. If one can stand to think in evolutionary terms, if we can really look at ourselves as we are, who we came to be through evolutionary forces, then we can improve the landscape a great deal.” In other words, the professor of evolutionary biology is saying, We hold these truths to be self-evident. . . . There is an objective, science-based truth about mankind, about each of us as a member of the species, and it is as plainly obvious as the nose on your face—but if the tribe says otherwise, then fear of being shamed and facing the outrage of the collective drives the rational part of our brain into hiding.

  Professor Heying goes on even more bluntly. “So, there are the premoderns, as it were, who have [a] very traditionalist, conservative approach to gender roles, to sex, to relationships. And there are a lot of us in the modern world who would reject a lot of that. And then there are the postmoderns, who want to throw out everything, who want to throw out everything that evolution handed us and pretend that it didn’t happen. Pretend that it’s not even based on reality. And there’s a third way, a modern way, to navigate what evolution has given us.”

  So who are the science deniers? Don’t gloat, because I promise, your side will be if it doesn’t serve the political engine blessed by the mob.

  Maybe there should be a new category to add to facts, alternative facts, and fake news called Internet facts. That means it is a fact that it appeared on the Internet. It would be defined as anything someone using the Internet claims is true. The fact that we are even debating what a fact is, is absolutely terrifying. As we have seen so many times in history, the first thing a totalitarian regime does is substitute its own propaganda for facts. In 1941 Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels, in an article entitled “Churchill’s Lie Factory,” wrote about British prime minister Winston Churchill: “The astonishing thing is that Mr. Churchill, a genuine John Bull, holds to his lies, and in fact repeats them until he himself believes them. That is an old English trick,” adding later, “The English follow the principle that when one lies, one should lie big, and stick to it. They keep up their lies, even at the risk of looking ridiculous.” He concludes by claiming, with amazing irony, “[Churchill] belongs to those stubborn people who can only be convinced by the facts. Let us bring about those facts.” It’s actually kind of scary to imagine what someone like Goebbels could have done if he had access to social media. Well, until you look at how other people are using it.

  Among those other people is President Trump. As conservative columnist S. E. Cupp wrote, “This has been Trump’s most significant contribution to American politics so far. As long as he can make you feel like something is true—illegal immigrants are rapists and drug dealers, for example; who cares if it’s actually statistically true? In fact, Trump’s neatest trick was in turning things like the truth, facts, statistics, polls, and studies into privileged concerns of the ‘establishment’ elite.”

  If we can’t even agree on what is true or what is false, there is no way of moving forward as a nation. As French president Emmanuel Macron told a joint session of Congress in April 2018, “Without reason, without proof, there is no real democracy, because democracy is about true choices and rational decisions.”

  There is no doubt that the creation and popularity of conservative media sharply escalated the already existing battle between the right and left. Just as the creation of the Yankees and Red Sox elevated the battle between New York and Boston. When only one side dominates the airwaves, there is no real conflict or disagreement. Conflict is not always bad. It is a necessary component of progress. Talk radio and the creation of Fox News in 1996 didn’t create a movement; the movement had been there for decades waiting for an outlet. First talk radio gave a loud voice to conservatives; it gave them a meeting place, and millions of people were thrilled to discover that millions of other Americans felt the same way they did. It was absolutely necessary to provide an outlet for a point of view that wasn’t being heard; debate is always more productive when all opinions are considered. Rupert Murdoch recognized this when he founded the Fox News Channel and hired Roger Ailes to shape it and run it. Ailes was a brilliant man who had a deep understanding of the media. I often wonder what he might
have accomplished if he had devoted his talent to entertainment rather than political TV. Actually, it isn’t hard to guess. In the early seventies he tried his hand at Broadway. He won an Obie for Hot L Baltimore, later purchased by Norman Lear, who produced the TV show of the same name.

  There aren’t many people who have more firsthand knowledge about the political impact of both CNN and Fox than I do, as I remain one of the few people to have worked for both of them in a high-profile role. CNN approached me first. I was doing very well on talk radio. They wanted me to try out for a show. I remember being in a meeting with several executives who were trying to sell me on hosting a show for them. “Listen,” I told them, “I really appreciate your interest, but I don’t want to waste your time. I’m only here because my agent said it would be good practice.”

  The room got quiet. One of them asked, “Why don’t you want to do your own show?”

  “On cable news?” I asked. I probably shook my head. “Have you watched cable news? It’s awful.”

  “It doesn’t have to be that way.”

  “But it always is,” I said. “I don’t like the whole thing, people yelling at each other.”

  “Why don’t you come up with something you want to do?”

  So I did. I did it for two years. To my own surprise, I liked it; I liked the people there and I respected them. But it was a bad fit. I wasn’t treated the same as everybody else. Media people generally think alike. Groupthink is unavoidable and understandable if you just look at the number of media professors in the country who are self-proclaimed Republicans and conservatives. It’s less than 1 percent. Those elevator rides to the eighth floor were incredibly uncomfortable. The elevator doors would open and people would be talking and laughing—and then they would see me. We all suffered through eight floors of silence!

  I was not at all unhappy when my contract expired. Roger Ailes had been courting me for a while. We’d had several conversations. I believed Fox played an important role in this country. I think the outcome of where this country went after 9/11 would have been substantially different if Fox had not been providing political balance. But that didn’t mean I wanted to work there.

  I had little interest in staying on cable TV. When I turned down Fox’s offer, Ailes assumed it was a negotiating position and kept raising the money. They doubled the salary and added more perks. I met with Roger and his key executives, Bill Shine and Joel Cheatwood, and explained, “I’m not interested in doing more cable news. I mean this with respect, because if I were in your position, I might be doing the same thing, but you’re a collector of people. You see people who can hurt Fox and you take them and put them in your curio cabinet, and once in a while you’ll take them out and show the world your collection.

  “I’m not part of anybody’s collection.”

  Eventually, though, I accepted the offer. I did it because I believed then, as I do now, that our country is in trouble. (This was the same time that I wrote Common Sense. I had finished writing it and planned on dumping it on the Internet anonymously. Simon & Schuster reminded me of that thing called a contract—the book sold almost 2 million copies.) So I did my two years at Fox as well. And while I was there I saw both the potential and the power of conservative media to bring together an important movement and, just like CNN, sway opinion. It is amazing because if I lined up the newsroom of Fox with the newsroom of CNN, they would not be that ideologically different. The real difference is in the opinion and story selection. Sometimes what you don’t do is more powerful that what you do. While the left continually attacked conservative media, its existence gave people who had felt marginalized and alienated a loud voice.

  But it has ended up doing precisely the same thing the liberal media had been doing for a long time. It solidified a point of view that showed little respect for the other side. It had the same we’re-right-you’re-wrong, you’re-either-for-us-or-against-us attitude I’d found at CNN, and quite honestly, at first I felt at home and saw Fox as the Alamo. In a way, I guess it is, at least lately. Everyone who is successful there has had their career killed by the foe just outside its gate.

  It turned out when I left I was able to say exactly the same thing to my colleagues at Fox as I had told them at CNN: Half the country isn’t listening to you. And those people on the other side who do hear you are interpreting it differently than you believe.

  Americans began gaining access to the Internet at roughly the same time. That allowed people to become players rather than listeners in the growing political divide. Television presents images and ideas but doesn’t allow viewers to respond. It is passive. Not the Internet. Definitely not the Internet. The Internet made every one of us a publisher. It allowed us to find those people who agreed with us, no matter where they were, no matter what our belief system was, and join with them to form a community of like ideas. Or, at least in some cases, community of like idea.

  The Internet has turned out to be a blessing and a curse. It has made just about all the collected knowledge of mankind instantly available to every one of us just by pressing a few buttons. In an instant we can research any subject from Greek philosophy to 1948 batting averages. It has given voice to those who would never have been heard before, from the most remote jungles to the slums of India or Chicago. And at the same time it has provided access to every video of adorable baby pandas ever filmed.

  But it has also given us social media, video games, 24/7 news feeds, and all of the platforms that allow people to semi-anonymously express their opinions without responsibility, accountability, or the fear of repercussions. Those are just tools, to be used any way we choose. They are neither good nor bad. They just are. When I started in talk radio forty years ago, I had to go take a test to get a license to run the transmitter. Then I had to work really hard to find an audience and bring that audience together. Today, my audience has an audience. Every one of us, whatever the social platform of our choice, has an audience. And no matter what most will tell you, many times we turn up the volume for the clicks or likes. We are all now doing what the newsrooms in the media were accused of—running with stories for ratings.

  I’ve always felt that the button on our Facebook page should not be post, it should be publish. In many ways it is the natural progression from revolutionary town criers and the publication of pamphlets like Thomas Paine’s Common Sense—but to a much greater degree. We can reach more people with a single post than Paine reached in his lifetime. A 2018 Pew research study reported that slightly more than half of all Americans access Facebook daily. And unlike any other time in history, you don’t need a printing press or a copy machine to circulate your opinion. You just type and post, and your claims, your ideas, your birthday, and the death of your animal are instantly disseminated to potentially a billion or more people, and you can do it without disclosing your identity. Just imagine that power: You can write anything you want—it doesn’t have to be accurate or true; you can make any claim, invent any story, criticize any public figure, and do it completely anonymously.

  The Internet is neutral. When telephones first became available people had party lines, meaning numerous people could be on the phone at the same time. Think of the Internet as the largest party line in history, without the cake and candles. I’ve spoken with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg about claims that Facebook favors the left. I think, generally, that company has done a reasonably good job of being fair. He said to me, “Glenn, there’s no upside for me to say to half the country I don’t need you. Facebook is a global community. What’s offensive to one country or group of people may not have any impact in another country.”

  It’s hard to believe, but the Internet actually is so new that we haven’t yet determined its long-term impact on society—other than that it has changed it completely. One thing we know for sure is that it allows people to completely ignore traditional civility. Like avatars in online games, online people can become just about anything they want to be. With no repercussions to worry about
, we all have been given an outlet to say things we would never dare say in public. It has provided an outlet for the most extreme opinions, a place where people can really express their hidden hatreds. You can hurl any accusations, call people vile names, attack people and institutions without the slightest evidence. I’m as guilty of this as anyone else, and here’s what I’ve learned: It feels good! It’s a wonderful way of releasing all the anger and bitterness you have inside. The fact that this has pretty much no meaning doesn’t seem to make any difference. Almost no matter what someone believes, he or she can find someplace on the Internet that will reinforce those beliefs. That and cat videos.

  16

  * * *

  Worse and Getting Worser

  If you think it is bad now, google “deep fakes.” This is something I began talking about in the late 1990s. This time is almost here, within the next five years, when I can create a sex video of my favorite star, the president, or even the cute new girl in the office. But why stop there when I can place someone at a crime scene, make them say and do things that they never said or did? Remember when Romney was “caught on tape” talking about the 50 percent of people who don’t pay any taxes, or when Trump was caught on tape with Access Hollywood? Content like that can completely derail a campaign or end a career. When you can create a deep fake of any voice and any image or video, everything becomes NONSENSE. You will not be able to trust your senses. Our modern word “nonsense” has its roots in a French word, nonsens, which literally means outside the senses. But back to the here and now.

  Rather than becoming a place where Americans would debate issues in a calm and reasoned way to try to reach a compromise or a consensus, the Internet has hardened opinions and made compromise even more difficult; it has resulted in a lot more people expressing their anger and driven us farther apart. Remember what your mother told you: If you don’t have something nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Believe me, your mother was not talking about the Internet. “Nice” doesn’t get attention. Outrage gets attention. Pretty much the same language that might get you kicked out of a nice restaurant will get attention on the Net. Like so many others, I just couldn’t let things slide. When I saw something that triggered my emotions, I wanted to punch back or at least cheer on someone else as they punched back. It felt good; it always felt good. And when the other side punched back, my only thought was to hit back harder.