What Content Do You Mediate?
“We don’t have a say in his views. We are just a mechanism for his delivery.” That there is website developer Brad Parscale. He’s appearing in our news cycle again thanks to Robert Downen’s reporting on Influencable and Campaign Nucleus which links Tim Dunn and Jim Caviezel and Sound of Freedom and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton. Disinformation is a business model. Read all about it here.
But back to Brad Parscale. Read those words again: “We don’t have a say in his views. We are just a mechanism for his delivery.” The “his,” in this case, is/was his client, Donald Trump. I’m struck by the distancing operation attempted with the words “say,” “mechanism,” and “delivery.” I understand the impulse to attempt an air of critical detachment when it comes to certain partnerships and associations, the impulse to speak as if I’m merely a person around whom things happen. But that posture isn’t sustainable. The firewall Mr. Parscale proposes between himself and his client is illusory. If I publicly repeat the public claim of an abusive pundit, politician, or media personality, am I more than a mere mechanism for their delivery?
I’m afraid so. Consider the exhibit above. It is, in one sense, a mea culpa voiced by someone on the verge of concluding he’s become the toxic content he’s mediated on behalf of someone else for money. Downen speaks of Mr. Parscale’s “digital prowess.” When I consider those words next to the image above, they lose their allure. It’s hard to critique a death cult when you’re a high priest within it. When I give voice to someone else’s voice with my voice, I am enjoined, right? I am no longer apart from them. I am a part of them. It can be a lovely thing…except when it involves succumbing to evil.
Anyway, it’s all very ugly. And it feels far away until I remember that my elected officials have locked arms with people like Mr. Parscale against kids, educators, librarians, doctors, and pastors right here in the beautiful state of Tennessee. Every form of thoughtfulness feels more fragile than ever.
And if you’re like me, people you’ve known as long as you’ve known anyone are recommending Sound Of Freedom. What do we owe the victims of disinformation in our lives? If you can get them to read to the end of an article, I recommend this reporting from Anna Merlan.
As I argue in that book I’d love to imagine will prove a breakthrough for readers, I believe we become what we normalize. We become, I suspect, what we still for. And the weariness we feel when someone recommends a film like Sound of Freedom is, I fear, baked into to a calculation, the schemes whereby Mr. Parscale and his clients monetize our fecklessness and despair. Let’s stand up. Let’s not let carefully calibrated lies sneak past us. Know your boundaries. Stay safe. But, when we can, let’s stop the flow of militant ignorance. Let’s engage. Let’s not be useful to abusive people.
Mr. Parscale seems to have had brief moment of moral clarity concerning his key role in the soft civil war occurring among us. It now appears that moment was squandered, and he’s at it again. He isn’t alone.
And neither are we.
Stay safe, everyone.