(or how to exploit the media’s desire for narrative along with their utter lack of appreciation for cognitive processing)
The story d’ jour is about “rigged” elections and how it will undermine democracy — a critical issue indeed. But there is so much cognitive polarization, the way the media are presenting this only further inflame the misunderstandings and anxiety.
As others have noted, many (most?) reporters have willingly lumped all Trumps random accusations together. Rigged means voting, rigged means campaigning and rigged means reporting.
Rigged voting?
But while the media (and sane people) are puzzling over the absence of, y’know, actual “voter fraud” (“no evidence it has ever happened”, “very very unlikely that tens of thousands of local, uncoordinated, and offline voting systems could be systematically hacked”, etc.) The media are still trying to lend credible meaning to the inkblots from Trumps accelerating efforts to get crowd affirmation.
To republicans, the lack of actual voter fraud is either because of republicans being so diligent and preventing… the wrong people from voting. Or it’s because republicans believe the conspiracy is so extensive it’s being controlled from the very top! (enough said). To Trump, “voter fraud” is a random expression that bigly excites his crowds and feeds his ego.
Ironically, while the accusations are baseless… all these news stories showing them to be false actually DO help increase the anxiety and doubt about the validity of the election. “They would not keep discussing it if there wasn’t an issue there, right?!?” The media thinks they provide clarity by using emotional appeals to get attention — the brain’s filters think that emotional appeals exacerbates bias and compounds uncertainty.
Rigged campaigning?
The media give Trump’s stream_of_nonconsciousness spew — credibility by conflating meaningless examples, such as "well Steve, it IS true that hacked emails from the DNC showed favoritism for Clinton...". um, yes and no -- It’s hardly shocking the people who lead the DNC favored the person who they knew best and had supported them the longest (those bastards)… and more importantly, that is NOT what “rigged” means.
But the media lump it all together and it certainly reaffirms the cognitive narrative for affirmation seeking supporters
Rigged reporting?
But in the world according to Trump, “rigged also means that the media favor Clinton because look at all the endorsements for crooked Hillary” <crowd boos>
(note: Trump has no distinction between reporting and editorial opinion — and while Fox news does intentionally erase it — I really doubt Trump ever understood the difference in the first place )
As evidence of a rigged election, Trump has been pointing out all the negative stories that use direct quotes clips from his rallies and tweets -- why, they even recorded him in a locker room! ! ! <crowd boos at the evil media>
(okay, he was not actually IN a locker room... more like outside... a recording studio... with a reporter... being filmed by a camera crew... but obviously it was private personal moment alone with his… thoughts? But as Trump would say "isn't that just like the liberal media -- first, they say they want men to be able to use women’s locker rooms... but then they complain when a guy walk into the dressing room with naked teenage beauty pageant contestants and starts touching stuff (and they let you do it) <crowd cheers> — clearly the media is rigged against me"
"but I also never did that"
"and never said that"
"and the fact the media has recordings of me saying and doing stuff I never said or did PROVES it's rigged!" <crowd boos>
"the media, really horrible people saying terrible things about me"
So "rigged" seems to mean "a situation where the majority prefer or favor or support or advocate for" something… then is not democracy itself rigged?
Isn’t this whole popularity contest of an election rigged?...
"I put it to you, Greg - isn't this an indictment of our entire American society? Well, you can do whatever you want to us, but we're not going to sit here and listen to you badmouth the United States of America.
Gentlemen! "
<Trump supporters file out humming “Trumpland uber alles”>
there are no words
sigh
A wave election would be a really nice way to avoid four more years of “demotivated reasoning” in our government. (but we’re stuck with it in our society)