The Fraught Way Forward

Is social media greater than insurrection?

The poll data from 538 indicates that the president was still within his normal range, 41.9%. His attempted coup does not yet seem to have cost him much support. Maybe that will appreciably change in coming days. 

Because the president's core supporters are loyal to the man personally, not the president, democracy or the Constitution, it may be the case that banning him from social media will hurt his approval more than his attempted coup. Loss of social media access arguably is the bigger threat to the president's power and influence than his act to overthrow the government by violence. Based on his public reactions so far, the president arguably sees his social media problem as more serious than his insurrection problem, which he doesn't take any responsibility for. 

For example, Trump is considering moving to the radical right authoritarian-fascist social media site Parler or setting up his own social media platform. The president needs to maintain a constant flow of dark free speech to his supporters to keep them trapped in his fake realities and to maintain his power over them. He also needs it to maintain his ability to tap his people for money. 

It is reasonable to think that the president assesses his situation correctly. If so, then the way forward for American politics and society will be fraught. Trump's supporters firmly believe that Trump won, Biden lost, the election was fraudulent and people who say otherwise are liars. There is no indication so far that a significant portion of the GOP leadership is going to take the coup attempt seriously or otherwise act to counteract the fake realities that Trump has created to trap his supporters. Those people have been sucked into the president's vortex of lies and manipulation. 

So, what can people who oppose the president do to try to inject some reality and context into the situation? The minds of trumplanida believers are not going to easily change, assuming they can ever be changed. For the most part, those minds will have to change themselves. At the moment, the best way to do that probably is to keep the demagogue off of social media. Memories fade, including the memories of Trump supporters. 

The unsolvable problem: dark free speech

Of course the problems with that are (1) Fox News, Breitbart, Newsmax, OANN, etc., and (2) Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz and other radical right GOP demagogues itching for power. Those radical right propaganda sources are not going to change their rhetoric and tactics nor will they go away. And, maybe the radical right online presence will migrate to Parler as the central propaganda clearing house for Trump. Supporters could go to Parler as the central source, while maintain their hundreds of millions of accounts on Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and whatever else there is for repeating and spreading demagoguery, propaganda and lies.

By now, it is clear that simply stating inconvenient facts and laying out sound reasoning has either a neutral or no effect, or they are counterproductive by reinforcing false beliefs. The trumplandia "reasoning" is that assertions of inconvenient facts or reasoning is evidence they are false and the messenger or source is liar. There is no way to penetrate that kind of mindset with mere truth or logic.

Maybe it is a personal lack of imagination and/or intelligence, but every democratic, civilized path forward seems to be significantly (mostly?) blocked by the unstoppable power of dark free speech. 

So, other than keeping Trump off of social media, which probably won't work, and teaching people critical thinking skills, what other plausible options are there? What am I  missing? The problem always seems to boil down to dark free speech.