Bad Bunny, Kid Rock, and how we lose our republic | Opinion
Our federal budget deficit is on track to be another $1.8 trillion this year. Our national debt is fast approaching $40 trillion.
Around 27 million people in the United States lack health insurance, which is a little over 8% of the population. The No. 1 cause of personal bankruptcy is medical debt. Social Security is near insolvency.
Inflation, housing affordability, homelessness, the wealth gap, wage stagnation, gun violence, the rise in transmittable diseases and unemployment.
Oh, and let’s not forget about the existential crisis of global warming.
And yet, you’d think the most important debate in the United States is over Bad Bunny’s halftime show at the Super Bowl or whether Kid Rock lip-synced at the opposing show.
It is a deeply stupid debate, and we absolutely deserve the mess we’re in now.
Three years ago, I read “The Paradox of Democracy,” by Idaho State University’s Zac Gershberg and co-author Sean Illing.
At the time, it gave me a glimmer of hope, in that the book suggested that whatever disruption our democracy is going through, we’ve been through it before.
It’s a feature, not a bug of democracy: Free speech and open media allow for perilous persuasion, which can lead to bad outcomes.
Such disruption often occurs at a time of a technological advancement in communication, whether it be the printing press, the telegraph, radio, television, internet or social media.
The hope came from the fact that we have been through these disruptions and came out the other side.
But the flip side of the coin of hope is despair, and I’m afraid I’m in the despair stage.
It’s 2026, and we’re still victims to this technological advancement called social media.
My friends on the right, especially, are being manipulated by grifters, trolls and bots triggering them over transgender athletes, solar and wind power and even the idea that President Donald Trump is actually a whistleblower in the Epstein files. Conned and manipulated.
My friends on the left are not immune. They jump to indignation every time Trump says something nonsensical or a troll on X posts a criticism of Lindsey Vonn for crashing at the Olympics.
We’re being played, America. And we keep falling for it.
I encourage every patriotic American to read the Internet Research Agency indictment from 2018.
Read the report, itself, not the Wikipedia entry or a news article; just go straight for the report. It’s short, only 37 pages, but it should be enough to make every American’s blood boil — and be suspicious of every social media post.
It’s a federal grand jury indictment charging the managers and staff of a Russian troll farm with running a covert social media campaign to influence the 2016 presidential election.
The Russians created fake social media accounts and used them to pick fights with people online, spread disinformation and inflame political division.
My favorite (most infuriating) example is that, from their cubicles in Russia, they organized rallies in the United States — and gullible Americans showed up.
Unfortunately, gullible Americans are still showing up, some 10 years later.
The only way we’re going to get out of our current great American stupidfest is to break the chains of the bots, trolls, charlatans, grifters and opportunists who are having a field day on social media, manipulating your feelings, skewing your worldview, cherry-picking stats and just outright lying.
While we fight with one another over a singer at a sporting event, another dollar is added to the national debt, and another American dies from a preventable disease.
If Ben Franklin were to time travel to today, he’d look around and just shake his head and say, “It was a republic, but you’ve lost it.”
Scott McIntosh is the opinion editor of the Idaho Statesman. You can email him at smcintosh@idahostatesman.com or call him at 208-377-6202. Sign up for the free weekly email newsletter The Idaho Way.
