The Fierce Certainty of Now: The Drivers of Moral Certainty

Many of you read part one of this two-part column on “The Fierce Certainty of Now” that ran last Thursday. A little over 48 hours later, events in Charlottesville reinforced what was written.

What drives the “fierce certainty of now” that threatens this country? On every street in America we’ve picked sides, often driven by the influencers we find in the media, in social media and in our friends.

A friend asked me the other night if I thought staunch Trump supporters might see some of his recent statements and waver. The truth is they may never see the criticism of those statements because the media and social media they choose to engage will instead change stories and focus on Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi.

On the flipside, people who dislike Trump will only see negative stories because they are locked into their own media and social media. Those outlets will always fault the president or the GOP-controlled Congress by keeping their focus always on their missteps.

We’re locked into sources stoking our worst fears and affirming our worst impulses. Fox sells what the right wants to hear and MSNBC sells what the left wants to hear. The NRA launches ads with violent words, while others counter with menacing language of their own.

What no one will say is that the purveyors of violent language and imagery in the name of their own righteous causes must bear some accountability. It is easy for people in a television studio or running a website to provide the kindling and matches and then watch from afar.

Free speech and freedom of the press are rights, but we must accept that rights come with a responsibility. As we broadcast hate, not every person can distinguish between fantasy-based rhetoric and reality.

The man who shot Republican Congressman Steve Scalise and the man who drove his car into people demonstrating against neo-Nazis both drew inspiration from the vein of anger pulsing through their media and social media. Those men acted with a “fierce certainty of now,” from a mindset reinforced by like-minded people hoping to foment division and discord for their own agenda or for profit.

Where is the honest arbiter of news? Where do we get a newscast stating only that Congress voted a certain way, or a natural disaster struck a town, or soldiers were killed in combat? Who is out there delivering facts without telling us how to think about them and who to blame for it?

Hannity, Maddow, Carlson et al are neither journalists nor news anchors. They are well-paid entertainers, dispensers of opinions who pontificate in real time while reacting to what drives the ratings. Their ‘fierce certainty of now” manifesting itself in their unyielding stances of right and wrong are what passes for news these days.

We bear some of the blame. We retreat to talk radio, news sites and Twitter feeds that give faceless people the ability to state ever more outrageous things; the more outrageous the better. We give them a soapbox and buy into their sermons. Suddenly the things we said privately now seem to be okay to say publicly.

No matter how extreme one’s views may be, whether on the left or the right, we can find support for our team, driving our belief that only our side can be right. We come to see the other side as less patriotic or un-American.

When one side plans a demonstration with media and cameras present we have the fierce certainty of now that we must show up and try to shout them down, shut them up and make them think the way we think.

Words become marches that can spiral into confrontations and violence. Once the violence starts we’ve given the media the content they crave. As that content rolls over and over, those at home have picked their sides and root for their team like it’s a ballgame.

The Charlottesville deaths and injuries were terrible enough, but as warped as this may sound it could have been much worse. Given the presence of armed “militia” at the rally in Charlottesville, what if there was just a moment of panic and someone opened fire? Don’t believe it can happen? Just remember Kent State.

For the foreseeable future every faceoff between demonstrators and counter-demonstrators locked in their side’s “fierce certainty of now” puts us on a razor’s edge. Given how media and social media stoke our all or nothing mentality ever greater violence is a real possibility. We hope that it doesn’t happen, but dark clouds loom on the horizon with very little leadership to drive the threatening tempest away.

Our best hope is for the center to rise up in common cause against dangerous extremist impulses driven by media and social media. Until that happens we remain locked on either side facing each other down, fueled by the righteous anger of our individual fierce urgency of now.