On his inauguration day of January 20, President Donald J. Trump signed an executive order to rename the Gulf of Mexico the Gulf of America. He followed that up by signing a second executive order on February 9th, recognizing that day as Gulf of America Day.

Truth be told, there was already a Gulf of America. It is the chasm between Americans with vastly different beliefs and belief systems.

As we discussed in an earlier blog, this gulf was borne out of what academics have labeled “affective polarization.” Affective polarization is when people’s feelings or attitudes toward those in their own party or group (e.g., race, religion, sex, special interest) grow more positive, and their feelings or attitudes toward those in the other party or group become more negative.

The polarized Gulf of America has grown substantially in the past decade or so. It has been widened and deepened by a number of factors including:

• People who use lies and disinformation to increase the distance between those who accept their construction of reality and those who do not.
• The manner in which many citizens access information and get their news.
• The elevation of free speech and individual rights above a concern for the common good.
• The mindsets of the American people.

Lies and the Gulf of America

Bill Adair is the founder of the Pulitzer-Prize winning fact-checking website PolitiFact. PolitiFact uses its Truth-o-meter to answer whether what politicians and others in the public limelight say is true or not.
Adair’s new book, published late last year, is titled Beyond the Big Lie: The Epidemic of Political Lying, Why Republicans Do It More, and How it Could Burn Down our Democracy. On October 9, Adair wrote an essay for The Atlantic, excerpted from his book, which begins as follows:

For American politicians, this is a golden age of lying. Social media allows them to spread mendacity with speed and efficiency, while supporters amplify any falsehood that serves their cause. When I launched PolitiFact in 2007, I thought we were going to raise the cost of lying. I didn’t expect to change people’s votes just by calling out candidates, but I was hopeful that our journalism would at least nudge them to be more truthful.

I was wrong. More than 15 years of fact-checking has done little or nothing to stem the flow of lies. I underestimated the strength of the partisan media on both sides, particularly conservative outlets, which relentlessly smeared our work.

Adair focuses on the preponderance of political lying beyond The Big Lie, which, of course, is Donald Trump’s unfounded claim that the 2020 presidential election was stolen. Lying thrives in many other public areas today as well. Consider Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.’s anti-vaccine campaign, with claims such as vaccines cause autism and that vaccines do not protect against measles and polio. Consider Alex Jones, conspiracy theorist and radio host’s claims, through the years, that traumatic events, such as the Boston Marathon bombing, were staged by the FBI, and that no children actually died in the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting massacre.

In addition to Jones, there are thousands of others who disseminate conspiracy theories and disinformation. Millions of Americans access, receive, and share these falsehoods. The bottom line is that in our nation today lies abound, surround, and astound.

Social Media and the Gulf of America

As indicated above, social media is a primary reason for the prominent presence of lies and disinformation today. That presence can be disruptive and sometimes destructive.

Charlie Warzel commented on the negative impact of social media in his article for The Atlantic, written after Hurricanes Helene and Milton ravaged the East Coast last year:

Even in a decade marred by online grifters, shameless politicians, and an alternative right-wing-media complex pushing anti-science fringe theories, the events of the past few weeks stand out for their depravity and nihilism. As two catastrophic storms upended American cities, a patchwork network of influencers and fake-news peddlers have done their best to sow distrust, stoke resentment, and interfere with relief efforts. But this is more than just a misinformation crisis. To watch as real information is overwhelmed by crank theories, and public servants battle death threats, is to confront two alarming facts: first, that a durable ecosystem exists to ensconce citizens in an alternate reality, and second, that the people consuming and amplifying those lies are not helpless dupes but willing participants.

It wasn’t supposed to be that way. As we observed, in a blog posted in 2020:

If there ever was a misnomer, social media is it. When social media first came on the scene in 1997, it was supposed to be an electronic platform for bringing us closer together — a way for friends, family, and like minds to network. As it evolved, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and others were going to be the means for elevating our communications. In many instances it has achieved those ends.

Unfortunately, in many instances it has not, and a segment of what transpires in the electronic space could more appropriately be labeled the unsocial media. The unsocial media became a means for saying vicious, venomous or vile things, and for propagating and popularizing falsehoods and fake news.

In 2025, the unsocial media has become a larger cesspool. Sadly, many Americans consume some or much of their news and information from that contaminated cesspool.

Social Media Usage and the Gulf of America

Just a few decades ago, the majority of Americans got their news and information from print publications and broadcast TV. In this 21st century, that is no longer the case.

A Pew Research Center News Platform Fact Sheet reports that the percentage of Americans who “often get news from TV” now stands at 33%. And, “just 26% of U.S. adults say they often or sometimes get news in print.” In contrast, 86% of U.S. adults get news from a smartphone, computer, or tablet and 57% say “they do so often.”

A Pew Research Center Social Media and News Fact Sheet reveals the following regarding social media usage:

• About one-third of U.S adults “regularly” get news on Facebook and YouTube with a smaller share for Instagram (20%), TikTok (17%) and X-Twitter (12%).
• Even though they get small overall audiences, 59% of X-users and 57% of Truth Social users (owned by Donald Trump) get their news on those sites.
• Women make up “greater portions of regular news consumers on TikTok (62%), Facebook (60%) and Instagram (59%). Men have greater shares on X (64%) and Truth Social (58%).
• There are demographic and partisan differences in terms of regular social media news consumers by site. For example:
  – Ages 18–49 are higher regular news consumers on all sites. Ages 18–29 usage is higher on TikTok (45%). Age 50+ is low across the board.
  – Whites are consistently much higher than people of color in usage across all sites.
  – “Overwhelming shares of regular news consumers on Truth Social (88%) are Republican or lean-Republican.” On Instagram and TikTok “consumers are more likely to be Democrats or Democratic leaners.”

This variance in social media usage is indicative of the tendency to secure news from a source that reflects one’s personal values and interests. Securing news digitally is not problematic, as long as the source provides accurate and truthful information.

Obviously, Truth Social cannot be relied upon to be a truthful source. In the past though, there was an attempt by major social media sites, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter — before it was acquired by Elon Musk and renamed X — to do some level of independent fact-checking to help ensure truthful and not harmful information reached their users, and to help them discriminate fact from fiction.

Mark Zuckerberg announced in January that Meta (the owner of Facebook and Instagram) was eliminating third-party fact checking, and moving instead to a “community notes” model, similar to that now employed by X.

Community notes allow a contributor, who has signed up to do so, to put up a note on the validity or extreme nature of a post, and if enough contributors say the note about a post is helpful, it will be shown to the public. If that sounds like a convoluted and disingenuous approach, it is.

As Michael Blanding reports in TuftsNow, Bhaskar Chakravorti, dean of global business at The Fletcher School at Tufts University, states “…the community notes model at X has failed completely.” Chakravorti also opined that use of such a model “could lead to an increase in toxic material.”

Free Speech and the Gulf of America

Why is it that toxic material doesn’t appear to matter much in 2025? There is no single answer. One of the major reasons, however, is because those in power politically, and on social media, advance free speech as the justification for not having rules and regulations governing social media.

Social media owners Donald Trump (Truth Social) and Elon Musk (X) have been members of the free speech club for some time. They have been joined recently by Mark Zuckerberg (Facebook and Instagram).

Donald Trump didn’t need his own social media platform to say anything he wants about anything and anyone without any constraints. He has been spouting off from his various bully pulpits throughout his adult life. His return to the White House enables him to use the foremost bully pulpit in the United States and the world to spread his perceived reality and opinions, through both social and legacy media.

Elon Musk characterized himself as a “free speech absolutist” in 2022 before he took over Twitter — now X. Back then, in an interview at a TED conference in Vancouver, when asked about banning tweets on Twitter, he said:

Well, I think we want to err on the, if in doubt, let the speech, let it exist. But if it’s a gray area, I would say let the tweet exist. But obviously in a case where there’s perhaps a lot of controversy, you’re not necessarily going to promote that tweet. I’m not saying that I have all the answers here.

Since he took over Twitter, Musk has had all the answers. They include getting rid of the fact checkers on that platform and letting all tweets, no matter how outrageous or outlandish, run rampant.

Mark Zuckerberg opens his personal announcement regarding Meta’s shift away from fact checking and content moderation by saying:

Hey everyone. I want to talk about something important today because it’s time to get back to our roots around free expression on Facebook and Instagram. I started building social media to give people a voice. I gave a speech at Georgetown five years ago about the importance of protecting free expression, and I still believe this today, but a lot has happened over the last several years.

Given this context, the concern becomes: Is this emphasis on free speech based upon a commitment to the First Amendment in the Bill of Rights in the Constitution? Or has free speech become a password for access to power, people’s pocketbooks, and an excuse for allowing the inexcusable to be promoted on social media platforms?

American Mindsets and the Gulf of America

In our polarized nation today, we American citizens are definitely not of one mind. As we wrote in our book, Working the Pivot Points: To Make America Work Again:

What we have in common as citizens, however, is the fact that we all share certain common characteristics. These include hardened beliefs, personal style preferences, selective reception of data, decision making and thinking flaws, and a tendency toward irrationality.

Hardened beliefs are a person’s core values, attitudes, and opinions. They are usually developed early in life, and relate to areas such as abortion, same-sex marriage, religion, and race relations.

Because of our mindsets, as the earlier discussion of how social media platforms are accessed highlighted, we tend to seek out data that reinforces our personal beliefs.

Studies have found that many people do not even attempt to secure data if it does not agree with their viewpoints. And more importantly, researchers have found that if people are provided with accurate information on something, and then read a blog that provides incorrect information that correlates with their perspective, they tend to believe the false information, even when told it was not true.

Add to this “the illusory truth effect.” The illusory truth effect, as defined and explained in Psychology Today, is:

The tendency for any statement that is repeated frequently — whether it is factually true or not, whether it is even plausible or not — to acquire the ring of truth. Studies show that repetition increases the perception of validity — even when people start out knowing that the information is false, or when the source of the information is known to be suspect.

Psychology Today cites the “birther conspiracy theory,” disseminated in 2008, when Barack Obama was running for President, that he was not born in the United States as an example of the illusory truth effect. In our opinion, Donald Trump’s proclaiming that the 2020 election was stolen, and its acceptance by as much as 70% of his supporters, is an even better example.

Shrinking the Gulf of America

As the analysis in this blogs attest, these are perilous times in the Gulf of America. Much work will have to be done to shrink that Gulf. The bad news is that much of what is being done today at the national level politically, and on new media now, will make the Gulf bigger, not smaller. We are on a trajectory to a post-truth society.

The good news is that we, as concerned citizens and individuals, can take actions to help bridge the gulf and make truth matter. The best advice for how to do this we have seen comes from Dr. Francis Collins, former Director of the National Institute of Health, under Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden.

In a guest essay for the New York Times, written in September of 2024, Collins comments:

When we review the breadth and depth of society’s current malaise, it’s tempting to just check out. We’re discouraged by what’s happening to the social fabric, we’re burned out and turned off by all the lies, conflict, and venom, and so many of us have stepped back from the animosity to just try to take care of our families, our jobs, and our sanity. In the terminology of More in Common, a nonprofit that conducts surveys, we are the “exhausted majority.”

But there is still a deep hunger in most of us for healing and hope. To achieve that, we need to overcome the exhaustion, the fatalism, and the cynicism.

Collins goes on to provide these “specific ideas about actions we can all take,” excerpted below:

First, we should each take the time to get our own mental house in order. Let’s begin with a fundamental principle: There is such a thing as truth, and truth really matters.

Second, to move from our current divisiveness to an era of empathy and understanding, it is essential for more of us to become comfortable having conversations with people who have very differing views from ours.

Third, individual bridge-building can also extend to communities. The antidote to feeling hopeless is to link up with other individuals who also are motivated to address our current polarization.

Finally, individuals are also part of a nation, and ultimately the nation should be responsive to their needs, hopes, and dreams. If our nation’s political system has lost much of its commitment to truth, compromise, and civility, it is up to us to turn that around.

We agree with Collins, and have provided similar recommendations in the past. Unfortunately, writing about this is much easier said than done.

Recognizing this, we should remember that positive progress and change in our democracy has never come about instantaneously. It has required hard work and tenacity. It will require the same in these days and times.

Shrinking the Gulf of America will require citizens of differing mindsets coming together to put the right plan in place, and then to have the patience, persistence, and principles to collaborate in executing that plan through the years and decades ahead.

 

(The author is an entrepreneur, civic and thought leader based in Washington DC. Views are personal)