Validating The Invalid

We all do it; we all seek facts, commentaries, and arguments that validate our opinions and/or beliefs, and we are annoyed by facts, commentaries, and arguments that contradict our opinions and/or beliefs. MSNBC is in the habit of trying to present both sides of the issues by inviting Republican apologists or, far worse, Trump apologists to join in the discussions. More often than not I react to those apologists with disgust! I refer to the practice of interviewing those apologists as helloing up the elephant's ass. In fact I have been known to shout: “There isn't but one thing that can come out of the elephants ass, and I don't want it dumped in my living room!” So am I closing my mind to facts I do not like or valid arguments I do not like? I know it may appear that I am, but I do not think so because what we are witnessing today goes way beyond mere spinning to outright lying! The Republicans have alternative facts, don't you know?

I used to listen to both sides no matter how ridiculous I thought the other side was being. I even studied extreme right wing literature just to see how ridiculously paranoid they were. There is nothing new about demagogues exploiting the fear and loathing of gullible people who are far too eager to blame others for their own failures. Before Rush, how low can you go, Limbo we had people like Joe Pine and later Wally George pitching what Richard Hofstadter called the paranoid style in American politics. The difference between then and now is that people actually read news papers and news magazines, and there were popular liberal commentators on the radio to counter the fear mongering of xenophobic reactionaries. Even right wing television personalities like George Putnam were on networks that had some journalistic integrity and reported factual news. But the greatest difference between then and now is that the extreme right wing was considered a fringe group that influenced the Republican Party rather controlling it.

All of that changed when liberal commentators were not as prevalent as the reactionary ones, and when cable television stations such as Fox News abandoned any attempt to be factual. At that point the propaganda of the fear and loathing crowd went unchallenged by any fact checking! Why the mainstream media was derelict in its duty to keep the public informed can be summed up in one word,”Commercialism.” Selling the product was more important than keeping the public informed. Why people stopped tuning into liberal commentators has often been a subject of conjecture. My opinion is that the falling ratings of liberal commentators were the result of liberals taking good sense for granted and accepting science and facts as the validation of their policies. How naïve of them! Science and reality have no impact on people who seek validation in a pool of ignorance and false certainties where beliefs and shared assumptions are vigorously defended against all inconvenient facts. As Eric Hoffer said: “Propaganda does not deceive people; it merely helps them to deceive themselves.”

Therein lies the problem. Educated people fed up with the mind rot of Fox and with the Neanderthal purveyors of nativist nonsense welcomed MSNBC, but we still wound up with Donald Trump as President. The bottom line is that too many of the ignorant joined the willfully ignorant in throwing a tantrum, and our anachronistic electoral college magnified the destructive results of the that tantrum. Now we have another problem that must be addressed and addressed soon. As Vox news has reported, “Sinclair’s pro-Trump news is taking over local TV. See if they own your station." That is right, our anti trust laws have become a sham and no longer protect us from the efforts of Rupert Murdock and Julian Sinclair Smith to mute anyone who does not spew right wing garbage at people who think they are watching news programs! If you do not think this matters you should bear in mind that the first victim of despotism is always the truth! I agree with Mr. Hoffer that propaganda does not deceive people, but I have one very important caviate and that is unless there is an absence of Truth. We can and we must fight back! Write to your elected Representative and get rid of any politician who will not protect the expression of the diversity of opinions that a free press and freedom of speech are supposed to provide and protect!

Intellect Barred By Roseanne

If you live in a county where the cows outnumber and out think the humans Roseanne Barr's show, which tries to normalize the sort of right wing dumbfuckery that makes fear and loathing such a profitable product for the likes of Fox News, Dimbart News, and Rush Limbo, just might be the show for you. Why are farmers so unsophisticated when it comes to politics? Why do they think they still have the self sufficiency of subsistence farmers while touting the agrarian myth that all industry is dependent on farmers who grow commercial crops to send to urban markets? The farmers that participated in the Grange movement certainly knew better than to spout such self sufficiency nonsense. As Grange organizers often said, it is that self sufficiency nonsense that makes farmers so vulnerable to exploitation. I suppose in many respects today's farmers are experiencing the same sort of amnesia that causes too many blue collar workers to oppose labor unions, but that does not explain all of it. It does not explain the fear and loathing that makes otherwise reasonable people work against their own self interests.

During the nineteen-fifties and sixties there were many books and articles that discussed the dehumanization of the assembly lines and the feelings of alienation and isolation urban dwellers often felt even when surrounded by other people. Similarly, rural folks know that isolation is just a part of farm life, which is what makes church services and other gatherings of people who share certain basic assumptions and prejudices seem like a God send. To put it in rural terms, if you are one of the chickens in a group that is shrinking and becoming more isolated your vulnerability is probably going to make you think that anything overhead casting a shadow larger than a sparrow casts is a chicken hawk and any creature on the ground that does not have feathers is a fox. Which is to say you are going to be very susceptible to the type of tribalism, and fear, and loathing being peddled by right wing demagogues and would be despots.

Donald Trump is not the aberration the pundits are portraying him to be; rather he is the extreme result of the McCarthy/Bircher wing taking over the Republican Party and of the willful ignorance and paranoia Rosanne Barr is trying to normalize. In this Ms. Barr is being aided and abetted by the main stream media. Here is a hint for the lame stream media, calling wrong wrong is not the sort of partisanship you should avoid. The normalization of the hateful, destructive, and corrupt behavior by our President is a clear and present threat to our country and our democracy! The most prosperous, knowledgeable, and productive societies in history have always been trading empires that embraced diversity and eagerly learned from other cultures!

So far Roseanne's character is Archie Bunker without the redeeming humanity and satirical qualities that made all in the family so successful. And I do not expect any better from her. The far right is all about beliefs rather than facts. It is anti intellectual, anti science, and anti anything and everything that questions basic assumptions, accepted beliefs and the tribal norms and folkways of a majority rapidly becoming a minority and feeling threatened by that reality. I know it must seem odd to many that Roseanne Barr, who was considered to be to the left politically could shift so far to the right, but they who embrace radical ideologies are susceptible to deeply felt disappointments that can cause them to shift in the opposite direction. As Eric Hoffer said: “Disappointment is a sort of bankruptcy - the bankruptcy of a soul that expends too much in hope and expectation.”

We cannot, we must not let our disappointments cause us to accept the fear and loathing of the alt. Right as the new normal! We are much better than that. We are America, damnit!