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!