CommentsMY TURN-There has always been an element of the extreme in every society, and it is usually a smaller group that is often given little attention.
However, this has all changed in the U.S. when those that should have been delegated to mental health counselors finally felt that they were being “heard.” The addition of the consistent brainwashing propaganda techniques employed by the Russian and Macedonian purveyors of fake news combined with what we will eventually find out as the blatant hacking of the American electoral system, has resulted in a wash of loud, obnoxious, rude, mean, sexist, bigoted, and hateful people.
They have wrapped themselves in flags while carrying both Bibles and guns and are forcing the type of ideologies that have been seen in pre-WW II Germany and the fictional story of the Handmaid’s Tale. There is no comparison to the type of unrest that we typically find when one political side wins over another; this is outright insanity and it proves that the final disease is only the result of years of symptoms.
We no longer turn to our media for news. Most of the channels are simply seeking ratings and as we saw during the 2016 Presidential campaign, they will deliberately ignore anything that was once considered to be unacceptable and simply try to analyze and make sense of it. This was apparent when Trump showed up, spewing his bizarre, sick and twisted word salad rhetoric, and the media sources chose instead to continue to attack previously covered, ended and resolved email situation of Hillary Clinton.
This condition contributed towards the escalation of insanity as the general populace embraced the idea that being nuts was “ok”, and things such as facts and data weren’t important, and it was just fine to change the topic with redirects and misinformation. For anyone with even a touch of critical thinking abilities, we would know that this format is what Fox was created on and all the media wanted a piece of that conservative extremist pie.
For anyone that has considered themselves to have common sense and lived their lives with dignity and honor, the current time isn’t simply tumultuous, it is outright craziness; and we are viewing the country as an asylum being run by the inmates.
Few journalists have the guts to come forward to address this topic. It is like a family’s dirty little secret of Uncle Bob that has always been known as a sexual predator, but they simply choose to not think about it. In fact, if you try to research the subject of the insane behavior of the current state of affairs, you don’t turn up much. One of the major reasons for this may exist in the rule-of-thumb that psychologists use regarding refusal of diagnosis of mental illness from afar. However, as the temperature of the country becomes increasingly more unstable, with right-wing wacko extremists wreaking havoc on everything from the rights of the people to caging children and even attacking all cultures that aren’t “white”, these long held guidelines are being broken.
One of the curious things to take note of is that a majority of the extreme right-wing conservatives that have embraced the behavior that Hillary Clinton correctly referred to as “deplorable,” is that they simply do not have any clue about the history of the United States or the Constitution itself. This becomes very apparent in their conversation where they view protests as something that is new, illegal, and they think the millions of demonstrators are being paid by George Soros. Bringing to their attention the fact that our country was founded on protest, beginning with the Boston Tea Party and continuing through the years with the Suffragettes, the Vietnam War, Civil Rights, Women’s Rights, protecting the planet…they simply change the subject. This is beyond the scope of their ideology and asking them to think about these historical times is like asking them to jump off a cliff; they don’t comply with their Fox brainwashed propaganda belief system.
The fact that the orange asshat that is sitting in the White House continues with insane behavior on a daily basis, validates the extreme right. His rhetoric is escalating to encompass all of the characteristics of a fascist regime and as long as the Republicans can use this time to catapult themselves in lining their pockets with wealth…they simply don’t care.
The entrance of a methodology to transition the American people into an easily manipulated rabble began when President Reagan disbanded the “Fairness Doctrine Bill”, opening Pandora’s Box to allow any and all craziness in reporting without the requirement of truth. I cover this topic
extensively in my article: “How Fox Brainwashed Conservative America,” where Fox is shown to report ONLY an average of 18% truth.
“A very important aspect to take note of is that all news channels have some percentage of questionable reporting, but Fox tops the charts with the least truthful of all. In my same article: Supporting Trump: The Psychology of the Lie, I include statistics for how bad Fox really is and that they average only around 18% truth in reporting:
‘Over the passage of time, a majority of conservatives turned to Fox as their primary channel of choice, even though those behind the reporting were deliberately spinning information into lies.
This shows in a Politifact post:
- True 17 (10%) (17)
- Mostly True 20 (12%) (20)
- Half True 31 (18%) (31)
- Mostly False 35 (21%) (35)
- False 49 (29%) (49)
- Pants on Fire 16 (10%) (16)
When presented with this type of fact checking information, conservatives that view Fox will not only deny, but try to relate that other news program lie more and spin the information to a liberal slant. The same Politifact study listed above shows that this is simply not true.”
One of the few sources that has examined the insanity of the country is the Atlantic. In their article “How America Lost Its Mind.”
The nation’s current post-truth moment is the ultimate expression of mind-sets that have made America exceptional throughout its history.
“When did America become untethered from reality?
“I first noticed our national lurch toward fantasy in 2004, after President George W. Bush’s political mastermind, Karl Rove, came up with the remarkable phrase reality-based community. People in ‘the reality-based community,’ he told a reporter, ‘believe that solutions emerge from your judicious study of discernible reality … That’s not the way the world really works anymore.’ A year later, The Colbert Report went on the air. In the first few minutes of the first episode, Stephen Colbert, playing his right-wing-populist commentator character, performed a feature called ‘The Word.’ His first selection: truthiness. ‘Now, I’m sure some of the ‘word police,’ the ‘wordinistas’ over at Webster’s, are gonna say, ‘Hey, that’s not a word!’ Well, anybody who knows me knows that I’m no fan of dictionaries or reference books. They’re elitist. Constantly telling us what is or isn’t true. Or what did or didn’t happen.
“Who’s Britannica to tell me the Panama Canal was finished in 1914? If I wanna say it happened in 1941, that’s my right. I don’t trust books — they’re all fact, no heart … Face it, folks, we are a divided nation … divided between those who think with their head and those who know with their heart … Because that’s where the truth comes from, ladies and gentlemen — the gut.”
A core section of this article hits the nail on the head with:
“The word mainstream has recently become a pejorative, shorthand for bias, lies, oppression by the elites. Yet the institutions and forces that once kept us from indulging the flagrantly untrue or absurd — media, academia, government, corporate America, professional associations, respectable opinion in the aggregate — have enabled and encouraged every species of fantasy over the past few decades.”
Here We Are, Trying to Hold on Until Our Fingers Bleed
The 2016 Presidential campaign seemed to begin with a feeling of uneasiness that quickly jumped to disbelief, frustration, anger, and then shock. The media that we had hoped we could trust turned out to be yet another capitalist profit making machine and I blame them for dissipating so much of the misinformation that got the orange Voldemort into the White House and the GOP in charge of…..well, everything.
Of course, there is plenty of blame to go around: the elitist extreme left that stomp their feet and hold their breathe because they didn’t get their candidate and could care less about the consequences, the low self-esteem women that vote for a conservative party that is anti-women, the Democrats that did little in the past to stop the gerrymandering, those that just decided not to vote because they didn’t “like” either of the candidates, and even those that didn’t vote because they think politics is distasteful.
The fact of the matter is that once the fallout occurred on the announcement of who would be controlling the country and who would be in the White House, the rest of us cried. These are tears that we share with all of those that we knew would suffer; and it has gone beyond our worst nightmares. All the while…the drooling Orc Trump supporters are dancing with glee, feeling empowered that they can say and do anything that they want and laughing at anyone that is feeling PTSD symptoms, as they punch, jab, and ridicule.
All the while, the extreme right sources such as Fox/Breitbart/Sinclair are continuing the lies and falsehoods, pushing their eager followers to the next levels. They are now spewing that protesting is now considered to be “riots” and that the Democratic representatives should be jailed. They are insisting that all of the lies about the Clintons were true, even when millions were spent debunking them, and that they should be in prison. Any and all individuals that are liberal are now being called “socialists” as they throw failing countries such as Venezuela out for the feeding frenzy of the conservatives to devour and then regurgitate.
For many of us that exist for verified facts, we find ourselves existing in episodes of the X-Files or Twilight Zone. We realize that we can’t turn to the media for any form of reality but instead, are seeking potential leaders that will shove away the crap and continue to carry the torch. We hope that our election system has not been hacked to the point of no return as Vladimir Putin continues to try to upend and destroy every Democracy in the world. We are raising our eyes to people such as Robert Mueller as well as those in the State of New York who are patiently working to expose the many years of illicit and illegal actions of Trump and his family.
We are holding on to the edge and refuse to join their insanity.
(S. Novi is a journalist that worked in the media and continues to seek out truth and integrity. A liberal and one that is suspicious of cults and empty promises. Her posts originate at Medium.com.) Prepped for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.