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2/03/2018 6:30 am  #1


The Crisis

Rongone's excellent thread (http://theexchange.boardhost.com/viewtopic.php?id=7411 ) really got me thinking about something.
I didn't want hijack his thread, so I offer my ideas here.

The Crisis

Rush Limbaugh summed up the paranoid style of politics nicely in 1989.
“Science has been corrupted. We know the media has been corrupted for a long time. Academia has been corrupted. None of what they do is real. It’s all lies!”

In the 1960s and 1970s, the American right set about undermining trust in the mainstream media, which it saw as dangerously infected with liberal assumptions. They created their own media, first with AM radio spouting conspiracy theories in the early morning hours. Then people like Rush Limbaugh brought the movement into prime time. Then, in 1996 Roger Ailes created a news network for the paranoid right. Later the internet followed. Ironically, the right's news media was more biased than anything ever seen before. And now tens of millions of Americans could sit in an echo chamber that reinforced all of their existing beliefs and never challenged them with anything new.

Then, over the issue of evolution,, the right attacked academia. Education was, they said, hostile to Christianity, corrupted by liberal bias because little Johnny couldn't study creationism in biology class.

In debates over climate change,  the right attacked the validity of modern science. Again, vast conspiracies were alleged. Science was, they said corrupted to attack capitalism, and american wealth.

After decades of the Fox's, the Coulter's, the Hannity's, it has become an article of faith among conservative ideologues that whole realms of human expertise were in fact intricate structures of propaganda constructed by The Enemy. Everything is political, and the only people that you can trust are fellow tribalists.

Fast forward to the Nunes memo. Conservatives, having undermined public confidence in the media, academia, and science, are now attacking our own department of Justice and the FBI. In their attempts to undermine the Russia probe, Republicans aren’t presenting a coherent theory — even a coherent conspiracy theory. They’re just sowing confusion and distrust toward the nation’s premier law enforcement agency in order to protect the president.

And, It seems to be working on some. If you monitor conservative sites you will note this. Many conservatives, straight arrow Law and order types, have turned on a dime and are joining the chorus of complaint against the, wait for it, Liberal FBI. Unbelievable.

Comparisons to George Orwell's 1984 may be over used. But, perhaps not. I think that we stand at a crossroads. We are looking at the distinct possibility of descending into authoritarianism. If there is no truth in any of our institutions, then only the cult of personality remains. And, our institutions alone will not save us. The constitution provides the mechanism for dealing with a corrupt President. But, it does not anticipate a Congress that is a willing participant in the crime.

We are in deep trouble.

Last edited by Goose (2/03/2018 6:35 am)


We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists. 
 

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