Thursday, March 4th, 2021
BRING BACK THE FAIRNESS IN BROADCASTING DOCTRINE, b/c WHITE SUPREMACIST CORPORATIONS ARE NOT PEOPLE
Today is the day that the QAnon people and hardcore Trumpers believe Trump will finally come to power and be the "legitimate" 19th President of these United States through some made-up theory based on supposed historic precedence. It's all bullshit. Pure "coo-coo for Cocoa-Puffs" (tm), kind of thinking by a manipulative, out-of-touch, and splintered Republican Party. They are a party without a center, held together by conspiracy theories and a misguided, deep-seated fear of anything from the Left. Their compulsion to "own the Libs" at just about any cost would be laughable if it wasn't so damaging to the American electorate. The Right is and has been for nigh on 40 years, chipping away at our democracy for the sake of holding on to power that is slowly slipping from their grasp. In the last two weeks alone, Republican-led legislatures across the country in more than two dozen states have presented over 250 pieces of legislation that would make it harder for people to vote. Which people you ask? Why, that would be communities of color that would be affected the most of course. Could it be a coincidence that at the same time that the conservative party in this country is increasingly out of touch with the people because of their failed policies and obstructionism-at-all-cost strategies, that they are also trying to make it as hard as humanly possible for POC to legally vote because they know that if the majority of people do vote, Democratic candidates win? The plethora of voter suppression tactics employed by the Right just proves the point that they cannot win by their ideas. They can only win if they restrict the voting to only those people they know that will vote for them: white, hetero males.
White Supremacy? Is that what I'm getting at? I'm sure that those on the Right will continue to attempt to Gaslight the American people into believing racism isn't so bad here, that it was actually Antifa that stormed the Capitol on January 6th, and the Democrats stole the election. They are precisely doing that, and the sad thing is, 68% of the Republican party believes all those lies. Which is not terribly surprising when you realize how they've been fed a steady diet of lies and misinformation from the GOP and their Right-Wing media propaganda machine for about the last 33 years. Ever since Reagan got rid of the Fairness Doctrine in Broadcasting in 1987. What is the "Fairness in Broadcasting Doctrine" you ask? Well, I'm glad you asked. What it did was to establish two forms of regulation on broadcasters: 1. to provide adequate coverage of public issues, and 2. to ensure that coverage fairly represented opposing views. Getting rid of the Doctrine opened the door to one-sided journalism and the rise of AM conservative talk radio that was not required to broadcast any opposing views. The listener was fed a steady, daily diet of right-wing propaganda that could be presented as news to the consumers without the pesky bother of providing opposing viewpoints that might distract the growing and loyal audience. Enter Rush Limbaugh and Fox News. Which led to the likes of Glenn Beck, Ben Shapiro, Steven Crowder, Alex Jones, Laura Ingraham, Bill O'Reilly, Dennis Praeger, Tucker Carlson, and a host of other far-right conspiracy spewing "Trumplican" sycophants.
They are, without a doubt, the two biggest entities that fomented the rise of the ever-increasing fascistic tendencies of the Right. Cloaked in outrage and directed at the perceived immorality, and big-government overreach from the "Crazy Libs", they have slowly chipped away at our American democracy as they come to the stark realization that their party is increasingly losing support because of their one-sided view of the power structure in this country. They've blindly worked so hard to hold on to power with their Jim Crow-like, voter suppression schemes and policies, that they refuse to see the damage they've caused. This is a generalization, but, conservatives don't seem to see problems in society until they or their family are directly affected. But even that is in question in these days of conspiracy theories and misinformation on social media. When I listen to the speeches from the Right, I hear fear-mongering demagogues telling scary campfire stories to a lot of scared, angry, white people that have been persuaded to believe lies about their fellow Americans, and whatever else they can think of to cling to power.
The answers to our problems as a country will be dealt with one way or another. I just would rather it be in a responsible and equitable manner that considers all sides of the issues as opposed to the Republicans' "Head in the Sand" policies. Let's face the long-term issues that go far beyond the next quarterly profit report. Let's start thinking about the good of the people, not the corporations. Because contrary to the Supreme Court ruling, corporations are NOT people.
I'm sure this has been said by countless others throughout human history, but we really are living through scary and precipitous times. Not just politically, but if we don't start to align our politics with the reality of the state of the planet we live on, then we might just be another in a long line of species that have died out on this blue-green speck of a mote on a sunbeam in the endless sea of the Universe. It's time we start making the civilization we ALL deserve, not just the privileged few.
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