What Does the Ostrich See in that Sand?

 

Obviously:

I’ve learned a lot about American politics from the newly defined Trump Republican Party. Basically, if you use labels consistently, repeat lies as truth all the time, you can define the issues that lambast your opponents, glorify your blind followers and win elections. Here’s a taste: The 2020 election was “stolen.” So, we need to reconfigure voting practices to eliminate those who might vote against the GOP position. We are “patriots” who are “saving America.” Why are we prosecuting what the Republican Party officially labels the January 6th attack, where people died or were seriously injured (including more than a few police officers), as “ordinary citizens engaged in legitimate political discourse,” hardly the seditious conspiracy charges (under our federal criminal code – 18 US Code § 2384) brought against the participating Proud Boys?

The dictionary definition of “socialism” – effectively government ownership of all or most land, business and wealth – has been replaced by “embracing pro-people-over-big-business” policies that have been an essential part of – oh, coincidence – the Democratic Party for over three quarters of a century. “Stop socialism” seems so American since “we’ve been fighting communism for decades,” but it has nothing to do with actual Democratic policies.

We also have a proclivity to blame anything we do not like on our political opponents. Even as Donald Trump’s embrace of autocrats – from Xi Jinping, Viktor Orban and Kim Jong-un to Vladimir Putin, while threatening to end NATO and generally withdrawing from international involvement under his “America First” (a KKK chant from the 1920s) – sent a clear signal to Moscow that the US would not meddle in its stated battle against the West and potential invasion of “whatever.” No Obama didn’t help either by sitting idly by as Russia swallowed Crimea. Sanction? Everybody uses them, but where have they produced the desired result? Remember that little “favor” Trump asked of Ukraine President Zelensky – investigate the Bidens – if you want those weapons we were supposed to deliver… well… The failure timely to deliver those weapons also helped bring Putin’s power lust to the fore.

That lovely invasion jacked up the cost of grain, fertilizer and most of all oil. Shipping costs skyrocketed, fossil fuel prices exploded and the collapse of available fertilizer and grain availability began mass starvation in impoverished nations. You might say both political parties contributed to these inflationary accelerators, but the biggest incentives to Mr Putin did come from Donald Trump. But hey, it’s an election year, so as Americans, we blame the incumbent.

What is equally obvious is that very little is going to change hardened ideological blame and perceptions. We are still going to have oversized gun magazines and assault weapons out there. There will be perhaps fewer mass shootings with genuine background checks (good luck with enforcing that… it isn’t free), but there are more children and innocents who will die from these weapons. God-invoking evangelicals will still want to punish women who elect to have abortions, even as they favor the death penalty and the free proliferation of assault weapons… and believe that climate change cannot be a significant policy driver. We are a house divided with no realistic middle road. We have legitimized racism and discrimination against those who are “different” (which depends on to whom you speak) and accepted minority rule. What we continue to do is make sure that truth never reaches those who need to hear and feel it the most.

So in this spirit, I would like to introduce some of the words of LA Times OpEd writer, Kurt Bardella (advisor to the Democratic National Committee and the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and a former senior advisor for Republicans on the House Oversight Committee), from his June 8th contribution: “When the Jan. 6 committee hearings begin on Thursday night, you’ll notice one cable ‘news’ station — Fox News — will not be broadcasting the proceedings . The network will stay with regular programming with Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, all of whom have denounced the committee’s investigation as illegitimate and a witch hunt… For context, Fox News devoted more than 1,000 evening segments to the Benghazi issue.

“At this point, why are we pretending Fox is anything but a propaganda vehicle for the GOP? Why is it allowed to be a credentialed news organization covering the White House or the U.S. Capitol? Would we grant such access to QAnon propagandists if they started their own digital platform? Of course not.

“For reasons I cannot explain, there are those in the establishment media world who still cling to this notion that Democrats and Republicans represent two different but equal sides of the same coin. That it’s important for the American people to be presented with ‘both sides’ as if they carry equal weight… Axios reported this week [first week in June] that new leadership at CNN is ‘evaluating whether personalities and programming that grew polarizing during the Trump era can adapt to the network’s new priority to be less partisan,’ and if ‘talent cannot adjust to a less partisan tone and strategy, they could be ousted.’

“They may not realize it, but news executives advancing this type of editorial edict are the GOP’s best friends. They are playing right into their hands and are acting as unwitting accomplices in the effort to end democracy as we know it… It is not partisan to confront the dangerous litany of lies advanced every day by the Republican Party. It is not partisan to expose the embrace of extremism that is driving GOP ‘policymaking.’ It is not partisan to challenge Republicans on their hypocrisy. It is not partisan to use adjectives like ‘dangerous,’ ‘radical,’ ‘extreme,’ ‘liars,’ ‘wrong,’ ‘violent,’ ‘racists’ to describe leaders in the Republican Party. That’s what they are and quite frankly, they aren’t even trying to hide it… Democracy is in a death spiral.”

Fox “News” is providing “counter-programming” instead. If you distract enough, then the big issue doesn’t really matter. If you label a major reality with a pejorative term, it must be bad. If you repeat a lie enough, it must be true. And if only your side can ever be right, who needs democracy anyway?

I’m Peter Dekom, and we live in ostrich land in a non-reality based on those incredible “alternative facts.”