Innate Hatred + Totally Fabricated Statistics and Reality-Custom Distortions = Irreconcilable Differences

 

Innate Hatred + Totally Fabricated Statistics and Reality-Custom Distortions = Irreconcilable Differences

Big and Bigger Little Lies

One of the reasons I began my DEKOM! LAW & POSSIBILITIES Podcast, getting good quality ratings BTW, is that to salvage a severely damaged Democracy we ironically call the United States of America, Americans need to respond to the same set of facts. If someone can make up a really important number that just might jibe better with what a voter may want to believe, and he/she votes to support that number even if its wildly false (but how many people really fact-check… or even know how to?), the underlying problems are very likely to get worse. Spinning fabricators plus irresponsible and toxic social media that makes money from ads based on the number of eyeballs – thriving in controversy and divisive name-calling but fading when that conflict fades – have created two distinct and highly antagonistic constituencies layered atop each other in the same country. Who seriously hate each other.

For most Americans, the basic desire is to be left alone, not pay absurd prices, feel safe and are actually able to afford that middle-class promise that has all be disappeared: a decent home in a decent neighborhood with good schools for our kids with a job where dedication and hard work actually does pay off. We don’t care if some get rich, but not because of purposely low taxes, special rights and privileges (connections, baby) or deregulation where it is OK to cheat consumers, not require safe workplaces, allow pollutants to be emitted without any consequences and cos-pay brilliant pseudo-economics with policies that have never worked before. Honest hard work was a main American value, but where is that value today?

It used to be that one thing that really pissed Americans off the most was unfairness, injustice and malevolent manipulation… garish show-offs were un-American. But now, billionaires, no matter how they got there, are heroes; garish lifestyles and over-consumption are now revered, and lies that resonate with a personal wish list have replaced facts. I’m not saying the Democrats do not lie and fabricate – and during reconstruction Democrats were the gerrymandering kings and super-liars, but somewhere in the Cold War, the big lies migrated to the GOP. Remember when the CIA was engaged in cocaine smuggling to buy guns for anti-Islamist and anti-communist purposes (e.g., Iran-Contra-gate scandal of the 1980s), “Mission Accomplished” and Saddam Hussein’s WMDs (that we never found), but once the 21st century arrived, it was the wild west of mendacity.

It wasn’t Donald Trump who started the GOP on a track to “alternative facts.” He just knew how to say anything a growing disenfranchised, Christian right wanted to hear to aggregate their votes, with increasing passion. Most were good people committed to their perception of fundamental Christian values. But conspiracy theories, boldfaced lies, flourished as Fox ascended and social media rose in importance. For example, in 2015, pre-Trump’s candidacy, Fox Business News Sandra Smith reported that with Planned Parenthood, "Almost 95 percent of all their pregnancy services were abortions.” But fact-checking at the share of abortions per patient (and assuming one procedure per patient), the figure sets at somewhere between 3 and 12 percent.

Facebook/Meta, Twitter/X, Truth Social made money with controversy, and these players were quite ready to take MAGA money as much as anyone’s. The left of center world was quite literally a rainbow of voters (Roman Catholics were liberal except on contraception and abortion, for example), African Americans and liberal thinking Jews were often at odds. But Fox “News” had an easier time. The new Republicans were either greedy money worshippers or a new powerful evangelical movement. Fox did not have much of a battle among and between constituencies. Dems were way too segmented for a singular approach. Plus, the GOP discovered that unions abhorred the globalism that was rising fast, so they worked that angle as their leaders continued to plunder globalism.

It would be one thing if those reporters, rightwing podcasters, etc. believed what they were pedaling. For example, when pipe bombs were planted outside the Washington, DC major headquarters of the two political parties in 2020, the rightwing press made a convincing statement that this was the work of a leftwing radical, one who had particular antipathy for the GOP and Trump. Bombs were “planted” – right wing wisdom insisted – to make Trump look bad. The FBI began investigating, but somehow the perp remained free. One of the main podcasting reporters, Dan Bongino, touted that the bombing was quite literally a Democratic Party “inside job,” a concept that rapidly became the gospel truth on the right, embraced by such notables as Sean Hannity.

But five years later, as Deputy Director of the FBI in Trump 2.0, Bongino was proud when that bomber, Brian Cole, Jr was arrested by the FBI under Bongino’s watch. What was more amazing was that Cole was a pro-Trump supporter who believed the Democrats “stole” the 2020 election from Trump. The recent arrest made Hannity wonder how the man who started the conspiracy theory about the bomber could be happy about an arrest under his watch, one that contradicted that theory. Hannity asked Bongino, and here’s what the Deputy Director said, “I was paid in the past, Sean, for my opinions, that’s clear, and one day I will be back in that space… but that’s not what I am paid for now; I’m paid to be your deputy director, and we base investigations on facts.” Wow!

Fox News hosts have escaped defamation litigation in the past as judges have found that because folks like Tucker Carlson were well known for exaggeration and fabrication, no one could take their statements literally. But millions did and still do as Donald Trump himself is telling his followers not to believe their own eyes and own experiences… that they are living in the best and most affordable economy ever. When the real numbers and the grassroots perception clearly reflect otherwise.

I’m Peter Dekom, and when a huge constituency refuses to believe truth, no matter how convincing, how exactly can they make a true judgment upon which to base their votes… and if they will not or cannot, can the Republic be saved?