It will take a strong leader like Harris to turn US from falsehoods to facts
Editor:
It will take a strong and very accomplished woman like Harris to flush this toilet.
I was surprised a 30-year-old book on press limitations was recently cited to run down mainstream media. The problem analyzed was the economics behind what readers want to read about and how it’s reported. It was insightful at the time before there were any conservative outlets.
Unfortunately committed was the fact mainstream media have substantially beefed up their compliance departments in response. Omitted too was that newish conservative media seized on the paradigm and have proved willing to pay hundreds of millions in defamation settlements as a price of biased reporting and a big following.
In that vein I was sad to see someone I very much like say with definiteness that crime is up. When Waltz said it was down, Fox had a big headline it was up but when I read the article is cited types of crime in three cities.
The Brennan Center at Columbia University has put together a multi-year trend analysis. Click here for the link.
The official reports for full year 2023 and midyear 2024 are not final as not every department nationwide is prompt. Also they have to be adjusted for state laws and categories. But the data so far show 11 of 12 categories down and the 30-year very sharp downward trend in both violent and property crimes continuing again. (Click here for link.)
Fox ignores this. Trump lies about it.
Fox did not report that when asked about his plan for child care all Trump could say was we would have a great economy. Harris would use the proven child care credit.
Fox did not analyze that in his Biden debate Trump said we could give up on Ukraine and NATO since we “have” an ocean to protect us. But in this day of missiles, submarines satellites etc. he and his press forgot that is the same line we heard from some Reps and American Nazis in the 1930s before WW 11. (Biden – Harris keeping Russian aggression in Europe, with NATO help, contained is working. We started small and each time we let Ukraine get more aggressive Russia squeaks but it keeps backing down. The strategy is working and certainly not WWIII stuff as Trump now claims.)
The thought that if Trump goes away, his dangerous personality driven mishmash of lies and attempts to seize power regardless of our laws goes away. That is wrong, I think. By always playing both sides – Proud Boys, Christians Nationalists who would rewrite text book and the Constitution and lies generally, Project 2025, women’s issues, the fact his layers help pick a jury with several Republicans on it – he has allowed all sorts of fringe ideas to gain a strong American following. We have to consider this danger too as Fox and that ilk are not going away.
In some ways it’s similar to Reagan’s tax cut and “trickle-down economics.” That was always bad economics and only a short-term stimulus but the mantra persists in various form to this day as an article of faith. The middle class – lemmings marching to the sea – keeps voting for an economic program that puts more and more of the burden on it.
Trump and commercial enterprises like Fox and the expanded ultra rich Robber Baron class have let the genie out of the bottle. People you know and like have fallen for it and are too convinced to convince.
Remember every time Trump claims he would do something the first day, it means he is doing a Project 2025 end run on Congress where he could get little done with permanent laws just like last time when both Republican houses for 2 years refused to pass his half-baked and nasty proposals other than the huge tax cut.
Alternately this weekend’s threat to personally jail election officials if he wins is possible. (One circulating fantasy is that 20% of Pa. mail-in voted are fraudulent but of course they have not been mailed out yet.) Trump could carry out his Day One threats if he declares an insurrection and suspends the law as he talked about last time.
On Tuesday listen to Harris. She is a proven executive. She has detailed plans to present to Congress that are not based on third-world style hate and retribution. And the next day fact check both with a real independent fact-checking organization.
See who will work to lift us up to a better future. Who says the world stinks and everything revolves around him – who lets grudges consume him to the point the old Republican Party is extinct and the good things it stood for in that toilet.
Conrad F. Cropsey
Albion
