Fox News and ‘New GOP’ living in dangerous soap opera

Editor:

We have been through a national tragedy with millions dead and all people do is fight. It’s right and just to fight back against fighting but first you have to figure out the New GOP.

I’ve heard that MAGA voters don’t know how things work in either Washington or their lives; to them everything is Reality TV. Some mention that so many of the core are short on advanced education and do not respect hard-earned expertise. Also, I’ve heard that they think they are a minority that’s being preyed upon by unseen forces. (That’s the boogeyman theory.)

I follow Fox News and understand why its stockholders are suing over billions in losses due to suits for false reporting. It’s clear to all pondering the crisis that Fox is part of the illusion causing the fighting.

Fox’s reporting ignores that $8 trillion of the $33 trillion US debt is due to Trump tax cuts. It ignores Biden’s all-nighters, his new trade deals creating US jobs that he got through a infrastructure bill that eluded four prior presidents, that incomes are rising faster than inflation and we have the lowest inflation rate in the western world. It ignores the impact of how many of our Nobel prize winners are immigrants, first or second generation, or how controlled generous immigration boosts the economy. It ignores how the world needs us with two crises that could drag us into war and a third brewing.

I would expect that bias of a single delusional politician or a fringe political party but to have both the news and a major political party in lockstep? That smacks of a conspiracy.

Then yesterday Sen. Hawley was on Fox bragging how he had trashed Secretary Mayorkas. Mayorkas would not comment on a disciplinary personnel matter in progress regarding a suspended anti-Semite. Hawley called Mayorkas a racist for not having fired him immediately.  Fox and Hawley showed one side with the questions and bragged on how well Hawley did.

In fact Mayorkas’ testimony was left out as it embarrassed Hawley. Hawley did not know that Mayorkas’ mother was a concentration camp survivor who lost most of her family to Hitler. He is no anti-Semite; he simply could not legally comment yet. Hawley intentionally insulted Mayorkas simply so he could air his insulting comments.

The entire episode was a case of losers attracting losers. That’s the sine qua non of propaganda – pure and simple.

It seems the start to understanding the New GOP starts with understanding that fools listen to fools, criminals believe other criminal’s excuses, and attack dog instincts need no refined application of knowledge and logic to real facts. Crooks and idiots are equally warped!

The sad fact is that people who do not break out of the Fox-GOP cycle  of nonsense will end up leading the unhappy,  frustrated, and delusional lives that the New GOP and Fox are serving up for them. They are stooges living in a dangerous soap opera. A story of a once mighty democracy slipping away.

Nobel Laureate Thomas Friedman simply sums up how they tick as “Shameful, Shameless, and Dangerous.”

Conrad F. Cropsey

Albion