sigh... The American media is hopelessly, haplessly stuck in a powerful vortex of denial. I'm not even bothering with links to related articles & video clips - just too many.
I will note that this posting was inspired by a Salon article on how Donald Trump has warped democracy. Au contraire - the Trump candidacy is a symptom, not a cause, of one segment of the American electorate gone wild, the majority gone silent & a 4th Estate gone missing.
We're where we are due to YEARS of a media & seemingly intelligent people opting to embrace the Fox News notion that Dems went toe to toe with the GOP in confabulating political mores, in promoting flagrant fantasies in place of mundane facts, in boorish behavior that worthy of ideological hooligans & thugs. Pardon me - if they did, it was an outlier, not the norm.
The current climate of seething resentment & hair trigger emotions can be chalked up to Joe Wilson, Justice Alito, Speaker Boehner & their ilk - each helped open the door to dissing the notion of civility having any place in politics. Leave us not forget the inner circle of GOP leaders & big wigs who staked out their claim to making politics very personal, agreeing on the very night of President Obama's first inauguration to deep six any legislation he advanced. And it's hard to top Dr. Ben Carson, who made his conservative bones by trashing the prominently present president at the annual Prayer Breakfast.
The slams & overt insults hurled at the president are too numerous to recount. The level of unmasked animosity is unmistakable - unless you are what passes these days as a conservative. To such as they, the facts be damned; the shoe is totally on the other foot.
Well, I've had it with people laying blame for the current sorry state of affairs at Donald Trump's door. He is a canny businessman who read the lay of the land & used it to his advantage. Sure, he's manipulating just about everyone in sight, but he is not the cause of our polluted political landscape. That blame is laid rightly at the door of Fox News egging on the conservative base to embrace being political dunces & dullards, on Establishment Republicans who garnered votes by promising social revolution & not delivering, and - as noted before - a segment of the American electorate gone wild, the majority gone silent, a 4th estate gone missing.
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