JULY 15, 2021 – Daily, I visit www.fox[propaganda].com. (I eschew the TV version, which competes shamelessly with even more bizarre media outlets like Newsmax and OAN (“One America News”).)
Fox and its competitors on the right are more than irritants. They’re irresponsible, anti-social, destructive forces leveraging an influence loop for the sole and soulless sake of lucre. Their pollutants of the mind are capitalism at its worst.
Although for June and the second quarter of this year, viewership of all four cable channels—Fox, its competitor Newsmax, MSNBC, and CNN—has dropped dramatically from highs during You Know Who’s salad days of presidential publicity, Fox continues as an overwhelming force inside way too many American heads.
By every “story” told—and just as important, every story ignored—Fox makes me wonder whether the “gig is up” for this country. Acceptance of falsehoods and distortions is a barometer of our nation’s prospects.
One must ponder how the country would divide if, thanks to the Fox influence loop over the Big Lie and related voting suppression efforts, Republicans seize control in November 2022 or, God forbid, if You Know Who or an imitator stages a coup in 2024. Would the split be a redux of 1861—North vs. South? Or would it be Northeast, parts of the Midwest, and the West Coast vs. South and West? Would the divide ignore regional lines altogether, pitting urban populations against rural dwellers? Perhaps the separation would be along racial lines or between people who have stuff to protect and those who have nothing to lose. Maybe the line would form between those who believe in science and those who don’t or between folks who care only about their clan and those who understand interdependence. Or maybe the split would occur between people who subscribe to the law of the jungle and people who want to live under the rule of law.
To be sure, since the founding of our nation we’ve been at odds with ourselves, despite “United” in our name and “unum” in our motto. But never have we been so profoundly divided, not over policy, philosophy, or principles, but over . . . reality. By “reality,” I mean EVIDENCE—visual, aural, scientific, documentary, and the most straight-up, in-your-face and-in-your-lungs and in-your-lap forms, all in overwhelming abundance.
Those of us who see, hear, understand, and accept reality must ask ourselves whether our survival depends on separating from people who deny reality. You don’t believe in vaccines? Fine, suffer in your state of denial, because you’ll be denied the “freedom” to deny science in our state of reality. You think the existence of BLM protesters means Antifa was behind the January 6 insurrection? Fine, take your “Don’t Tread on Me!” flags and your MAGA caps and trash your houses of conspiracy nonsense—not the seat of our rational Democracy.
But when it comes to climate change, there’s no escape from the state of “We’re all in this together.” Lincoln was right: a house divided cannot stand.
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© 2021 by Eric Nilsson
