“A lie told once remains a lie, but
a lie told a thousand times becomes
the truth.”
Joseph Goebbels
When Roger Ailes was rolling out Fox News he understood that two aims were paramount: 1) creating a point of departure that defined his competition in the worst possible light; and 2) aligning the mission of his new organization with a narrative his target audience could idolize, therefore conveying higher purpose to his news model. The results now devastate our country and the world.
From the start Fox conflated watching its news channel with rejecting established premises about the country’s evolution. The idea that social progress was zero-sum and came at the expense of Fox viewers was there from the beginning. Rights vs undo privilege has permeated the Fox narrative from day one. Affirmative action, aid to the poor, voting rights, gun control, abortion rights, even evolution and environmental protection all were redefined as unsettled us vs them questions, misrepresented by mainstream media for decades.
Who decided blacks had been discriminated against enough to require a federal response? And why did Mississippi still need to be monitored for voter repression that happened in the 60s? Who knew just how much welfare recipients were gaming the system? Nothing was firmly established, everything debatable.
From the outset, Fox existed to validate white grievance, and worked from the assumption government was picking their pockets to fund programs they at least felt unnecessary, at worst thought immoral. Facts were fungible and in service to the narrative, no different from what mainstream media had always done. There were no established standards, no best practices, merely a problem to be remedied.
If the mainstream media was the enemy to be opposed, American exceptionalism was the ideal to fight it with. A concept rooted in nostalgia for a time when the target audience felt safest and most preeminent. What began to take shape, trumpeted relentlessly on Fox and the AM talk circuit, was a shangri la lost. America as religion, where straying from the established text was heresy; and that’s exactly what the liberal mainstream media had been committing for years. It stirred discontent for imagined slights, ever trolling for votes to serve its liberal political masters. An existential threat that had to be, not just stopped, but reversed.
To this end, Reagan worship was employed. Who better to personify American infallibility than the man who had stared down the Soviets. Suddenly, what WAS became the focus, not what could be. Where we once were, and how to get back there, supplanted where we should be going.
Somewhere back then was the apex of US power and prestige which was now in decline. Somewhere was a sweet spot where we were the undisputed greatest, before liberals began undermining. Somewhere, presumably sometime during the Reagan years, we got it just right and should have left well enough alone. But instead there was the ACLU, and the EPA, and the NAACP, and Clinton, and whiny blacks, and homos foisting themselves on decent folk, and of course, always the evil of abortion.
Exceptionalism tolerated no remedies to problems of today because they had already been solved. Blacks had their rights now; stop making race an issue. Pollution was over; needless regulations only unnecessarily cost jobs. And when the hell would women ever be satisfied and stop complaining, particularly about so-called rights to their bodies? Anyone in uniform was under appreciated, and government could do nothing right.
Twenty-five years of relentless 24/7 messaging later the carnage from such psychosis is in the West Wing, Fox/AM’s first POTUS. Exceptionalism is now laid bare for what it has always been…nihilism, a fantasy for white malcontents steamrolled by progress. The fallback for bad choices and personal failure, unable to compete in a rapidly changing world. How long an Administration devoted to such delusions can convulse before the country suffers irreparably is anybody’s guess. Yet and still, the success of Ailes’ model assures a base of supporters inured to fact, addled by more than two decades of day and night storytelling.
The target audience, now Trump’s wretched core of support, is no longer able to make distinctions between right and wrong, only us and them. What somebody does is irrelevant; it’s all about who is doing it, and who they are doing it to. There is no rule of law; there is only who is suffering or benefiting at its hands. And most importantly, whatever is currently happening can only be evaluated in relation to what “they” did or would do because whatever “we’re” doing can never be as bad and thus is an improvement.
The GOP, beguiled from the beginning that Fox/AM served its aims, tried and failed to harness this madness. Now it lies mortally wounded as its leadership surrenders to the Walking Dead. Assuming there are limits they will recognize is a fool’s errand; their allegiance is open ended because they abide no alternative.
Families separated at the border for a misdemeanor won’t phase them. Just like rounding up reporters won’t make any impression. We may be one cherry bomb away from Muslim IDs; nothing is impossible. If the Third Reich taught us anything it was never to underestimate the power of fear and alienation, or a lie relentlessly repeated. Roger Ailes certainly didn’t. That is why we’re here. BC
Sad but true.
yes but look at the resistance of millions throughout the country, we mock him daily and will continue to, you start seeing stuff like you are referencing and you will see massive marches everywhere, yours truly, Jean Caahhhtiack!
I agree the resistance is there and its growing and becoming more vocal. The problem is that the minority Trumpies are like lemmings marching to the sea. They will keep going even if it means falling off the cliff. That cliff is looming ever closer and we can only hope we are not dragged down with them.