Do we remember the ISIS guy that back in 2016 said ISIS does not need to attack the USA as Trump will do that for us?

We have a problem. As media like Fox and other right wing supporters say ‘what are we to do with the 75 million that voted for Trump?’ Actually that is NOT the problem. Truthfully much of that 75 million has been lied to for too long causing them to believe things that are factually and provably untrue. It is not just their fault. They have been told they are “patriots” and supporting Trump is the patriotic thing to do. They have been told that the Democrats eat babies and other wild insane stuff. No wonder they are passionate about supporting Trump. Their blame is therefore more about closing themselves off from the truth – by only listening to one point of view without the intellectual curiosity to hear countervailing arguments. As Mitt Romney said the way to fix the problem is to tell them the truth. Problem is, it is not that simple.

There is media that has seen the advantage of guiding an audience to tune into them. Trump was right that “the media is the enemy of the people” – problem is he chose the wrong media. Let’s face realty for a second. Suppose there had been no Fox ‘News’ with Hannity, Ingraham, Watters, Levin, Judge Jeanine, Lou Dobbs and the like and no Newsmax or the internet all of whom gave exposure to the Trump’s wild claims of conspiracy, fraudulent election, radical socialism and “fake news”.  America would not be so divided nor would the Capital invasion have happened.

Now we see on Fox their attempt to keep the divide going – it’s what makes them money. We also see them looking over their shoulder at other networks wanting to cash into the Fox audience. This will force them to maintain and even double down on their Trumpish views. It would be interesting to be a fly on the wall in the Fox board room as they discuss the threat from networks going further to the right. On one hand they are pleased at social sites banning right wing views as that could eliminate some competition for their market (of course they don’t say so), but they are loosing Trump who was good for their ratings. So the real issue facing the US and democracy in general is on one hand how do you keep freedom of speech and at the same time keep media outlets in a capitalist society tethering themselves to the truth? There are no good answers. Whatever one does can lead to unintended consequences.

It may seem a waste of time and a further division between right and left BUT there is a good reason to impeach Donald Trump. The reason works for both the Democrats AND the Republicans who might be thinking of themselves running for President in four years. An impeachment can lead to the prevention of Trump from ever holding Government office. That means he would not be legally able to run for President ever in the future leaving other Republicans able to do so. It also would make it difficult for him to retain as much influence on the Republican party as he has now.

Meanwhile the right wing media has already started the spin. Fox with the Hannity Ingraham types are already obscuring what happened. One crazy idea with no proof at all is that it was left wing ANTIFA types that might have been the invaders of the Capitol. There is plenty of proof that it was indeed the Trump supporters alone that staged the attack.

They also say the tech companies banning Trump and his supporters is an attack on freedom of speech – which it is. BUT then again what are they to do? If they knowingly allow falsehoods to be spread widely on their platforms they open themselves to culpability in the negative results that happen. In effect they could become party to incitement to anti American acts like we saw at the Capitol and have been espoused by President Trump and his supporters. Trump has himself been pushing to change the law to allow someone (like him) to sue if they feel they are not allowed to push whatever ideas they want to push – true or false. The tech companies do not want such a law to come into effect but at the same time they have come to realize that some sort of restrictions might be necessary. They prefer to themselves choose those restrictions rather than the government.

Ingraham, Hannity, Levin, Dobbs and others are in the business of “alternative facts”.  It’s the basis of their business. Trump may be leaving the  White House but there is still a big audience they can tap into so there is little incentive for them to want to change – why discover truth when it will loose you money? Besides other networks already do that so why be one of many? Better to continue giving exposure to lies as that is where your bread is buttered and (though growing) there are few competitors. We will not be seeing much if any change in those Fox type networks. The sad thing is that the audience that listens only to them exclusively will continue to believe the bullshit they believe now. We will continue to live in a divided society because the society listens to two different points of view and never the twain shall meet.

In November 75 or so million people voted for Donald Trump and 82 or so million for Joe Biden. If that same election was held today in the aftermath of the Capitol invasion that number would be much less for Donald Trump.  It is a mistake to think that 75 million are the supporters of Trump. At least half of them would have voted for any Republican who headed the ticket. 

Republicans vote for Republicans most of the time even if they held the nose and voted for a guy like Trump. Now that they have seen the true colors that would no longer be true. The reality is that Trump does have dedicated followers even if they drank the cool aid so they can not be written off. The real number might be as high as 30 million which is significant but no way close to 75 million. Of those probably half will never come to believe anything approximating the truth. They are stuck in believing what they believe and nothing is going to change that. As Trump said – he could shoot someone and still have support.  Joe Biden can say all he wants that he is dedicated to the idea of uniting the country – and he means it. But there is no way he is going to convert the committed Trump people. This is especially true because there are media outlets and right wing pundits who have a vested interest in perpetuating the anger the Trump people are told they should have. Division I am afraid, is with us to stay.

Interesting to see what Fox is doing now that Trump has screwed himself.  They cant just change course – especially Hannity and the other pundits who have supported Trump’s wild claims. Hannity and his fellow pundits have helped Trump spread the lies and infect his supporters with untrue beliefs.  They share in the blame. They know better and did it for the money so that makes them even worse than Trump – who lets face it is mentally sick.

The thrust is now Trump supporters are not so bad because Black Lives Matter people did the same a few months ago. The difference is this. Trump is President. Trump had a responsibility to all Americans. The Black Lives People are off the street and reacting to what they see on those streets. The Trump people are reacting to the lies that the President and his media tell them. Violence is wrong on both sides but they are not equal or the same.

Now that the days of Trump are nearly over, all the talk about how much was accomplished during the Trump 4 years will hopefully be brought to light.  Of course there were some positive things but many that are credited to Trump would have been credited to whoever was President at the time. I never saw any evidence that the tax cuts actually did much to help the middle and lower income groups. The flood of companies to bring jobs back to the US did not happen. Those companies that did move to bring some jobs did so for reasons nothing to do with Trump. Automation was the driver of those jobs. The new NAFTA deal was only slightly better than the last one so all the fuss about NAFTA being the worst deal ever was just political theatre.

Meanwhile Trump never knew the details of it anyway.  Just like the Iran deal. He never knew its contents either and in fact Iran is now much further ahead in nuclear development precisely because Trump cancelled the deal and never moved to replace it with a better one. Getting out of the environmental accord? Leaving the WHO? What did those moves accomplish.

Then there is the wall. Not a bad idea in my opinion but highly overblown and Mexico was and did not pay for the small amount of fencing he actually got erected. The talk of the military was mainly fake news and Trump’s idea of a strong military was as relevant as the French building the Maginot line.  He was thinking about fighting World War 2 and meanwhile did little to face the real threat of the digital age which is the future. It costs billions to build an aircraft carrier but only a million to sink it. 

What happened to eliminating Obama Care and replacing it with something better? Replace never came up. Of course that also led to the disaster of the Covid crisis. Health – no matter which way you cut it this was an unmitigated failure and it is Trump’s fault.

Then there is China. What was gained? Higher costs to the American consumer and meanwhile China was given carte blanch to set up its own trade deals as the US opted out. Incredibly stupid and short sighted. The only way US farmers made out was the Trump payments to farmers (paid by US tax payers) to keep them from going broke. Sounds pretty much like socialism to me. Government not picking winners and loosers? yea sure.  And China did NOT pay the tariffs, US importers did who then passed the higher costs on to the US consumer. Trump kept saying China was paying the tariffs which was a lie – is still a lie and will always be a lie.

North Korea? All that was accomplished was making Kim more accepted by his own people and making the US look stupid. There was never going to be a war so all that talk was bullshit.

Peace in the Middle East? Still no deal with the Palestinians and now even further away from a possibility than ever before. Peace with countries far away doesn’t mean anything especially as the US gave them what they really wanted to get the peace deal. Weapons, off the sanctions list, acceptance of a land grab etc. Moving the embassy? How is that an achievement?

He never showed his tax returns. He never gave up his ownership of companies. He played golf more than any other President in history even though he said he would not have time to play golf and criticized Obama for doing it. He complained about how unfair he was treated, forgetting his consistent espousing and pushing his Obama not born in the US conspiracy theory. 

His loyalty to Putin will have us scratching our heads in wonder until the truth comes out. Must be the reason he has hidden his taxes for so long.  Selling out the Kurds? A black mark on US foreign policy forever. The stock market?  Well it did not tank when Joe Biden was elected. In fact it went up to a new record. Elimination of regulations? Which ones? Most will come back to haunt us.  Regulations were put in place for a purpose – usually to correct a danger and prevent ones in the future from lessons we learned from disasters or dangers of the past.       

Meanwhile all the bullshit about Joe Biden raising taxes, socialism etc is just that – bullshit. Of Course taxes have to go up. No country can give away so much money to save its people and jobs during a pandemic and imagine there are no financial consequences. If Trump was elected he too would have to raise taxes. He would have no choice. Meanwhile all the nonsense about “radicle socialist programs” being espoused by the Democrats are at best gross exaggerations and show a complete lack of understanding to the meaning of the words. Just more political theatre. Of course BOTH Democrats and Republicans are prone to exaggerate, that’s the nature of Politics. BUT during the Trump years the Republicans encouraged and forced by Trump took the exaggerations to a new level that included outright fabrications and “alternative facts”. Trump proved over and over that one could get away with lying and lying made good TV. The message resonated with pundits who found themselves a new larger audience resulting in more money to them personally. The word “News” grew a new meaning.  Say what ever gives you a bigger audience – and keeps that audience coming back for more – that is the new meaning of the word “news”.  ;’

I never liked Ted Cruz but even so I have to admit that his continued support for the overthrow of the election (which lets face it was exactly what he was doing) was surprising. The good news is that any thought that he has a chance to run for President ended yesterday. The same goes for Hawley. Hopefully the Republican Party has been jolted to look in the mirror and get back to the basics that they once believed in.

Jan 7, 2021, I was interested today to see what Fox would say about yesterdays events at the Nation’s Capitol. During the day there was some attempt to face realty until Tucker Carlson came on, then Hannity and later Ingraham. Fox then descended into the usual telling  the audience what they want to hear, NOT what they should hear. Bend the truth and deflect. Keep your audience angry so they continue to watch your station. Focus on the mistakes on the other side so you don’t have to comment on the ones on your side. It’s a way to lie without actually lying. The problem now is that Hannity is so used to lying that he does it without thinking. There are laws to prevent lying about a product – truth in advertising laws – you can’t yell fire in a movie theatre when there is no fire – BUT you can say what you want in politics. We call it free speech. That’s the way it needs to be.

The problem is that most of those Trump supporters listen to programming that does not tell them the truth so of course they are angry. BECAUSE they are told to be angry and they are fed crap to make them angry. As we can see on TV when they are asked by a reporter to comment on what they are doing or why they are at a Trump event they done WANT to hear the truth if it is not what they have already decided in the truth. Truth is then fake news.

When Fox had the temerity to tell the truth about Biden winning Arizona it turned out to be news the Fox audience did NOT want to hear so they switched to other networks who did tell them what they wanted to hear. That is the dilemma Fox have gotten themselves into. To make their money and keep their advertisers they are stuck catering to an audience what wants to be given “alternative facts”.

The saddest thing is that most of these people think they are patriots. What they don’t realize is that Trump has perverted the word to really mean patriotism is not allegiance to the US Constitution but allegiance to him personally. That is the basis of fascism. That the right wing media has helped him do that is to their everlasting shame.