Trump & The Media

Thinking. I wonder what ever happened to our country?  Maybe it really is just the extreme income inequality. That phenomenon has created a special class of humans who seem to be different from the rest of us. Different in that they exhibit no real interest in the things that happen to ordinary humans, good or bad. They seem to care only about themselves.

It makes me wonder about the royalty of ancient times. Did the royal families, not merely the kings and queens, but the dukes/duchesses, barons, and all of the other semi-royal hangers on, also care only about themselves?  To some extent I suppose they must have, although they also had to take care of their armies and their personal guards.

And who are the “armies” of the ultra-rich today? That makes me even wonder about Trump’s “armies”. That is, if Trump decided to wage war against, say, the Biden voters, or democrats in general, could he command the various brigades and divisions of our military to literally wage war against our civilian population? And if he did, whose side would the 101^st Airborne Division be on?? See, Trump is pretty much totally unhinged, in addition to being not too bright.  He seems to get worse daily, if his tweets are to be believed. And when he appears in public, he is so angry that he really does appear as a five-year old in the middle of a temper tantrum. Only this five year old commands nuclear weapons.  And oh, by the way, suppose Trump were to command a nuclear strike against Albany, to get rid of Governor Cuomo, would the air Force obey him??  I would like to think that our armed forces have a sufficiently independent streak that obeying obviously illegal orders from a deranged president is not in their playbook.

But then what of his other political BFFs? What ever happened to his party . . . remember that republican party? No one in that party of old has spoken against Trump.  I wonder what ever happened to George Will? He is reported to have offered this assessment last July, 2019, in an interview about his book, "I believe that what this president has done to our culture, to our civic discourse ... you cannot unring these bells and you cannot unsay what he has said, and you cannot change that he has now in a very short time made it seem normal for schoolboy taunts and obvious lies to be spun out in a constant stream. I think this will do more lasting damage than Richard Nixon's surreptitious burglaries did."

But Will seems unable/unwilling to counter the daily lies being spun out of both Trump and the Right Wing PR machines, Fox, et al. We would need George Will to be shouting from the rooftops daily and even that might prove inadequate. We keep seeing comparisons between Trump and Hitler’s rise to power in the 1930s.  In part, he did gain control of the German Press to help in his ascension to power. From one such text on his rise:

“Establishing Control of the Press

When Adolf Hitler took power in 1933, the Nazis controlled less than three percent of Germany’s 4,700 papers.

The elimination of the German multi-party political system brought about the demise of hundreds of newspapers produced by outlawed political parties. It also allowed the state to seize the printing plants and equipment of the Communist and Social Democratic Parties, which were often turned over directly to the Nazi Party. In the following months, the Nazis established control or exerted influence over independent press organs.

During the first weeks of 1933, the Nazi regime deployed the radio, press, and newsreels to stoke fears of a pending “Communist uprising,” then channeled popular anxieties into political measures that eradicated civil liberties and democracy. SA (Storm Troopers) and members of the Nazi elite paramilitary formation, the SS, took to the streets to brutalize or arrest political opponents and incarcerate them in hastily established detention centers and concentration camps. Nazi thugs broke into opposing political party offices, destroying printing presses and newspapers.

Sometimes using holding companies to disguise new ownership, executives of the Nazi Party-owned publishing house, Franz Eher, established a huge empire that drove out competition and purchased newspapers at below-market prices. Some independent newspapers, particularly conservative newspapers and non-political illustrated weeklies, accommodated to the regime through self-censorship or initiative in dealing with approved topics.”

Now, will we see such a thuggish control mechanism here? Seems unlikely, doesn’t it? On the other hand, none of the media here foresaw such a power grasp by Hitler during the 1930's.  In part, we keep seeing/believing what we wish to see/believe.  And, so long as Trump can portray the bulk of our media as “fake news”, and so long as Murdoch & Co. allows him to say whatever he wishes and promote Trump as a truth-sayer, then at least some segment of our public will believe whatever lies he promotes.

And I assume that the Murdoch family-controlled Fox media gives the family what they want—control over a very large segment of our national population.   But how did they gain such control?

Well, I just finished reading an article about what the Liberal elites fail to see about the Trump supporters. The article portrays the nation as being divided between two population segments—the rural folks and the liberal city elites.  And apparently, the right wing media (Fox, et al) is highly effective at telling the rural folks what they wish to hear, whereas the “progressive” media has failed utterly to sell its agenda to these folks. What I don’t understand is what is it the rural folks believe they are getting from Fox and Trump?  The only thing I can understand is that rural folks seem to despise city folks, and perhaps the reverse is also true. And maybe it is the case that Fox sells the story line that urban elites are simply awful people, and Trump is trying to protect the good rural folks from all the evil things city people want to impose on them.  I imagine the whole case for social isolation goes over better in the cities, because the people there are practically falling in the streets. When the pandemic begins taking its toll in rural areas as well as urban, I assume they will begin paying attention.  But maybe not. Trump can/will always blame any resulting chaos in rural areas on the urban elites (democrats).

So, salesmanship is the name of the game, and the right wing is better at the game than the left wing.  And that was true, eventually in Hitler’s rise to total power. Turns out, when you believe you can lie with impunity, and you tell lies the people want to hear, you will succeed.  And that is what is happening here. A very large segment of our population believes itself to be aggrieved, is told lies by the right wing to convince it to believe their problems are all caused by left wing elites, and so they continue to be enraged against those liberal city folks.  The fact that Trump is not protecting them is largely irrelevant. Turns out people believe what they wish to believe, because it is convenient for them.

And so the game goes. We “liberal elites” can do little to affect this game, other than voting. And remember, Trump, the republicans, and I assume the Foxies will do everything in their collective power to inhibit voting.  So, we really need to be paying attention. This pandemic is a perfect opportunity to inhibit voting.  You better believe the republicans will do everything in their power to take advantage. 

In addition to doing everything in your power to make certain you can vote, maybe we need to begin paying attention to this income inequality thing. We need to begin pressing for tax policies that can change that. Perhaps we need to begin lobbying for  tax reforms, and that includes  reforms of the policies by which the ultrarich currently hide their incomes.  Yeah, maybe voting coupled with some activism to return us to a state of civility and national consciousness would be good.