The following TV documentary provides a reasonably good account of the process by which Fox News became "The Trump Channel"-- ultimately making it possible for the Big Lie to spread quickly and deeply through the Right wing viewers destabilizing our polity as a result. The doc, "How Murdoch's Fox News allowed Trump's propaganda to destabilize democracy," runs about 50 minutes, and shines a light on one of the truly immoral purveyors of the ongoing Right Wing Trumpist insurgency, relying largely on insiders many of whom could not stay at Fox in good conscience. The doc goes back to the birth of the TV channel in the 90s and goes right up to the present, in which Murdoch's commitment to Trump propaganda has caused internal division within the Murdoch family-- between the brothers who were supposed to jointly inherit the business from their father. I think it's a worthwhile watch. As one interviewee puts it, "The US gave Rupert Murdoch a great deal, and he repaid it by doing America a great deal of harm."
Below the doc, I added a 5 minute interview with political scientist Barbara Walter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbara_F._Walter who has worked with the US gov't predicting which states in the world are likely to descend into civil war and/or discord and violence. She maintains, along with others in the field, that we are so close to civil war or descent into chaos and violence that using the models developed by US intel agencies to monitor other countries, we no longer qualify as a democracy at all, but as a hybrid state "somewhere between democracy and autocracy, and edging closer and closer to autocracy." As I have argued on this blog, the vast majority of Americans are in dangerously deep denial of this fact. I see the 2 clips (the doc and short interview) as complementary in providing insight into the current, rapid unraveling of the system here-- both the political system and the civilian population, the citizenry, the electorate, i.e. what sociologists sometimes call the "social system." When the political system breaks down, we have serious problems. But when the social system--the very medium of shared life at all levels in this country-- begins to unravel, the ensuing crisis is far more complex and difficult to address. When people are the glue, and the glue no longer holds, things can fall apart at breakneck speeds that are unforeseen by those who are unjustifiably complacent at this time. The first step is to shake these sleepwalkers from their illusory sense of security, to awaken a sense of just what is actually at stake here and now-- US Society and government as we have known them.
Please leave any comments on these topics. I would be very interested in any practical suggestions as to how we might issue a warning that will be taken seriously, hopefully snapping some Americans out of their induced state of hypnosis as the institutions that hold us together show serious signs of imminent decay.
No comments:
Post a Comment