The upcoming election is not really a choice between
Republicans and Democrats. It is really a choice about the moral compass of America.
31 October 18
emagogues
rarely commit violence directly. Instead, they use blame, ridicule,
fear and hate – and then leave the violence to others. That way, they
can always claim “it wasn’t me. I don’t have blood on my hands.”
Of the tens of millions of Americans that the
Trump-Fox News regime has made fearful, only a small percentage – say, a
hundred thousand – have been moved to hate the objects of that fear.
And of those hundred thousand, only a relative handful
– say, a few thousand – have been motivated to act on that hate,
posting loathsome messages online, sending death threats, spray-painting
swastikas.
And of that few thousand, a tiny subset, perhaps no more than a hundred or so, have been moved to violence.
But make no mistake: This lineage of cause and effect begins with Trump and his Fox News propaganda machine.
Politicians and media moguls have long understood that
fear and hate sell better than hope and compassion, no matter how much
we might wish it otherwise. But before Trump, no president had based his
office on it. And before Fox News, no major media outlet had based its
ratings on it.
Ronald Reagan stoked racism by bashing “welfare
queens” and George W. Bush by airing campaign ads featuring “Willie
Horton,” but fear and hate weren’t the centerpieces of either
presidency.
The two political operatives behind these campaigns bear mention, though: Lee Atwater, who had also been chairman of the Republican National Committee and a senior partner at the political consulting firm of Black, Manafort, Stone and Kelly (yes, that Manafort and that Stone); and Roger Ailes, who went on to create and run Fox News.
Atwater and Ailes premised their careers on fear and
hate. Ailes’s Fox News monetized fear and hate through phantom menaces
like a “terror mosque” near Ground Zero, Barack Obama’s alleged
connections to black nationalists and Muslims, and Sarah Palin’s
fictitious “death panels.”
Trump took Atwater and Ailes to their logical extremes
– building a political base by suggesting Obama wasn’t born in America;
launching his presidential campaign by warning of “criminals” and
“rapists” streaming across the Mexican border; and ending his campaign
with an ad suggesting that prominent Jews — billionaire philanthropist
George Soros, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein and Fed Chair Janet L.
Yellen — were in league with Hillary Clinton to control the world.
Since taking office, Trump has ramped up fear and
hatred – towards immigrants, journalists, black athletes who won’t stand
for the anthem, major media, and prominent Democrats.
In recent weeks he suggested that criminals and
terrorists from the Middle East had joined a caravan of immigrants
heading toward the border, and even floated a conspiracy theory that Soros helped fund the caravan.
Fox News has magnified the fear and hate exactly as
its founder would have wanted. A guest on Lou Dobbs’ show claimed the
caravan was being funded by the “Soros-occupied State Department.”
That same week, Soros was among the targets of pipe
bombs sent to prominent Democrats and members of the media. A Florida
man who identifies himself as a Trump supporter was arrested in
connection with the attempted bombings.
Hours before a gunman entered a synagogue in
Pittsburgh and killed eleven worshipers, he reportedly wrote that a
Jewish organization for refugees “likes to bring invaders in that kill
our people. I can’t sit by and watch my people get slaughtered. Screw
your optics, I’m going in.”
Bombs mailed to political leaders. Threats against the
media. A shooting in a place of worship. None were directly ordered by
Trump or his propaganda affiliate. They didn’t have to be.
Trump’s demagoguery inspired it. Fox News magnified it.
The hatefulness is unconstrained. Having fired the few
“adults” in his Cabinet, Trump is now loose in the White House, except
for a few advisors who reportedly are trying to protect the nation from
him.
House and Senate Republicans are not holding him back.
To the contrary, they have morphed into his sycophants. An increasing
number are sounding just like him.
Atwater and Ailes are gone from this world, but their
descendants – Fox News’s Sean Hannity and Bill Shine, formerly Roger
Ailes’s deputy – have direct pipelines to Trump (Shine is now formally
installed in the West Wing).
The upcoming election is not really a choice between
Republicans and Democrats. Those traditional labels have lost most of
their meaning, if not much of their value.
It is really a choice about the moral compass of America.
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