FOX’s dereliction of duty.

 “The press is impotent when it abandons itself to falsehood.” - Thomas Jefferson

On the night of the January 6th House Committee's last prime time hearing on July 21st, which nailed the former President’s dereliction of his constitutional duty to send troops in to quash the insurrection, one of his most avid supporters was also derelict in their responsibilities as a member of the 4th estate.

While the committee was hearing testimony from two life-long Republicans who voted for Donald Trump and who had worked devotedly in his administration, and were explaining why the former President had shattered their faith in him, forcing them to resign their White House posts, FOX’S prime time talking heads of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham were not only avoiding this critical public service, but, in Sean Hannity’s case at least, portraying it as a sham investigation.

MAGAites may feel comfortable falling back on their oft baseless views that all Democrats lie and that any negative thing “the media” reports about Spanky Bonespurs is merely fake news.  The people who were exposing Trump in these hearings, however, as a lying fraud who put our constitutional democracy at great peril on January 6th, 2021 were his own White House staff, congressional Republicans and even three family members.  The very people who had helped sustain his presidency through thick and thin during his four years were now being accused of “so many lies and misrepresentations” on Trump’s own flatulent social-media network, Truth Social.

But as bad as the attempt by the Carlson/Hannity/Ingraham trio was to dismiss these congressional hearings, it was the Rupert Murdoch News empire which had abandoned any genuine connection with objective journalism years ago, that is perhaps guilty of collaborating with a wanna be dictator and should be viewed not only as a traitor to journalistic core principles, but a traitor, not unlike Trump himself, to this nation.

Words have consequences and those willing to share them, despite their absence of reality-based evidence, are complicit in any claims that evoke violence.  Equally damaging is when a large platform like the FOX Network chooses to avoid reporting on sworn testimony given under penalty of perjury if they lie, denying their viewing public an opportunity to draw their own conclusions on the veracity of what the January 6th  Committee is presenting to all Americans.

FOX’s deliberate choice to not air the full slate of the Commission’s hearings sends a misinformed signal to their very large viewer share that what transpired on January 6th, 2021, is the “sham” Hannity called it and propped up Trump’s own duplicitous view of it as a witch hunt.

Their actions are so transparently dishonest and disingenuous because had the same behavior been played out by any Democratic President and their coterie of devoted loyalists, there would’ve been uninterrupted reporting 24/7 and hair-on-fire vilifying by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity and Laura Ingraham, along with all the other FOX doe-eyed pretenders who saddled up to Trump over these last 4-5 years.

American activist and educator, Bill Dixon once stated that “while everyone has a right to his or her opinion, the people who are informed have more of a right.”  FOX chose to deny their viewers that right because it suited their perception of who mattered most to them - the megalomaniac who they wanted to help keep in power because it no doubt aligned with their financial and political interests.

SOME PERSPECTIVE ON TRANSPARENT STUPIDITY

 

 

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms.” - Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, District of Columbia v. Heller

It appears that most advocates for more guns, not less, to deal with mass shootings, are oblivious of the concept, “cause and effect”.  The reality that more guns, in any fashion, does little to reduce gun violence has been established by numerous careful studies.    Add to this the easy access Americans have to obtain them, and it becomes crystal clear why the U.S. gun death rate is “at the top of the list for countries with high Socio-demographic Index.”

Lewis Toland would have us believe that it’s simply a loss of traditional mores and feminist antagonists who run off their husbands that contributes to the increase in mass murderers.  However, he cites earlier mass murderers from past eras without connecting their deranged atrocities to low morals and absent fathers. 

Immoral, fatherless young men have been with us throughout history and some likely engaged in taking innocent lives in part because of their deprived fate.  But unlike today’s homicidal bunch, none had the easy access to abundant, more deadly firearms to make this an existential threat to American society as it has become today.  As of June 3rd, there had been 20 more mass shootings since Uvalde.

Could this violent epidemic of gun killings really be just the result of those who haven’t found Jesus in their life and grew up without a dad?  Perhaps the Tolands of this world should take a hard look at their own tribe

Tom Nichols, a self-proclaimed Never Trump conservative observed that “Republicans have entered their own kind of end-stage Bolshevism, as members of a party that is now exhausted by its failures, cynical about its own ideology, authoritarian by reflex, controlled as a personality cult by a failing old man, and looking for new adventures to rejuvenate its fortunes”.

Nichols’ view of today’s Republican fits those who insist that more guns are needed to combat mass shootings.  It is another knee jerk reaction in the style of Tucker Carlson to automatically blast any idea that emanates from liberal Democrats or others who don’t align with their nutty, perverse ideas

 

Nutty ideas like Senator Ted Cruz’s “one door” solution that has “one door into and out of the school, and have … armed police officers at that door.”  Even 2nd amendment zealots who want too find plausible counter arguments to gun reform legislation have to be somewhat mortified by this dangerous approach that puts teachers and students in harms way when a fire or bomb threat evacuation is needed in rapid order.  Fox News contributor Judith Miller argued that Republicans have become "the party of egregious mass shooting and uncontrolled guns" following the Uvalde, Texas school massacre.

It is lunacy that portends that reasonable and sane gun reform measures threatens to take away guns from those conscientious gun owners who practice reasonable gun safety.  It is an idea fostered by the NRA who advocate for more gun sells on behalf of the gun industry.  To believe that ideas like banning AK-47’s, expanding background checks and enacting Red Flag laws will not reduce gun violence is to ignore how effective these measures have worked in other developed countries

Innocent men women and children will continue to die at the hands of desperate and disturbed people who’ve easily obtained guns because the gun industry and their lobbyist, the NRA, have advanced a paranoid idea that serves their financial interests. 

The laws that enable this insanity are the results of voters who continue to re-elect the handmaidens of the gun industry and fail to call them out after each mass shooting. It’s a classic example of Einstein’s definition of insanity

Uvalde massacre continues to expose perhaps America’s greatest failure.

 

“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.” - Rudyard Kipling

I won’t bore you with statistics that are now well known about America’s gun violence problem.  We are the epitome of a large industrial country who simply can no longer manage a crisis that other countries have managed relatively well.

The gun craze by some in this country has exacerbated any rational discussion about sane gun control measures.  But though a majority still wants stricter gun laws, Gallup polls shows that number diminishing over the last few years.  Dropping from 64% in 2019, to 57% in 2020, only 52% polled last year are in now in favor of stricter gun laws.  This is diametrically in contradiction to the reality of gun deaths in this country, as the statistics above show.

What could possibly lead people to abandon a rationale that sits juxtaposed to the insanity which ignores how diseases are the only other cause of death in America greater than that caused by guns?

With the number of gun sales increasing by leaps and bounds each year, about 1 in 3 Americans now possess a deadly firearm, many in households with children.  A condition that “is prospectively associated with later adult criminality and suicidality in specific groups of children.”  Both the Uvalde and Buffalo mass murderers were 18-year adolescents.

You would think that the adults in this country would react in a responsible manner under this nightmare scenario, and many of us are willing to.  But where it counts, the adults who would truly impact this brutal and mindless behavior, are most likely the ones that are sustaining and even feeding it. 

The gun industry’s lobbyist, the NRA, is usually one of the first groups to create barriers to sane gun control legislation, with their toadies on the the air waves and the internet feeling emboldened to feed the public a steady diet of extremist hyperbole about how any action to limit any American’s firepower, including the use of military-style accessories like body armor and high-capacity magazines, will violate their exaggerated view of the 2nd amendment.

To these profit and power-motivated purveyors of people who have been led to believe that more guns, not less, will solve our gun violence problem, it was always about the benjamin$.  Increased gun sells means higher profit margins regardless of the cost to American society.  Working with self-serving dimwits in government to obstruct any effort to keep their product from getting into the hands of the least stable and most naive people among us, is simply a business practice to gun manufacturers that enhances their bottom line.

But the true perpetrators of this national scourge are the feckless and spineless politicians, who offer little more than “thoughts and prayers” to a problem immune from such inane suggestions.  These “leaders” are actually cowardly followers of the gun industry and the financial influence they exact with their higher earnings.  Our own Governor Abbot encouraged Texans to buy more guns in a 2015 because, it seems, he was embarrassed that Texas ran a paltry second to California’s gun purchases.   "Let's pick up the pace Texans." he wrote, tagging gun rights advocacy group the National Rifle Association of America (NRA).

We’ve known for years that states with the highest gun ownership rates also have the highest gun deaths.  Only a mindless idiot would ignore such trends just to satisfy a an oft-angry contingent of the “don’t tread on me” crowd.   The same type of people who thought they were emulating early American patriots when they overran the Capitol on January 6th, 2021 - destroying public property and attempting to stop the legitimate election that had Donald Trump confronting his loser status.

These are people that get re-elected and continue to do nothing to end America’s gun death nightmare.  Not one Republican is willing to pass legislation that will help deter this mayhem by expanding back ground checks and employing red flag laws that keep guns out of the hands of those who have killed 169 school children since the 1999 Columbine massacre, as well as some 311,000 children who have suffered some form of gun violence during school hours since that day two decades ago.

This insanity can be brought to heel as it has in other countries around the world.  It just takes the political will of parents with school-aged children willing to elect representatives who have the courage to stand up the NRA and their sycophants and make this country safe enough to send our kids to school, to shop at our favorite stores and go to church without fearing they won’t return home.
 

When political recalls only serve a small group’s self-interest

 

“Those of a conservative disposition who feel unsettled by change might well be prevailed upon to oppose measures that threaten to upset the status quo and replace it with something unknown.  This is not necessarily because they oppose the content of the proposed reform, just that they oppose change itself.” - Dr. Madsen Pirie,  The impact of interest groups on public policy

Upon reading former City Councilman Don Duff’s reason for initiating a recall on District 4 Councilwoman Allison Maguire in the Denton R-C’s May 6th article, The basis for a recall petition against Alison Maguire? A meme on Facebook, his justification appears transparently flawed, unless of course you are part of the crowd these days who seek to gain political power by any means possible, despite what voters have shown their preference for.

I don’t disagree that the meme Ms. Maguire used was lacking good taste, especially in an ever increasing environment where gun violence is rampant.  But had this been a Republican campaign ad who use guns to appeal to a common culture and common fears, would Duff and his ilk been equally offended or vocal about it?  Who can forget “Sarah Palin’s infamous attack-ad that seemed literally to ‘target’ 17 sitting members of the House of Representatives, including Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.”?

And his objection to “an absolute, dead right-on gerrymandering of the worst kind” seems laughable in the face of this State’s GOP efforts to create one of the worst gerrymandered voting district maps in the country.  Again, the hypocrisy here from someone who lives in Denton’s most solid Republican voter bloc is beyond shameless.

Equally ludicrous is Duff’s concern about Maguire’s comments in the DRC about Denton turning blue, admonishing her for stepping over the line in our tradition to keep city elections non-partisan.  You would have thought he would have at least equated this to a recent campaign flyer that invoked the “Republican” label in its support of Gerard Hudspeth for Mayor.  But sadly, his silence was deafening here.

The remainder of his reasons remain dubious at best from someone who never really actively inserted himself in meaningful policy during his brief, two-year stint as District Three’s council representative. On occasion he would be seen nodding off when City Council sessions went beyond 9pm.

But let’s cut to the chase here.  This can easily be seen as an ongoing pattern by far-right conservatives employing yet another tactic to remove those elected officials who fall outside the right’s ideological circle.  Councilman Brian Beck is right when he calls Duff’s efforts a ploy to change the current leadership on the City Council.  

Trump MAGA supporters opposed his impeachment following his abuse of power to influence a foreign government to find dirt on his opponent, Joe Biden.  Let the people decide his fate they cried when the election rolls around.  God-forbid such a notion should apply to Allison Maguire however, whose use of a misplaced meme comes no where near the transgression that’s evolved into the “Big Lie” and still persist in its efforts today to undermine our constitutional democracy.  But apparently principals in fair play apply only when it suits a special interest’s agenda to attain political power.

Has Denton’s nonpartisan policy for City elected officials turned a dark corner

“In a democracy, supposedly we hold power by what we do at the ballot box, so therefore the more we know about political power the better our choices should be and the better, in theory, our democracy should be.” - Robert Caro

A campaign mailer recently sent out by the Protect & Serve Texas PAC supporting Denton Mayoral Candidate Gerard Hudspeth raised a couple of concerns for me.  The PAC, originating in Austin, is throwing its support behind a local candidate who two out of its three Directors reside in the State Capitol and one resides in Dallas.  Not an uncommon practice for outside sources to support local candidates but one that shows its close ties to state government.  One that has routinely demonstrated their role as a “nanny state” over local governments.

But  perhaps one of the most disconcerting features of the ad was its decision to violate Denton’s somewhat sacrosanct policy of avoiding any party affiliation to City election campaigns.  It presented itself as the “2022 REPUBLICAN VOTER GUIDE, for the Mayor’s race.  The PAC’s choice was Gerard Hudspeth over current Place 6 City Councilman, Paul Meltzer.  Both of these men are well known acquaintances of mine and ones I feel comfortable calling friends.  Both have served Denton well but obviously my preferences lean more towards one than the other.

It is troubling to me that Mayor Hudspeth would allow this Austin-based PAC to cross the line of impartiality in their support of him, violating our City’s traditional, ethical standard by representing him as the “Republican” candidate.  It is no secret to most Denton voters who know which party the candidates likely align themselves with.  But these alliances remain off the public register and for good reason.
 
It is been the long-standing practice of city races to leave Party affiliation aside in the hopes that it will reduce the growing division amongst Texas voters and instead encourage citizens to practice meaningful researching of candidates and their policies.  Efforts that should make for sound voter choices.  Sadly, too many voters put aside this effort and merely look at the (R) or (D) next to the candidate’s name.  A lazy action that has led one major Party to elect people who seem to have no moral compass.

Labeling themselves as Republican or Democrats allows them to engage in hyperbole and misleading information, while giving give scant attention to matters important to voters.

Case in point on the Hudspeth-supporting PAC flyer is the deliberate attempt to muddy what the “defund police movement “ really represents and its alleged effect on growing crime rates in the nation.     By default, the mailer suggests that Hudspeth’s opponent supports the worst aspects of the PAC’s absurd claims.

You have to wonder too if the Protect & Serve Texas PAC’s attempts to attract more voters might not have the opposite affect.  Now it seems is not the right time to parade one’s “Republican” affinities before concerned voters, especially Independents.  Today’s GOP promotes no substantive policies and defends the out of control delusions of their twice-impeached President

More thoughtful Republicans are fleeing their Party because of its increased occupation with baseless conspiracy theories and their support of lunatic fringe candidates over their traditional conservative model.  

Role-modeling this behavior is our own Texas governor Abbot’s silly and needless blockade of commercial transports at the border, negatively impacting consumer costs that were already high from inflation.  Right behind him is the federally-indicted State Attorney General, Ken Paxton, who abuses his authority to intimidate one of Denton’s families raising a transgender child.  Also friends of mine.

I sincerely hope we start to see a reverse towards adult, responsible behavior with many of the GOP spineless leaders who demonstrate no shame in lying and one of the more extreme members of the House who urged the White House to declare “Marshall law” to overturn the certifiable 2020 presidential election.

Maybe this can start in our own backyard.   I hope my friend Gerard Hudspeth will take steps to block any further attempts to break with tradition that could set a precedent, dragging our city elections down to the base level we’re seeing throughout the Republican Party

Our future and being honest about the past

 

“In this new world, it may be that big, ideological changes are not caused by bread shortages but by new kinds of disruptions” - Anne Applebaum

In her book, Twilight of Democracy: The Seductive Lure of AUTHORITARIANISM, Anne Applebaum discusses events that led post-Soviet Hungary from a newly formed democratic-republic to its current, Russian-style autocratic state.   She goes on to make parallels there to what we are currently experiencing in the U.S. 

In an early chapter she reflects on a form of nostalgia that enables this anti-democratic transformation.  There’s the reflective nostalgics who miss and dream of the past but are content to leave it there, knowing that all was not as idyllic as some fantasize. 

It’s the restorative nostalgics however that pose the greater threat.  “They do not merely want to contemplate or learn from the past” Applebaum tells us.  “They want … to ‘rebuild the lost home and patch up the memory gaps’.  Many of them don’t recognize their own fiction about the past for what they are.” 

They’re in denial about the past’s dark moments, with its flawed leaders and lethal consequences of military victories.  “They want the cartoon version … and live it as they think their ancestors did, without irony.    Eventually, those who seek power on the back of restorative nostalgia will begin to create conspiracies theories, or alternative histories, or alternative fibs, whether or not they have any basis in fact.” 

Restorative nostalgia is indicative among those Lost Cause believers of the old South.  We’re seeing a more contemporary version of this with the MAGA crowd who’ve been led by Trump and his acolytes to believe his defeat was the result of massive voter fraud. 

The former President’s use of lies and unfounded conspiracies is alluring to people who feel the changes that have resulted with our more inclusive policies for people of color, women and the LGBTQ community have taken away the past they were more comfortable with.  One that was predominantly white, Christian, overtly heterosexual and conservative.

On this perspective, Applebaum refers to research by Karen Stenner who suggests that "authoritarianism predisposition ... is not exactly the same as closed-mindedness.  It is better described as simple-mindedness: people are often attracted to authoritarian ideas because they are bothered by complexity.  They dislike divisiveness.  They prefer unity.   A sudden onslaught of diversity  - diversity of opinions, diversity of experiences - therefore makes them angry."

As a response to today's socio-political complexities MAGA-ites have not only followed Trump's voter fraud delusion down the rabbit hole with the fraudit in Arizona and more repressive voter restrictions coming out of GOP-controlled state legislatures, many are followers of the QAnon conspiracies which perpetrate myths that should qualify them to psychiatric wards.  Anti-vaccers among them have been dismissive of the coronavirus vaccine due in large part to Trump’s flippant attitude towards it and the virus as well, putting millions at risk now with the rapid spread of the Delta variant.

Needles to say all of this is having a destabilizing effect on our society, with trust evaporating on so many fronts and making prospects for the future of our republic difficult to sustain itself.  Could this be the end game for Trump and his coterie of enablers?   A scheme to disrupt the current order so vast that a remaking of it to fit something that Vladimir Putin would be proud of may lay at its foundation?

Longing to capture an imaginary past that ignores its many unpleasantries along side its more admirable achievements means we have to be honest enough to dissect the delusions foisted by charismatic people whose grab for power is their only focus.  A false rendering of our past by those willing to bend our social norms for personal gain can create the potential for constitutional and political chaos, which can only end badly for all parties, unless you’re a fan of authoritarianism.

Franklin’s apprehension of America’s Future

Shortly after the Constitutional Convention convened in September, 1787, Pennsylvania delegate Ben Franklin was approached by Elizabeth Willing Powel, a pivotal woman of the founding era and asked Franklin, "What do we have, a republic or a monarchy?’’ "A republic", Franklin replied, “if you can keep it.’’

In a recent PBS documentary that made credible parallels between the rise of Nasism and today's Trumpism, educator and anti-fascist activist Ash Sarkar points out that “democracy is fragile because in order for it to be truly democratic, in a purist sense, it leaves itself open to being taken over by fundamentally anti-democratic forces.”   

In a similar vein, NYU Professor and scholar on Authoritarianism, Ruth Ben Ghiat explains how “one of the most crucial moments of authoritarianism capture is when traditional elites invite the Authoritarian-in-the-making into power”  believing he can be contained and controlled to accommodate their ends.

I believe we’re seeing this authoritarian cycle repeating itself.  Evidence of this is becoming more apparent almost daily.  

Former Trump ally and convicted felon, Michael Flynn, recently called for a military coup to overthrow our duly elected government .  Just prior to this, Trump co-conspirators Matt Gates and Marjorie Taylor Green made “inflammatory remarks on gun rights and armed rebellion”  at a Trump-style rally in Georgia.

Paramilitary thugs like the Proud Boys, Three-percenters and the Oath Keepers were in force at the January 6th insurrection.  Menacing groups not unlike Hitler’s Brown Shirts who were loyal only to the Führer, intimidating all who opposed the dictator, in and outside of politics.  We’re seeing a similar stratagem being played out here today.

 
Though not as prolific yet as Hitler's paramilitary hoodlums were, we have witnessed the handy work of Trumpian thugs in their nascent stages.  After Charlottesville there was the foiled kidnapping plot of Michigan’s governor, Gretchen Whitmer and serving as the template for the January 6th terrorist attack on the nation’s Capital.  An assault downplayed as little more than a “normal tourist visit” by  Trump todies in Congress.  These same people have now opposed a bi-partisan 1/6 commission for fear that it will expose many of them as being sympathetic to the insurrectionists.

Nazi Party office holders in 1930's Germany stoked animosity towards their Communist Party counterparts in the German Reichstag or Parliament to win over converts to their ill-fated cause.   Today, many congressional Republicans are copying this tactic, weaponizing their attack by mis-appropriately painting Biden and congressional Democrats as “Socialists”, intended to provoke their base while persuading Independents and defecting Republicans to join their grab for power.

Like their Nazi predecessors, GOP-controlled state legislatures are enacting legislation attempting to give credibility to their leader’s big lie about massive voter fraud.  Measures that are primarily designed to hold onto power in a Party that has lost its moral compass.

Today’s Trumpists represent a demographic in this country, not unlike Hitler’s supporters, who seek to establish a nationalist purity, spearheaded by a dominionist theology and white nationalists groups.  A mindset that too many of our relatives, friends and neighbors have identified with, most without fully understanding how ill-fated this is for sustaining a republic worth keeping.