Stacked Deck, Rigged Game

A few years ago I was scanning through a “conservative” forum and I caught an exchange where an idiot wrote, “… Of course Hitler was a leftie … His party was called The National Socialist German Workers’ Party … ’nuff said.”

I almost responded, “Captain Kangaroo … neither Captain … nor Kangaroo … ’nuff said.”

How many times do we have to tell these fools that even though the word “socialist” was in the name … Nazis … Were … Not … Socialists. Once Hitler came to power, the first people he attacked and imprisoned were the Socialists and the Communists.

Recently Glenn Beck repeatedly said on his television show that the Nazis were a Leftist movement.

Some lies never die.

After Beck’s show, progressive/liberal bloggers completely refuted Beck’s lie by citing point by verifiable, undeniable, point how the Nazi Movement was a product of the extreme political Right. ‘Nuff said … right?

No … Not at all … That’s The Problem. The liberal/progressive approach in refuting Beck’s lies Doesn’t Work primarily because Glenn Beck’s audience never sees it.

Liberals/Progressives … a.k.a. … Sane People … write a rebuttal to a lie based on facts … and upload it somewhere on The Internet for other Sane People to read. Maybe you (Mike Malloy) or Olbermann will talk about it but most Crazy Stupid People are completely unaware that their Right-Wing sages have been exposed and caught in a lie. The cycle begins again when O’Reilly, Beck, or Limbaugh trot out their next lie.

Sane People are constantly reaffirming to each other obvious truths while Crazy Stupid People are constantly fed obvious lies. Figuring out how to break that cycle is The Key to establishing sanity to the collective American Mind.

Once we had The Fairness Doctrine.

In my town when I was a kid we had the three network affiliates, a couple of independent stations, and a PBS station. The Fairness Doctrine could ride herd on what was being broadcast. Today cable television offers up to 270 channels. There is no way The Fairness Doctrine could be brought out of mothballs and handle that kind of output.

And some people don’t want to bring it back.

When Barack Obama was running for the presidency his press secretary wrote that Obama, “Does not support reimposing the Fairness Doctrine on broadcasters … [and] considers this debate to be a distraction from the conversation we should be having about opening up the airwaves and modern communications to as many diverse viewpoints as possible.”

Last January, 32 Republican Senators sponsored the Broadcaster Freedom Act of 2009. If passed and signed into law, it will prohibit the FCC from having the authority to require broadcasters to present opposing viewpoints on controversial issues of public importance, commonly referred to as the Fairness Doctrine.

The Fairness Doctrine is gone and it’s not coming back.

In The Meantime … Ron Suskind wrote in 2004,” … I had a meeting with a senior adviser to Bush. … he told me something … which I now believe gets to the very heart of the Bush presidency. The aide said that guys like me were ”in what we call the reality-based community … That’s not the way the world really works anymore,… We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality. And while you’re studying that reality … we’ll act again, creating other new realities, which you can study too, and that’s how things will sort out.”

That not only described the very heart of the Bush presidency … it describes how our media and our world works now.

They create their own reality. They lie. We refute it and they lie again. We rebut that and they lie again. We’re always playing catch-up to their lies. Why do these jerks have the upper hand? Why do they get to direct the debate? Why are we even talking to these fools? Why are we always on the defensive?

Because it’s the Corporatocracy’s playing field … they make the rules … it’s their game … and it’s their audience.

This is what political discourse turns into without a Fairness Doctrine. This is what happens when the “deregulated” Limbaugh Crowd spew raw sewage directly into the body politic for more than twenty years.

Hannity gets out a manure spreader, lays down a thick coating over the brains of Crazy Stupid People, and turns it over to O’Reilly. He adds a layer, gives it to Beck who adds another, and Beck hands it over to Limbaugh and on and on and on.

Layer upon layer upon layer. All day. Every day. Everywhere.

We don’t need the FCC now … This job is better suited for the Environmental Protection Agency.

We refute their lies … but only to ourselves. How do we dig through the layers of filth to get the truth to the buried minds of Crazy Stupid People? And if we could exhume those buried brains … what then?

I know a self-described Ditto-head who after a couple of botched gall bladder operations is unemployable and facing bankruptcy because of medical bills. Though he’s on the absolute brink of ruin … he still argues that national healthcare is a socialist plot.

The mountain of crap rests upon a bedrock of denial.

Years ago I worked for LA’s largest cable company. That’s when I stopped being afraid of nuclear bombs and started being afraid of television. I could see what was going to happen when there were hundreds of channels to choose from. Society would begin to fragment. People could watch The Food Channel, Sports Channel, Movie Channels, or any other damn channel they wanted. How long would it be before The Fascist Channel showed up? The Racist Channel? Maybe a Goddamn Lies Channel?

The FOX News Channel launched on October 7, 1996 and now has been rated the cable news network with the largest number of regular viewers.

Forget about the rest of mainstream media … in February 2003, a Florida Court of Appeals unanimously agreed with FOX News that there is no rule against distorting or falsifying the news in the United States. The Media Can Legally Lie

What Can We Do?

Keep doing what we’re doing. Affirming to each other The Truth is how we defend ourselves from the daily onslaught of lies.

But what can we do about the sewage Crazy Stupid People ingest daily?

The FCC’s obscenity fines can drive a radio or television station out of business.

There is a fine for saying the four letter word meaning excrement on the air.

How can that one word be more obscene than a lie?

I Don’t Know.

But as Walter used to say, “And that’s The Way It Is.”

Stacked Deck, Rigged Game June 26, 2009