When Elvis Costello wrote Angels Want to Wear My Red Shoes, he
didn’t have the right wing noise machine to make him cynical. However, in the days since the election I
found myself becoming more angry and hostile to that wall of ignorance that
drives most of talk radio and the Fox News Channel and spills into the hearts
and minds of ordinary people who are losing their minds and vomiting their bile
all over the internet and to anyone who will listen. The fact free world of the right wing is so
destructive and while we can take heart that a majority of Americans chose to
take a stand against it the other night, we have a long way to go.
As the election returns were coming
in the ground work was being laid at Fox News for the narrative that would
carry on the rest of the week. As news
agencies including Fox called Ohio which gave the President enough Electoral
votes to claim re-election, Karl Rove challenged the conclusion of his own
network, citing his conversations with the Romney campaign and thinking he knew
more than the vote counters in the backroom.
At one point suggesting the counts coming in were not accurate. This narrative was reinforced by two line
mention of voting irregularities which now have some on the right questioning
whether the count is real or just President manipulating the data. Let’s be clear, Rove had a great deal
invested in Governor Romney winning.
Millions of dollars in other people’s money were spent with Karl in
charge. His return was minimal and
frankly his apparent on air break with reality could have been a very real and
very public display of what goes on in our heads when cognitive dissonance sets
in. But none the less, his crazy
reaction to reality is becoming a narrative that was echoed by an equally lost
soul in Donald Trump, who called for revolution and called the election a sham.
But that was small compared to what
we have seen since election was called.
There has been an unrelenting attack on the voters, over 61 million, who
chose to rehire the President over the Republican challenger. We
have been called lazy, maggots, takers, moochers, looking for the golden
goose. There are those who have said we
just want people to do for us and not work for what we need. That the women who voted for the President
just want to be able to have sex with anyone and have the government take care
of their birth control or abortions. Beyond
that there are those who say we have a mental illness, one radio shouter
suggesting we all have brain damage. The
people on the right have been so soaked in the miasma of the right wing echo
chamber that any reality that challenges what they are told by carnival
barkers. When faced with reality they
will call anyone who challenges their lies and vitriol all manner of
names.
Let me be clear. I am not lazy, I work for all I have, I am
pretty sure I am not mentally ill or injured, and neither do the hundreds of
people I contact daily. To call me that
because your party failed to win an election is stunning, and your anger at the
fact that America chose to give the President a second term if far more an
indication of perhaps the need for mental health evaluation than the of those
who voted for Democrats. But there is
hope. You can fully ignore the disease
that is the right wing media and focus on thinking for yourself. You can listen and evaluate what is going on
around you, but do from a position of knowledge not emotion. There are plenty of ways that one can be
critical of this or any President and hold his feet to fire without resorting
to questioning his patriotism or calling him treasonous. But if you persist to simply elect to carpet
bomb the universe with lies, attacks, ridicule and silliness I am going to
respond. I am sick and tired of having
to constantly explain to people reality, but perhaps that is one way I can make
a difference. If you are going to
support something, good for you. But if
you are going to simply attack I will be waiting and this blog may call you
out. By name. And one thing I am good at is making sure
that everyone will understand the facts.
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