The Republicans apparent rising from the “dead” and taking easy
control of the U.S. Senate—and insuring control of the House of Representatives
for years to come with added Republican governors, and thus
Republican-controlled redistricting—is a victory less of party politics than news
media dysfunction. With hundreds of television shows with zero commentary on
social issues (except crime)—much different than the 1970s—that people tune to
rather than news, it is essential that people are told truth where it can be.
And the truth has been that ever since 1994 the Republican
Party has ceased functioning as a “party,” but as a mass movement with no
agenda for governing save for attacking “liberalism,” acting “tough” and
destroying civil discourse and the social contract. What are we as a country?
The one in which was expressed by the Affordable Care Act, that this is a
country that has a shared responsibility for all of its citizens—or one that is a grotesque caricature of the
negative aspects of human nature? The Republicans in their chosen role of
patrician masters seek to destroy belief in government for the people and by
the people, in fact representing the power of corporate America under the
pretense that it is doing what is “best” for the “plebeians.”
Thus it was the duty of what passes for “news” media to expose
the Republican Party as the obstructive, destructive force that it has been for
20 years. It failed to do so. There were no Edward R. Murrows with a national
audience with the courage to expose them. So what if a few racists would be “outraged.”
Let their bigoted, insular talk condemn them. But apparently money in the form
of sponsors and corporations “talk” much louder, and CNN and Fox News (which is
nothing more than the instrument of its right-wing owner, Rupert Murdoch), give
the extremism of the right all the false “legitimacy” it needs to con millions—dare
I say—of willfully uninformed or ignorant people.
What does Republican control of both chambers of Congress
mean now? How can it mean anything but tacking on another two years of
legislators doing nothing but expectorate and obstruct while taking home a fat
paycheck? Unless Republicans suddenly decide that they want to “work” with
President Obama rather than fruitlessly waste their efforts on “killing” the
Affordable Care Act—for which they can’t claim any “responsibility” for now
that it has proven to be a success that the news media has of course been silent
on—the business of the country will be held hostage by fanatics and extremists.
What have the voters wrought for themselves? They forgot
that a Democrat who has tried—and failed—to work with Republicans hell-bent on
thwarting his every policy initiative, regardless of its popularity or its
value, will likely seek to bypass Congress altogether. Some form of immigration
“reform” will still be necessary, and with the Republicans ready to block any
initiative for purely partisan reasons, Obama will have to proceed unilaterally
as he has “promised”—and hope that the public will see nothing but a lot of
empty hot air, propaganda posturing and mindless hate-mongering that is what
the right (especially under the influence of the so-called “Tea Party”) has
become.
Meanwhile the Tea Party--which is in fact nothing more than the same
extreme-right reactionaries that appear from time to time with barely concealed
racist agendas dating even further back than the so-called “American” Party,
better known as the Know Nothing Party before the Civil War--will claim more “authority”
over the Republican “agenda.” And thanks to today’s craven news media, a great
portion of the voting public will continue to be fed a constant diet of
malinformation about the causes of the state of union and who is actually at
fault, and many voters will continue to make the wrong decisions because of the
half-truths of unreality becomes their “reality.” I have no faith that this
will change. The only “hope” left is that now that Obama is a “lame duck,” he
will use his executive powers without fear of “consequences.”
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