After the 2016 election, CNN editors bemoaned the fact that they had given so much airtime to Donald Trump’s white nationalist populism, which merely excited voters who were looking for something “different” and were swayed by Trump’s “feeling good about feeling bad” propaganda that demonized groups vulnerable to nationalism, xenophobia, chauvinism, bigotry and racism. Most of the “experts” thought that Trump was going to lose anyways, but they underestimated the strength of the white pity-party despite the fact the economy was getting stronger. It certainly is possible that if the network had simply highlighted statements that reflected Trump’s unfitness to be president, and not his “populism” which deceived many voters, there was a chance that states that flipped with just a few votes to spare would have delivered the “expected” result.
Now we are hearing similar misgivings about Marjorie Taylor Greene. The other day Anderson Cooper “reluctantly” mentioned her name in regard to her comparing mask-wearing to the Holocaust, but vowed never to speak her name again. Others on CNN also expressed “reluctance” to give her more of what amounts to as free campaign spots that her supporters gobble up no matter how outrageous. Fox News—even its “hard news” hosts—tend to avoid mentioning Greene, since almost everything that comes out of her mouth only highlights the dangerous nature of the network’s far-right political and social agenda. Is Greene “smart” for playing the “liberal” media like a fool, or just a psychopath suffering from dementia, which explains her inability to control her most insane fantasies from escaping the darkest corners of her mind?
One thing for certain is that people like Greene have “influence” on the news cycle far in excess of what could be deemed their actual worth, but also have the effect of being in opposition to prevailing social politics. For example, Shannon Watts and Joanna Lydgate have an op-ed in The Hill in which they talk about “misogynists” who are threatening women who are “saving our democracy.” Which of course is self-serving feminist horse-pucky, because some of the most dangerous and crazed characters threatening our democracy are women—and while Liz Cheney may have paid a price for her failure to support Trump’s election lies, it still must be remembered that she is still a reliable far-right agenda vote. Who is behind Arizona’s crazed and incompetently-conducted Maricopa County recount that is certainly to be controversial no matter what the result? State Republican chairperson Kelli Ward, National Committeewoman Lori Corbin, and President of the Senate Karen Fann. Whose is putting up a lonely battle against this fanatical Trumpist trio? Maricopa County Recorder Stephen Richer, and now, belatedly, Jack Sellers of the Maricopa County Board of Supervisors; both are Republicans
What can be done to marginalize voices like that of Greene? She still has a Facebook and twitter page. After Kevin McCarthy finally woke-up after five days and issued a tepid “condemnation” of her comparing mask wearing to the Holocaust, one of her fiercely-crazed supporters tweeted that McCarthy was a “moron” and a “feckless cunt,” and Greene thanked him for his profound "insight" into the matter. Greene only minutes later deleted her own comments, but too late given that her social media pages are monitored 24 hours a day since she is liable day or night to suddenly get the urge to comment on whatever infests her mind. Certainly we can say that her social media pages only attract “deplorables” and the merely curious, but the question of whether responsible media has a “duty” to either warn the country of the dangerous nature of such people and the harm they can cause before they break into the national consciousness, or to simply ignore them in the hope they will remain mostly unknown fringe figures seems almost a moot point, considering the absolute shamelessness of such people.
It was certainly easier to keep such people from a wider audience in the “old” days, before the Internet, social media and cable news. In the old days, firebrands with crackpot ideas tended to stay local. The only media outlet that could spread the “word” about such people were newspapers and pamphlets, and later the radio. Until the advent of cable television, network news programs tended to be self-policing, and people with crackpot ideas almost never were allowed to appear on television, or seldom commented upon unless to poke fun at them. People on the far-right (and far-left) fringes upset a well-ordered, civilized society, and there were more important issues to discuss on a 30-minute evening news broadcast.
It is also troubling to note that an ever decreasing number of people in Congress have the slightest notion of lawmaking, and even less interest in making them. Today, less than 40 percent of House members have any training in the law, which is part of an ongoing trend away from a time when people with law degrees were actually the preferred candidates. Some people think that “diversity” of backgrounds is a “good” thing, but that is a matter of opinion. What we see now are people elected to office who have no clue of or respect for the process of making laws; their only agenda is getting elected in order to be obstructionist and becoming “celebrities” on cable news shows. They not only are a waste of taxpayer’s money, but they each “represent” a tiny fraction of the population that tends to be ill-educated and focused on insular concerns—and, like Greene, they are usually little more than a face from that crowd who spoke a little more loudly and with less shame.
It is too late to put the genie back in the bottle. Facebook and Twitter can’t ban everyone who is a danger to this country, and the Internet is just too big to control, In the past some people came out of left field to threaten the “establishment,” but they typically flamed out once people saw there was little in the way of substance. That isn’t true anymore; as we have seen with the QAnon “movement” and “stolen” election scams, in which outlandish conspiracies theories without a shred of evidence have a way of infiltrating the Internet “mainstream"--even if for a brief time--can cause incalculable damage to a democracy.
Is there a way to talk about dangerous characters like Greene without the danger of making them “martyrs” or folk heroes? Should they just be allowed to remain fodder for late night talk shows? One thing seems ominously unknown, and that is we don’t yet know what the people who voted for such people actually feel about them now, and that won’t be known until the 2022 midterm elections. Do voters realize just how abnormal these people appear to be—or are they really “representative” of their views? Do they even care that their “representative” is a fringe outlier who is respected by few of even her own colleagues—save those like Matt Gaetz, who needs a “friend” because of accusations of sex trafficking—and generally regarded as an embarrassment to the party? Or since the cat is already out of the bag, and will bite, scratch and claw to stop from being put back in, will the fickleness of the voters be the only thing that can be counted on to stop these people?
No comments:
Post a Comment