Good god, y’all!
This brilliant compilation of Fox News clips came over the transom this week. I’d never heard of comedian Bill Jubran, but he had to work to assemble this.
“Do people really not see they are playing you?” Jubran asks.
No. No, they don’t. They are too busy being played by people who feed their prejudices for profit. Fox is by now a legacy player in the decay of our democratic republic. When its talking heads are not hyping wars on everything, they’re feeding viewers’ perception that the world, the news, and everyone unlike them is biased against them.
Fareed Zakaria considers the differences in how the cultural erosion of trust manifests on the left and on the right:
A 2023 study by Sung In Kim and Peter A. Hall confirms this pattern: When citizens perceive the system as unfair or biased, they shift preference from neutral process to direct, personalized rule. Leaders who present themselves as fighters rather than referees — who attack courts, media outlets and bureaucracies — gain credibility precisely because they reject the system’s pretense of fairness.
Trump’s rise also exposes a deeper divide between left and right populisms. Kim and Hall find that when people see unfairness as personal — my job, my income, my future are unfair — they turn to right-wing populists, whose rhetoric frames their pain as betrayal by elites and outsiders. When they see unfairness as social — society treats others unfairly — they gravitate to left populists, who promise redistribution.
My home, my family, my church, my school, my bank account & my guns, etc. That me-first perspective on the right rejects the social contract that is the very foundation of self-rule. “There is no such thing!” as society, Margaret Thatcher famously declared. You don’t need to tell Donald Trump twice. It’s every man for Donald Trump.
The left (and our nation’s founders) accepts that a peaceful society involves human cooperation. Although unfairness exists, ameliorating it where possible is a worthy goal, as is defense against the aggregation of power. The right sees that as a crime against survival of the fittest, Darwinism fundamentalists otherwise reject. Unless it’s convenient.
(h/t KY)
* * * * *
Is this a private fight, or can anyone join?
No King’s One Million Rising movement
50501
May Day Strong
Freedom Over Fascism Toolkit
The Resistance Lab
Choose Democracy
Indivisible: A Guide to Democracy on the Brink
You Have Power
Chop Wood, Carry Water
Thirty lonely but beautiful actions
Attending a Protest Surveillance Self-Defense