In the Aftermath

 

                                    In the Aftermath

 

        So, what's going on this week other than that election "thingy" on Tuesday.” First (and worst) of all, we still have many Far-Right members of the GOP scurrying to convince the deplorables that the attack on Paul Pelosi was the act of a “lone wolf” and not in any way engendered by their rhetoric. Texas’s Ted Cruz shared a tweet calling the attacker "a hippie nudist from Berkeley" and dismissed the idea that the attack was motivated by right-wing ideology as "absurd." Others have actually claimed the FBI orchestrated the attack as a “false flag” to discredit the GOP’s radical wing. The attacker was a known Far Right loony who might well have killed Speaker Pelosi had she been home. We now have many of the GOP, including multiple members of Congress, treating this incident as Alex Jones did the Sandy Hook school shootings.

This particular flavor of bullshit goes all the way back to well before Donald Trump's pre-election statements of 2016 and has continued right on through to the present. When we got stuck with Donald Trump, we saw a complete departure from presidential restraint and consensus building. What once were the natterings of isolated groups of malcontent morons, became mainstream poison. I've been politically aware since the Eisenhower administration and have never heard an American chief executive be as confrontational, derogatory, or vengeful as Donald Trump.

 Sadly, many of those Americans who have lurked in these shadows harboring feelings of racism, anti-Semitism, and dissatisfaction with the misery of their own lives, have come to feel empowered by this new openness of hate speech. To be frank, in the modern era Trump did not invent this concept of publicly digging into the hidden frustrations and bigotry of some Americans. Dissatisfied Southern Democrats (Dixiecrats) went there in 1948, when Harry Truman urged the inclusion a civil rights plank in the Democratic platform. They left the party and ran vile racist, Strom Thurman as an alternate candidate. It should be no surprise that they then became Republicans by 1952, in time to become a thorn in the side of Dwight Eisenhower. Later, Newt Gingrich refined this to a great extent, largely through his own rhetoric and even more so because of his support for people like Rush Limbaugh who became, in essence, “Alex Jones lite.”

When, in 1987, Ronald Reagan essentially quashed the FCC’s “fairness doctrine” which required media outlets to allow the presentation of both sides of controversial issues, he opened the door to the current plethora of unaccountable broadcast liars such as the Hannitys, Carlsons and Ingrahams.

The fairness doctrine consisted of two basic elements: It required broadcasters to devote some of their airtime to discussing controversial matters of public interest, and to air contrasting views regarding those matters. Stations were given wide latitude as to how to provide contrasting views: It could be done through news segments, public affairs shows, or editorials. The doctrine did not require equal time for opposing views but required that contrasting viewpoints be presented. The demise of this FCC rule has been cited by many social observers as a prime contributing factor in the escalation of party polarization in the United States.

By the time this op-ed sees publication, we will know the outcome of Tuesday’s vote. Some recent political candidate ads were markedly more aggressive than the pre-Trump era. The tragic aspect of this is that many of the candidates who were running the most aggressive and confrontational ads are people who still see any indication of not supporting Trump as a negative among voters of their party, ergo they will say things they may not even believe in campaign ads because they don't want to anger the great orange Wizard of Oz. One current example would be Nevada Senate GOP candidate Adam Laxalt who like a disappointing number of other Republicans continues to use the words “open border” or something similar to imply that the current administration has “dismantled border security” (Laxalt’s words). In fact: funding for Customs and Border security in the Biden administration is precisely comparable to that of the Trump administration. Border Patrol staffing under the Biden administration is consistent with the Trump administration. And finally, the laws and policies to prevent immigrants from remaining in the US illegally continue under the Biden administration to remain exactly the same as they were. In point of fact, for fiscal year 2022 Congress appointed over a billion dollars more for border security than any of the four Trump budgets.

On a local note, we saw similar claims from Marco Rubio. We have seen him claim that Val Demings, his opponent, “votes with Pelosi 100% of the time.” (Just like he voted with his party?) He has falsely implied that Congresswoman Demings would support defunding the police when, in fact, she was one of the few Democrats who voted against a bill to open the doors to that happening. We were also exposed to Governor Ron DeSantis claiming that he's keeping Florida “free” while restricting the ability of public-school teachers to do their jobs. We also saw DeSantis decrying the economy under former governor Charlie Crist, which ignores the fact that Crist’s governorship coincided with the major economic national recession caused by eight years of inadequate supervision of financial markets and the housing bubble collapse. In other words, like Barack Obama would be in 2008, Charlie Crist was also the recipient of a bad economy that affected the entire world, not just the state of Florida.

As of my writing this, I am hopeful, but by no means optimistic, regarding the results of the election. We surely deserve better than we have in Rubio’s (and Scott’s, but he didn’t run this cycle) Senate seats and in the Governor’s mansion. I loved teaching my 20 years at Boone High school, but I don’t think I’d make it a full year teaching real history under current restrictions. Stay strong and please remain politically active.