Saturday, November 13, 2004

Conservative Media, The True Danger

According to Fox News and Rush Limbaugh, as well as other self-serving conservative media machines, there is a vast ultra-liberal conspiracy that is (in spite of 11/02/04) still threatening to corrupt America from shore to shore. The actual size, makeup and membership of this liberal threat is really quite vague (it is much more ominous and threatening that way). In fact, there are only three places where it has been "exposed" by Fox, etc., to public scrutiny:

1.) the liberal media (consisting of the TV news and Hollywood)
2.) far-left minority groups, and
3.) a few ultra-liberal democratic politicians (mostly those from California and Massachusetts) whose names are regularly mentioned by Fox News personalities and Rush Limbaugh.

No matter whether they are right or wrong, at least they are being honest on the few occasions that they name actual names.

Their dishonesty and truly anti-American behavior lies in their implied accusations against a fourth group: the vast majority of politicians in the democratic party. Fox News and Limbaugh have been blatantly advancing the conservative, evangelical agenda (and their own profit margins) by strongly implying that all remaining democratic politicians (who come from all over this great nation, including even the most blood-red states) are guilty of ultra-liberalism merely by association with the above three groups. If you think about it, guilt by association is the way things worked in the former Soviet Union and other repressive dictatorships (as well as in the U.S. during the "communist scare" of the early 1950s). It amazes me that half of the American population has either been fooled by or approves of such tactics. I expect the religious right to behave this way, because they will allow nothing, not even democracy, to stand in the way of their interpretation of the Bible (at least the parts of It that they approve of) because the Bible is their only law (except those parts that preach to us to give assistance to the poor).

The Demon Slayers
But Limbaugh and the personalities at Fox don't really care about the democratic process. They need demons to slay every night in front of millions of conservative viewers who are more than eager to have their preexisting beliefs stoked to a red-hot level (this is the true definition of brainwashing). And those demons are Fox's "liberal" competitors in the media market (my, how convenient for Fox).

In essence (this is a broad "in essence"), Fox, Limbaugh and others would have us believe that the "liberal" media and Hollywood (in their desire to legitimize far-left groups) are the real brains behind the democratic party, and that all democratic politicians (who were elected by voters all over this nation) are just their puppets. The subtly stated message to their conservative viewers is: Fox will defeat the puppet masters (if viewers help by tuning in to Fox and watching the commercials), while conservative viewers defeat their democratic "puppets" by voting them out of office and replacing them with conservative republicans who are pro corporate greed and/or evangelical Christianity.

Of course, conservatives could also say that the liberal media and the democratic party are two equal partners in the same conspiracy (instead of masters and puppets). It matters not, for Fox's method of getting rid of them both, as stated above, still applies.

The problem with Fox's and Limbaugh's self-serving logic is that most of our democratic politicians grew up in "traditional" America. They know their constituents' wishes just as well as republican politicians do (whether both sides respect those wishes or not is a completely separate issue). Democratic politicians weren't born yesterday. They can tell the difference between losing the next election because they voted for an ultra-liberal cause and winning the next election because they opposed it. Voting consistently for radical, far-left bills is a lot more difficult to hide from the voters than secretly receiving hefty campaign contributions from giant corporations (the latter being a favorite pastime of members of both parties).

What's in It for Fox?
Does Fox News Corporation really feel a driving moral need to protect America from the "liberal" media elite and other democratic "evildoers"? Is that the only reason they went into business? If so, that was a very selfless act on their part. Or are they just using a deviously clever tactic designed to win the ratings war? Hmmm.... Just think about it: Fox is a giant, profit-driven corporation run by a multi-millionaire foreigner who certainly didn't come to the United States all those years ago just to save us from our liberal half (he probably didn't know a liberal from a Whig when he first arrived here). Could profit be the real goal behind Fox's conservative agenda? That would be an interesting irony. Conservatives preying on the fears (nay, delirium tremors) of other conservatives in order to get rich. It would be downright humorous if it wasn't so dangerous to our democratic, two-party system.

Fox's Reckless Endangerment
Agenda- and profit-driven media outlets, like Fox, are recklessly and selfishly guiding America toward a one-party system (a system that will be populated solely by "red" republicans and "blue" republicans, the latter formerly being known as democrats) by convincing us that the liberal media elite and the democratic party are one and the same. This is pure crap (please forgive the vernacular), and they should be censured and humiliated, just as communist-hunting Joe McCarthy was eventually censured and humiliated in the 1950s.

In Conclusion
I confess that I agree, to some extent, that there are a number of liberal media personalities in this country who feature politically correct issues almost every time they go on the air, and this may influence (or coincide with the beliefs of) some moderate democratic politicians (and even some moderate republican politicians) to the extent that they are caught between a politically-correct rock and a politically-incorrect hard place. I despise those journalists as much as conservatives do (I despise political correctness, in general); however, the self-righteous conservative approach to dealing with the issue makes me sick, so I rebel against them. I am also a moral and spiritual person, but the moral and spiritual approach to life espoused by evangelical and born-again types makes me sick to a degree that is off the charts (I am surrounded by them, so don't tell me I don't understand them). Finally, I am angered almost beyond words by the methods used by the conservative media in its efforts to convince us that the liberal media and democratic politicians are really one and the same. That is a corruption of the electoral process that is going to cost us dearly down the road, if we don't wise up soon.

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