Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Monday, March 4, 2019

The Most Important Story Of The Week

(This offer not valid fifteen minutes after I post this.)

Jane Meyer has one of those in-depth New Yorker articles that meticulously details a topic in ways we haven't seen drawn together before.  In this case, it's again not something that it really surprising - Fox News is Right Wing agitprop and has a direct link to Trump's "brain" - but it's the depth of research and comprehensiveness of the story that is amazing.   Someone said, back in 2016, "We used to think Fox News worked for us, now we know we worked for Fox News."  That relationship is laid out in acute detail in the article.

A few key points.

First, Rupert Murdoch is a huckster who understands how to appeal to people's baser instincts in order to win their viewership.  He's always a tabloid guy, first and foremost. He knows how to tickle the amygdala of his audience.  From there, it all flows in an escalating cascade from Whitewater to Trump.  Fox News works by scaring its audience; that's not an outside observation.  That's the business model.

Second, Trump really is captured by Fox and to a certain degree, vice versa.  And because of this closed informational eco-system, the people working there and working "for" them never question the merit of their decisions.  This echoes the question I asked yesterday about how Mitch McConnell can do the things he does.  If he's high on his own supply, he's not going to question his assumptions.  Working for Fox is working for America.

We are truly fucked.

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