The warring tribes mentality which Fox News brings to politics escalated up another notch this morning with a depiction of Merrick Garland juxtaposed with images of parents at school board meeting covered in crosshairs. A voiceover intoned, “You have weaponized the FBI…” This is propaganda par excellence.

If you missed Garland’s appearance before Congress yesterday, the lowlight was reached when Ted Cruz defended the use of the Nazi arm salute at school board meetings. Garland, who is Jewish, showed remarkable composure. But then again, he knows he’s dealing with maniacs. If Ted Cruz had put on an armband and started goose stepping around the chamber it would probably not have surprised him, nor us.

Speaking of Cruz, the Nazi salutes comment was not the worst. This was.

Isn’t that abominable? Ted Cruz should teach a master class in Posturing Demagoguery, or maybe Abusive Hackery would be a better title for the course. We certainly saw it demonstrated in Congress Wednesday.

We’ve already seen what Fox News decided to do, which is to create executioner imagery. But Cotton wasn’t done, no siree, he found a way to get his 22 seconds on the next Fox Newscast.

Dick Durbin provided the voice of reason. Listening to Durbin is listening to a statesmen. Listening to Cruz and Cotton is listening to wanna be tyrants.

Cruz and Cotton were playing to the peanut gallery. They believe that their constituents want to hear hateful rhetoric and see uncouth displays on the floor of Congress and somehow that translates as “strength.” That was how Trump was initially advertised, as somebody who “told the truth” and “told it like it is.”

It is shocking how our public discourse has plummeted in the past five years but do not look for that to change, except to get worse. The GOP is running scared. They’re trying to follow the Trumpian playbook, but the only problem there is that there is no real playbook to follow. Trump himself is a follower, not a leader. If he would publish “The Sayings Of Chairman Don” in a small pocket size, it would contain blank pages. He reacts to things, he creates nothing. The man is not a thinker, let alone an original one. That’s been the irony of this entire phenomenon we have lived through in recent years. Trump is a creation of television. He’s geared to performing, not leading, there is no substance only form. He “played” the role of president for four years, he was incapable of doing the job.

But the GOP continues to mimic him, believing that what worked for him will work for them. The veiled threats will continue. God help us if the political pendulum swings in favor of the GOP in 2022. Conventional wisdom and history both say that it will but we don’t live in conventional times anymore, so it’s anybody’s guess.

 

 

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8 COMMENTS

  1. You want to know why I’m agnostic and therefore doubt the existence of any God? I can for damned sure say I flat-out DON’T believe in the existence of the God Cruz (and his ilk) believe in – that Old Testament wrathful God. Because THAT God would for damned sure, as soon as Ted Cruz started putting himself as the protector of ETHICS have been struck by a lightening bolt and turned into a tiny pile of ashes!

    • Some questions won’t be answered, if at all, on the other side. “The end. My only friend. The end.” Jim Morrison of the Doors…from a Religion major.

    • Having studied under a true Biblical scholar @ UNC-CH, I find few people in America, no matter whether they think it fell out of the sky, or discount it due to personal prejudice, really know much about the cultures, history, & path this collection of writings has traveled. Of course, I could say the same about history, physics & so on. I always note few people even know WHERE THEY ARE. The speed of light is 186,000 per second. It will go around the earth 7x in one second. That is a fact that is inconceivable in itself. It takes 8 minutes at that speed to reach the earth from the closest star, our sun. Inconceivable of how far that is. We recently learned it would take 26,000 years to reach the center OF OUR GALAXY at that speed. The distance is beyond human ability to imagine. The next closest galaxy is 4 light years away. The scientists estimate, at this time, there are 350 BILLION galaxies. Inconceivable. They have measured light from 3.7 billion years ago AT THAT SPEED. Monotheistic religions, believe God made everything. So what I’m saying is no fucking homo sapien, that has lived, or will ever live is an expert about anything. Doesn’t discount everything, but believers, along with non believers who are CERTAIN are simply ignorant on multiple levels. We may be able to learn more, but it is a mathematical impossibility to know much about God, or what happens when we biologically die. Truth. In fact, the Bible clearly states God is a mystery who’s name is too sacred to be known. Taoism states the same in different language. “The Tao that can be named is not the true Tao”. “Ever desire less, one sees the mystery. Ever desiring one sees the manifestations”. I could go on but most people don’t REALLY want to know anything. Not really. Makes them feel insecure especially in the face of certain death. The only true democratic thing on earth. Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust. It’s in the book.

      • Whatever one might think about how much truth there is to the whole Priory of Scion stuff in The DaVinci Code there is still some entertaining and compelling writing and more than a couple of points worth pondering. One is when the eccentric English Lord behind the whole plot states a startling fact that too few people even think about – “The Bible did not arrive by fax from heaven.”

        That same scene in the book goes on to talk about the Council of Nicea and some startling (to most religious people) about the debates over what (as in chapters) would be included in what would become the bible and it’s subsequent derivatives. Another was a vote on whether Jesus was a regular mortal man or divine being!

        Frankly, all I’d known most of my life about Nicea was The Nicene Creed. In truth, other than the bible there’s not much actual independently recorded history of goings on in what we now know as Israel during biblical times. Hell, the New Testament including the (only four that got included but all the disciples had their own) Gospels weren’t written down for generations after when it’s believed Jesus lived and died. There is debate on just how long, with some saying it was as little as five or six decades and some saying it ran into the hundreds of years before the stories passed along among Christians were actually written down. Probably some were recorded in writing before others. But the point is that it was in the early decades stories being passed down among the faithful. And we all know what happens with stories as each person in the chain passes them along!

        My point is that there is damned near nothing other than the bible itself to “prove” any of the stuff it contains happened, or happened close to the way Christians believe it did. One can either choose to believe or not. Being agnostic (something that happened in the latter part of my 30s) I’m part of the latter group and don’t suscribe to any religion. I can relate to worshiping nature, so Wicca might work to some degree for me but those people are pretty damned secretive and clanish about telling someone who’s not part of their circle of fellow Wiccans when they get together. Or to even communicate beyond providing web links to books. And I tried both up in WV (about an hour and a half northwest of DC) and after moving to the Raleigh area. Oh well.

        • Actually, most Biblical scholars do believe that the Passion narrative was written down within a few years of Christ’s death. The canonical Gospels (which are believed to have been written decades later) all seem to have “borrowed” the various Passion stories floating around the various early Christian communities; I specified “canonical” because there were a number of other Gospels that chose to tell other aspects of Jesus’s life or felt the Passion story was too “well-known” among the various communities to warrant “yet another take” on the story.

          • There was also well known sayings that were grouped & borrowed from, known as the Q sayings.. Scholars believe the gospel of Thomas, then Mark were the earliest. Of course the gospel of Thomas contains some eastern sounding sayings, like lift a stone you will find me there & so on. It is also a mistake to think the way we focus on passing verbal information was the same then. Most people were illiterate but the jews did have a sacred oral tradition that didn’t allow for them to substantially change anything. To prove the point, my professor had developed his memory to a point that he could have a class of several hundred undergrads call out a verse & he would quote it verbatim. He also had memorized a number of the romantic poets like Byron, Shelly, etc. Although a believer, he was an archeologist that took old testament events & went to Egypt etc. & dug up evidence. To completely discount everything as made up or false is inaccurate. Our culture, which is GREATLY influenced by our judeo/Christian beliefs, is largely ignorant about ancient history. This is true of believers & nonbelievers who discount the whole thing as not worth studying. Big mistake. Funny, we don’t discount medicine because they used to bleed people to cure them. We don’t discount science though they used to teach we were the center of the universe. We don’t discount the law although it has a LONG history of being wrong & punishing people as if it were right. The cannabis laws used to lock up tens of millions are based on lies, yet someone will get arrested by the self righteous system TODAY. Somehow, I find many people who discount faith have no more understanding than the morons who think every word in the Bible is fact.

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