You learn a lot listening to the denizens of right-wing radio. Make no mistake, we would not be here at all politically, if there wasn’t a confluence of events which led us to this moment. First of all, Reagan getting rid of the Fairness Doctrine set the stage for the rise of Rush Limbaugh on right-wing radio and Limbaugh and Fox News sprang from the same seed and within a few years of one another. Right-wing radio uses Fox News opinion shows a lot. You know you are in the hinterlands when you’re driving through a rural area and the music stops and the talk shows begin. The talk shows are religious or political — which in this day and age mean the same thing. Listen to what this climate-denying, election-denying demagogue has to say and it will all begin to make sense to you.
God made a move alright and he even told us he would!
2nd Thessalonians… pic.twitter.com/GuivZ84LfO— Warlock Woods (@WarlockWoods) March 2, 2024
Their hatred of Obama explains a great deal of the backlash which resulted in Trump. Even Obama sensed that. When Trump was elected Obama said that he was going to try to figure out how much of what had just happened was about him.
And the other side of the coin is how much Hillary was hated. Hillary spoke of the “vast right-wing conspiracy” and in her case it did exist. For twenty years both of the Clintons were the stars of conspiracy theories that had them doing everything from trafficking in drugs, flown into Arkansas onto private airstrips, to killing different colleagues and Alex Jones once reported that Hillary had killed somebody’s cat.
Hillary was painted as the quintessential evil and Obama was painted as everything from a practicing Muslim (he was raised 7th Day Adventist, last I knew) to what you just heard, “gay, raised by transgenders.” Maybe they were transgender wolves, ya spose? Maybe Obama is a feral child?
In any event, this is a situation where, as Marshall McLuhan pointed out when he began to do a formal study of media and the vast wasteland of television, the medium is the message. People in rural areas (and some of these areas have problem receiving WiFi, but all of them get some radio signals) are fed a steady diet of this lunacy. If people in those areas know better, they have cable, they watch other shows, they’re part of a larger world. But the rest, the “poorly educated” the “low information people” eat this up with a spoon. This is real to them.
This does explain, at least in part, how a group of White Evangelical Christians would be deluded into thinking that an amoral monster like Trump was sent from God.
Since you’re here, check this out. Another right-wing broadcast on how the Evangelicals can and will restore Trump to the White House. (Pssst…I don’t think there are enough of them, but we might as well listen, right?)
Charlie Kirk is on a mission to ensure that Trump receives more than 81 percent of the evangelical vote in 2024, because if that can be achieved "there is almost no way Donald Trump loses." https://t.co/vtt8vXTanN https://t.co/odyDYE26QI pic.twitter.com/v32fU74sQq
— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) February 29, 2024
81% of the Evangelical vote means that 19% of them don’t approve of him. How can that be when he’s so perfect, and God went to all this trouble to anoint him, etc.? Who knows? All I’ve ever known about Trump and so-called religious people is that the evangelical nutjobs, as I call them, defy all logic and reason believing that any God, let alone a Christian God, would approve of Trump and his wicked ways for a minute, let alone choose him to lead America. I have never been able to parse this twisted thinking — other than what it obviously is, which is a vitriolic response to eight years of Obama and all the hatred that was created during those years.
Our problem, and when I say “our” I mean America’s problem and the Democrats’ problem, is that we allowed ourselves to be lulled into a liberal stupor when Obama was president. Times were good. We lost track of the fact that in the shadows, Evil was present and doing what Evil does, which is prepare for an even greater showdown than the one before.
And so the mold was broken and Evil (in its usual guises, Apathy and Hypocrisy) took advantage of a vacuum of leadership in the GOP and found a way to put Trump at the top of the broken Republican party ticket. And now we are here in 2024, still trying to put an end to MAGA madness.
The IRS needs to go after these so called “churches” who are nothing more than right wing propaganda machines……her is some information on the laws governing “churches” and politics……
https://www.irs.gov/newsroom/charities-churches-and-politics
…….and, if you feel the need to report a “church” or representative of a “church”…..
https://www.irs.gov/charities-non-profits/irs-complaint-process-tax-exempt-organizations
I feel this is a worthwhile undertaking to put an end to their 100,000 watt pulpits of hate…..
Keep hammering this hypocrisy Ursula. Ironic that hypocrisy was one of the main themes Jesus was reported to rail against, especially by the smug self righteous religious leaders. I do think a healthy dose of racism lies behind it. Let’s remember that the ‘christians’ supported the absolute EVIL institution of slavery with all it’s brutality for hundreds of years. I also wonder how much of the ‘fear’ about Biden’s age is because a ‘ni**er bitch’ is next in line if he dies in office. Oh, and if anyone wants to get a real sense of how evil, brutal, and unimaginable slavery really was, then read Colson Whitehead’s pulitzer prize winning book: The Underground Railroad. To counter evil we must speak out and confront it at every turn. We might not change the cult but even if one person turns from evil, it was worth it.
Whereas the end of The Fairness Doctrine was the birth of right wing talk radio, the conception began with FM Radio. AM radio could not compete with music as Steely Dan sang, “no static at all”. But the downside of FM is the signal has limited reach, so it would only reach out as far as the end of the sidewalk. AM could reach everyone, before cable gets stretched, before satellites were shot up, before internet broadband.
AM could never compete with FM for music, but AM made the conversion to talk radio to save their business, despite the damage it does to the country.
‘Talk’ radio = whinge radio.
And the fact that AM radio is nothing but RWNJ Propaganda and lies (ooops, that is redundant!) is why the AM broadcast band needs to be shut down completely! ALL radio stations are licensed “to serve the public interest”. Lies do not “serve the public interest”!
“Evil” unfortunately is not discussed much in liberal churches; believing in evil is unfashionable these days. We need to point out that it still exists, that UT didn’t end with Hitler, that McCarthy was evil that those who opposed desegregation were evil,that liars in particular are evil(and how many times did Trump lie under oath in his fraud trials? how many times has he lied under oath in depositions for Bragg’s criminal trial? And under oath in the depositions for theNational.Archives trial?) according to the Bible means lying h under oaths.