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In reply to the discussion: Cry Me a Fuckin' River [View all]Lonestarblue
(9,981 posts)Trump has been worse than most, but he did not start this slide into irrationality and utter refusal to listen to facts. Most of it started in the 60s with forced integration. Too many white people refused to accept that the races were equal, and they fought any way they could to preserve the status quo that had reigned throughout the 1950s. Pastors, especially those in the Southern Baptist Convention preached against integration and encouraged resistance.
Nixon started the War on Drugs as a way to target black men and lock them up as they typically voted for Democrats. Nixon did not have Fox News to broadcast propaganda, but he did have Roger Ailes who was later the person Murdoch hired to turn Fox into a conservative, right-wing powerhouse. Ailes worked with Nixon to frame his national campaign issues for television, framing the race-based Southern strategy in a way to appeal to white conservative voters and to make the stiff Nixon more likable to voters. Ailes also worked on the campaigns of Reagan and both Bushes. He was one of the chief architects of the descent into the politics of personal destruction of political opponents and oversaw the development of Fox into an entire system of Republican propaganda. The blatant lies have become worse since Trumps presidency, but they did not start with him.
None of that excuses the cult that would rather believe crazy conspiracies and lies, but these people have been programmed most of their whole lives to believe in what we see as nonsense. Those from the 1960s passed along their hatred of black people to their children and grandchildren. Fox built its empire by catering to that hatred because many white people refused to accept that their children would be forced to associate with black kids in school and they and their children would have to work alongside black people. White evangelical churches in red states are still among the most segregated places in the US, and that is on purpose.
Television had an enormous influence on how we got to where we are today. The Internet then magnified many of the worst aspects of television. And it was the Republican Party rather than the Democrats that saw the value of television, mostly through the work of Roger Ailes, and then chose to use it deliberately to spread disinformation and portray their politicians and party in ways that would fool the public and lull them into voting for Republicans.
And here we sit today with Fox still spewing lies and stoking hatred to drive wedges between people. Until Fox is gone or changed, and the Republican Party is changed, the country will continue to be filled with a large population of people who hate and want to destroy their fellow citizens. I do not see either changing.