The Gadfly was at his place of work today and something fairly extraordinary occurred that sent a shiver (the good kind) down The Gadfly's spine.
The Gadfly was in a medical facility, waiting to perform some technical troubleshooting on a reported IT problem in a patient exam room. The room was occupied and one of the nurses advised The Gadfly that the room would be available in a few minutes. So The Gadfly took up station outside in the waiting area and patiently waited for the room to be vacated.
The waiting area outside of the exam room was fairly small and there were a few folks sitting there and one of them was an elderly gentleman whom The Gadfly noted was gazing up at the wall mounted television, and he appeared to be the only one doing so. The Gadfly strained his ears, as he was not directly facing the television, to see if he could catch the audio and without even looking at the screen, it became immediately clear that the set was tuned to the Fox "news" channel (that's how blatantly biased they are).
The Gadfly could make out the voices of a couple of talking heads, a male and female and they were just yammering on and on about wonderful dear leader Donald Trump's fabulous trip to Davos, Switzerland to hang out with the elite oligarchs of the world and they were gushing about how presidential and great Trump was showing himself to be on this trip, and how he was demonstrating to all of the leaders of the world how great America was and he was making friends all over the planet and this pathetic knob polishing just went on and on and on.
After a few minutes of this insufferable drivel, the elderly gentleman sitting there, whom The Gadfly figured to be a Trump admirer, because he seemed to be intently paying attention to the broadcast, got up from his chair, sauntered over to the nearest nurse and politely and firmly said to her (and this is verbatim), "could you please turn the tv channel ma'am? The last thing I feel like listening to right now is a bunch of lying horseshit about Donald Trump." The nurse dutifully complied with the man's request and changed the channel to some local news station.
And The Gadfly's heart nearly leapt out of his chest at the joy of hearing a fellow citizen, with senses tethered to reality, openly state the obvious about Rupert Murdoch's Ministry of Propaganda network and like a shot of adrenaline, it gave The Gadfly a glimmer of hope that maybe, just maybe - we will emerge from the darkness of this Drumpf saga still intact as a world-class nation and democracy and get on with the business of truly making America great again.
Fox has morphed in to Pravda on the Potomac. Just listening to them for 5 minutes is enough for any rational, well educated adult to realize just how deep down the propaganda rabbit hole they have clambered.
Conservative (one of the sane ones) Russian/American author and military historian Max Boot wrote an article a few months ago sounding the alarm over just how overt Fox's propaganda has become. Boot wrote:
While other networks are covering Trump’s myriad setbacks and scandals, Fox presents an alternative reality in which the bumbling president is close to infallible (except when he splits with fellow populist Jeff Sessions), his critics are “snowflakes,” and the biggest threat facing America is, depending on the day of the week, either the Hillary Clinton email scandal, “the war on Christmas,” or “political correctness.” It’s all too reminiscent of the Soviet-era TV stations that ran stories about record grain harvests even as grocery shelves were bare.
http://foreignpolicy.com/2017/08/08/fox-news-has-completed-its-transformation-into-trump-tv/
Fox basically has become the "Baghdad Bob" of American cable television news.
Boot went on to note:
A vicious feedback loop has developed. Fox airs implausible claims, e.g., speculating that it was Ukraine, not Russia, that was guilty of interference in the U.S. election, or asserting that Russia was really rooting for Hillary Clinton to win. (So Putin helped Trump because he secretly wanted him to lose? Got it!) An inveterate TV watcher, Trump echoes Fox’s fantasies in his own tweets and remarks. Fox, in turn, cites the president as confirmation for its made-up stories. As Dartmouth professor Brendan Nyhan notes, it’s a “perpetual motion machine of bullshit.”
And he sums it up thusly . . .
This is how bad it’s gotten: Fox, a TV network that purports to offer “fair and balanced” reporting, has become a flagrantly unfair and mentally unbalanced mouthpiece for a populist demagogue in the White House and his best friend in the Kremlin. One can only hope that its ratings diminish along with Trump’s popular support, but, sadly, it doesn’t take many dupes to keep this con game afloat.
And of course just this week we have Fox on-air personalities playing hide the propaganda salami with some Republicans in claiming that the Mueller investigation is tainted because purportedly (with no evidence at all presented) that there is a "secret society" of Trump haters who are deeply and secretly ensconced in the FBI, and who are having secret meetings and who are secretly plotting secretive things to destroy Donald Trump, and all of this very secrety stuff is being perpetrated at the secret behest of the dreaded Hillary beast.
Fucking sigh . . . .
The Gadfly hopes more of his fellow citizens make the decision to take a stand and speak up against the Fox bullshit like the elderly fellow that The Gadfly witnessed do today. It is imperative for anyone who cares about the future of our democratic society to do so now.
----TFG
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