I hope that you don’t spend your time listening to right-wing radio. I know that I don’t spend my time that way, although I do sometimes indulge on the rare occasions that I take a road trip during the work week. Let’s take a look at one example of what is being broadcast into the heartland.
“We’ve got somebody in the White House who effectively, peace be upon him, acts like a Muslim and a Marxist the same time,” [Cliff] Kincaid told host Rick Wiles, before calling Secretary of State John Kerry “an agent of Hanoi” who is just one of many “people in positions of power who are working actively for the enemies of the United States.”
Wiles laid out a scenario where Obama refuses to leave office after his second term: “This guy is so wacked-out, if he could create a crisis, I think he would stay in the White House.”
Kincaid said that while he doesn’t know if the president would attempt to stay in office, he believes Obama is “working actively for the enemies of the United States, and Iran is just one of them. I would include in that China, I would include in that Russia, global Islam; it’s going to be tough to survive these last two years. We need the help of God here.”
“This is guy is mentally unstable,” Wiles said of Obama. “He’s not incompetent, he knows exactly what he was doing. Hitler was wacked-out and Hitler was very competent in carrying out his agenda but he was mentally insane. I don’t think Barack Obama is a mentally stable person. I think he is an extremely dangerous man.”
I see progressives criticize the president on a daily basis, including some very uncharitable estimations of his true intentions. I certainly can remember some zany left-wing theories about the presidency of George W. Bush, too. But there really wasn’t anything on this level being broadcast on radio.
Let’s take a look at Cliff Kincaid’s next theory:
I think he’s wacked-out in the sense that I think if we go back to his history, especially in Hawaii when he came under the influence of the Communist Frank Marshall Davis who was himself a dope-smoker and an alcoholic, Obama we know was a member of the ‘Choom Gang.’ He was a heavy marijuana user. That had to have an effect on him. Maybe it’s clouded him some way, it enabled Davis to brainwash him. Of course we know he was raised partly as a Muslim. These are the ingredients that went into the combustible material that we see in the White House today, and the whole thing is threatening to explode.
By the way, Cliff Kincaid runs an organization called Accuracy in Media.
How do you fight this stuff?
I’ve the same question and given the gobs of money now running our political system, it really is quite disheartening.
I’ve probably mentioned this previously here, but I’ve a close cousin and a close friend who both keep conservative talk radio on ALL day when they are home. While both are well-established senior citizens, both are still gainfully self-employed which helps to keep them mentally sharp but, sadly, politically conservative.
Last week I made an overnight visit to the out-of-town relative. The next morning, while she was showering, I departed the bedroom wing, where Rush was holding forth in her bedroom to the kitchen where another radio was tuned to Herman Cain holding forth on that “extremist radical”, Elizabeth Warren. Cain was a lot less mean in his delivery than was Limbaugh.
We lost a lot when we lost the Fairness Doctrine. We can’t compete when “crazy” is always gonna sell a lot better than sanity and rationality.
Call it was it is at every opportunity, especially to the face of those as they tune into it, rat poison for lemmings. Expressed with pity for the poor lemmings. If it’s Rush, “there goes the chief rat dispensing his poison for lemmings.” etc.
While I suppose this Obama critique COULD be labelled a policy one, I personally think it isn’t. Want to share this “Rewrite” from Lawrence O’Donnell a couple of nights ago. The first minute of the 5 minute piece is relevant to this post.
http://on.msnbc.com/1Bkdsid
People who listen are most comfortable with a host who tells them how to feel and makes them comfortable with opinions without a thought process.
You can opinion interrupt by making it personal. Reminding an old friend of what high school gossip was like and how it was meant to hurt. Then you can point out that telling the truth is an act of friendship. I know, sounds like Pollyanna came to town, but on an individual basis starting Point A from a friendship toehold can open a door.
Point is, we shut up when the TParty first came to town to spread their locker room gossip and the lesson learned is not to back away but to engage.
This is just an incredibly and depressingly frustrating fact of life. Everyone I know who is not a leftie, and I am not exaggerating when I say “EVERYONE”, feeds at this poisonous trough. They might not necessarily feed from it directly, but within one or two degrees of separation in their circle of “trusted people”, there is someone who does. And those “trusted people” are filling up their Facebook feeds, their In Boxes and their heads with this shit on a non-stop basis. I know, I see it all around me.
Even those who are close to being completely apolitical cannot help but get caught and swept up in the current of the horrible vortex of hate. And it forms the basis of the extent of their political understanding. The sheer volume and pervasiveness of its presence at all levels gives it all such a veneer of credibility in the minds of those who simply do not give enough of a shit or have the time to dig into the veracity of this non-stop bilge.
I just don’t know if there is any way now to put this disgusting genie back in the bottle. It has so deeply infected a segment of the media culture and I just don’t think it is possible to excise the cancer it at this point.
This will remain a problem in the USA until those that push blatant BS are held accountable for what they say. I find it appalling that Lying is so protected. I understand the free speech protection but I find it hard to believe that those that wrote the US Constitution and the Bill of Rights ever thought that this type of dealings would be going on.
They did engage in it themselves though.
I don’t see this rhetoric and the people who consume it as the big problem in our country. This stuff is decades (centuries?) old anyway. This is more like a distraction. As far as purely rhetorical conflicts go, the problem is that on the one hand the Republicans have a populist narrative about who the enemy is. It’s bonkers and incoherent, but for historical reasons it still has pull. The Democrats could have an analogous narrative, which would have the advantage of being simple, compelling, and true, (the super-rich want are destroying the country and the planet, mostly for their profit but also because they just can’t help themselves) but too many Democrats are eyeball deep in corporate money and DC assumptions to say anything of the sort. The result is that there is a sort of unilateral disarmament and Democrats are left being merely moderate and sensible.
It would almost be funny if it wasn’t so incredibly sad. I know far too many folks who eat this shit up.
“This guy is so wacked-out, if he could create a crisis, I think he would stay in the White House.”
And WHO came up with the plan to allow the suspension of elections (with the accompanying implementation of Marshall law) in the event of a terrorist attack? Why, Dubya did, which had ME white knuckling through the 2008 elections.
Fortunately for our democracy, Dubya no longer desired to be President. He also pressed McCain and Obama to clean up his 2008 economic mess, before he was even out of office…
The destruction by St. Reagan of the old Fairness Doctrine in broadcast media reporting, the amount of plutocrat cash pollution, the virulence of American “conservatism” and the rise of the Repubs as the majority party all correspond to the rise of 24/7 nationwide rightwing radio. We’d have to see data on the number of areas in which rightwing radio is effectively the only station, but that’s common in vast swathes of rural areas based on my experience.
The more rational and professional a country’s public “news” media, the more sound and stable the democracy and its decision making. We know that if you consistently listen to braindead shit like this, you de facto agree with it. If you start listening and keep up with it, you end up agreeing with it as well. The crucial thing to the Team Coaches is that the (successfully) poisoned mind be willing and able to eat ONLY the rat poison (thanks Marie2!) and refuse other food. The victim must refuse the antidote.
The demographics would be interesting on it, since it’s difficult to imagine an informed educated person being able to stand such absurd shit and nonsense day after day. To the extent that it preys on the ignorant–willful or otherwise—that’s even more of a black mark on it. It certainly appears to be a white (mostly male) phenomenon as well—whites appear to be the clear target market for the rat poison, and it’s done its work well as the rise of (increasingly malevolent) GOoP demonstrates.
As the sources of rightwing lies and baseless propaganda multiply in the (Dis)Information Age, the old First Amendment theory about the “marketplace of ideas”–in which the good (factually correct) drive out the bad (intentional lies and nonsense)—is shown ever more clearly to be a hopeless piety. The bad not only is not driven out, it multiplies exponentially, haha. With the five conservative male activists posing as “justices” set to rule that intentional lies in political advertising are protected speech, the final nail is being driven into the coffin. If this is a correct interpretation of the Constitution, then once again our founding document has wildly failed us.
The institutions have collapsed, and most “consumers”–the highest form of American citizenship—don’t really care. All lies, all the time!
I think if we go back to his history, especially in Hawaii when he came under the influence of the Communist Frank Marshall Davis who was himself a dope-smoker and an alcoholic, Obama we know was a member of the `Choom Gang.’ He was a heavy marijuana user. That had to have an effect on him. Maybe it’s clouded him some way, it enabled Davis to brainwash him. Of course we know he was raised partly as a Muslim.
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Easter Sunday These are the ingredients that went into the combustible material that we see in the White House today, and the whole thing is threatening to explode.
By the way, Cliff Kincaid runs an organization called Accuracy in Media.
Of course he does.