Fox News and Conservative Reality.
Fox News. A testimonial to the idea that, if you can get enough talking heads to tell the ‘truth’ the way you want it, and say it often enough, it becomes the truth to those that listen. Anything on TV becomes credible to those who don’t get their information any other way. ‘It ain’t what you don’t know that gets you into trouble. It’s what you know for sure that just ain’t so.’ Mark Twain
While attending a real estate luncheon last Friday, I was seated with a couple. I struck-up a conversation with a standard ‘how about that economy?’, a germane topic given the venue. What I got in response was a diatribe against Obama and the Administration. I listened and attempted to offer a reasonable, but not confrontational, conversation. I was not going to reason with this man. The more we spoke, though, the more I realized that he was speaking the phrases and clichés from TV news, probably Fox News since he mentioned them, specifically. ‘Socialistic, government take-over’, etc. Then I realized, he was not giving me any original ideas of his own or any argument he had thought of himself, just platitudes he had heard on TV. This started me thinking, again, about what type of humans there are and how they are played by politicians and the media.
‘I have what I need and those that don’t must have made bad decisions and they will just have to live with them.’ There is no other option for them or explanation for other people’s conditions. All of the people without jobs now must have made bad decisions somewhere and their condition is their own fault. I hear this line from Tea Party-types and supposed conservatives. I want to ask them, ‘if you were at a lake and a man was drowning, would you try to save him or would you say “Well, he must have gotten himself in there on his own and he probably deserves what he’s getting. I’m okay, I don’t owe him anything, let him drown”?’
I have been laid-off twice in my career, neither time was this, in my analysis, based on a bad decision I made. In the first case, my job was sent to India to save money for the company, not because Indians would do a better job than I could. In the second case, my company was acquired by another and they decided not to keep two staffs to do the same work. Poor decisions on my part?
This ‘Devil take the hindmost’ attitude seems to be a prevailing attitude among the Right, Republican, Conservative base. Those that are well-off believe that God has touched them and granted them grace and anyone else are ‘those people’. I am going to guess this may have been the same during the last Depression, as well. Certainly, there are some who would live off the welfare of the state but I don’t think that most, and I mean most, would if they had alternatives. We should not characterize the entire group by finding the most offensive individual and painting him as the representative of the whole. Unwed mothers probably saw their lives differently at one time. By withholding assistance from the mother we condemn the child. Working men and women without jobs want them, not the small stipend that unemployment provides. Unemployment is helpful but there is no future in it.
My position would be that we should help those who actually need help. This includes those who will pick up and make something of themselves and rejoin productive society as well as those who will need help indefinitely such as mothers with children whether they got that way through an indiscretion, divorce or what have you. We should also make every attempt to weed out those who abuse the system. This, surprisingly, requires government, another sore-spot for the Tea party-types. This will be the subject of another blog entry.
‘A rising tide floats all boats.’
