Constitutional Republic in Jeopardy….
Please help save people from the dumbing-down effects of 6 daily hours in the insanity zone, which is 3 hours of Fox in the early morning & 3 more in the evening. There are also weekend & Fox Business shows that are just as bad. And talk radio along with fringe groups on internet social media are polluted with that type of rot-think. Any of the rational conservative Republican voices not on the extreme right are being drowned out. Millions of conservatives who tune in are absorbing all this while believing it without discernment or questioning what they’re hearing. The echo is a brainwashing mechanism which most of their audiences dutifully consume without realizing the negative connotations. Especially with Fox, that network has built up tremendous trust with conservatives throughout the years before becoming radicalized, with their viewers not perceiving all the subtle changes that over time became big changes. Then along came Trump, who in conjunction with the echo, are together attacking our constitutional republic.
That conservative base has now been thoroughly conditioned to believe the destructive rants of deranged lunatics just because they appear on their favorite network, while many of the thoughtful conservative commentators have been driven out by Fox, which we’ll reveal in the Ralph Peters’ comments below. It’s allowed the conventional conservative mindset to go off the deep end way out on the far-right, believing in falsehoods over truths. Our country badly needs a viable conservative party to effectively function, so it’s essential we drag conservatism back to the center-right, hoping the thinking returns to its right mind that can operate in the real world. The standard fare for the Fox evening lineup is to attack everyone refusing to make a blood sacrifice towards their nihilistic/extremist opinions, featuring unequivocal worship of Trump, with their hardcore rightwing viewers glued to their televisions getting all ginned up with animus towards their perceived enemies. The GOP has been riding aboard this crazy train, & as a lifelong GOP supporter, I just want my party back!
We can be the conduit for our circle of influence trapped inside that bubble, to help them question the viability of that echo garbage dump. To those possibly brainwashed beyond repair & offended should you dare criticize their far-right messaging sources, we provide the tool The Voracs that you can direct them to, keeping yourself above the fray so their ire isn’t directed back at you personally. Whether you send as a text, email or in person, simply ask them to “check out this site.” By spreading the word of rational pragmatism far & wide to that echo-crowd (or even sending to anyone regardless of political ideology), many arch-conservatives do outright reject or ignore the blog site, but we only seek to bring those open to balanced viewpoints over to the sane side. So some will & some won’t, but make people aware of the blog site & they can decide for themselves.
It’s worth the effort, since retrieving conservatives back from the extreme-right fringe may well be the only possible way to ultimately fix the GOP, which might be necessary to save the nation. I’d say that’s mighty important! What we’re currently doing in America to fix our myriad of problems isn’t working, with extremists on both sides largely to blame for the polarizing gridlock. Depending on your work situation, tread carefully with business associates & customers, so use your best judgement whom to share with. As patriotic Americans, together we can all strive to do our civic duty. Fox & the echo is so deceptive & dangerous, people need warned. Let me just say if people wade into the echo as a contrast to real news, there is some validity to that, so long as viewers understand the far-right slant they’re getting, along with that echo twisting their narratives beyond reason in praise of Trump. The damage from brainwashing comes when the echo is used as the primary or even the only news source. Even by just getting echo-people to take a more objective/critical look at what they’re taking in, that alone could be considered a success.
In the Related Articles below, the first group of links explain factors are aligning that facilitate a potential fall into fascism. In the article do-trumps-voters-even-care-if-
Earlier this month, the Democracy Fund voter Study Group released an astonishing report. While an overwhelming majority of Americans favor a constitutional democracy, 32 percent of Trump voters would prefer a “strong leader” who doesn’t have to answer to Congress or a body politic. “The highest levels of support for authoritarian leadership,” the Study Group concluded, “come from those who are disaffected, disengaged from politics, deeply distrustful of experts, culturally conservative, and have negative views toward racial minorities.” So if the president’s base has no real commitment to democratic values, would they care if the president were found culpable in any of the scandals presently roiling the White House? Jan-Werner Müller, a political theorist at Princeton University and the author of the 2016 book “What Is Populism?” has his doubts. Even if Trump violated campaign finance laws in his alleged hush payment to Stormy Daniels, obstructed justice in the Mueller investigation or was discovered to have colluded with the Kremlin, Müller contends, he might not face any political consequences for his misdeeds. “In many populist regimes, what seems so obviously like corruption is, in fact, a strength for these leaders,” Müller told Vox’s Sean Illing. “It’s easy to look at abuses of power and assume that it will hurt the person committing the abuses, but it’s not that simple. What might look like corruption or cronyism to neutral observers is seen by the supporters of populists as doing the right thing for the right people, the ‘real people.’ This is why the tribal appeal of populism is so crucial. Populist leaders thrive on distinctions between ‘us’ and ‘them,’ between ‘the people’ and ‘the establishment.'” As Müller sees it, the president’s supporters have been conditioned to tolerate a criminal commander-in-chief.
More alarming concerns about Trump & his supporters come from a-triumph-of-collective-narcis
Donald Trump embodies almost everything wrong with America: He is a greedy, craven, untruthful bigot and bully, the living product of a celebrity-driven popular culture prefaced on distraction and crudeness. Trump’s political movement and presidency seem to resemble a slow-motion car accident, but instead of running away from this destruction and chaos Trump’s voters and Republicans en masse largely seem to welcome the mayhem. Much of this dynamic can be explained by Trump’s skill as a storyteller who is keenly aware how to speak to the hopes and fears of the human deplorables who comprise his camp. He is a political cult leader. But Trump’s public also possesses a high level of agency. His followers have made a choice to stand by their Great Leader — even when that loyalty is personally harmful to them as well as the country they supposedly love. Why? Because Donald Trump and his supporters are intertwined in a state of collective narcissism. Is it possible to free Donald Trump’s voters from this codependency? What role does collective narcissism play in Donald Trump’s authoritarian movement? How does collective narcissism encourage the kinds of political violence that have emerged during Trump’s campaign and presidency? What is the relationship between social pathology, collective narcissism and the cult of personality that Trump inspires?
Trump plays to his base in keeping them on his side as he attacks political opposition, a common trait among autocrats. Amy Siskind in her book The List chronicles the crazy events always surrounding this president which make him uniquely dangerous: changes-under-president-trump-
This article by Ralph Peters should be required reading (especially for Fox viewers), which I posted excerpts here but preferably click on why-i-left-fox-news to read the whole thing. There are other articles about this in the Fox section below. It looks like Fox is giving litmus tests to control the narrative of what their commentators say. Peters also says they squash negative critiques of Trump. It’s clear Fox isn’t a news organization so much as a pure propaganda machine:
You could measure the decline of Fox News by the drop in the quality of guests waiting in the green room. A year and a half ago, you might have heard George Will discussing policy with a senator while a former Cabinet member listened in. Today, you would meet a Republican commissar with a steakhouse waistline and an eager young woman wearing too little fabric and too much makeup, immersed in memorizing her talking points. This wasn’t a case of the rats leaving a sinking ship. The best sailors were driven overboard by the rodents. As I wrote in an internal Fox memo, leaked and widely disseminated, I declined to renew my contract as Fox News’s strategic analyst because of the network’s propagandizing for the Trump administration. Today’s Fox prime-time lineup preaches paranoia, attacking processes and institutions vital to our republic and challenging the rule of law.
Four decades ago, as a U.S. Army second lieutenant, I took an oath to “support and defend the Constitution.” In moral and ethical terms, that oath never expires. As Fox’s assault on our constitutional order intensified, spearheaded by its after-dinner demagogues, I had no choice but to leave. My error was waiting so long to walk away. The chance to speak to millions of Americans is seductive, and, with the infinite human capacity for self-delusion, I rationalized that I could make a difference by remaining at Fox and speaking honestly. I was wrong.
As early as the fall of 2016, and especially as doubts mounted about the new Trump administration’s national security vulnerabilities, I increasingly was blocked from speaking on the issues about which I could offer real expertise: Russian affairs and our intelligence community. I did not hide my views at Fox and, as word spread that I would not unswervingly support President Trump and, worse, that I believed an investigation into Russian interference was essential to our national security, I was excluded from segments that touched on Vladimir Putin’s possible influence on an American president, his campaign or his administration.
During my 10 years at Fox News and Fox Business, I did my best to be a forthright voice. I angered left and right. I criticized President Barack Obama fiercely (one infelicity resulted in a two-week suspension), but I also argued for sensible gun-control measures and environmental protections. I made mistakes, but they were honest mistakes. I took the opportunity to speak to millions of Americans seriously and — still that earnest young second lieutenant to some degree — could not imagine lying to them. With my Soviet-studies background, the cult of Trump unnerves me. For our society’s health, no one, not even a president, can be above criticism — or the law. I must stress that there are many honorable and talented professionals at the Fox channels, superb reporters, some gutsy hosts, and adept technicians and staff. But Trump idolaters and the merrily hypocritical prime-time hosts are destroying the network — no matter how profitable it may remain. The day my memo leaked, a journalist asked me how I felt. Usually quick with a reply, I struggled, amid a cyclone of emotions, to think of the right words. After perhaps 30 seconds of silence, I said, “Free.”
David Hogg managed to get Ingraham to take the week off, if not get her fired altogether. Now if he could only find a way to get Carlson & Hannity fired, he’d be a national hero: Now-That-Ingraham-s-Gone
In the first sign of how Gates is aiding that probe, Mueller revealed on Tuesday that Gates was in regular contact with a former Russian military intelligence officer who allegedly still had ties to that agency. The story rocketed through the media, and for good reason — as Crooked Media’s Brian Beutler noted, “While Manafort and Gates were running the Trump campaign, in other words, one of their employees was a potential liaison to the Russian hackers who stole emails from the DNC.” But one regular commentator on the Russia probe has been noticeably silent on the Gates revelations: Sean Hannity. Indeed, Hannity last substantively mentioned Gates on his Fox show on October 30, when he said that Mueller’s indictments of Gates and Manafort have “nothing to do” with “Trump-Russia collusion,”according to a Media Matters review of the Nexis database. While the special counsel filed additional chargesagainst Gates in February, leading to Gates’ subsequent decision to cooperate, Hannity remained mum. His sole reference to Gates during this period came on February 20, when he said that Mueller had announced a “new plea deal with a lawyer tied to Paul Manafort and Rick Gates.” This is incredibly unusual. Since Mueller was named special counsel last May, Hannity has transformed his Fox News program into a propaganda show dedicated to denouncing what he terms “black-helicopter, tinfoil-hat conspiracy theories about so-called Trump-Russia collusion.” Hardly a show goes by without Hannity scoffing at Mueller’s probe, demanding his resignation or removal, and calling for criminal investigations into the “deep state” conspiracy of senior law enforcement officials that he blames for the “witch hunt.”
The Fox host typically responds to new allegations related to the Mueller probe immediately (at times to comical effect). On Wednesday, for example, Hannity branded as “fake news” a report from earlier that day that Trump’s lawyer had last summer suggested to lawyers for Manafort and former national security adviser Michael Flynn that they might receive pardons from the president, presumably if they refused to cooperate with Mueller. And Hannity has worked tirelessly to provide his audience with an alternative narrative about the increasing number of Mueller targets to be indicted or plead guilty and cooperate with the probe. In Hannity’s telling, criminal charges against Flynn and Manafort should be dropped because they are the victims of a witch hunt; George Papadopoulos, a former Trump campaign foreign policy adviser who told an Australian diplomat in May 2016 that Russia was in possession of thousands of emails that would damage Clinton’s campaign, is someone Hannity “never heard of” who provides “bar talk” and “four-way hearsay”; the guilty plea of Alex van der Zwann, a lawyer who worked with Gates and Manafort and the son-in-law of a Russian billionaire, shows “no collusion”; and the indictments of various Russian nationals and entities somehow vindicate the Fox host’s Uranium One conspiracy theory. Hannity is a shill, and because of that, he likely has insight into the Trump team’s Mueller strategy. He regularly advises the president, who watches Hannity’s show. Senior White House aides, Trump’s lawyer, members of Trump’s family, and key Republican congressmen who are engaged in the effort to push back against the Russia probe regularly appear on Hannity’s program to talk about the special counsel’s investigation. If anyone in the right-wing press is aware of how Republicans are trying to forestall a Mueller result that would be devastating to Trump, it is Hannity.
In the group of links on other lying echo-news sources, we see Alex Jones is as bad as Hannity: kelly-jones-alex-jones-brainwa
So please click on & review the Related Articles, where the groups of links give us topics on threats to our democracy, Fox fake news, other echo fake news & evangelicals. In our noble mission to save the GOP & America through reason & common sense, while we’re at it let’s also save the evangelical church, where the flock are seemingly being led down the wrong path through much of the faith’s international leadership having abandoned their greater mission. Believe me when I say the world lately has noticed the hypocrisy & double standards. For the faith to even survive & serve its purpose, it’s imperative to get back to using God & not so much Trump as the guiding light. Might I also suggest changing cultural issues comes from changing people’s hearts, not by some strong-armed bully of a leader jamming changes down our throats.
I believe biblical truths are absolute, but I also believe the evangelical church’s overwhelming embrace of extremist politics devoid of Christian values is selfishly & disastrously driving millions away from the faith. I strongly sense so many are leaving the church or dissuaded from joining in the first place, driven by this evangelical movement pursuing a temporary worldly power grab feeding off a spirit of deception, which is hindering people on the outside from wanting to even consider the saving grace of Christ. I would say by any measure that’s an awful trade-off. The church may never recover from the Trump era as so many Christians are perceived as a poor example of a genuine faith in God, with the Trumpeter clarion call being the exact opposite of the love & grace of Christ.
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