Enabling the Crazy: Republicans and the right wing need to be held accountable for their dishonesty

Until Republicans police their own and use honest arguments, they cannot be trusted.

Rush Limbaugh

Over the last forty years, Republicans have developed some very bad habits. False equivalencies, out and out lying (such as claiming that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction), hypocritical stances (such as denying Merrick Garland a hearing for a position on the Supreme Court), accepting of lies for political expediency, and accusing the opposition of the very sins they commit are only some of the tactics that Republican base has grown to accept through networks such as Fox News and numerous zany online hysteria sites.

After a Berkman study found study (among many others) demonstrated that right wing media does not hold itself to account, and that Facebook is far more right wing than Twitter, Facebook began to take steps to address false reports. This led to criticism of social networks by President Trump, and a business opportunity for other purveyors of falsehoods. That is because Republicans can no longer survive without the falsehoods. A few people have noticed this danger, one of them being the founder of the founding online editor of the Washington Examiner and NewsBusters, Matthew Sheffield. In his own words:

I eventually realized that most people who run right-dominated media outlets see it as their DUTY to be unfair and to favor Republicans because doing so would some how counteract perceived liberal bias.

While I was enmeshed in the conservative media tradition, I viewed lefty media thinkers like @jayrosen_nyu as arguing that journalism was supposed to be liberally biased. I was wrong. I realized later that I didn’t understand that journalism is supposed to portray reality.

Mr. Sheffield wasn’t the only one to notice this problem. Last week Charles Koch put it quite simply: “Boy, did we screw up!” He did so by funding the Tea Party that fed on propaganda, not journalism.

The news echo chamber in which right wing people live live is not a threat to democracy, but is a threat to good, sound government, and to the health and welfare of the public. Donald Trump’s lies about the Corona Virus are merely the logical conclusion of a concerted attack that began with Rush Limbaugh in the 1980s, intensified with Fox News, and has led to such hate sites as InfoWars. Although Senator McConnell is smart enough not to peddle conspiracies, he has no problem profiting from them. He therefore does nothing to correct them, putting party before country. And so what do we get? Failure to recognize the risks of climate change, improper preparation for what became a pandemic that has led to economic destruction and chaos, and breeding of bigotry and violence.

Moral equivalences to justify some of Donald Trump’s more egregious acts seem to be a favorite. Previously we heard how, because cages were built under the Obama administration to house children for periods of up to 72 hours when they had no other place to go, it was therefore okay for the Trump administration to target migrant families for separation.

The latest claim from my friends on the right, led by people such as Representative Steve Scalise, has been that Donald Trump has the same right to use the courts to make whatever challenges he will, just as Al Gore did when he lost to George Bush in 2001. It is true that Al Gore did use the courts to attempt require a recount in certain districts. In that case, Gore and his legal team made very specific claims, and had evidence to advance them. They were these:

(1) The rejection of 215 net votes for Gore identified in a manual count by the Palm Beach Canvassing Board as reflecting the clear intent of the voters;

(2) The rejection of 168 net votes for Gore, identified in the partial recount by the Miami-Dade County Canvassing Board.

(3) The receipt and certification after Thanksgiving of the election night returns from Nassau County, instead of the statutorily mandated machine recount tabulation, in violation of section 102.14, Florida Statutes, resulting in an additional 51 net votes for Bush.

(4) The rejection of an additional 3300 votes in Palm Beach County, most of which Democrat observers identified as votes for Gore but which were not included in the Canvassing Board’s certified results;  and

(5) The refusal to review approximately 9000 Miami-Dade ballots, which the counting machine registered as non-votes and which have never been manually reviewed.

Gore v. Harris, Florida Supreme Court, SC00-2431, December, 2000.

Each of these claims were specific, backed up by facts that were not in dispute, and raised substantial questions of procedure, as demonstrated by the ruling of the Florida Supreme Court. The point here is not to re-litigate an election that took place 20 years ago, but rather to highlight how Mr. Gore used the courts in good faith, even if he lost in the end.

In this case, the Trump campaign has put forward wild claims that have not been backed by evidence or law. While President Trump and his cronies have whined about fraud to the press and to the American people, when they have gone to court, their tune has been very different.

In Pennsylvania, Arizona, Michigan, and Nevada, when asked if they were arguing that fraud had occurred, the answer was “No”. In Michigan or Wisconsin, where the best they could come up with were what they called statistical irregularities. In 2016, those same “irregularities” occurred in districts Trump won, and yet there was no complaint at the time. That’s because there was no actual evidence or testimony of any wrong doing. Mr. Trump is a sore loser. He has thrown spaghetti at a wall to see what would stick. He and his clown, Rudolph Giuliani, have wasted the time of the courts, and have attempted to undermine the very institutions he swore to uphold. In computing we would call this a Denial of Service (DoS) attack, in which the resources of courts and opponents are wasted by suits filed in bad faith. In Williamsport, Pennsylvania, US District Judge Matthew W. Brann, a lifelong Republican, castigated Mr. Giuliani for his buffoonish arguments, writing:

… this Court has been presented with strained legal arguments without merit and speculative accusations, unpled in the operative complaint and unsupported by evidence.

In Georgia, Trump and his fellow loons have attacked the Republican Secretary of State for having followed the law and performed his duties. One of his loons, Russell J. Ramsland Jr., filed an affidavit that raised concerns about alleged incidents that didn’t even take place in the state. They have attacked various government officials in Nevada as well.

In the meantime, Republican senators and governors largely sat silent, allowing this travesty to continue. With one exception, the only people who dared to stand up to Mr. Trump were those who were retiring, or those who had just been reelected. That required no courage or leadership whatsoever. These people have been swayed by Trump’s media madness, worrying that they might not get re-elected, or thinking they might develop a political advantage when Biden is sworn in. Winning, not their oaths to their country, is all that matters to them.

Some will say that Democrats are no better, that Democrats obstructed Mr. Trump from the moment he came into office. Maybe there is some truth to this, but at least in the Democrat’s case, they used legal means and the stark truth to support their positions. Not so with the Right Republicans in Congress, and enablers such as Senator Collins.

There can be no reconciliation, nor can their be trust in their role in government, until Republicans police their own, starting with taking responsibility for not having stood up to a liar and bully, who harmed a great many people.

On criticizing President Trump

I’ve have been debating with friends about how best to deal with the new president and his administration.  Some say, “Give him a chance,” while others think he’s already gone too far.  A former president made the point far better than I could have, and so I’m simply going to quote him:

The President is merely the most important among a large number of public servants. He should be supported or opposed exactly to the degree which is warranted by his good conduct or bad conduct, his efficiency or inefficiency in rendering loyal, able, and disinterested service to the Nation as a whole. Therefore it is absolutely necessary that there should be full liberty to tell the truth about his acts, and this means that it is exactly necessary to blame him when he does wrong as to praise him when he does right. Any other attitude in an American citizen is both base and servile. To announce that there must be no criticism of the President, or that we are to stand by the President, right or wrong, is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public. Nothing but the truth should be spoken about him or any one else. But it is even more important to tell the truth, pleasant or unpleasant, about him than about any one else.

Teddy Roosevelt, in a letter to the Kansas City Star, 18 May 1918

 

Good News? Bad News?

Rupert Murdoch (Courtesy WEF)

A while back, I went on a tear about Fox News and just how bad they are at actually delivering news, and how people who listen to them need to hold themselves accountable.  Since then, I think someone defriended me on FaceBook for the note.  I suppose I had one too many friend.  Fox is part of a right wing media conglomerate controlled by Rupert Murdoch, where his goal is to control the message, and thereby have a strong say in our government.  And he’s very successful through truly deceitful means.  Even the name of the conglomerate is deceitful- News Corp.  It’s not.  It’s lies with a bit of truth sprinkled in to help people suspend disbelief about the lies.  He’s not the first to do it, but seemingly he’s the most effective.  Let’s take a moment to pay tribute to the master, however, William Randolph Hearst, the newspaper magnate.

Is there a good honest news source?   My preferred news sources these days are as follows:

Google News

This is perhaps the most popular news aggregator there is.  Google doesn’t actually do any of the reporting but just groups together related stories, and I can compare points of view based on the source of the story.  Say, Fox versus The Guardian.

National Public Radio

NPR remains a strong source of news with stories that one can listen to on the radio that are more than just sound bites.  They have in depth interviews with key political players as well as scientists.  I have always found their business reporting to be somewhat limiting.  This leads to a more controversial preference.

The Wall Street Journal

William Randolph Hearst

The Journal is the paper of record for business news, even though they are part of News Corp.  It is rare that you read a retraction on a story that matters (I can’t remember one, actually).  But they are a relatively recent addition to the conglomerate, and so the impact has been limited to what stories they choose to report, headlines, and their editorial staff.  Hosting a shady character like Karl Rove immediately disqualifies what was already a colored view, even prior to the takeover.

Note that nowhere in my list are any of the major television networks.  That’s largely due to several factors:

  • I live outside the United States and so my access to network programming is somewhat limited;
  • Their stories tend to be short and lack depth, except for news magazines, which I don’t have access to.

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