Media Matters, Payton Armstrong, 27 April 2022: According to right-wing media, anything that makes them look bad is a “false flag”
Subtitled: “Whether it’s acts of right-wing violence, Russian war crimes, or the January 6 pipe bombs, right-wing media personalities — from the fever swamps to Fox — are quick to suggest they are ‘staged'”
Immediate thought: who would be doing all this staging? Is the entire country of Ukraine “staging” bodies in the streets and manufacturing bombed out apartment complexes? How many people in the US, activated so quickly to stage such an event, would be needed to keep up this fantasy world that the right-wing folks imagine? And all of them keeping it secret, without any leakers to provide any kind of evidence of the staged frauds? But right-wingers obviously do not have a clear grasp of how the world world works; that’s part of their simplistic, white and black, worldview.
Though not a new phenomenon, the trend of prominent right-wing voices claiming that events are “false flags” shows that conservative media are ushering their audiences even further from reality and mainstreaming what was once considered a fringe tactic.
Long list of examples. A dismayingly long list of examples. Concluding with:
Calling real events “false flags” is one of the lazier worldviews right-wing media could offer their audiences. Instead of engaging with the facts, they cultivate a separate reality where conservative violence and acts of hate are always fake, staged, or someone else’s fault.
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LA Times, Editorial Board, 26 April 2022: Editorial: Truth doesn’t matter to the GOP
Once upon a time, being caught lying would have been a big deal, particularly about something as grave as how to proceed after a riot to block the peaceful transfer of power. No longer. On Saturday night, McCarthy was warmly received as the keynote speaker at the California Republican Party convention in Anaheim. Attendees were largely unaware of or unfazed by the revelation.
“I just spent four hours in a room with 980 delegates … and this was not a topic of conversation,” Jim Brulte, a former chairman of the California GOP, told an editorial board member on Sunday, adding that it was being covered only because of liberal bias in the media.
“Nobody cares.”
The GOP seems to be having a lot of success creating its own Manichean fantasy reality, the better to attract its base voters, who apparently all live in fear of so many things. And few things motivate better than fear of the other, and solidarity with fellow believers.
Voters decide how much truth matters. But how long can democracy stand when roughly half the voting population is willing to ignore falsehoods and reward political leaders for their dishonesty? Trump’s Big Lie that he won the 2020 election — despite numerous audits and lawsuits that turned up no credible evidence — didn’t come out of nowhere. It began with thousands of falsehoods he spewed during four years as president, and culminated in an attempted coup.
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Another example of how those who would ban things don’t think their proscriptions through.
NPR, Matthew S. Schwartz, 26 April 2022: Florida man asks schools to ban Bible following the state’s efforts to remove books
Granted, this guy is “known for his tongue-in-cheek petitions to local government agencies.” But he has a point. (And personally, I would be far less worried about children — whether my own or anyone else’s, who will grow up to live in the society where I live — being exposed to the different kinds of people who actually live in the modern world, than to the barbaric morality of the ancient desert tribes who their god gave them rights to slaughter all their neighbors…just to take one example.)
Among many points,
Stevens sent the petitions as a way to point out the hypocrisy, he said. “If you want to teach morality and ethics, do you really want to turn to a book that wants you to dash babies against rocks?” he told NPR, pointing to Psalm 137:9.
Covered elsewhere (interesting how different new outlets cover the same story in different ways…without any of them being wrong), this story includes the notion of the “woke behavior” of Jesus.
Hill Reporter, 25 April 2022: Atheist Activist Challenges Florida Book Bans By Demanding ‘Too Woke’ Bible Be Removed As Well
Compassion for the poor, for the refugees? How very old fashioned. Christians these days have other priorities.
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Meanwhile at the Supreme Court:
LA Times, Randall Balmer Op-Ed, 27 Apr 2022: Op-Ed: Jesus said to pray in a ‘closet,’ not on the 50-yard line
Are people like this coach dim, hypocritical, or simply narcissistic? Unless they would be fine with a rabbi or an imam leading prayers, they are hypocritical. My guess is that this coach, like many evangelicals, simply feels that his religion is the obvious superior one, and since it’s in the majority, at least in his area, he’s entitled! Thus missing the entire point of the First Amendment (because his school is government run — private school, no problemo).
