Make it Stop
Media skews news for fun and profit, never mind that it is dividing us in ways both obvious and subtle.
Here’s a thought experiment: what would happen if you turned off MSNBC and Fox News? And you stopped listening to conservative talk radio? And you no longer watched Alex Jones or Tucker Carlson on X or YouTube or anywhere else? In other words, you stopped listening to the polemicists (those who trade in controversial, often polarizing opinions). They prosper by engaging your sense of outrage, fear, and loathing. Hard stop. That’s what the entire political media infrastructure is about: Profit. Profit grows with the intensity of your anger and bitterness.
And if you think that the purveyors of polarizing media care that they are destroying the pillars of our democracy, or the institutions that are the underpinnings of our civic life, think again. They only care about share price, profit, and power. If you are truly interested in changing our country, start with your own listening, viewing, and reading habits. Stop that which suggests you should hate gays, or transsexuals, or the NRA, or the FBI, or the Catholic Church, or Jews, or people who are pro-choice, or people who are anti-abortion.
Just stop. You’ll steal their raison d'etre (literally, “reason for being”), and stop the flow of money to the polarizing forces. Then and only then will they move on to the next profit center.
Not only is most everything that you are listening to, reading, or watching, promoting division in our country, it’s also promoting ill-health in your very self. Anger is a toxic emotion. There is a recent NIH study that shows just how toxic anger is. As they make us angry, and incite us to fight with one another, they are getting rich, sure, but they are also sowing seeds of doubt and waving a magnet over our collective moral compass. The FBI may not be perfect, but it is the pinnacle of law enforcement in our country. Undermining it for the sake of scoring political points, or protecting one grifting conman who can never be wrong and can never lose, is proving detrimental to our entire understanding that we are a nation of laws, and that no man is above them.
Callous political calculation led people who are much more ideologically motivated than Donald Trump to get him to appoint judges who would overturn Roe v. Wade. The same judges are now involved in ethical scandals, Justice Clarence Thomas for taking over $4M in the last few years in the form of an RV, a house for his mother, and elaborate private-jet-to-luxury yacht-set vacations funded by Republican mega-donor, Harlan Crow, who has business before the court. With similar favor-taking by Justice Samuel Alito, who also flies political side-taking flags at his houses, this same highly politicized court that knows none of the 5-4 balance of the past, runs amuck with a 6-3 majority.
For instance, they have decided that partisan political gerrymandering is absolutely fine and dandy, telling other federal courts not to get involved when states violate the very spirit of democracy by stacking congressional districts in their party’s favor. According to Gallup, the Supreme Court is at a record low approval rating by the American people. Because the court has no mechanism to enforce its rulings, it relies on our faith and trust in it. It has gone a long way toward destroying those very things in recent years.
Jamie Raskin, (D-Truth-to-Power) has a current and hard-hitting piece that uses the oft-mentioned comparison between judges and baseball umpires, because like umpires, the Supreme Court is supposed to call balls and strikes. "Professional baseball would never allow an umpire to continue to officiate the World Series after learning that the pennant of one of the two teams competing was flying in the front yard of the umpire’s home. Nor would an umpire be allowed to call balls and strikes in a World Series game after the umpire’s wife tried to get the official score of a prior game in the series overthrown and canceled out to benefit the losing team. If judges are like umpires, then they should be treated like umpires, not team owners, fans or players.”
Justices Alito and Thomas are hiding behind the weakest ethics rules in government, for nowhere else in the judiciary are judges expected to police their own conduct. They’ve created their own rules, and now decide whether to follow them or not. I lay this all at the feet of the polemicists on radio, television, and the internet. The cure is simple. Maybe it’s so simple, we just haven’t been able to see it before. But the cure is Netflix and chill!
My friend, the never-not-funny Bill Andres, puts the silliness on display: “A new study says 56% of people don’t believe polls, and a new poll says 65% of people don’t believe studies. Margin of error +/- 50%.”
If you want to make it stop, stop giving it credence.
©2024 Jon Sinton
I stopped long ago watching any TV-generated "news," from MSNBC to Fox; do not follow anyone on TIk Tok or X (Twitter), never scroll down Instagram or Facebook (check it only when I have messages from people I know and like), post only links to my own writing on Facebook. Seriously. And intentionally. I listen to NPR on the "radio" (remember that?) and read, most days, the major headlines of The New York Times (and have my dissatisfaction with their coverage of the back and forth). We all need to use our heads and good judgment and, like you say, screen out the rest of this stuff. Did I say "seriously"? I meant that; discipline, not "wishing I could do that." I don't feel like I miss anything important to me and I miss a lot that is just toxic.
Brilliant, wise, poignant and needed!