I was napping when they broke into the Capitol. My wife, Martha, woke me to tell me the news. At that point, the riot (or “insurrection,” if you prefer, although I wasn’t thinking of it in those terms at the time) was a couple hours old; it appeared that Congress was safe, our representatives tweeting and cuddling each other in their undisclosed safety bunkers. Ok, I don’t remember any reports of “cuddling,” but I like to think of Susan Collins and Chuck Schumer holding each other tight.
Martha said she thought we were watching an important moment in American history. I said I didn’t think so; there’d already been so much insanity during Trump’s four years in office that the scene struck me as just another example–though a particularly dramatic one–of MAGA’s criminal exuberance. It was, I thought, Trump’s political death knell.
Five years after the fact, with our criminal president reinstated for a second term, I understand that day—and especially its aftermath—differently. January 6, 2021 was the day America broke.
Archive: http://archive.today/L3hAL
Those of us old enough to remember consider Dubya signing the USA Patriot Act into law what broke America.
You know, Dubya… The creation of the
American GestapoDHS, “enemy combatants” and rendition of prisoners to foreign countries to get waterboarded while dodging the Geneva Convention, Gitmo prisoners denied due process and locked up there for decades, extra-judicial killings abroad, labeling people terrorists to strip them of their constitutional rights, secret courts… All that shit started with Dubya.That’s when America went fully fascist for the first time. I mean it’s always kinda sorta reeked of fascism since the end of WW2, but Dubya took it all the way to the other side of the fence.
That’s also when I left and renounced my citizenship. Fuck fascism. Members of my family had to deal with the original fascists and some lived to tell us kids what they went through. So you know what? I really, REALLY, R.E.A.L.L.Y. can’t stand fascists.
Those of us possibly even older may point to the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in '87. From Wikipedia, the fairness doctrine “required the holders of broadcast licenses both to present controversial issues of public importance and to do so in a manner that fairly reflected differing viewpoints.” In short, it’s repeal paved the way for Fox News and led all the way to CBS under Weiss.
But to your point, there are 3 things on my platform that I tell anyone who wants to hear it. 3 actionable items:
I didn’t say it would be easy.
Well, fascism in America, like fascism in Germany and Italy, like any disease, is a spectrum. You’re running a mild fever one day, the next day your neck feels stiff and the third day you call your boss to tell them you’re staying home with the flu - and the official day your flu starts is day 3.
America in the 80’s was all kinds of messed up but it wasn’t fascist. It had fascistic traits, which wasn’t really obvious if you didn’t pay attention (I admit I didn’t) and are really obvious now with the benefit of hindsight, now that we’re all stuck in bed with a full-blown fascist fever.
I’m not convinced the Fairness Doctrine is all that relevant. France still has something akin to it, and the French Republic is also about to fall to a fascist takeover. Social media, where the bulk of fascist and malicious propaganda thrives, is mostly unregulated.
It always bothered me how Fox News had such low viewing numbers, but its stories were always disseminated exponentially beyond their immediate viewers. Facebook knows how this happened
You need to add:
I usually think of the corporate usurpation of our property rights in terms of “technofeudalism” rather than “fascism,” but it can easily be the latter too.
Fairness doctrine never applied to newspapers, magazines, cable television, podcasts, youtube channels, twitch streamers, and so on.
It literally only ever applied to broadcast television and broadcast radio. In other words, anyone using radio spectrum to broadcast their message. It applied exclusively to broadcast because businesses pay licensing fees for exclusive use of specific bands of the publicly available radio spectrum (naturally public I might add, literally anyone with the knowledge and tools can set up a radio tower which is why the spectrum is tightly controlled). Cable Internet is private infrastructure, the internet in general is hosted on private infrastructure, newspapers are built on private infrastructure, and so on. Under what arguments could we even use to regulate modern media in the same way?
It was abolished 9 years before FOX News (a cable tv station) existed.
I’m sorry but I get tired of this canard that if only we had kept it somehow things would be better. We live in a world where it got repealed, so I have a hard time believing that if it had been kept around that it would have been sufficiently updated to cover other forms of media. I mean look at the fight over Net Neutrality, it’s a similar idea as the Fairness Doctrine, that all data should be treated neutrally and equally, ISPs shouldn’t have the ability to pick winners and losers in media reach and access. It has been gutted and no longer exists.
With all that in mind I find it so hard to believe it being kept around would have changed much about what is happening now. Hardly anybody even watches antenna driven over the air television anymore.
The Fairness Doctrine seems kind of pointless now that traditional OTA TV and radio are dying off. I could see companies like Fox News just divesting from licenced broadcasting entirely and sticking with only cable and streaming to avoid getting regulated. The media ecosystem exists mostly outside of licensed spectrum now so it wouldn’t be much of a loss for them. The end of the Fairness Doctrine was definitely fundamental to how we got here, but I don’t think bringing it back will change anything significant about how the system functions now.
Amend the fairness doctrine to any (Insert better language here) interstate commerce. Last time I checked a subscription is service, and monetizing advertising is still selling something.
Also you could probably set up some way to enforce based off of subscription numbers, employee count, or revenue. Perhaps even mandate what revenue sources they are allowed to take, mostly because I am utterly convinced that a lot of bigger right wing groups would implode if you cut off their rich donors.
i like because right wing groups implode. how do we balance with freedom of press?
You don’t, freedom of press does not mean freedom to misinform.
Simple they can publish or say whatever they want, but they wouldn’t be able to take direct cash from rich assholes. I’d also probably ban people over a certain level of wealth from owning news publications or at least mandate that they have to put it in trust or something. Basically I want to prevent Prager and Fox from existing while stopping rich pissants from buying up legacy media to control the narrative.
i guess, how do we provide a framework that ensures that happens while we still get sesame street
Goo question to which you’d need a lawyer and a financial expert. I have ideas but nothing solid enough to talk about.
blinks
opens up a history book
flips to the section marked “19th century”
No. No no no. Not the first time.
flips to the section marked US History in the 1920s
Not even the first time in the last century
flips to the section marked The Reagan Administration
Holy shit. I’m beginning to see a pattern.
It shits me to tears seeing Bush’s reputation being rehabilitated. He was and is a fascist. In November 2004 I decided to leave America when I could. Happily living in a more decent society now.
the tea party, shock jocks and fox new broke america