The Beat Goes On
Sorry. Now I'm worried about backsliding. When will it ever end?
Since the inauguration has anyone heard Dr. Anthony Fauci on a podcast or in a television interview? Have you seen him being interviewed?
The man, who I believe is eighty years old, looks vibrant. His responses to quesitons are ebullient.
If he were a water feature, he would be a babbling brook. Two months ago, and for the previous four years, he was a wastewater pond.
Dr. Fauci reflects what a majority of Americans feel. As a country, we have been living in an abusive household for the last administration’s term and now the source of the abuse has been excised. Like a bunion on a big toe. It’s hard to believe. Difficult to fully fathom.
It hasn’t precluded my daily nightcaps, but it has put a bounce in my step.
However, I am already starting to get irritated at the people on Twitter who ask inane questions that remind me of icebreakers at social events or Cards Against Humanity. I am not interested in reading the responses about what kind of car a person would be if they were to magically become a car. It’s terrific that a weight has been lifted from our collective shoulders and we can now behave like the rescue dog that has finally arrived at the understanding that she is safe and sound and can loll around on her back, legs in the air, underbelly and privates exposed to the universe.
I take it this was the non-political Twitter which existed prior to millions upon millions of us realizing the possibility existed that a significant other number of us were willing to elect a boorish, self-promoting con artist as the president of the United States. The election of a man completely unfamiliar with democracy scared regular Twitter straight. It turned serious over the past four years. The term “doom-scrolling” most likely originally applied directly to those who tweet.
Now, you can apply it to all social media scrolling because the doom has been spread equally (to some extent).
It is good to see Dr. Fauci beaming. It is good to feel the relief, to get a much more consistent night of sleep. It’s always been good to see light-hearted tweets mixed with the more erudite, political and educational tweets.
But it’s too soon to drop our guard and go back to a steady diet of sophomoric humor and ‘cat video’ tweets because right wing media NEVER rests and there are serious topics to consider over the next two to four years. Or however long moderates and liberals hold the reins of government (as tenuous as those reins may be).
Right wing media is working overtime to shape the narrative as I type.
Right wing media suddenly cries for unity when a month ago they were crying for people to rise up. Right wing media glosses over the insurrection when a month ago they were egging their followers to reclaim their government by any means necessary. Right wing media finds fault in every detail of the inauguration, clutches their pearls over the Time magazine cover illustration showing an Oval Office vandalized and littered by the outgoing administration as if they are unaware of metaphors or hyperbole for the sake of illustration.
Right wing media is going to double down across the board about every little thing and the sad part is - every now and then - like the tiny furor over Joe Biden wearing a Rolex watch, mainstream media, such as the New York Times, will get caught up in the eyeballs sweepstakes and join in. But, in doing so, the narrative people like Tucker Carlson is spinning, will achieve an infinitesimal degree of approval.
It all adds up eventually.
The problem lies in that mainstream media behaves as if the Fairness Doctrine still exists. NPR behaves as if they can be denuded of funding at a moment’s notice and, in fact, they can. That’s why over the past two decades NPR has been forced to rely more and more on corporate beneficence.
Meanwhile right wing media and it’s incessant drumbeat of right wing propaganda drones on with the same narrative they’ve used since the Fairness Doctrine in media was eliminated - “Capitalism good, socialism/communism bad.” Nothing in between.
So, in bars, hospital waiting rooms, airport terminals, hotel lobbies, military bases and practically anywhere humans gather in America, right wing propaganda continues to spread like the virulent fog in that crappy B movie I saw at a drive-in theater years and years ago. A fog of propaganda that creates humans that act as if their minds and bodies have been snatched like the humans in that other grade B movie I saw a generation ago.
The next thing you know these body-snatched humans are attacking the very seat of the government that has given them everything they have and hold dear. When this attempt fails, are they contrite? Did they awaken from the fever-dream? Did any of them admit the error of their ways? Did any of our elected officials who aided, abetted and exhorted the insurrectionists try to dial back the rhetoric? Did they go on record saying the election in November was legitimate?
The answer, of course, is no.
While we can rejoice in the knowledge that a bumbling idiot no longer has access to the nuclear codes, and an administration of competent people are working on getting America back on track, and we are all, like Dr. Fauci, feeling a sense of ebullience, it is too soon for my Twitter feed to be filled with questions like “How do you feel about sofa beds?”
The right never sleeps - metaphorically speaking - and neither should we - also metaphorically speaking.
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AAR James Li sent me this endearing tale of a man and his adventure chicken. Check it out. As far as this picture goes - I think the chicken came first.
Also, Tom Tomorrow captures the prevailing sentiment as of today.
Thanks once more for reading, responding and passing along. - JLM