Snake Charmers

As we all know, last November, Donald J Trump was elected to be the 45th President of the United States in one of the biggest upsets in the history of American politics. Many of us were shocked. We were shocked that a man, who during his presidential campaign, made fun of a crippled man; called for a ban on all Muslims entering the country; threatened to have his opponent put in prison; put himself at odds with the American news media outlets; and just showed a general disregard for civility and propriety throughout the entire campaign on numerous occasions could ever be elected to the highest office in the country. We were shocked, but we shouldn’t have been, because this didn’t just happen out of nowhere, no, this was decades in the making.

As far back as the mid-1990s, we can see that a very elaborate system of propaganda and fear-mongering was taking shape. Conservative talk shows were becoming more popular, with figures such as Rush Limbaugh leading the charge. In 1996, however, a much more sophisticated outlet would be launched, and that of course, was the Fox News Network.

Fox News began on the premise that it was the network that was “fair and balanced,” and oftentimes implied, or even outright stated, that the other news networks were biased in favor of the left and were not to be trusted. Without the influence of Fox News and the success of this particular premise, it’s quite possible that the alternative news sources of today would have no footing.

Let’s start by taking a look at a man, who up until his recent termination, was Fox News’ bright and shining star. I’m talking, of course, about Bill O’Reilly. Mr. O’Reilly made a career of playing on the common fears of the religious right, such as losing the right to own firearms; losing the right to be a Christian; the government takeover of healthcare; and America becoming a socialist country; etc.

In 2016, O’Reilly played on the fear of losing our 2nd Amendment rights by claiming that then President Barack Obama’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Merrick Garland, “voted, so the folks know, in Washington, to keep guns away from private citizens,” on the March 16, 2016 edition of his show, The O’Reilly Factor. This claim turned out to be outright false. In fact, Garland voted, while in the United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit in 2008, that private citizens do have the right to own a firearm for self-defense, striking down provisions of the Firearms Control Regulations Act of 1975, which had put more regulations on firearms in the district. So, Garland actually voted in the opposite direction of what O’Reilly had accused him of; but this was the nominee of the Regressives’ favorite boogeyman, Barack Obama, so unleash the fear-mongering conspiracy theories, right?

Some of O’Reilly’s greatest hits come from his disdain for atheists and other secularists, and his attempts to rally his viewers against them. Every year, it seemed, he upheld his time-honored yearly tradition of scaring Evangelicals by claiming that there was a “War on Christmas,” being led by liberals and secularists who were trying to ultimately abolish Christmas and take away people’s right to their faith.

First of all, there is absolutely no evidence for these claims. Yes, there have been movements to remove religious symbolism from government buildings, and that state employees should not make religious references favoring one particular religion, but that is because doing so is unconstitutional! State-sponsored religion is flat out against the 1st Amendment and is unconstitutional; but no one that I am aware of has ever argued that people, as private citizens, do not have the right to hold whatever faith they choose and celebrate holidays as they see fit! These are two distinctly different issues that people like Mr. O’Reilly just don’t comprehend, or just like to stir up their bases with. This is probably just another manufactured “war,” conjured up by the regressive right, to keep their base in fear, and to keep them coming back to them; and guess what, it works. A study by Fairleigh Dickenson University found that watching Fox News increased the likelihood of someone believing that there was a war on Christmas by as much as 10%.

Mr. O’Reilly condemns liberals in general on a regular basis, but never with quite as much vitriol as he does when criticizing atheists. Let me point to another gem of his from August of 2015. This was the earliest edition of The O’Reilly Factor after the tragic WDBJ shooting in Moneta, Virginia. O’Reilly diagnosed the cause of the shooting as the result of America “turning away from spiritualism.” He continued by saying that the liberal media was “openly mocking religious beliefs,” which I have never witnessed on any news network. He went even further by stating, “Every single murderer over forty years that I have covered in these circumstances has been either atheistic, agnostic, nor religious basis at all.” He then posed the question, “Can you point to one person who committed mass murder recently that had a religious background? You cannot.” Challenge accepted:

-Eric Rudolph

-Timothy McVeigh

-Osama Bin Laden

-Jim Jones

-Omar Mateen

There are more, but I think you get my point.

I should also cite the statistics from the Pew Research Center and the Federal Bureau of Prisons that, in 2013, atheists made up 3.1% of the population, yet only accounted for 0.1% of prisoners. Out of 191,322 people in federal prisons, atheists only accounted for 197. So, I am at a loss as to how atheists are somehow less moral than those of a religious faith.

All that being said, despite the fallacies and outright lies, do not underestimate this sort of propaganda. In September of 2009, The O’Reilly Factor had been the #1 cable news show for 106 consecutive weeks. As of March 2015, it remained at the number one spot for its 60th consecutive quarter, with its popularity even growing among 25-54 year-olds. In addition, a study performed by the University of Minnesota, just last year, showed that atheists were still one of the least trusted minorities in America, along with Muslims. This stuff works, people.

Moving on, we all know about the infamous claim that former President Barack Obama was actually born in Kenya and was not a natural US Citizen. This claim persisted for years, despite the fact that Mr. Obama provided his birth certificate, proving his natural citizenship. Even his rival for the presidency in 2008, John McCain, refuted this claim, along with the claim that he was a Muslim. Well, we know that Donald Trump was one of the more vocal fellows keeping this claim alive, but only a niche group of conservatives even paid him attention back then; and as we are all painfully aware of now, he’s a bit nuts. However, you know who is not nuts and actually did have a large audience at the time? Sean Hannity.

As early as the election of 2008, Sean Hannity, both on his show on Fox News, and his own radio talk show was spreading the false claim that Mr. Obama was born in Kenya, completely ignoring the fact that he had provided both the short and long forms of his birth certificate.

That’s certainly not all. You would be hard-pressed to find someone with a significant audience who attacked Barack Obama with more venom than Sean Hannity did and even still does. Let’s check out some of his claims and see how they resonated.

What about when Mr. Hannity claimed that Obama’s Science and Technology advisor, John Holdren, advocated for compulsory abortion? Glenn Beck, another conservative propaganda salesman, had made the same claim months earlier. Maybe this has something to do with why their listeners were scared to death of the Affordable Care Act, thinking that they would be subject to death panels and the possibility of euthanasia! By the way, that claim was later proven to be absolutely false, in case you were wondering.

How about Mr. Hannity’s special he ran on “liberal bias” in the media called “Behind the Bias?” This gold-standard of documentary-making featured a smorgasbord of cropped quotes by people, made to deceive the viewers, such as the clip that showed Katie Couric calling former President Ronald Reagan “an airhead.” It turns out, as most of us know, that Couric was citing a conclusion from a biography of Reagan, and not suggesting it to be true.

In addition to his crusade against then President Obama, Mr. Hannity repeatedly ignored the overwhelming data that showed that employment actually increased during Obama’s tenure as President, claimed on numerous occasions that his policies were disastrous for the economy and the employment rate was dropping! When you intentionally ignore facts or distort them to fit your agenda and deceive the public, that is not journalism, that is propaganda.

Another contributor to Fox News I would like to focus on, briefly, is Jesse Watters. On his show, Watters’ World, he interviews people, usually liberals, that he finds in public and oftentimes at political demonstrations, and asks them questions to essentially try to stump them about their own beliefs. Admittedly, the people that make the final cut to his show do seem rather ignorant; but, and I’m speculating here, simple probability suggests that he does run across liberals who do know what they are talking about. I know they exist because I have seen them! I like to at least think I know what I am talking about, and I’m sure that you, the informed reader, know what you are talking about, so there has to be more! I guess this is why he never interviews a Nancy Pelosi or Bernie Sanders and instead chooses to interview college freshmen, who probably aren’t as well-informed.

Anybody can do this trick. I mean, I have known conservatives who, when you make up the name of a country that ends with “-stan” and ask them what they think about it, they will say that we should bomb it! Every group has its less-informed constituents, and I have absolutely no doubt that these are the ones that Mr. Watters focuses on and we just never see the ones he interviews who actually do know how to substantiate their ideology.

With all this being said, do not underestimate the right’s use of propaganda. We progressives made that mistake last year, ignoring the absurdities being churned out by Fox News and the like, and we took the high road, thinking that people would figure it out and they were just making their selves look bad; and frankly, we lost our ass!

Despite how they may look to us, they are smart, and they understand psychology. As of January 2014, Fox News was the number one rated cable news channel for 145 consecutive months. Fast forward to August 6, 2016, and we see that the GOP Candidates forum on Fox News had, by far, the largest audience ever for any cable news event.

So, in 2015, then candidate Donald Trump hits the scene and takes a bombastic stand on everything that these news outlets had been claiming for years. We would start saying “Merry Christmas” again (implying that we stopped at some point); that the mainstream news was biased and controlled by the left, and were fake news; that our jobs were in trouble and our economy a disaster; that liberals were idiots; that Muslims must be barred from entering the country; that we must repeal the Affordable Care Act because it is destroying healthcare; etc, and he gets elected. Donald Trump as President is simply the end result of decades of fear-mongering for political expediency.

The Republican party has become the party of fear. Last month, after the tragic shooting of GOP congressmen in Virginia, Fox News invited a “Terror Expert” onto the show, who said that the left was now more dangerous than ISIS! They are afraid! They are afraid of liberals, atheists, gun-regulation, universal healthcare, unemployment, Muslims, the LGBTQ community, losing their religious freedom, etc.

If I can be metaphorical for a moment, we all have a fearful, but dangerous snake inside of us. A snake, more often than not, bites out of fear, not because it is some badass. Fear is what makes them dangerous, and just like the snake charmers of ancient Egypt and India, these propaganda artists are very proficient at playing just right notes to make that scared, dangerous snake inside of us come out of the basket and dance.