Letter to the Editor: Just stop it!
I hoped for a dialogue. In life, it’s okay, even productive, to disagree. I’m finished though, indulging lies and insults. Just because you don’t have a better argument. I respect your right to your opinion. You don’t think so, since you don’t respect my right to mine. I’ve listened enough. We don’t want the same things. I want a productive way forward. You want to destroy things. I want cooperation. You want to fight, to “be right,” and have it all your way.
I don’t often know what to say. You a have prefab response to everything. All else fails, blame it on “fake news.” Two words, and you declare yourself winning every time. Facts I point out are irrelevant. Your facts, cherry-picked, massaged, or manufactured, are what counts.
I’m shell-shocked. Another day blindsided. Successive rounds fired from out in right field. Another bizarre offensive because you saw something on the news today. Wave upon wave of criticism, complaint, and conspiracy. I’m sent reeling, and the blitzkrieg continues. Your rapid-fire of information doesn’t make sense! I am overwhelmed by continuously shifting jargon and hooey!
You have “the real news,” you say. You don’t say where it comes from, but you also watch CNN and MSNBC, so you have a broad view. You are super smart and open-minded. I am in a trance and a fool. The implication is clear: You’re the authority and completely unbiased. Your sources are pure. More “real” than my fraudulent sources for national news which I’m supposed to be ashamed of: The New York Times, The Atlantic, The New Yorker, The Week, Time, regular TV, and my SmartNews feed where, like a lot of people, I read an assortment of random stories that are manipulated to suit my reading habits. But it’s not like I’m studying for an exam. I don’t happen to have a rebuttal for every weird accusation whenever you demand one. Backed up by a list of facts in my hip pocket for you to reject no matter what I say. “Fake!” You smirk and tell me I’ve “bought in.”
After 1/6 an article in The New Yorker by Luke Mogelson, “Among The Insurrectionists” detailed what happened at the United States Capitol before, during and after the insurgency. Later I learned Mogelson had “spent the previous ten months reporting on the radical fringe of Trump supporters, from anti-lockdown militias to fascist groups such as the Proud Boys.” He detailed the people he recognized from previous events that day at the U.S. Capitol. He described what people said, what they did outside and inside the House Chamber, what they wore, how they interacted with each other, and with the overwhelmed members of law enforcement. Six people are now dead. Several more officers are severely injured, some permanently, we’ve learned in the aftermath.
Two days after that article the footage from The New Yorker was released. I watched everything Mogelson had described on MSDNC. Fake news? I recognized the man with the camera wearing Proud Boy colors, black and yellow, an undeniably bold plaid. Though the Proud Boys, members of the “Groyper army,”as the alt-right call themselves, had decided to go “undercover” that day to the U.S. Capitol. There was the authoritative man in the green army flack jacket and green helmet. Men in red MAGA hats were rifling through Congress member’s desks trying to remember if Ted Cruise was on their side, or not. They decided he was. The Q-Shaman, obviously, howling and showing off the written message he left for Congress on the dais, “…Justice is coming.” Are my eyeballs fake news too?
I guess you’re watching Tucker and Sean. Listening to Rush? Facebook? You still don’t say. They’re already spinning a different reality, I know that much, trying one, then another, getting their story straight. Settling into a comfortable groove, “Everybody doin’ us wrong.”
An 87 percent approval rating for Donald Trump among Republicans following his sedition against the United States, only five Republican Senators willing to stand up and call it what it is, as memories fade three weeks later. Those who said impeachment was necessary are quickly changing their tune. Rand Paul stood up and argued a phony technicality. Your buddies, down in Georgia and in Colorado, elected White Supremacist QAnon conspiracy theorists to Congress. Certifiable Marjorie Taylor Greene and Lauren Beobart are now spewing nothing but venom, carrying on endlessly, staging a daily shit-show. We’ve got Kevin McCarthy traipsing down to Mara Lago to kiss His Majesty’s ring, despite his original normal reaction to a President of the United States provoking treason. It’s no surprise Super Patriot, Florida Congressman Matt Gaetz, turned up in Wyoming Friday to “censure” Liz Cheney for having a spine. On behalf of poor downtrodden MAGA, having melted-down last year over doctor recommendations to wear a cloth mask to work during a pandemic. Showing up to his job wearing a gas mask instead, by way of “protest.” It seems y’all just can’t move on from crazy. You’ll be moving permanently then, to Wonderland with the Hatter?
You still claim you’ve cornered the market on patriotism. I think Joe Biden and Kamala Harris are patriots. They’re getting to work dealing with the problems in the country and the world. I worry the country and the world won’t weather another go-round with your kind of patriotism so well, or with a so-called “Patriot Party.”
Your insistence Trump isn’t a racist, that in fact, racism doesn’t exist at all. Your refusal to “see,” the lasting effects of Jim Crow; the current attempts at a reboot by your party. Your “feeling” that climate change and the pandemic are “hoaxes,””overblown,” or “a scam.” The repeated implication that mask-wearing during a pandemic is histrionic in some way, and an affront to your liberty. (“Boo-hoo!”) Your tacit support of sedition. Or is it outright support? I suppose it depends who you listen to.
Is it suspicious that Joe Biden won?
Donald Trump had a 35 percent approval rating when he lost the election, the lowest of any modern president. The majority of Americans are disgusted. Because of Trump’s overt racism, by the continuing and blatant efforts by the Republican Party to cheat and restrict voting, and by your adolescent attitudes and behavior. Trump was the lying-est president of all time. He botched the pandemic and is openly contemptuous of science and scientists. Even the word “science” is a problem for you now, as are the basic health measures for curbing the spread of disease. You complain we don’t give Trump credit for the good things. Trump spent most of his time and energy watching TV, tweeting, inciting division and playing golf. He stopped doing his job for months while he was trying to steal the election. I thought we weren’t supposed to give participation trophies out to everyone.
You wanted and expected Trump’s cheating to work. Your entitlement issues again. You love him and he understands you. Somehow in your mind that equals he should be the president no matter what? That’s unAmerican! Rationalization is not a point of view!
Nobody supports defunding the police. Except anarchists, obviously, and right-wing mouthpieces who provoke and stoke division so they can rake in as many dollars as they possibly can. Nobody supports anarchists. Our President and Vice President support funding the police. Black Lives Matter supports funding the police. Democrats support funding the police. We also support funding improved education and expanded social and mental health services to better serve the specific needs of communities. We can walk and chew gum. We don’t believe all available funding should go exclusively to bloated police budgets for military-style gear and weaponry. We don’t believe law enforcement is the best first-responder in every situation.
It’s a legitimate position. Note that I am not saying mine is the only position. We still live in a democracy, thankfully. Some people forget.
“Defund the police” is a meme started by protestors after the entire world watched George Floyd brutally and senslessly murdered. George Floyd was strangled to death for eight and a half minutes on the street, in broad daylight, by a police officer while a group of other officers stood by watching and did nothing. Floyd repeatedly said he couldn’t breathe. This has become an all too familiar scenario in our country. “Defund the police,” as a broad concept, was discussed by liberals briefly in the context of police reform. Anybody who knows anything at all understands the concept of police reform is more complex than a meme taken at face value. The only people talking about literally defunding the police are extremists on the right using it as a blunt political weapon.
Right wing TV and radio mega-personalities are right now gleefully lining their pockets using FAKE NEWS to rebrand the intent and meaning of a catchy meme for the express purpose of pleasuring their all-too eager audience. A demographic more interested in it’s never-ending list of grievances than it is in ever finding solutions. That would be you.
Helene Day
Graeagle