HOW DO YOU MOVE AN IMMOVABLE OBJECT? – A RANT ABOUT FOX NEWS

Posted: March 11, 2023 | Author: | Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: , , , | 1 Comment

I’m frustrated. I’m completely stymied and I don’t know what to do about it or how to move forward from it or how to get passed it. I have found an unstoppable force and I have come face to face with a truly immovable object, and it has left me in a highly unsettled and anxious state and shaken my idea of how the world is supposed to work to its white hot core.

Willful ignorance. Wickedly willful ignorance and weaponized stupidity. I don’t know how to get past the fact that some people on this planet will not, do not, or simply cannot care when faced with confirmed factual truths that go against their beliefs. And no, I’m not talking about religion, although I suppose I could be, but religion at least has that element of faith innately built into it.

I’m talking about something that in our current culture actually measures close in its societal impact that organized religion has: I’m talking about the goddamned flat-out fucking liars at Fox News and the mind-blowingly baffling fact that their viewers just straight-up don’t give a shit that not only were these disingenuous fear-mongering monsters purposefully misleading them about the sanctity and security of the American democratic process, but that there is now substantial legal proof that the knew they were spreading falsehoods and did it all in the name of keeping their shareholders rolling in the green.

It’s all out there: Tucker Carlson hates Donald Trump, and thinks he’s a destroyer and a demonic force. He texted that. Those were his own words. He and his criminal cronies and cohorts at Fox News knew that the election was fair, that there was no problem with the Dominion voting machines, and that all of the claims they were pushing nightly after the 2020 election that fatefully led to the January 6th attempted insurrection were fully completely thoroughly blatantly 100% goddammed fucking fake and false. Not only fake and false, but again, in their own words behind the scenes, “crazy”.

My dad’s response to that when I told him and showed him: “I don’t care. I like what they say.”

Me: “What do you mean you don’t care? (showing him my phone) It’s all right here – They’ve been comprehensively lying to you, purposefully misleading you into believing something hugely important with massive consequences that simply wasn’t true, and they fucking knew it!”

My dad: “I don’t care. I like what they say. Don’t show me that stuff.”

My brain: Endlessly folds in on itself creating a singularity that destroys the universe.

I dropped the conversation there, mostly because I was basically overcome with an inability to speak or form words because, like seriously, what the ever fucking fuck? How do you respond to that? How is it possible to get past, “I don’t care that they’re lying to me because I like what they say.”?

I am so thankful that my father and I actually do have other things that we can talk about and that I’m able to quash my desire to scream some bloody sense into him, because there would be no point. There is no point in trying to convince someone of something that they do not want to be convinced about. They’re zealots for their faith, so maybe, and I shudder to say this, maybe this cult-like Trumpism is actually turning into more of a religion than I previously ever thought it would or could. Things have quite apparently gone that far. This is worse than the internet hyperbole about Trump probably being able to get away with shooting someone on 6th Avenue in broad daylight; this is people openly admitting that they basically wouldn’t care if he did, just like they don’t care that their favourite Fox personalities have been wantonly playing them for gullible rubes all along because their idiot eyeballs equal advertising dollars.

It’s all there in the documents. Rupert Murdoch himself thought his on-air personalities were going too far with their lies and admitted that he knew the claims of election-fraud were complete and utter bullshit, but hey, it brought in viewers, so all good, right? Well, I guess so, because their viewers obviously don’t mind being lied to as long as they get that endorphin hit of hearing charismatic people repeat their worldview to them against a background of soothing colours and attention-grabbing graphics.

I want to make my usual joke about this being the dumbest timeline, but you know what? This shit ain’t even a little funny and this is the only timeline we’ve got. How the hell are the rest of us supposed to exist in a world where a good percentage of the people know that their beliefs have been based on blatant lies and flagrantly choose to not care?

Truth doesn’t matter. Facts don’t matter. Logic doesn’t matter. Reality doesn’t matter.

Somebody – Please! I’m desperate! Tell me how I’m supposed to get past that? How am I supposed to get along in a world where verifiable truths have been rendered meaningless in the face of maliciously willful ignorance? Because, like, I think I’m at least a slightly intelligent person, but I don’t have the first clue around how to deal with this! So can someone smarter than me please lend my brain a boost and give a homey a hand? I don’t ask for help often, but I’m completely lost around this.

(Please note that I’m not actually asking for help and I’m being mostly facetious, though I am wildly upset and confused about the fact that a good portion of the Fox News viewers I’ve seen on social-media either didn’t know about these revelatory text-messages (because Fox won’t report on them), or haven’t cared about them if they did know and continue to consume that media that has basically – now openly – been spoon-feeding them lies, untruths, and completely slanted propaganda all along. How they can not care about that is beyond my comprehension and that’s a factual truth that we can all agree on.)

Contextual links:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/dominion-defamation-lawsuit-trump-carlson-1.6772571

https://www.cbc.ca/news/world/fox-dominion-suit-murdoch-deposition-1.6762607