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
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