Fair and Balanced?…What a Crock of Horse Dukey

I hear that it’s pretty damned difficult for journalists in Russia to even say the word ‘war’. I even saw reports of people being arrested for holding up blank paper with nothing written on it, all being shunted off under police guidance. How outrageous! Right? Well, unless you live in Texas, Florida, or Idaho. Is it any wonder that there are far right radical pundits who are actually voicing approval of authoritarian regimes from Russia to Hungary?

How is the so called “don’t say gay” bill even a thing? We can all complain to high heaven about how bad it is that citizens of Moscow have been arrested in the thousands for saying out loud what is a real thing. But we humans have been trying to silence folks who have enough common sense to think for themselves for as long as we’ve had history. Galileo was put under house arrest for his anti-geocentric ideas by the Catholic Church in the 1600’s. Nelson Mandela was put in prison for his stand against apartheid. Mao killed, god knows how many people for thinking that his communication ideas were oppressive. During the inquisition in Portugal, Jews were given a choice, convert to Christianity or be executed. Missionaries and US government officials demanded that indigenous children speak English, not their native languages. Not a single one of those social experiments worked. Know why? Cuz they’re the epitome of stupidity.

Does anyone, including Vlad Putin actually think that arresting people for saying the word ‘war’, will make it something other than it is? Does anyone including Ron DeSantis actually think that not saying the word ‘gay’ in front of kids will make them something other than they are? Did arresting Nelson Mandela make apartheid evaporate? Does anyone actually think that flashing white power signs on your hands will make you a more sexually desirable human being?

According to Merriam Webster, righteousness is defined as, “acting in accord with divine or moral law; free from guilt or sin.” This is where all of the thought police folks are going to run into trouble as far as I can see. They do pretty well in the part about “in accord with divine or moral law”. They fall flat on their backsides when they get to “free from guilt or sin” though. Every one of these thought police Karens or Darens start their police actions with their own guilt and their own sin. That’s what makes their faux righteousness such a laughable matter.

I believe it was in the early 50’s that a law in New York which was supposed to keep teachers from teaching communism was struck down. Free speech is supposed to be just that — free speech. But we’re living in a period of time where that idea is being attacked on many fronts. One front that one would not expect an attack, is from the media. There is this frenzy in the majority of media outlets to be fair and balanced. Excuse my French, but what a crock of horse dukey. News has never been fair or balanced. Newspapers have been traditionally right or left leaning. And they should be. As the cheeky meme says, “if it weren’t for free speech we wouldn’t know who the idiots are.”

It appears that folks like Sr. DeSantis is what we would call a bandit. He destroys things, but he himself benefits. That’s opposed to stupid people who destroy things with no benefit to anyone. Here’s the thought process so you can check it out for yourself. Sr. DeSantis’ law to “not say gay” does not benefit anyone other than Sr. DeSantis. It does not help gay children. It doesn’t help straight kids either. It doesn’t even help straight laced, prudish parents. Laws like this one and the Texas abortion law encourages goofuses other than law enforcement, to persecute their neighbors under the law. Does anyone actually think that folks who do that persecuting will not be seen as pariahs in their communities? But Sr. DeSantis wins by a divide and conquer strategy. What a wonderful political system that is, huh?

It seems to me that the thought police think that they or someone somewhere, has the power to cause people to think about things a certain way, due to some supposed power to influence how folks think and believe. Now there’s a perfectly absurd idea. If that were true, then the Gosar boy would have common sense or his brothers and sisters wouldn’t. It would be hard to explain Trucker Carlson from that perspective. Much less Elon Musk. Or Jeff Besos. How did those fellows get to where they are? Who screwed up and taught them to think for themselves?

The only way to overcome these nonsensical ideas which Karens and other thought police types would visit upon us, is education. But education as we know it today may actually promote the “us and them” considerations in our thinking machinery. “Brain imaging studies have shown increased signaling in the amygdala when people make millisecond judgments of “trustworthiness” of faces. That’s too short a time to reflect conscious processes and likely reveal implicit fears.” (source). In other words, deep in our other than conscious thinking we tend to consider “us and them” ideas for issues related to food and other survival issues even if those issues are not actually present. That’s the problem with ideas like Mr Putin’s “don’t say war” and Sr. DeSantis’ “don’t say gay” ideas. They’re not supported by conscious, sensical thought. They are supported instead by nonsensical fears which have no basis in reality, other than they are disembodied fears.

My question is why would people like Senator Graham and Senator Cruz or Sr. DeSantis or Mr Putin or even Trucker or Marge stoke those fears? It certainly isn’t for the health and well being of the people in whom they promote fear. It appears to be for their own self serving purposes.

But senators and congressmen who promote fear aren’t really all that much of a worry. They don’t have near the power they’d like us all to think they have. No one gives all that much credence to politicians. But newscasters? That’s another issue altogether. People who present “both sides of an issue” by presenting the idiotic ravings of self serving politicians, are often trusted as truth tellers or educators. They are often nothing more than opinion mongers. I don’t mind that. I think that’s their actual job. I think they should be overly obvious about that part, however. I don’t think that journalists have the right, much less the obligation, to be fair and balanced. I think the public deserves to have to make up their own minds to digest and understand events, but just events. I do not think it is either fair or balanced to report such atrocities as Marge’s thinking on authoritarian regimes, nor Sr. Ron’s ideas of governance. I think it’s a journalist’s job to report on the actual event and if he or she has an opinion about that event they should clearly make it obvious that they are expressing their opinion. I would think that would be more nearly aligned with the ideas of education as opposed to aligning with the thought police arm of moral righteousness.