For the companion Skunk Podcast episode that goes with this article, click here.
Call the Proctologist: We Have an Asshole Problem
It seems counter-intuitive that anyone would want to come home from a long day of work, turn on the TV, and be yelled at by some angry person. Yet this has proven to be one of the most popular forms of evening entertainment, and the manner in which at least half of the country consumes its news. Strange, isn't it? Well, not as much as it might seem. The intent of this article is to examine the slippery business of being a professional demagogue.
The real secret to why people tune into such cesspools of negativity is that the bloviating anger-golems on networks like Fox News aren't yelling at the viewer, they are purporting to be yelling for them. Every night these "news hosts" shout into the abyss at an amorphous blob of faceless enemies that includes Muslims, transgendered people, abortion doctors, and Karl Marx. And lazy viewers who have never read Karl Marx, encountered a Muslim, or met a transgendered person are made to be terrified of these things.
Thus, the exhausted person coming home from work to turn on Fox or OAN isn't doing so because they feel like being read the riot act by some chinless maniac in a cheap suit, but rather because they perceive the person yelling at them is somehow their advocate in life. The outraged opinion show host is the 1-800-The-Law-2 of keeping transgendered people out of your child's school restroom - they'll fight for you.
There is a fortune to be made in distracting people from what their real problems are, and the most prominent demagogues of our day - Ben Shapiro, Sean Hannity, Tucker Carlson, Donald Trump, Candace Owens, Rush Limbaugh et al. - have mastered the art. It's a sleight-of-hand as simple as saying "look behind you" and then taking the person's wallet when they turn around. It really is that basic.
The Ol' Switcheroo
"Is your company downsizing and moving production overseas? It's because those communist liberals on the coasts hate America and love China."
This kind of lazy scapegoating works because it is easy for people to digest - "communism is bad, and coastal liberals who don't believe in god have nothing in common with me. People who are cosmopolitan care more about the outside world than they do about our country. They did this. They hate America."
In reality, even a cursory look into an example like production moving overseas will reveal that coastal elites (or whatever pejorative you want to call educated people who live near water) aren't communists, don't love China, and, if anything, tend to vote for things that prevent companies from sending labor overseas and protect American workers (strengthening unions, industry regulations, etc.). The real reason American companies outsource labor is easy: capitalism prioritizes money over human beings, and your company found a way to save a buck by hiring Chinese slave labor instead of paying you a fair wage. People are tricked into voting for this cycle to continue via the professional distraction that is the right-wing culture war industry.
Business interests partner with right-wing media to spread the long-debunked lie that unfettered, free-market capitalism with zero rules, regulations or accountability is "what's good for business". Any attempt to regulate or otherwise protect workers and consumers is portrayed as "stifling business", and therefore stifling you.
It is in the interest of corporate America and the financial industry to have people believe that predatory loans are good for them, that the economy will be destroyed if DuPont has to stop dumping toxic waste in our drinking water, or that laws preventing banks from making risky investments with people's retirement money will "kill Wall Street".
My favorite example of how people have been seduced into siding against their own interests is the incredible brainwashing job done by the health insurance industry. Private health insurance is such a bald-faced and obvious ripoff that the industry needs people like Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh to come out and spin their brand for them. Which, for money and attention, these unscrupulous people are only too happy to do. So here's how this works.
The health insurance industry needs Americans to believe that private health insurance at extortionate prices is the greatest thing that could possibly happen to them. Any attempt by "the left" to give healthcare to people for a reduced price or - god forbid - for free, must be painted as a communist takeover of the American way of life. An existential threat. And our favorite loudmouth TV personality will pull out all the stops to paint it that way.
The spin on right-wing media becomes some version of this: medicare for all is not an effort to provide healthcare for everyone - it's actually a sinister socialist agenda whose real goal is to assassinate Mickey Mouse in front of your children and piss all over John Wayne's Grave on the 4th of July. (That's honestly not even much of an exaggeration. Go read my article about the Great Mr. Potato Head Dust-up of 2021 to see an incredible deployment of this type of distraction.)
The only attempt at what might be considered a reasonable argument in favor of private healthcare is that competition among private insurers will keep their prices low. This is the ol' "kill em all and let the market sort it out" approach so favored by libertarians and others who hate the government and prefer private industry in all things.
Okay. Sure. But who would look at an American health insurance bill and call it "low", especially when the other option is "free"? The idea that these companies relish a good ol' competition in the marketplace is bogus, because the minute competition comes along in the form of a low-cost public option, these private companies lose their minds and spend billions to eliminate it.
Why? Because their interest isn't in providing you healthcare to begin with. They're interested in providing profit to their shareholders. Welcome to free-market capitalism, which can never be counted on to put people first. Its goal is always profit; you should never expect it to do the right thing or help anyone who doesn't own a share.
But, thanks to our professional demagogues telling their audience that cheap or free public health insurance is communism, people will fight tooth and nail to protect their right to be extorted by private, for-profit companies. It's astonishing what the partnership between demagogue and industry has accomplished in getting people to stand up for their right to be ripped off.
It's almost like the Hamburglar telling you salad will make you fat, and then luring you into McDonald's day after day to eat pure crap. You slowly pack on the pounds and drift into a diabetic coma, believing to your last breath that the Hamburglar was on your side. Then McDonalds pays him and they both can't believe what an idiot you were.
"Here, I brought you something light..."
The health insurance industry is a good example, but the professionally outraged pundits we tune into night after night cover for other moneyed interests as well. And the amazing thing is that they only need a handful of go-to topics to distract their audience, most of them interchangeable. While the audience is busy getting pissed off about these surface level, ridiculous "hot button issues", the banks, insurance companies, fossil fuel industry, and other bad actors rob them blind.
One pictures a Fox News host like a puppeteer opening a chest of puppets, wondering which ones to bring out and wave at the children each night.
The typical list looks something like this:
Communists / socialists / Marxists are taking your freedom
Someone wants to censor you
Your childhood is under attack
White people are being replaced
Sharia law is coming to your town
Mexicans are storming the border
Public healthcare is communism
Liberals want to take your guns away
Liberals want to make it illegal to be conservative
Liberals want to make it illegal to be a Christian
There is a war on Christmas
The thought police are coming to get you
The real victims of racism are white people
America is perfect and anyone who disagrees hates America
The left wants to turn your kid into a transgendered person
Count on right-wing media to drag these beauties out on any given night of the week. Even when conservatives are in political control of the country, they must constantly portray themselves as the victims. It's the only way to keep their enraptured viewers from taking a break, looking around, and realizing how utterly conservative policies are failing them. The demagogue knows that if the cycle of grievance ever stops, the whole thing falls apart, because there is nothing productive actually happening behind the scenes.
The minute people have the attention span to realize that trickle-down economics is a myth, or that lawless free-market bonanzas lead to economic crashes and years of abject misery, is the minute they're in danger of switching sides. This can never be allowed to happen. Thus, we have a captive audience whose worldview is colored by a steady diet of false victimhood and manufactured bitterness. At no point is this audience hearing new ideas, or positive views on the evolution of our culture. It is always - and must always be for the trick to work - regress, regress, regress. Your way of life is slipping away, and someone is replacing it with Caitlyn Jenner and a Mexican. Regress, regress, regress.
I've collected a few Tucker Carlson headlines so we can see what I'm talking about. And just to point out how lazy and repetitive this crap is, I'll tick off the numbered topics from the list above that each headline covers.
This is a good one. Any time somebody wants to improve America, they must be saying it sucks and they hate it. But don't worry, Tucker is on your side - he loves America and thinks it's perfect. Case closed. No need to do anything else.
I suspect this must be a War on Christmas segment - the yearly Fox tradition where the pundits mourn the death of Santa Claus after Bernie Sanders ritually kills him and blows a shofar over his corpse so that the 12 tribes of Israel can assemble and feed on his flesh. (We're ticking off 14, 11, and probably 3, if the picture is the context clue I think it is.)
This is the golden oldie "Democrats are thought police and independent thought is going to be made illegal soon". Which is usually just cover for "I got banned from Twitter for calling Obama the N-word". Bonus points for a picture that manages to cram in AOC, Bernie Sanders, and a bunch of guns which, presumably, are in danger of being snatched away from patriots. (This one ticks 1, 2 , 8, 9, 10, and 12.)
This is like an encore version of the thought police trope, only here Tucker seems to be upset about immigration. I'm guessing he is pointing out that migrants are crossing the border at rates that he finds uncomfortable, and that his efforts to dehumanize them are being looked at as racist, which he then spins into "I'm being silenced and intimidated". (This one ticks 1, 2, 4, 6, 9, and 12.)
Tucker's name is in crosshairs here, because he's obviously a target/victim, as usual. Don't worry though, he's brave and he's going to say what's on his mind. Which, of course, is going to be more drivel from our list of talking points. I suspect somebody else put that over top of this photo, but who cares, it sums it up perfectly. (Specifically 1, 4, and 7.)
I'd love to know how the country responsible for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade and whose bloodiest war was fought over whether black people are property isn't racist at its core, but hey - maybe this prep school white dude who used to wear a bowtie knows more about it than I do. (Ticking off 3, 4, 13 and 14.)
It's only a matter of time on any of these broadcasts before the specter of transgendered people and their relationship to children is raised. (Ticking off 15.)
Okay, you get the point - it's the same list of bullshit day after day, trotted out like a tired hooker to service its audience all over again. These fifteen fallacious and asinine issues have come to define modern conservatism, and you'll notice that they are all reactionary and fear-based. Who would want a government that operates based on that list?
A little under half of America, apparently. And we wonder why the world laughs at us.
A Pause To Be Childish
Not that I'm in a hurry to look at Tucker Carlson's face any longer than I have to, but those pictures reminded me of something important: so many of these guys look like puppets. Tell me these men don't look like there's a hand inside them just waiting to articulate their mouths. It's uncanny.
Okay, full disclosure: one of those pictures is actually of a pair of sock puppets. But I'm not going to tell you which one.
Why Do We Put Up With This?
It's not so much that we "put up with this" as it is "being forced upon us". The whole raison d'existence of the Right-Wing American Demagogue is to fight societal change because societal change costs their masters money. That's it, pure and simple.
Forcing car manufacturers to conform to environmental standards costs them money. Admitting climate change is real costs the fossil fuel industry money. Public option healthcare or medicare for all are a threat to the profits of health insurance companies. Gun control is a threat to the firearms industry. Immigration and racial justice are threats to the white financial and cultural hegemony of the United States. Regulations on banks and investment firms cost them money and bars them from the type of reckless gambling that they love (because they get to do it with your money, and if they lose there's no consequence).
The list goes on and on, but the point is that for every asinine War on Christmas grievance, you are guaranteed to find some wealthy interest behind it. Either that, or somewhere a "left/liberal" policy is achieving success, and a sideshow must be conjured to obscure that fact. Any non-conservative policy success must be hidden at all costs from the audience, who need to be kept angry and voting over cultural issues while the banks run away with their house.
So to answer the big question: why do so many Americans have a predilection for angry people yelling on TV? Because they are being manipulated into thinking it's for their own benefit, that the people doing the yelling are their friends. In reality it's the opposite. Nothing is farther from the truth.
I honestly think that for some of these right-wing pundits, the whole thing is just a grift. They're in on the con, and they know exactly what they're doing. It's just business for them, and, like Donald Trump, these are people who have no real ethos of their own to begin with. They don't really care about Dr. Seuss being cancelled or gender neutral bathrooms, it's all about being paid for the outrage. Whatever they need to say or do to get attention and make money is just fine with them. Looking at you, Kayleigh McEnany.
Those are the clever ones. But for others, I think they're just as fooled as their viewers are, only they happen to be good at hosting a show and spinning the types of narratives that get people to vote in the interests of their masters. Either way, it's all just money, and what could be more American than that?
Many of you no doubt read this whole article and thought "well no duh, Trash Skunk, or whatever your name is (it's Sean), I know all of this already. This stuff is obvious."
You would think, wouldn't you? But it's not. Fox News is routinely the most watched cable news channel. Rush Limbaugh was arguably the most successful radio broadcaster of our time. Mush-brained opportunists like Ben Shapiro top the New York Times Best-Seller list whenever they excrete a new test tube full of their drivel into the world. So whether or not you personally know how this all works, somebody out there who looks up to Jordan Peterson really needed to read this, and hopefully learned something.
Additionally, my focus on right-wing political pundits doesn't mean that I don't hold the left responsible for their own versions of these figures. But I will say that the problem on that side of the aisle, at this particular moment in history, seems to be dwarfed by its conservative counterpart. The real lesson, no matter what side of the aisle you're on, is that cable news is a ratings-driven cesspool, and not the best way to inform yourself about the world. It's quite literally toxic waste, and you deserve better. If you made it through this article, you have what it takes to begin reading print journalism. Do it.
Look, we all have our triggers. If someone is pulling yours, you need to examine why, and for whom, they are doing it. Because it's almost never for your benefit.
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