So let's see....

[better]

Openly racial animus.
632 filibusters.
A government shutdown.
Full faith and credit of the country held hostage.
A stolen Supreme Court seat.
Nomination for president of a candidate who both advocated war crimes, insisting that our soldiers would not refuse unlawful orders given by HIM because he's a strong leader AND boasted that his celebrity permitted him to commit sexual assault.
Collusion with a hostile foreign power to influence an election.
The election of a president who lost the popular vote, for the second time in less than two decades.
A sweeping tax bill passed in the dead of night, with not a single public hearing, and with the effect of transferring wealth from the middle class to the wealthy and corporations.

Sure is starting to look like we've arrived once more at that time as a people "when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute despotism".

Sound familiar? It's from the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence.
Who remembers what the hallowed founding fathers said about when that happens?

[fierywoman]

1. Love you for quoting this!

[better]

4. Thanks

But I HATE that I have need to.

[fierywoman]

6. uh-huh. yup.

[MFM008]

2. I wish I lived

Elsewhere.

[DFW]

5. Germany may not be paradise, but sometimes I'm glad I DO live elsewhere n/t

[MFM008]

13. I did live there

4 years. Wish I was back there.

[DFW]

3. Their big ace in the hole is this:

With Fox Noise worming its way into the minds of tens of millions, the people don't realize that they are being subjected to despotism.

As in the old East Germany, everyone who was able to receive western TV and radio pretty much knew what their government was up to. The ones who remained true to the regime and swallowed the party line were the ones in a small pocket of Saxony who couldn't receive the broadcasts from the West. THEY were convinced they lived in an absolute socialist paradise, and West Germany was a horrible place with a tyrannical evil regime where no one in their right mind would want to go.

With the Foxsuckers, their exclusivity of informative media is voluntary, but no less destructive for all that. They are convinced Fox is the only source of truth, and that Republicans can therefore do no wrong. Their taxes go up and their health care vanishes? With Democrats in power, it would have been worse. They know that for a fact because Fox said so, and none of us can convince them otherwise.

[better]

7. Yeah I hear you

My neighbor across the street is one. He actually misplaced the Great Recession by a full fucking decade, so that he could blame it on a Democrat. I'm genuinely not in favor of changing our form of government, but we live in a reality in which there truly is no hope for salvation with the First Amendment as it stands now. As long as our press is permitted to brazenly lie to us, there can be no informed democracy.

[DFW]

8. Informed is a key word there

Sometimes it takes a fictional character to express it best if our own politicians won't:

Key word at 7:35

[Angry Dragon]

9. We used to have a Fairness Doctrine.........I believe Raygun got rid of it in 1987

[better]

11. This is way beyond the realm of being addressable by a fairness doctrine.

What we are facing is not merely a media landscape in which one opinion on how to deal with reality is afforded preference. We face half the electorate being completely oblivious to what reality IS.

We either fix that, or democracy dies.
There is no other outcome.

[Angry Dragon]

14. Your response is full of bull

We face half the electorate being completely oblivious to what reality IS.
The Fairness Doctrine would address this
90 of the airwaves are controlled by 6 corporations
75% of the information is either outright lies or half truths
politicians lie.........
What sweeping one size fits all solution is going to fix things?? You sound like you have the one solution, please share
The Fairness Doctrine was started in 1949 .......... I remember a time when what you heard was probably close to the truth
no more...........republicans did not like that
Or is the Fairness Doctrine a good place to start
Black(dark) money??

[better]

16. If I sound like I have the one solution, I am communicating poorly. I do not.

I am merely attempting (albeit perhaps poorly in my currently emotionally agitated state) to posit that a fairness doctrine alone is an inadequate solution. A return to the fairness doctrine would indeed do something to ensure that our point of view would be more widely disseminated. But it would not address the fact that half of the electorate has been brainwashed into dismissing any liberal point of view out of hand.

It is my assessment that in order for a fairness doctrine to be acceptably effective to the objective of an adequately informed electorate, we must have a situation in which it is true both that the views of both sides of the political spectrum are presented in equal measure and that blatant misrepresentation of fact by the press (from either side of the political aisle) carries criminal penalties.

I can readily agree that a return to the fairness doctrine is in order, just not that it is in itself adequate to address the current problem.

Dark money is without any doubt yet another major issue with which we must deal, but dark money would be dramatically less damaging were it strongly legally constrained from representing fantasy as fact.

[better]

18. I suppose what I am getting at, more accurately, is this...

It is because the right wing media has for decades been permitted to get away with blatantly misrepresenting what is factual that we are faced with the reality that approximately half of the electorate is indeed conditioned to dismiss any liberal point of view without any further consideration. Until we fix that, simply getting liberal points of view in front of such voters will be more or less worthless, and I don't see how we fix that without addressing the fact that we permit them to be conditioned by lies to reject any point of view we might potentially get before them.

[Angry Dragon]

19. Picture this if you would

Most of the brainwashed watch Fox News(I have to go wash my fingers after typing that)Fox News has to tell the truth
Fair and Balanced would really be Fair and Balanced..........opinions would change

[better]

20. That's kind of my point.

The issue is not that Fox is not required to air liberal points of view.
It's that Fox is permitted to represent fiction as fact, and that is responsible for what liberal views do get expressed on Fox being rejected by their viewers.

A return to the fairness doctrine would serve a purpose.
Just not the purpose of addressing this particular problem.

[world wide wally]

10. So right on the money,,, and a sad truth for America

[Lars39]

21. Sinclair Broadcasting is expanding

and targeting younger viewers than Fox.

[AmericanActivist]

12. From the Declaration of Independence

“But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.--Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies”


“-That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.”


“In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.”

https://www.archives.gov/founding-docs/declaration-transcript

[Angry Dragon]

15. .............

[AmericanActivist]

17. Thank you I love this document both the

Spirit and the letter of it.

[AmericanActivist]

22. Kicking for the Declaration of Independence nm