Ann Davidow

The mainstream media has a tendency to talk about news sources as if they were just expressing opposing views of a given issue, even though it should be apparent by now that nothing of the sort is true. There are even those in the general population who acquiesce in some tortured sense of fairness to the notion that Sean Hannity on Fox is stating an opinion on the right just as Keith Olbermann on MSNBC does on the left.

The difference is, however, that on Fox opinion is propped up by opinion whereas on programs that maintain some sense of integrity opinion is informed by factual material.

Rationales for the way our economy operates are in constant conflict. Lower taxes are a conservative rallying cry, but tax cuts tended to put money in the pockets of the rich without benefiting most Americans. The transfer of wealth to the affluent did not create jobs but, resulted, rather, in massive layoffs, pay cuts and benefit reductions or “increased productivity” for those seeking euphemisms to describe the process.

Some analysts agree that our tax system needs re-working in order to create a revenue stream for needed social programs, close loopholes and produce something resembling a level playing field. Of course free-marketeers decry any effort to redistribute wealth as tantamount to creating a socialist form of government.

The witless chatter that consumes so much media and congressional air time is never-ending. No matter how often health-care reform is defined, for example, Republicans keep repeating the same talking points about a government takeover that will destroy the doctor-patient relationship and ration health care, ignoring of course that insurance companies are the interlopers, the deniers and the greedy consumers of health-care $$.

The party insists that free enterprise is the glue that holds the country together and that market forces will return it to prosperity. Never mind that free-wheeling money handlers bundled unsound mortgages into precarious investment properties that brought the country close to financial ruin. It’s easier to blame Fannie and Freddie and ACORN.

It has become increasingly clear that great swaths of the public are deliberately misled rather than informed. Led by political deluders and poseurs calling themselves journalists they cling to long-held, preconceived ‘facts’ and resist anything that intrudes on their certitude about everything from health care to national security.

Sometimes it seems that callers to programs encouraging listener participation are reading from hastily scrawled notes that parrot a Beck or Limbaugh screed. If the subject is the economy, President Obama is accused of turning the country into a socialist training ground.

Every once in a while I force myself to watch at least a portion of a right-wing, self-congratulatory event just to see what goes on in that rarified atmosphere. It isn’t really so much an educational endeavor as it is a reminder that a lot of scary people continue to market the same old rhetorical wares. And no matter how ill-conceived their efforts have proven to be, many in their camp still regard them as heroes and support the premise that America is safer due to their efforts despite the mess left in their wake.

The wonder is that the neo-con triumph over common sense and intellectual integrity is so thoroughly ingrained in the psyche of supporters that appeals to rational debate literally fall on deaf ears. There wasn’t a single mea culpa for obvious missteps among the who’s who of conservative bigwigs at a recent “Keeper of the Flame” awards dinner held under the auspices of the Center for Security Policy. Former Vice President Cheney, at his unpatriotic best, asserted that President Obama has placed the country at risk by not following in the muddy footprints of his predecessors and for “dithering” and “waffling” about Afghanistan.

When it comes to the issues, no-one is better informed or more willing to find common ground than the president. But there’s a yawning chasm between government’s duty to deal with the country’s macro-economic condition and its obligation to address the plight of ordinary Americans at a time of financial peril.

It is hard to sell bailouts for banks and industries to voters struggling with foreclosure, inadequate health care and limited job opportunities. Especially infuriating, large salaries and bonuses are still shamelessly the order of the day at financial institutions that continue to operate at the limits of responsible business procedures.

How tortured our belief systems have become. Things that seemed immutable in the past have been warped into unrecognizable forms whether the topic is religion, the economy, or our political environment. Agencies we always thought would protect us are often fronts that don’t speak to the interests of regular folks. And by the time they’ve been proselytized and pulled in a dozen different directions the American people end up clueless about who’s telling the truth and who’s just jerking them around.

How is it that Christianity is the fallback position for many of our politicians and pundits when all else, and most especially logic, fails? Who knew that Jesus was a free-marketer or that God would always bless America no matter what course our leaders undertook? And how did “The Family” on C Street come to be regarded as a religious, tax-free institution where prayer meetings and bible readings by right-wing lodgers could hide ethical and moral lapses from view?

What’s to be done about the descent into the world of non-sequiturs in which so many on the right and some on the left engage? The amount of time dissecting every issue great and small only diminishes the ability of most people to make sense of their world and the politics that surround it.

One of the more outrageously eye-popping discussions occurred between Bill O’Reilly and Brit Hume of Fox News during which they skewered the NY Times for being biased.

In what bizarre universe does Dancing with the Stars qualify as “reality TV” or any other definition of reality? And how did a disgraced former congressman end up cavorting in outlandish outfits as a participant in such a travesty? Indicted for illegal campaign-finance dealings, Tom DeLay apparently couldn’t stand being out of the limelight despite having dishonored his time in office.

But the antics of dubious stars are something way far apart from the reality average folks face in lives fraught with anxiety about health care, jobs, and fears about our foreign engagements. The president is being pressured now to make decisions about Afghanistan by the very people who were so deadly wrong in the past.

What began as anger and outrage at the excesses of radicals in government and right-wing media has become something more deeply distressing. It isn’t just that mean-spirited, low-minded rubbish is so widely disseminated. More disturbing is the ignorance that infuses so much of the rhetoric and the degree of public acceptance that attaches to it.

Despite real issues, real problems and their impact on real people, the noise from the opposition crowds out rational discourse. It’s like trying to listen for discernible speech in a windstorm. If it’s health care, abortion is wedged into the debate and “abstinence only” programs in school are promoted by conservatives who want something to write home about.