The Asshole Economy

The revelations that Fox News personalities Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham not only don’t believe what they’re telling their audiences but have contempt for their guests who they give airtime to comes as little surprise to those outside of the Fox News bubble.

A bubble created around not just ideology and political affiliation but quite literally on strategies employed by cults.

A media company can’t constrain your physical environment by shipping you off to Waco or Guyana, but it can do the next best thing by convincing you that any other information that contradicts theirs isn’t an alternative view but is actually fake. As in, everything not them isn’t real.

For everyone outside the Fox bubble - liberals and conservatives alike - what Fox News actually is is plain to see. It’s a propaganda arm of the Republican Party.

That’s not hyperbole.

Among the many revelations that have come out in the Dominion lawsuit, we learned that Rupert Murdoch shared confidential information about Biden’s Fox News ad buys during the election to Jared Kushner.

But the conversation tends to end there. That Fox News is just the communications arm of the Republican Party. Presumably to keep Republicans in power.

There’s actually a larger picture, though, that’s not being discussed… why they want power.

Money.

Traditional conservatism used to stand for smaller government, the rights of the individual, fiscal responsibility, and a robust defense.

If you look at the laws they promote… when they’re bothering to govern in between owning the libs and raising money… they aren’t conservative.

They are a business that’s in business to extract money from taxpayers by capturing the institutions of government.

Massive handouts to the wealthy is not conservative.

Banning books is not conservative.

Passing laws that take away women and minority rights rather than expanding them is not conservative.

The Republican Party is the canary in the coal mine for America’s larger problem…

Pitting people against each other to make a buck.

We’re becoming an economy of assholes.

Media has replaced interaction with today’s mantra… engagement.

Interaction is exchange. A transaction. A sharing.

But it has less heat than engagement.

Engagement is getting attention at any cost. An emotional and psychological coercion.

A coercion that often tries to convince you that somebody you don’t know is out to get you. The Cult of the Perpetual Victim.

The cost we’re all paying for this obsession/compulsion is the disintegration of not just Democracy but the fabric of society.

The next time you’re taking in media and you have a strong emotional reaction, ask yourself this…

Who are you making rich by allowing your emotions to be exploited right now?

If you feel angry and empty after these “engagements”, congratulations. You now know the product they are selling…

Destruction.