frame name metaphor spin
5/20 sorta generic? could also include meme and story<div>
</div><div>see other
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</div><div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">awake = alive = light = active/agent</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" /><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div>
</div><div>How the right wing uses language as a weapon</div><div>
</div><div> Magdi Semrau May 04, 2021</div><div>
</div><div>Right-wing operatives have recently mounted a campaign against the idea and practice of "wokeness." The word has the pretense of a neutral reference, but is<b> increasingly used to debase and belittle the underlying meaning of anti-racism and anti-bigotry<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">. </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Similar rhetorical tactics have a long history in conservatism, as they allow the GOP to obscure policy objectives, while simultaneously evoking negative and positive emotions. Overall, the GOP benefits from imprecise language soaked with connotation. Unfortunately, journalists and some liberals keep falling for it.</span></div><div><b>
</b></div><div><b>In the case of "woke" and "wokeness," conservatives are undermining a positive idea with derisive figurative language</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Consider a converse example, in which the Republicans advanced an ugly principle through positive framing: waterboarding. It was described as "enhanced interrogation" by conservatives, and that was repeated by the press corps. </span>However, if you actually describe what's involved in waterboarding—making a person temporarily experience drowning—Americans respond with repulsion. Conservatives knew this, so they chose to be evasive. "Enhanced interrogation" is more palatable than both "torture" and "simulated drowning."</div><div>
</div><div>Language can be exploited to great political effect. Words convey meaning two ways. By denotations, the actual real-world reference of a given word or phrase. <b>And by connotations, the feelings they evoke. The GOP systematically uses language that obscures denotation and advances connotation.<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);"> </span></b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The case of "wokeness" is not so different from "enhanced interrogation," but, in this case, the underlying denotation—awareness of social injustice—is good whereas the connotations are unfortunately negative. As they did with "enhanced interrogation," conservatives are using figurative language to obscure deeper principles and create a fog of feeling, rather than reason.</span></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The GOP's use of such language—figurative, imprecise, but laden with connotation—gained prominence in their backlash to the civil rights movement. After a certain point, it was of little benefit to conservatives to explicitly state they were opposed to equal rights for Black Americans, so they adopted fuzzy terms. This strategy was famously outlined by the late Lee Atwater, a chief architect of modern GOP rhetoric:</span></div><div>
</div><div>You start out in 1954 by saying, '[n-word], [n-word], [n-word].' By 1968 you can't say '[n-word]'—that hurts you, backfires. So you say stuff like, uh, forced busing, states' rights, and all that stuff, and you're getting so abstract. Now, you're talking about cutting taxes, and all these things you're talking about are totally economic things and a byproduct of them is, blacks get hurt worse than whites. … 'We want to cut this' is much more abstract than even the busing thing, uh, and a hell of a lot more abstract than "[n-word], [n-word]."</div><div>
</div><div><b>Here, Atwater specifically argued that, to advance racism, conservatives should embrace abstractions, given that racial slurs no longer confer electoral success.</b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);"> This tradition of linguistic manipulation continues to pervade our discourse. From "illegal alien" to "states' rights" to "politically correct" to now "woke," the Republicans have perfected the art of language devoid of concrete specifics, but charged with big feels</span>.</div><div>
</div><div><b>That language has this power presents a challenge for journalists. Reporting should be informative and neutral. Yet with increasing frequency, the press corps uncritically adopts whatever linguistic frame has currency. The result, predictably, is neither informative nor neutral. What do Republicans actually mean when they criticize "wokeness?" It's unclear. Yet journalists repeat their rants without clarification.</b></div><div>
</div><div><b>Consider what "woke" actually denotes. The origin of the expression is unknown, but references to "staying woke" in African-American English can be traced back to Lead Belly's recording of "Scottsboro Boys," a song about young Black men who were falsely accused of rape</b>. <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Recently, "woke" gained prominence during the 2014 Ferguson protests when it was used to signal awareness of anti-Black racism.</span> <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 0);">"Woke" then proliferated online where its meaning broadened to describe anyone who was aware of systemic racism. Finally, the meaning shifted to encompass an awareness of bigotry in general. Now, lexicographers define "woke" as "aware of and actively attentive to important facts and issues (especially issues of racial and social justice).</span>"</div><div>
</div><div><b>While the current use of "woke" arose from African-American English, "awake" as a metaphor for awareness has deep cross-cultural roots. Wakefulness as revelation is referenced throughout both Buddhism and Christianity as well as in the work of poets and playwrights. It is, in fact, the same metaphor underlying the "Age of Reason"—or the Enlightenment—such that Kant wrote, "Enlightenment is the release of man from a state of bondage.</b> … Have the courage to use your own understanding!" "Wokeness" was present in American political movements long before BLM. Republicans—proud descendants of Abraham Lincoln—might be interested to learn that an early anti-slavery faction within their own party called themselves "The Wide Awakes."</div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 51);">So, what "wokeness" denotes is overwhelmingly positive: awareness of bigotry and concomitant opposition. Yet, recently, as conservatives have co-opted it, the term has become derisive. "Woke" people are unserious. You're allowed to roll your eyes at them, because they are sensitive and sanctimonious. In this sense, "woke" has unfortunately become a <b>dysphemism. Whereas euphemisms soften underlying meaning (the dead "passed away," for instance, or the woman is "with child"), dysphemisms do the opposite (the dead "croaked', for instance, or the woman got "knocked up").</b></span></div><div>
</div><div>What's denoted by "woke" has been eclipsed by connotations. When we hear "woke" now, we do not think of its history as a metaphor for awareness. We certainly do not think of the Enlightenment. <b>We think of pious scolds. And then, perhaps unwittingly, we transfer this pejorative connotation to the underlying principles of social justice.</b></div><div>
</div><div><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">We can't expect rhetorical honesty from the GOP, but we can ask more of the press corps that reports on conservatives' use of "woke."</span> When reporters repeat the GOP's derision of "wokeness" without explaining the underlying denotation of the word, they are serving as a conduit of conservative propaganda. Such reporting is neither informative nor neutral. The meaning of what's said is, at best, obscure and imprecise. Failure to report the underlying meaning allows the negative connotations to prevail.</div><div>
</div><div>So, if an elected official claims "wokeness" is bad, journalists should ask them what they mean! Journalists could ask, for example: "Is anti-racism bad? What about anti-bigotry in general?" If they refuse to define what they intend when they deride "wokeness," journalists should do it for them by citing the dictionary definition.</div><div>
</div><div>We are in an existential battle. The forces of bigotry are strong, and, in many ways, our electoral system allows them to flourish. However, the evidence is clear: the actual principle of "wokeness"—the broad "awareness of social injustice"—is increasingly popular. We cannot let conservative rhetorical manipulations muddy this fact.</div></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">300k kia</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha: conflation of economic pain/damage to physical human death (bs pseudo-rational is disease of despair kia increase in recession] property>ppl</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">economic health vs human life</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">f</font><span style="color: rgb(76, 81, 87); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">ox contributor </span><b style="color: rgb(76, 81, 87); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px"><a rel="nofollow" target="blank" href="http://click.e.mediamatters.org/?qs=8c4b53f4a5cb50a48df493008afa6b2131b4db9bc10f2f8da3a725b103b2c5ee3fc6033cebc9f3845fe64845d871668f1a9444c6a1ad6ecf" title="Kimberley Strassel" style="color: rgb(25, 118, 210);">Kimberley Strassel</a></b><span style="color: rgb(76, 81, 87); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">: “Economic lockdowns, we know, they are causing as much if not more damage than the virus itself.</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: rgb(76, 81, 87); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">
</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><span style="color: rgb(76, 81, 87); font-family: " helvetica="Helvetica" neue="Neue" arial="Arial" sans-serif="sans-serif" font-size="font-size" px="px">// tucker death is inevitable</span></div><div style="font-size: medium;"><font face="Times New Roman" size="4">=</font></div></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">aha-ish: Bannon promoted djt as disruptor,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);"> A STORY:</span> the system is sick/rigged so he will blow it up and give us something better; he will fight your enemies (the chinese, the godless commies/boomers, drain the swamp, restore American pride/dominance [coal mfg]; relatd to throw the bums out they are all crooks? What do trumpistas think the swamp is? they atre fine with crony capitalism b/c bizmen <b> MYTH [is a recurring/useful/ meme-able story?] </b>are tough minded, numbers-based tough realists who will be efficient and stop wasting our tax money on losers/POC <b>lazy welfare queens</b>. so we should not be surprised when system crashes, because trump ppl know nothing, and are grifter rent-seekers. all they know about gov't is how to leech off it and dump their messes on it. short term / self-ish thinking: how do I/the books look good for next qtr (or for trump the next news cycle, which is 12 hours?!)</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">as someone else recently observed (burn dwn hse gingrich?) gop has built in political/rhet advantage b/c willing to crash the system to maintain power. (gives them leverage in negot? BUT lost votes in gov't shutdowns?]</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-derangement-syndrome-those-of-us-who-warned-america-that-fascism-was-coming-were-called-hysterical-alarmists-we-were-right-all-along/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/08/trump-derangement-syndrome-those-of-us-who-warned-america-that-fascism-was-coming-were-called-hysterical-alarmists-we-were-right-all-along/</font></a></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Do you remember “<a href="https://www.salon.com/2017/01/08/you-have-been-warned-trump-derangement-syndrome-will-be-a-cudgel-used-to-silence-his-critics/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Trump Derangement Syndrome</a>?”</font></div><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It was a cute phrase that likely first appeared in 2015, deployed by prominent voices across the political spectrum to demean, mock, reject, dismiss and deflect the warnings that <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/23/ruth-ben-ghiat-on-trump-and-the-bitter-american-truth-we-do-not-have-a-real-democracy/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">Donald Trump was a fascist, an authoritarian and a white supremacist</a>, not to mention a vile and dangerous human being with <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/07/31/dr-justin-frank-it-is-terrifying-to-have-a-president-who-is-psychotic/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">apparent mental pathologies</a> who posed a <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/08/03/trump-is-getting-truly-desperate--and-that-means-hes-increasingly-dangerous/" target="blank" rel="noopener" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">massive threat to American democracy</a>....</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; font-size: small; background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">-----</font></p><div>
</div><div>sparked by :</div><div>
</div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/experts-fear-trump-supporters-will-be-dangerous-if-he-loses-the-last-gasp-of-a-dying-party/" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/07/experts-fear-trump-supporters-will-be-dangerous-if-he-loses-the-last-gasp-of-a-dying-party/</font></a></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div style="font-size: small;"><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The United States has a long history of bitter, divisive presidential elections being followed by gracious concession speeches. But Journalist Andrew Feinberg, in an article published by <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/trump-lose-2020-election-supporters-maga-presidency-a9606081.html?utm_source=reddit.com" target="blank" style="text-decoration-line: none; font-weight: bold; color: rgb(0, 51, 153); outline: none; box-sizing: border-box; margin: 0px; padding: 0px; transition: color 0.3s ease 0s; cursor: pointer;">The Independent</a> on July 7, examines the possibility of far-right violence if Donald Trump loses to Joe Biden in November.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“Even by the hardball standards of American presidential politics,” Feinberg explains, “Trump’s reelection bid stands out in history as the sole example of an incumbent president who is pushing his supporters to view a loss as the end of the republic rather than the end of his political career. This unprecedented strategy is raising concerns among experts on extremism and authoritarianism, and even veterans of Republican politics who say it is likely to result in violence should Trump lose in November.”</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Trump is hardly the first U.S. president to play hardball during his reelection campaign. President Richard Nixon, in 1972, slammed Democratic nominee George McGovern unmercifully and was reelected by a landslide. Had Nixon lost to McGovern, however, he would have no doubt congratulated him and moved on; for all his corruption and ruthlessness, Nixon knew when to quit. But as Feinberg points out in his article, Trump’s rhetoric has been historically over-the-top.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">“While speaking last Friday at the foot of Mt. Rushmore as part of an official, taxpayer-funded celebration of American independence,” Feinberg notes,<span style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);"> “Trump characterized the anti-racist protest movement that has swept the country in recent weeks as ‘a new far-left fascism’ and a ‘left-wing cultural revolution’ that is ‘designed to overthrow the American Revolution’ and ‘would destroy the very civilization that rescued billions from poverty, disease, violence and hunger, and that lifted humanity to new heights of achievement, discovery and progress.’"</span></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Feinberg adds that on July 4, the day after his Mt. Rushmore speech, Trump gave a White House speech in which he railed against “the radical left, the Marxists, the anarchists, the agitators, the looters” and asserted that defeating them in November would be akin to “the process of defeating” the United States’ enemies during World War II.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Brian Klaas, a politics professor at Universal College London in the U.K., told The Independent he “would be surprised if there is not at least some sporadic low-level violence around the election” if Trump loses.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">Klaas warned, “In modern American history, there has never been a major mainstream political figure who has argued that his opponents are not legitimate.” And the things that worry Klaas about the hardcore MAGA bass, he told The Independent, include the “high concentration of weapons among Donald Trump’s supporters” and the “steady diet of information that tells them that they are the last defense for America against some conspiracy against them.”</font></p><p style="margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255);">According to Klaas, “People who have really worked themselves up in this vortex of disinformation… and have really gone down the rabbit hole…. may take Trump’s tweets literally and say, </span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">‘OK, they’re my enemies. They’re committing treason, they’re part of the Deep State, and it’s time to be a patriot and stand up against them.’ That would be very, very dangerous.”</span></b></font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Former Republican Rep. Joe Walsh, who was a Tea Party favorite befor he became a Never Trumper, also fears the possibility of violence from the far right if Trump loses. Walsh, interviewed by The Independent, described Trumpism as “the last gasp of a dying party” that will become “even more desperate” if Democrats retake the White House and the Senate in November.</font></p><p style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); margin: 0px 0px 17px; box-sizing: border-box; outline: none; padding: 0px; line-height: 1.8;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>“They will engage in violence,” Walsh warned. “They will engage in trying to stop the machinery of government from even working.”</b></font></p></div><div style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-size: small;"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">=</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><a href="https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/mitch-mcconnell-wants-to-get-rid-of-the-governing-process-and-right-wing-media-is-helping-him"><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" color="#000000">https://www.alternet.org/2020/05/mitch-mcconnell-wants-to-get-rid-of-the-governing-process-and-right-wing-media-is-helping-him</font></a></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">no lnx</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">mitch McConnell wants to get rid of the governing process — and right-wing media is helping him</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">Written by Nancy LeTourneau / The Washington Monthly May 16, 2020</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">If Joe Biden wins the election in November, he will face the same thing every Democratic president has faced since Bill Clinton: a country broken by Republican policies (or the lack thereof). While it’s true that Biden isn’t likely to have to deal with two endless wars in the Middle East, we don’t yet know the lengths to which Trump will go to rescue his narcissistic ego from the prospect of being a “loser.” But we do know that he has decimated the entire federal bureaucracy and will leave the country in the worst economic shape since the Great Depression.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">In light of that, our friend Ed Kilgore writes that Biden will need to avoid the mistakes of the Obama presidency.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">But there’s a major problem with Biden winning the presidency and partying like it’s 2009: Obama’s record in dealing with that crisis was mixed at best, even though he had political assets that Biden will not enjoy (e.g., big majorities in both congressional chambers) and faced conditions that were bad but nothing like today’s…Does Joe Biden have the rhetorical chops to overwhelm Republican opposition in a way that Obama could not?</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That last question is what caught my eye. The “rhetorical chops” Kilgore refers to are often captured by the term “bully pulpit.” The assumption is that if a president can use superior rhetoric to convince enough voters to support his agenda, Republican opposition will give way. The comparison is often made to FDR.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">The New Republic’s Osita Nwanevu cites Biden’s expressed determination to reshape America like FDR did and sensibly notes that he “would have to unite an extraordinary proportion of the American public — not only in support of his agenda but in support of him, personally, as a political leader, just as Roosevelt did.”</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">But there are a couple of political dynamics that have changed since those days. First of all, Mitch McConnell has demonstrated that he doesn’t care what the majority of American voters think. He has not only promised to return to his mode of total obstruction if a Democrat is elected president, but Republicans have also developed a strategy to maintain their power—even as they slide into a minority.</font></div><div>
</div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">The perfect example of how Republicans dismiss what voters want came in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook shooting when it became clear that over 90 percent of the public supported common-sense gun safety measures—including a majority of Republicans. But McConnell and his cohorts simply obstructed that legislation as well. They have no reason to care what voters think because they are never held accountable.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman"><b>The other dynamic that has changed since Roosevelt was president is that Republicans are more than happy to lie with abandon, knowing that right-wing media—led by Fox News—will buttress those lies. That nullifies the use of the bully pulpit to unite Americans behind a president’s agenda.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">We saw how that worked when, during negotiations over Obamacare, a provision that would have allowed Medicare to bill for end-of-life planning was turned into </span><b style=""><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 153, 0);">“death panels.” Given that their base has been convinced that they can only believe what right-wing media tells them and everything else is “fake news,” they buy into the lies</span><span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">.</span></b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">That is not only the challenge Obama faced, it is also the one that will confront Democrats if Biden is elected. It is true that, as Kilgore suggests, it could be mitigated with the abolition of the filibuster in the Senate if Democrats win a majority in that body. At this point, the biggest obstacle to that happening isn’t that Biden opposes it. A majority of Senate Democrats do as well.</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">It is also possible that the effectiveness of total obstruction could be minimized if McConnell loses his bid for re-election in Kentucky. On the one hand, his successor is likely to maintain a strategy that has worked so well for their party in the past. <b>But McConnell has been extremely successful at keeping his troops in line—primarily through the use of his coffers of campaign cash. It is possible that the next Republican leader could experience some defectors.</b></font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
</font></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman" style="background-color: rgb(255, 204, 102);">All of this is why it is so important for Democrats and mainstream media to focus on challenging the way that Mitch McConnell and right-wing media have been so successful in subverting the entire governing process. The first step in correcting the problem is to accurately name it.</font></div></div><div><font size="4" face="Times New Roman">
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