Thread by @l78lancer

Tucker Carlson doesn't need to be fired or resign. Fox needs to yanked off the air, forever. They're a national security threat.

When racist Tiki torch marchers chanted "Jews will not replace us," it resulted in violence, mayhem, and death in Charlottesville. It was no accident.

When Trump:

1. fed the republican base a steady diet of election lies, and falsehoods about immigrants being able to make white republicans votes count less;
2. told a racist organization to "stand back and stand by" to signal his sympathies with them, then

3. inevitably lost the election because of the absolute chaos he wrecked upon the nation due to incompetence, corruption and negligence during his four years in the White House...

...it stoked the racist Capitol Insurrection and attempt to overthrow the government that was all but a foregone conclusion. And, that insurrection was led by those same racist groups with which he assiduously cultivated that kinship. That, too was no accident.

So Tucker Carlson coming right out and self-righteously lauding racist, ethno-bigoted, and xenophobic replacement theory on what is still the biggest disseminator of rightwing propaganda in the country as if he was a preacher delivering the punchline...

...to a Sunday morning sermon, it is deliberately intended to destabilize the social order of America. He's not dog whistling. He's issuing a Christo-fascist fatwa and a call to arms.

The rightwing sees it as an existential threat, and they are treating it accordingly.

Unfortunately, too many others see it as an annoying, silly, comical, disjointed, irrational but largely aberrant inconvenience they wish would hurry up and die out, or for Biden or someone else to fix. But, it's not going away, and it will require more than just Biden to fix it.

I believe that's because too many Americans have become fundamentally lazy, disinterested, and ignorant about the meaning of democracy. We're arrogant, entitled, and don't know how to keep it. Maybe it's because too many of us have never had to do anything to truly earn it?

Citizenship may be the birthright and inheritance for many, but too many have no idea what's required to earn the right to keep it. Now that it's on the verge of being seriously tested, not only do many of us not know how, they are oblivious to the coming tests.

It's like kids who inherit a mansion but have no idea how to be homeowners.

Fox and the Murdochs are complicit because they allow their corporation to inject that poison into America's bloodstream. They've tolerated every bit of the noxious bile for the sake of profits.

Note this, too. It's also hard to swallow that the timing is no accident, as Carlson's proclamation of devotion to pernicious racist dogma happens to occur during the midst of a police trial over a racist killing that is no doubt the biggest police trial in this nation's history.

It's hard to overlook that regardless of the verdict, Carlson beating the drum and planting racist seeds will severely aggravate racialized tensions and responses during a time when police response to possible unrest across the nation is likely to be suppressed because of the...

...universal scrutiny currently placed on police. We know this because we have seen this before like when the sat back in the wake of the Eric Garner killing. The question is will we pretend lie we haven't and act surprise when it occurs?

Remember, it's no accident.

The time for polite discussion of race in America is over. Just like the republicans in congress have no intentions of polite discussion, negation, compromise or presentation of ideas, neither do the the extreme rightwing voting base of their party.

Fox should be completely discredited as a media outlet for their role. Any and all augments about the validity of their 1st amendment concerns should be thrown out. It's clear the motivations and goal of their message isn't to inform but to disrupt. They intend to cause harm.

That disruption has been shown to cost lives and is manifestly dangerous. With only one side in this nation wedded to the democratic precepts laid out in our constitution, how much longer will we pretend there are two rational, reasonable and responsible sides in this discussion?

So please forgive me if I don't seem amenable to the specious slippery slope discussions, phony debates about first amendment rights, or high falutin academic discussions about how put upon people who support Trump feel because the believe their culture is being taken away.

It's too late for that. The people with whom reasonable Americans want to reason have no interest in reasoning back. Based on their actions on 1/6/2021 they have made it clear that they would rather see you or anyone else dead than to yield any power. Besides, it's all lies.

They want the world to believe they are victims. But it's funny how as more information comes out about the underlying reasons for the insurrection, the majority of people arrested are not economically deprived - many are quite well off - but they are racially aggrieved.

So what's really going on, and what's America going to do about it?

The fact is America tends to never really see what they think they see with their own eyes. That's because we, as a people are delusional, self-absorbed, and caught up in our own greatness.

Or if we see it, we soon become distracted and forgetful about what happened. It's a disgrace that both the Floyd death and Capitol insurrection happened.

But in many pernicious ways they are connected, and they both needed to happen in order to slap cold water on the nation's face to wake up and pay attention.

America is largely sickened by what occurred, but the fact is both things have been occurring to black people, and...

...in black communities by racist whites for generations. And, America simply chose to either pretend that it wasn't happening, or explain it away with tepid rationalizations of victimhood and white grievance.

We have stated in unequivocal terms exactly what's been going on.

But America is too busy or otherwise distracted to take it seriously, to stay focused. If we continue under that pretense, we do it not only at our peril, but that of our children and their future. It's not alarmism or hyperbole. It's the sober reality of our current existence.

The age of demagogues, kleptocrats, kakistocracy, and tyranny is here. It's no accident, and this is not a drill.

And I don't give a damn if your feelings are hurt, don't like how I said it, or believe it's not conciliatory enough. That is a big part of the problem. Get over it.

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