This Unholy Mess

For several reasons, it was sad to read Linda Bolin’s response (“The Focus should be Biden, not Trump,” Nov. 16) to my earlier letter (“Trump University lives”). Okay, it was sad for more than several reasons, but I’m working with a word limit here.
It was sad first because Ms. Bolin apparently found it impossible to admit that our former “president” is indeed still “teaching” millions of Americans, and that through his example our national dialogue has become a kind of puerile orgy of self-indulgence, threats, and bullying. Near fist-fights in the Senate, shoving matches in the House of Representatives. Our former “president” has brought us all into the gutter, and has done it so gleefully that his followers are equally gleeful when they hear him describe his political opponents not as “wrong” or “misguided” but as “vermin” who want to “destroy this country.” Ms. Bolin must understand that the outcry against this behavior is not Trump Derangement Syndrome so much as an appropriate response to Deranged Trump Syndrome.
Instead of acknowledging the existence of Trump-Juvenile University and the dangers it represents for all of us, Ms. Bolin engages in one of the creakiest old gambits of those who have no defense whatsoever, which is Whataboutism. Don’t look at Trump, look at Biden. He’s the crook! She lists a series of crimes that are “involved” in the inquiry launched recently by a fire-breathing, hyper-partisan Republican House Oversight Committee: bribery, influence peddling, money laundering, and tax evasion. Pretty devastating, except for the fact that none of those have been shown to attach to President Biden’s behavior at all, a fact which Ms. Bolin conveniently ignores–or perhaps doesn’t realize. So far, the hearings seem to have discovered only what is already known: that Biden’s son, Hunter, is a tragic figure, a recovering addict and something of a sleaze-ball. Is this the basis for impeaching a president?
The second reason Ms. Bolin’s response is sad is that it demonstrates the ill effects of exposure to the large volumes of misinformation consistently offered by Fox “News.” Human consumption of these bits of misinformation, better referred to as poisonous “Foxins,” almost inevitably results in delusional views of the world, or, in its worst manifestations, complete detachment from reality.
I am reasonably certain that severe Foxicity infects Ms. Bolin’s letter because I make a somewhat masochistic, due-diligence habit of looking at the Fox News website most days, surveying the collection of twisted headlines, full of innuendo and distortion and oh-so short on facts. Rest assured I am always careful not to get any Foxic material on my clothes.
Armed with that background, I couldn’t help but notice that much of her language is lifted almost directly from the tabloid-style (not to say trashy) political articles about the Bidens found among Fox’s other gems of “news,” such as high school teachers who are found to be sleeping with their students, the “Dem-Run” cities that are completely overrun by addicts, prostitutes, and looters, and this week’s C-list starlet who is still “rocking” a bikini at age 58.
Her comment that carries the heaviest load of Foxicity is the one insisting that the Republican House Oversight Committee members “…now believe they have enough evidence that the Bidens should be quite worried about.” Tellingly, over the past six weeks, versions of this same language have appeared over and over in Foxic headlines, sometimes in two or three articles a day. The hilarious/tragic anticlimactic gist of them is that the committee now has air-tight, certain evidence that is likely to conceivably, probably, potentially result in a further move toward possible impeachment, maybe. I confess to having laughed out loud after reading some of these headlines. Click bait for MAGA-maniacs, but–alas for them–nothing more.
I know I should not be laughing. The whole charade, the whole deception that attempts to present Joe Biden as a worse choice for president than the man who only a year ago, in his rejection of the rule of law, in his never-ending delusional quest to avoid acknowledging losing the 2020 election, called for the “termination of all rules, regulations, and articles, even those found in the Constitution.” I have to assume from her letter that the level of Foxicity afflicting Ms. Bolin places her among those who endorse suspension of the Constitution. She appears to be part of that group of Americans who have somehow been duped into accepting the dismantling of our founding principles at the insistence of an opportunistic, self-absorbed seditionist. In truth, none of us should be laughing.