Fox News Mounting Campaign to Foment Hostility, Insurrection, Civil War

The lust for open hostilities and bloodshed is palpable amongst the folks at Fox News who are deliberately inciting all out war and encouraging their audience to embrace their most malevolent tendencies and act them out.

Fox Nation Gun War

This dangerously irresponsible effort is revealed on the network broadcasts and in the editorial decision making on their web site. There are presently at least fifteen separate stories with delusionally hyperbolic headlines. Fox is feverishly framing the debate on gun safety as one that is un-American, unconstitutional, and an elaborate scheme by a tyrannical administration whose desire they believe is to subjugate the nation’s population and force them into slavery. They present President Obama’s proposals as an imminent threat to liberty and personal safety.

What does Fox expect to happen when they terrify their viewers with assertions that their very freedom is at risk? Is Fox conscious of the animus that is already prevalent among right-wingers who are convinced that the President is a foreign agent working on behalf of our enemies? Are the network executives taking these delirious fictions into consideration when they publish headlines like these?

  • King Of The Gun Grabbers
  • NRA: Obama Wants ‘War’ So We’re Preparing for ‘Battle’
  • Nation’s Biggest Gun Store Calls for Revolt
  • Across Heartland, Sheriffs Vow to Fight Obama’s Gun Ban
  • Rand Paul Pledges to ‘Nullify’ Obama’s Executive Orders
  • Rubio: ‘The President Doesn’t Have the Guts To Admit He Doesn’t Believe In The 2nd Amendment’
  • Rand Paul Unveils Plan To Stop Assault On 2nd Amendment
  • Rubio: Obama Is Abusing His Executive Powers
  • Missouri House Proposes Jail Time for Federal Gun Grabbers
  • Levin: ‘This is 1930s Stuff … Why Do We Need a National Database of Citizens Who Own Guns?’
  • HURT: Gun Edicts Put Personal Liberty Under Fire
  • Starnes: Freedom, Tyranny and Granny’s .38
  • Oregon Sheriff to Biden: We Won’t Enforce Your New Gun Laws
  • Congressman Seeking Obama’s Impeachment Compares Him To Saddam Hussein
  • TEXAS THREATENS TO ARREST ANY FEDS WHO TRY ENFORCING NEW GUN REGS

There can be only one purpose for this sort of inflammatory rhetoric. Fox intends to increase the heat beyond the boiling point for people who are already on the verge of drastic action. The people for whom this resonates are deeply disturbed by delusional threats of oppression and servitude. What makes this even more troublesome is that these same people are likely to be heavily armed and not averse to using their firepower to defend their country from phantom enemies.

Fox seems to be trying to convince these Psycho Chicken Littles that now is the time to step forward and pledge their lives to the cause of freedom as defined almost singularly by the right to possess weapons of carnage that were never meant to be deployed outside of military use in wartime. But that’s what Fox thinks this is: Wartime! And their obsession with portraying fellow Americans who have a difference of opinion with them about the interpretation of the Second Amendment, as traitors can only have tragic consequences.

Pew Gun PollA brief review of the stories illustrated above is evidence of the extremism that Fox is tapping into. It is not accidental. They are executing a deliberate strategy that is fraught with risk and is contrary to the views of the majority of Americans. A new poll by the Pew Research Center shows that large bipartisan majorities favor bans on semi-automatic weapons (58%), bans on high-capacity ammunition clips (54%), and universal background checks (85%). The only option in the poll that garnered less than 50% was the one advocated by the NRA to increase the number of guns in our communities.

With support like that from the people, it is plain that Fox is directing their rhetoric at the fringes – the malcontents and miscreants who are most likely to wreak havoc. Exacerbating this problem is the fact that the fringes are no longer relegated to their traditional place at the outer rungs of society. Today they are on television and in congress. We have numerous public “servants” talking about secession, insurrection, nullification, and impeachment. And the presence of Fox News, a cable news network that rewards such talk, and participates in it, is only asking for trouble.

Life After Congress: Dennis Kucinich And Allen West Take Different Paths

The election last November returned President Obama and most of congress to the jobs they already had. However, a few notable exceptions resulted in changes to the Washington roster. This year we know what happened to a couple of the losers.

Dennis Kucinich was something of an enigma. He held fairly reliable liberal positions on issues related to the economy and the environment. He was also staunchly pro-life [Correction: Kucinich changed his position on abortion in 2002]. One of the more annoying traits he displayed was his eagerness to appear on Fox News where he would be abused by right-wing anchors and panelists and waste everyone’s time by expressing opinions that Fox viewers would never give serious consideration.

Now that he lost his seat in a primary that pitted him against a fellow Democrat due to redistricting, he is making the trek to Fox more permanent. It was announced today that Kucinich has signed on to be a regular contributor on the network that only hires Democrats as either targets to humiliate or puppets to manipulate into attacking their former colleagues.

Allen West was not enigmatic in the least. He was a flaming right-wing lunatic who believed that the Democratic caucus was teeming with commies and threw Nazi references around as if they were compliments. He was so certifiably nuts that even Fox wouldn’t touch him. So he signed up with the also-rans at Pajamas Media where he will be hosting a Glenn Beck style webcast. And viewers will have to shell out for the pleasure of watching West spew hyperbole and bile at his perceived enemies of liberty.

Both of these ex-legislators have made career choices that will lead them to ignominy. Kucinich will enjoy a bit of notoriety on his Fox perch for a while, but will lose respect due to his craven self-promotion and sycophancy to his new masters. For a preview of where he is headed he can look to other Fox News Democrats like Kirsten Powers, Pat Caddell, or Dick Morris. It’s not exactly a bright future.

In West’s case he will simply fade from the scene and be forgotten as befits a one-term representative who failed to distinguished himself as anything other than a psychotic, mouth-foaming crackpot. His model for the future is Glenn Beck who also has a subscription webcast. But West doesn’t have nearly the following or media savvy of Beck. Even so, Beck’s star has fallen precipitously since he was booted off of television. He is now relegated to a distant studio in Texas from which he sends out his alarmist communiques. Just yesterday Beck declared that civil war is imminent and displayed a loony flow chart that made little sense.

Glenn Beck

Beck never satisfactorily explained how this path would traverse from “Compromise” to the “President Complains” to a “Tragic Event” to “Blame” to an “Executive Order” to both “Violent Rebellion” and “Peace.” But that’s the beauty of insanity – no one expects it to make any sense. And in that respect West is a natural for this medium. His followers will surely find him and everyone else will forget that he ever existed.