Fox News’ Deadly Calculation

While doom scrolling over the weekend, I noticed these headlines in the space of about 30 seconds:

First, I read a Mitch McConnel quote, “It’s the Supreme Court’s job to issue rulings that Americans don’t like.”

This was followed by a new Missouri law restricting pharmacists from advising about Ivermectin, stating, “A pharmacist shall not contact the prescribing physician or the patient to dispute the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets for human use unless the physician or patient inquires of the pharmacist about the efficacy of ivermectin tablets or hydroxychloroquine sulfate tablets.”

Then I read about the mass murder in Buffalo. The House Republican minority whip Elise Stefanik has become a primary target of criticism for enabling white nationalism through her spread of Fox News’s Tucker Carlson’s racist diatribe — racial replacement theory. The arrested gunman in Buffalo subscribes to this radical racist conspiracy nonsense.

We now live in a world where the Supreme Court is filled with justices who rule against the public’s wishes. My trusted pharmacist cannot warn me about medication, even if that medication could harm me. And where Fox News, America’s most popular news source, and high-level government officials are encouraging and spawning white nationalist mass murder targeting people of color.

This is our United States of America in 2022. ‘I’m proud to be an American where at least I know I’m free,’ says the white man’s song.

Jewish space lasers, cancer-causing windmills, bleach injections, alleged Democrat leader pedophilia, and Obama’s birth certificate are just a few examples of crazy right-wing thought and talk currently poisoning our nation’s politics. This occurs while multiple deadly serious and real crises loom over our collective heads. Hence, my pathetic and endless doom scrolling.

I have no problem debating the pros and cons of abortion laws or working with both sides to determine the most effective ways to keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. These are discussions the nation must have. However, using hyperbolic, wing-nut theories solely for ‘ginning up the base’ is freaking dangerous. Who gave Fox News a license to kill?

But I figure Tucker Carlson and his handlers at Fox have made that deadly business calculation. They know that by constantly poking the bear of race replacement and Critical Race Theory, people will die. It’s simply a matter of time before some whack job lights a fuse or starts shooting an easily accessed AR-15 into a crowd. Fox has worked an acceptable number of innocent lives sacrificed into their faux American outrage equation.

Sadly, the nation is waiting for the allowable number of murdered innocents to be exceeded. Sooner or later, a shooter, bomber, or poisoner will come along that will pull the trigger on a mass murder so vast that even Fox News won’t survive it. And then the nation will suddenly stop short, take stock, and move in a new, super-controlled direction. The only question is how many lives will be lost at that moment, and will the change even make a difference in our lives because we are running out of time.