The Rise Of The Middle?

 


It's weird when you're like me and you get your news from Google News. Google News is an aggregator site for trending websites from all over. I personally think it's one of the better ways to quickly scan the top stories of the day and get a good round picture of what's going on without any perceived bias. Now, am I saying Google, the tech side of the company Alphabet, has no political leanings? Of course not. We know they do. And it's decidedly left.

But I do believe the algorithms that are in charge of separating the wheat from the chaff of everything on the Magnificent World Wide Web make what looks like a very egalitarian selection from all sorts of news sites be they right, left, or somewhere in between, and assembles them in what looks like a hierarchy of just simple, common popularity.

So tonight I'm reading about the surprise ousting of uber right wing Crazy Man Tucker Carlson by Fox News and before long I'm presented with the news of another shocking sack, that of uber left wing super woke man Don Lemon from CNN.

Is this just a crazy coincidence that both men are fired unexpectedly and without explanation on the same day? Social media is a buzz with all manner of assumed reasons but perhaps there's a bright side to all of this.

Could this be the beginning of the start of a new dawn of moderation? Could the middle be rising again?

Seems to me, at least as I seem to be remembering it now, that back around 1992, society seemed to be a lot more centrist. We had just elected a moderate Democrat with a lot of centrist appeal who ran against a Republican sitting president, himself pretty moderate.

But then I think it was sometime during Clinton's second term in the late 90s things started going wonky. I think that's around the time Hillary got her panties all in a bunch when her nationalized health care plan fell apart and she started blaming that and other problems on a vast right-wing conspiracy.

Thus began the beginning of the Hillary bashing trend that would continue and escalate on well into the new millennium. 

Then you have the controversial 2000 election and within a year Bush's reaction to 9/11 and the lies he propagated on the public just to lump Saddam Hussein into the mix as payback for that dictator's gunning for his daddy.

And As Time Marches On, with each year, it seems like new events bring up to widen the gap.

Various States passing civil union for same-sex laws being met by Newt Gingrich and his Defense of Marriage Act.

Crazy fundamentalist Church groups loudly protesting at funerals of anyone deemed even slightly left being met by LGBTQ groups dressed as angels with massive wings designed to block the signs of the protesters.

Sarah Palin mocked by SNL becoming a widespread meme of the 2008 race and the eventual victory of Barack Obama being met by Donald Trump and Friends building up a frenzy with his racist accusations of Obama's birthplace authenticity and question of his Christianity.

Which brings us to the 2016 race or virtually everyone thinks Trump is an entirely diluted idiot for thinking that his blatant and bombastic racism, womanizing, Shady dealing, and outrageous narcissism, could ever get him elected. And it was met by the incredible fact that he did.

The circus that was his four years in office met by almost all media lampooning him, prodding him, childing him, only to be met by not only him being pissed off and all the more determined to shove it in all of his naysayers face but all of his basket full of deplorables.

Add in a little abrupt pandemic no one ever saw coming, a wave of uprising after a black man is killed by a cop which no one saw coming, followed by a riot and raid of the nations capitol, which no one saw coming. And this was all met by a call for calm and collectedness right? Nope. Instead we get more division every day, blasted at us through all media sources and as loud as can be. All with the likes of Tucker Carlson and Don Lemon as the cheerleaders of the far right and the far left respectively.

And now they are silenced.

So we'll see what becomes of this. Will Fox News start to pull punches on their practically daily bashing of the feeble man in the White House? (I mean we all know it we can see it, but have a little decorum as a news station, show but don't applaud it. Cronkite never get on TV and outed Kennedy for his womanizing though he and his journalist cronies surely must have known. Some things are better left kept quiet.) Will CNN start to pull punches on their oh so favorite punching bag the Donald? (Well even a more moderate CNN probably won't stop pointing at the dumpster fire that he is. I mean a dumpster fire is a dumpster fire, and has to be reported about.)

Maybe soon, someday, someday real soon, we can all go back to The Way We Were, and start to live our own lives, dream our own dreams, Live and Let Live, walk along our path in life in peace and harmony, one day at a time, and again, yes, once again, start to mind our own fucking business for a change.