I'm sick of the damage this hideous scourge of political pornography, this electronic lobotomy known as Fox News has wrought on the country I love, the only planet I've known, and many of my loved ones. It's become clear that watching it is kind of like a fetish or an addiction that poisons the mind. It's not possible to think critically or empathetically while watching it. I don't think we can solve our problems in any meaningful way while it exists as it presently does. Here's my plea:
I don’t have all the facts its genesis, but it’s becoming more and more clear that Fox News is the great villain that’s led to the mess we’re in. Great masses of the populace, many that are loved ones of mine and other sane people that I know, have been essentially lobotomized and completely immune to the civic virtues that were the foundation of our society not long ago. Fox News never should have been allowed to exist. I know that Reagan eliminated the Fairness Doctrine which would have made Fox News impossible to operate as it does. I also know that when I first watched a few minutes of it (I can barely stand to watch it even for a few seconds), I immediately recognized the tone as essentially the same as the professional wrestling I watched as a kid, the TV preachers of the ‘80s and the anti-Mormon propaganda I was attacked with constantly on my mission in Central California. It’s really awful stuff, crappy entertainment, but incredibly toxic if it’s believed. The truly apocalyptic challenges we face now are directly traceable to people injecting themselves with this electronic excrement and being simply unable to think or decide or distinguish right from wrong or good from evil or to even be able to make the most basic observations of what is around them. It has seriously challenged the cherished notion of free speech to my mind. There are certainly abridgements of freedom of expression, such as the fairness doctrine, or those employed in the U.K. to disallow demonization of one's opponents that would seem to make sense. Many of the evils that seem to be threatening to engulf us presently would make our extreme form of freedom of expression obsolete anyway.
If anyone reading this spends any of their precious time on this earth and their precious senses of hearing, and sight and their mind on Fox News, I implore you to turn it off and never tune in again as long as you live and spend your life counteracting the damage it has done. It is political pornography of the most vile sort, much more damaging to you and to society than conventional pornography. I know Fox News has taught you to doubt and hate all other media (mainstream media, lamestream media), but you are quite safe listening to and watching pretty much any established media. The pre-Fox News news landscape in the U.S. was the envy of the world and of history. Quibbling about mistakes and bias does nothing to the fact that the networks, the major newspapers, CNN and MSNBC, etc. basically adhere to traditional press norms that have protected our information for decades, and made America a bastion of civic involvement and informedness. (We are, post-Fox News, now viewed as kind of the opposite.)
