I made the mistake of watching FOX news (Hannity) the other night, just for a few minutes. Earlier in the day, I had an interaction on Facebook that made me think, eh, maybe I'm being too harsh on the Republicans? And I wanted a reality check about what Republicans are saying from the voice of the GOP, FOX "News".
What struck me first was how similar it was to MSNBC at attempting to generate outrage. Hannity rants, the guest affirms, tiny quotes taken out of context and amplified over and over and over and over again. Yeah, sounds just like Rachel Maddow! (Love yah, Rachel!)
But tonight it was Harry Reid, stammering through an explanation of why we won't support a piecemeal bill to save cancer treatment for kids. Ugh, he's such a train wreck sometimes, but actually most of his comment makes a strong case against trading the problems of a few specific kids as opposed to the problems of all the 800,000+ people already laid off who have problems of their own? Good job, Harry. Until you stumble over the "gotcha" question and your horrible "Why would I want to do that?" response? I know you meant, "Why would I want to make that kind of a cruel and unfair trade?" But it sounded like "Why would I want to help some cancer kid? I am cruel and indifferent to them."
When MSNBC covers Reid's fumble, it's received with annoyance, disappointment and a little mockery. The ultimate "Doh!" moment. When FOX covers it, the sharks attack, the panther pounces, the snake strikes, thunder crashes and Harry Reid hates cancer kids. Harry Reid is a horrible person. Harry Reid, Harry Reid! Curses!
But we all know that's not what Dear Harry meant to say. He is a good guy. He is compassionate. Hell, you guys pummel him and mock him time and time again for those kind of mushy attributes.
No, let's face it. In the pantheon of horrible and cruel right now, I rank laying off almost a million employees, taking food off their tables, closing all the services, safeguards, intelligence, monuments and parks, cancer treatments and much much more that are provided by our collective effort in the Federal Government, all in the name of preventing millions of uninsured Americans from getting affordable health insurance! That's the real cruelty.
Not on FOX! All of them lambasted Reid's misstatement, and none even considered the possible intended meaning. They clutched at the worst conclusion possible, with no thought they might be wrong.
How odd, Republicans are accusing Democrats of the exact thing they are "guilty" of doing (at a much larger scale). That sounds just like psychological projection.
Freud considered that in projection thoughts, motivations, desires, and feelings that cannot be accepted as one's own are dealt with by being placed in the outside world and attributed to someone else. What the ego repudiates is split off and placed in another.
...
Projection of a severe conscience is another form of defence, one which may be linked to the making of false accusations, personal or political.
Yeah, this sounds like a classic case of projection. Millions of people are being impacted by the shutdown, yet the FOX crowd obsesses over a misstatement by Reid obliviously ignoring or downplaying their own cruelty. It seems like their true guilty consciences they are in denial, and using projection to make themselves feel better.
Hannity raged on for a little longer, but I couldn't stay with it. The stoopid, it burnz. But it still had me thinking, whether this was a larger pattern with the Republicans? Let's see...
REPUBLICAN ACCUSATION |
REPUBLICAN BEHAVIOR |
Death Panels! |
Stopping people from getting health coverage |
Benghazi! |
Weapons of mass destruction, lying our way into an unnecessary and expensive war where not 4, rather hundreds of thousands of people were killed or hurt. |
Voter Fraud! |
Voter suppressing photo ID laws in numerous states, restricting early voting, mail-in voting, purging voter rolls, understaffed precincts, gerrymandered districts |
Refuses to Negotiate! |
Refused to go to Conf Committee for months, 16 requests from Budget Chair Sen. Murray were ignored. |
Liberal Activist Courts! |
Citizens United. Voting Rights Act. Florida Recount. Need we say more? |
Special rights for homosexuals! |
Blocking equal rights and fairness at every opportunity (employment, military, marriage, adoption...). |
Government running your healthcare! Boogedy, bogey, boo! |
Mandatory Transvaginal Ultrasound intimidation laws in numerous states |
I am sure there's a certain amount of gamesmanship throughout politics, where you try to undermine your opponent by muddying their lines of attack by counterattacking with the same accusations. Sure. But this is a real pattern. It's a pattern of denial. And I see it not just at the national level with the way the parties behave, but I see it with my friends and relatives who love FOX and Rush. They don't really seem to care about the consequences of the policies they are pushing, ruthlessly and callously sticking to their guns (quite literally in the case of gun control) regardless of who gets hurt due to their policies.
OK, self-check... is it possible these people really are caring and I'm projecting my issues onto them? Denying my own inhumanity? Incivility? By attacking them for those attributes? Fortunately, that's not a worry I have when I look at the actual policy positions I have compared to the ones of the Republicans in the table above. Nope, not a concern at all.
The passage from the Gospel of Matthew came to mind, you know, the one about taking the plank out of your own eye before trying to take the spec out of your brother's? Yeah, if the Republicans want to save poor little Suzie and get her the cancer treatments she needs, they might do well to first address the very real thousands of little Suzies they have created by shutting down the government and laying off 800,000+ civil servants.