The propaganda value of using “others” to distract is immense. If you, as an elected public official, are busy lying, cheating, &/or stealing, but then are caught … with the media and public now focused on your crimes and punishment, just go on camera or on record and toss out some made-up BS about whichever “others” are au courant even if it something totally unrelated to you and your crimes…. and Magically, the public/media attention will be diverted, while you continue doing your crimes and covering them up a little better now.
We’ve all seen this too often to be shocked or even care much anymore about the tactic. It’s fallen to the level of, “Oh, they always do that, just like Friday night bad news dumps.”
The eagerness of media organizations to make a profit ensures that their “negative” coverage will be “evenhanded,” especially when it is slam dunk obvious that one party is lying their collective ass off, and that same media and public focus is easily diverted by whatever “hot,” “new,” story comes along and is waved in front of them.
Someone in another thread mentioned Edward R. Murrow and his ability to produce programs that helped stop social and political abuses, like the infamous Red Scare hearings involving Dick Nixon, Roy Cohn, and Joe McCarthy. They even suggested he was the greatest reporter who ever reported (which I happen to agree with). But everyone forgets that the head of CBS (of which CBS News was just a smallish portion), Bill Paley, determinedly and doggedly fought for continued sponsorship of Murrow‘s programs to keep him on the air. (No sponsor wanted their soap ads seen on programs about migrant labor abuses).
Contrast that with the behavior of the latest CBS honcho who was quoted saying that, “Trump may be bad for the country, but he’s good for CBS.” This obviously shows that things have changed in media management.
That change cannot be laid at the feet of Russia who is getting a lot of well-deserved blame for screwing with US politics, as well as conventional and social media, especially in 2016-17 (and now).
We Americans allowed it all to happen ourselves, just like the “good” Germans in the 30’s and 40’s. Fascism is not a strange and foreign way of government that suddenly pops up out of nowhere and takes over. It was, and is now, homegrown and it, like the “Tree of Liberty” needs nourishment and care. The provided fertilizer is mostly local manufactured opinions. The “water” ($$$$$$) may be local and/or foreign (cf. Russia via the NRA), but the Fascist “tree” flourishes because the local soil is accepting & capable of feeding it.
The fertilizer is built of hate and racism left over from slavery, added to all the xenophobia from the waves of immigrants who displaced those “natives” (prior immigrants) who for one reason or another thought that everything was rightfully theirs simply because they were here first. This bigoted & fearful mix, accretes, layer by layer until it becomes the bedrock of narrow beliefs. Bits of bigotry, fear, xenophobia, unease, more fear, all stirred and boiled up into a frothy stew by demagoguery from the local Pulpit, TV, Radio, the Internet. the Local Neighborhood, and other sources, all forming a nourishing, growth-enhancing liquor, which, when added to current events and media bias, yields a crop of true believers that are ready to assault Democracy or whatever else they need to do so they can just win the “Battle for America’s hearts and minds” and then sink back into a relaxed state, blissfully uncaring — with only their simple hates. needs, and wants, to work for.