It seems like only yesterday that America had a president who didn't shout rhetoric he stole from Stalin that the media is "the enemy of the people." But those days are long gone and have been replaced by a loudmouth ignoramus who hates the Constitution and does everything he can to turn his cult followers against it.
It was twenty-two years ago that Fox News made its debut on cable TV promising to "change the way you look at the world." And if what they meant was that you would now look at it through the lens of lies and ultra-partisan right-wing dogma, they were right. The network was the brainchild (i.e. Rosemary's Baby) of an Australian newspaper baron (Rupert Murdoch) and an American media consultant for the Republican Party (Roger Ailes). It took about five years before the cable channel caught on, but once it did it corralled all of the nation's conservative viewers into a single pen where they could happily wallow in the mud of a deliberately dishonest perversion of journalism.
Today Fox News has morphed into what can only be described as the State TV arm of Donald Trump's White House. It is a co-conspirator in his efforts to turn the United States into a dictatorship that serves the wealthy and corporatist classes of the country. And its programming appeals to a audience that has been expressly dumbed-down by two decades of pablum and soap opera style melodrama.
So Happy Birthday Fox News. And may there NOT be many more to come. The past twenty-two years has already inflicted more than enough damage on the nation and the viewers/victims (mostly our grandparents and high school dropouts) who became virtual fake news zombies. They are lost to us now, but with each new generation comes hope for a clear-thinking, propaganda-free future.