MAGA, Replacing Reality

I HAVE LISTENED to National Public Radio (NPR) for decades, usually hours daily, and can attest that it is most assuredly not biased in favor of liberalism. When public radio presents a program dealing with an issue of public concern for which there are opposing viewpoints both progressive and conservative, it gives advocates of the conservative point of view an opportunity to express that viewpoint in interviews, everytime, without fail. Often, if indeed not most of the time, prominent conservatives or conservative organizationts who are invited by NPR to come on the air for precisely that purpose decline the offer, and don't even bother to issue a statement of any sort to be presented on NPR programming. To whatever extent public radio fails to presnet a conservative viewpoint, the blame entirely belongs conservative, not liberal interests. Two powerful psychological forces at at work here. First, any absence of conservative values in any context, any media, provides a pretext for conservatives to make these unfounded allegations of liberal bias; unbiased reporting is construed, by default, as being liberal, and thus biased. Secondly, If given the opportunity, conservatives would almost certainly fill the airwaves with right wing bias and propaganda, omit all mention of liberal ideas and ideals, offer no liberal any opportunity to present any viewpoints contrary to conservatism, and would smugly call it "unbiased". The effort ongoing in Congress to defund public radio and television began decades ago, but has never gotten this far.Republicans have always falsely considered both to be biased for liberalism,and ay lack of bias to be de facto liberal bias. Public radio and television both present well researched, fact based, truthful information and analysis, which is precisely what right wing extremists hate. Climate change is real, racism in America is real, LGBTQ people exist,and when you talk about them without claiming they are a hoax, when any media source deals with these issue factully rather than falsely with anger and denial, suddenly, in the conservative mindset, the media is dispensing liberal propaganda and bias. The truth, about climate change, race, sexual orientation, among other issues, sounds liberal.This, because the conservative viewpoint, which embraces delusions like stolen elections, climate change denial, among many others, is so pervasivly, demonstrably false. Trump, his conservative Republicans errand boys in Congress, and the entire MAGA movement, like all fascist movements, predicated upon imposing upon the general population a false, delusional historical narrative, and an utterly false description of present day reality. No matter how accurately,honestly, and faithfully the news media mightor might not manage to inform Americans about current reality, Trump and his MAGA cult, in their zeal to permanently impose their will upon the United States, will claim that any negative information about Trump and MAGA in ay media source is false, and will attempt to suppress it, and replace it with a blatantly dishonest account of our fascist leader. The media in America is, we can only hope, strong enough and independent enough to withstand Trump's assault, and the same hope applies to the American system of education. The task is daunting, made so by the fact that the disease of Trumpism is ahared by tens of millions of tragically morally and intellectually vacuous American citizens.