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It is simply amazing how easily the American people can be manipulated into voting against their own interests. In two years President Biden has led an administration that has put policies in place that have dramatically slowed a rampant pandemic, put millions back to work in mostly good paying jobs, kept us out of a direct confrontation with Russia, lowered drug prices for many, insured many who had no health insurance and became the first president to pass meaningful gun legislation in decades.

He has also decreased the yearly deficit by $1.7 TRILLION a year. Given the massive deficit he was handed by his predecessor, that is s huge accomplishment. Consider that Biden’s predecessor and the previous Republican president, George W. Bush piled up @ 40% of the current debt by themselves, Biden’s turning the deficit around is a huge accomplishment.

Hard to believe he has done all that in just a couple of years. Did I mention taming the pandemic that Republicans were fanning with their Covid lies and misinformation? It helps to have a congress focused on actually solving problems rather than creating problems. Now that radical right wing Republicans are in charge in one house of congress expect those Republicans to do all they can to stop progress.

Stopping progress is the radical right wing Republicans calling card. Just as things start moving in a good direction for the American people and not just the billionaires, the radical right will do all they can to stop progress in their tracks. Radical right Republicans have a better chance at being elected when they can make the economy go bad and they can blame it on their opposition.

And that is the crux of how the radical right even has a chance at winning any elections. They own most of the press in this country no matter what platform you pick such as the internet that is fairly new? They own Facebook (now Meta which includes such well known sites as Instagram and WhatsApp) in the person of Mark Zuckerberg and Twitter through Elon Musk.

That old standby of newspapers? Gannet Corporation owns most of the country’s large daily locals, including the Des Moines Register in Iowa. They are quite corporate which generally lines up with the radical right wing Republican philosophy of power to the rich and screw the workers.

Radio? Clear Channel became I Heart Radio, but much like Gannet lines up with the corporate radical right wing philosophy of the Republicans. Same with television, with major corporate players like CBS, NBC, ABC. Fox and the CW. You may note that they own most of the cable stations and thus pretty much have a stranglehold on “news” disseminated on TV. 

There is little locally owned radio or television. Local television stations are owned by major corporations such as Sinclair and Gray. Same story as the other media – major corporations, radical right philosophy. Line up for the rich, screw the worker.

Almost all of the media in this country disseminate right wing talking points in their news reports and in most of their programming like music stations. A little aside here and there that goes unchallenged and suddenly even in a country where unemployment is low and real wages are growing, the workers who have been royally screwed by corporations and Republicans for decades think things are much worse than they were under Biden’s predecessor.

Manipulated like play-dough.

Considering that something like 70% plus of Americans support Democratic ideas like universal health care, controlling guns, decent wages, good schools (boy what a number Republicans are doing on schools), Social Security and Medicare – how do Republicans ever win elections?

It becomes an even more puzzling question when you realize that radical right wing Republicans make no bones about how much they favor the rich. They have narrowed their electorate to rich, white males for the most part. They don’t hide the fact that they have little regard for people of color, immigrants, women and LGTBQ people. 

So how do they win? By using the media to make it look like Democrats are failures even when their accomplishments are MAJOR as they are now; report on news stories in a highly biased way; focus on stories that are of little consequence especially if it can paint the Democrats in a bad light and the manipulations in a similar vein.

And of course there is their “cultural wars” that is used to drive stakes between Americans. What all these manipulations accomplish is not to get more radical right wing voters to the polls, but to discourage voters for the moderate and common sense Democratic Party. 

One of the big cultural war issues that the radicals have been using for a couple of years is “critical race theory.” It is simply a phrase hyped up to scare whites about race and really means nothing. However, schools would do well for the country and future citizens to teach Critical Thinking Skills so that people would understand when and why they are being manipulated by those who own the megaphones of society.