Have you noticed the right-wing follows the same pattern?

They create an imaginary story.
The story is weaved around an historical event, sometimes real, sometimes not.
The story has a smattering of accepted doctrine.
Inside the story is always one good guy and one bad guy.

The good guy is a misunderstood, yet all-knowing person who scoffs at the bigger world, and scoffs at cooperation among people, as if their offering of goods and services is all that counts, as if everything can be produced and traded locally, as if they need no steel tools or food made elsewhere.

Without fail, the bad guy is always our elected government, as if other people's voices should cease for the benefit of the guy who is most fearful.

The bad guy is never the corporation that outsourced your job or killed a relative or poisoned a well or lied to people or foreclosed on a deceptive loan or evaded responsibility.

It's the same old fearful story that pines for the past without solution for the future.


II
Have you noticed the right-wing op-eds follow the same pattern?

They create an imaginary story. The story is weaved around an historical event, sometimes real, sometimes not. The story has a smattering of 'accepted fact' or 'wholesomeness' without elaboration. The story contains one good guy and one bad guy.

The good guy is a misunderstood, yet all-knowing person who scoffs at the bigger world and at cooperation among people, as if their personal offering of goods and services counts most, as if everything can be produced and traded locally using 'understood' rules, as if they need no steel tools or food made elsewhere, as if roads repair themselves, and with the firm belief that things will spiral upwards if all local services are suspended, without a single nod to real-world economics.

Without fail, the bad guy is always our elected government, as if other people's voices should cease for the benefit of the guy most fearful.

The bad guy is never the corporation that outsourced your job or killed a relative or poisoned a well or lied to people or foreclosed a deceptive loan or evaded responsibility.

It's the same old fearful story that pines for the past without solution for the future.

Gene Haynes