The Skeeter Daddle Diaries

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If you’re like me (I know, you hope you’re NOT!), you’ve been diverted lately from the usual political comedies by the tragedies in Houston and now Florida which is in the crosshairs of Hurricane Irma. Irma? Who comes up with these names, some bored yahoo in the basement of the National Storm Appelation Department? And if you’re like me, you feel lucky to be torn away from the 24/7 drumbeat of Trump Tweets and maybe you even feel a little guilty considering the suffering of folks down there in the Bible Belt whose God has apparently forsaken them.

But now along comes that bombastic bomb thrower Rush Limbaugh to suggest the hurricanes are nothing more than liberal conspiracies to alarm the masses and thereby open the door for legislation on Global Warming, as big a hoax to the Rushter as the notion that Obama was born in the same country as him. Lies, all lies! A conspiracy of the left! An evil plot to destroy America! But he can stop them, maybe only he can stop them, by broadcasting the truth from his beacon of Brietbart babble.

Thank God for the Rushman! Faux hurricanes! Who’d have thought the Left could stoop so low. Bogeyman meteorology!! What’s next? Glaciers supposedly melting? Polar bear uprisings? Icebergs plowing into San Francisco? Is there nothing too low for these liberals to stoop to?

Apparently not, according to Herr Limbaugh. But … today he has decided to, well, let’s just say he’s decided to play it safe. He’s evacuating himself from the phoney baloney hurricane that’s nothing but liberal hot air. Not, I’m sure, to protect himself. No, the man is far too courageous for that. Truth, he would tell you himself, is all the defense he needs. The mouth is mightier than the sword. Or the whirlwind. Or whatever …. No, I’m sure he’s taking a small break from the routine of Savior, maybe indulging in a much needed vacation. Either way, I’m sure we could use a much needed vacation from Rush. And if that hurricane should actually make landfall with 150 mile sustained winds, don’t think it’s proof the libs were right. Probably brought on by the sudden vacuum of the Rushster gone silent.

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This morning in the mainstream lying press, I read about a UW professor who was tracking blogsites and twitter feeds to see if she could get a handle on where folks are getting their information these days. InfoWars. She was astounded that most people are reading – and probably believing— the alt-right and far left sites that appeal to their biases, not their reason. I listened this morning on the radio to an interview with a right wing talk show host who accused his interviewer and NPR of bashing all things Trump, just another example of the lying media.

Trump and his mentor Bannon of Breitbart have studiously planted the seeds of public doubt about the veracity of the Washington Post and New York Times. We are entering a techno-fueled Dark Age. I talked with a woman last week who said she couldn’t bear to read anything but the sites that bashed Trump. The entire nation seems to be pulling the covers over our heads and listening only to voices that agree with us. This tribalism bodes ill for Reason.

If I can summarize, the way to determine if something is faux news or factual news is this: it’s all phony. Everyone is lying. Truth is relative. Truth is what I believe, period. Walter Cronkite was a big fat liar, we just didn’t know it yet. Rush Limbaugh is God and he’s laughing at us. He killed the truth by telling people what they wanted to hear.

I don’t have the optimism I once had about the fate of a nation that loves its own ignorance. Like my old neighbor loved to intone: no brains, no headaches. Course, he went bankrupt three times, lost his wife and kids and his farm. My bet is he didn’t learn a single lesson from that. It isn’t that we no longer learn from history, we don’t even believe in history.

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