Originally published at: Public Broadcasting Cuts Are Putting Trump’s Supporters at Risk - TPM – Talking Points Memo
When Donald Trump directed Congress to defund the Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB), he and his allies pushed a long time, right-wing narrative about targeting liberal “bias” at NPR and PBS. Instead, the Republican rollback of $1.1 billion in CPB funding that had previously been approved by Congress is hurting vulnerable, rural-America communities in red…
FEMA can’t catch the baton that CPB is forced to drop, because their budget is already being plundered to make up for ICE overspending and high-priority luxury perks for Secretary Puppykiller.
Sorry, rural America, you’ll just have to fend for yourselves, like in the good ol’ pioneer days.
The fact that this would happen was known to your representatives at the time they voted for it. Make a note of it, willya?
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This is what it is going to take to wake up the rubes who think that all those benefits just fall out of the sky. Maybe they will think next time before they vote against those evil “libs”.
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Well this crocodile will be sure to shed real tears at all the reports of needless storm losses in the backwaters that turned out for the Turnip. Careful what you wish for, especially when you were too stupid to look at what that was.
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The public radio stations in West Texas and the Panhandle are the source for updates and information during massive grass fires. Due to corporate ownership, almost all the other radio stations might as well be satellite radio.
Way to go, dipshit GQP voters.
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I think Democrats have to think much harder about how to message stuff like this – and the list is becoming very long of the topics they can message --. We need to message in clear and concrete and specific and empathetic and helpful ways and in plain language the bad consequences of the Trump/Rethug way of doing things so they register with non-political non-wonky people.
True cult members may not be swayed but there are a lot of Trump voters who aren’t cult members but are just uninformed and misinformed. And some of those can be won over by clear messaging whether it’s by billboards or podcast/youtube appearances or ads or Bernie-AOC-style meetings or door knocks or letters or phone banks or all of the above.
I guess all that goes without sayeng, but, wow, in Trump we’re up against a tv star and a super con-man and incredibly practiced phony and liar who never stops messaging for a second and is a genius at pushing buttons with his message even though he’s an idiot in every other regard. His hideously effective bullshithorn has to be countered with a lot of effective information from the other side.
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Or… loss of service in the backwoods NPR stations will be taken as proof that those EEEvil public radio folk are commie librulz who hate Good Upstanding Amerkins. Look how they keep their “big city” stations on the air!
Republicans may well push that line, and have it taken, hook line and sinker. Because a fundamental root of Today’s Trumpublican Party is that YOU are the victim.
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All part of the plan. When you’re really broke in America - population 34, 90% shuttered - you could still get NPR.
Now it’s just the church, as designed.
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Hard to get any message out when the people that own and control all media can buy a boat with their tax break.
Democrats are shuttered out of media in the hinterland. Those anti-monopoly regulations were nixed within memory.
The cheapest monopoly of all is rural media.
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The Trump administration simply hates rural America.
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MAGATS will reply we don’t need no government radio or TV because We have Jesus Radio and TV…
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Definitely all true …
But the problem is that I don’t think there’s any alternative to the Democrats trying to do it, right? So, …skywriting? I mean, it’s gotta be something. Because without new and meaningful messaging then there’s literally no chance at all – you can’t motivate people with dead slience.
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Don’t you mean sorry rural American you’re getting what you voted for…
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And they’re not too fond of urban America either … Hard to know why an American administration would actually hate America, period, but that seems to be the case. (…not that they seem to be fond of very many other nations, either…)
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They are trying and you thinking there is dead silence shows how well the media ignores it.
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I wrote that unclearly. I know that they are trying. All I meant to say was that we need to do as much of it as possible, and really put a lot of effort into working out the best and most effective ways to get the messages across.because to some degree Democrats don’t seem to have a whole lof ot recent practice in reaching out to today’s rural voters…in addition to facing the serious obstacle of media that tends to ignore the Dems
…I had no intention of denigrating current efforts – …And when I said “dead silence” I was not referring to the present situation, I was referring to the idea that it was all pretty hopeless because it’s so hard get into rural media…If we think the communication landscape is so fraught with impossible barriers that we give up hope, then there will be silence.
And, yes, I know the media ignores them and always gets a Republican on their show or in their article and not a Democrats. Republicans get called for interviews when they’re in office and when they’re out of office. Democrats are much more likely not to get the call in either situation … Probably because they talk thoughtfully rather than combatively…
Still, though, the point is that if you’re being silenced then you have to try even harder to overcome the barriers. That’s all I’ve been trying to say.
I also think that my clear massive failures to communicate on this thread what I thought was a fairly simple and straightforward idea to generally likeminded people is an object lesson in how difficult messaging really is! My abject failure to write a clear post in that circumstance shows how hard Dems will probably have to work to communicate successfully with a bunch of voters who’ve been programmed to distrust every single thing they say!
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I admire your optimism.
I might even share it. See, what we’re all undergoing right now is a pretty solid experimental demonstration of the fact that government programs can be, and have been, extremely beneficial to communities, to our society, and to our cohesion as a nation. And, on the flip side, that eliminating the role of government does not in fact bring about a Golden Age of Prosperity for All Deserving Americans; it ushers in another age of the robber baron.
A hundred years ago, the average American farmer was a pretty conservative, and often solidly Republican, voter. Then the double whammy of the Great Depression and the dust bowl hit. And thousands of them were suddenly looking at destitution, loss of their farms and homes, due to forces completely beyond their control.
There was no pioneer-spirit bootstrap-pulling virtue of honest labor that was gonna save them. What did? Why, that Roosevelt fellow and his programs, that’s what!
But that generational memory (“FDR saved our farm (or small business, or savings account)”) has now almost completely faded from existence. And that, unfortunately, apparently means that it’s time for us to refresh it the hard way.
I hope it sticks for a while.
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Only our enemies benefit from.making us more vulnerable to disasters, natural or otherwise.
Can you say Russia, Russia, Russia?
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This is what Wingnuttistan voted for.
Cry me a river.
“That leopard wasn’t going to eat MY face”
Nebraska farmer who can’t find any workers:
“Who’s gonna milk my cows? I’ll go bankrupt!”
Bootstraps, dude. DIY
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Quite probably more Republicans are spotlighted by the media than Democrats are because that is what the media’s corporate masters want.
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