MCT Noindex

In the minutes, hours, and days after the shock of Tucker Carlson’s firing from Fox News settled in, the immediate question became: Why? And more pointedly, Why now?

If House Republicans refuse to raise the limit on the amount of money America may repay on what it owes — the deceptively named “debt limit” — they might force the United States to default, pushing interest rates into the stratosphere and shaking the world economy.

Political power is in the hands of the people. Our democracy responds to the cries of the people. And the people would like to prevent America from having five and a half more years of octogenarian governance, whether it’s President Joe Biden or former President Donald Trump again.

“Will a network that has decided to recklessly traffic in and promote lies, junk science and unfounded conspiracy theories, and purposefully omit and distort the truth to keep its viewers rabidly tuned in, feel at all chastened by what can only be described as an unequivocal and unprecedented smackdown?”

Ever since word got out that I’ll be retiring from teaching at the end of this semester, people have been asking me what I’ll be doing next?

Tuesday’s historic, 11th-hour settlement between Fox News and Dominion Voting Systems for a whopping $787.5 million for defamation was justice for Dominion, which Fox hosts had baselessly smeared to sow doubt in the 2020 presidential election results.

After ProPublica reported that for more than two decades, Clarence Thomas has been taking lavish vacations, super-yacht trips, and rides on a private jet, all courtesy of GOP megadonor Harlan Crow, Thomas issued a statement explaining that the reason he hadn’t disclosed any of this was that Crow and his wife are among Clarence and Ginni Thomas’ “dearest friends” and that “as friends do, we have joined them on a number of family trips during the more than quarter century we have known them.”

The two Black state Representatives from Tennessee – let’s call them the Tennessee Duo – who were kicked out of the state Legislature earlier this month for breaking rules of order (while protesting in the chamber during a debate on gun legislation) brought back memories.

I hate to say this, but America no longer has two parties devoted to a democratic system of self-government. We have a Democratic Party, which — notwithstanding a few glaring counter-examples such as what the Democratic National Committee did to Bernie in 2016 — is still largely committed to democracy. And we have a Republican Party, which is careening at high-velocity toward authoritarianism. OK, fascism.

In the wake of nearly every investigation — from his two impeachments to the FBI raid on Mar-a-Lago for classified documents to his arrest and arraignment this week for hush money payments — Donald Trump continually promises that you will be the next target of the corrupt government, the deep state, the Democrats, the media, the intelligence community and whomever else he’s made a convenient bogeyman.