Ian Noonan didn’t know if he could ever decorate for the holidays again after witnessing the results of the Mormon Christmas Eve Massacre up-close, live and in person. He was especially distraught by his friend Deena Webber’s actions and incarceration; shocked by the results of her blood test that night.
Intoxicated and medicated, too? Really? He never even saw her take an aspirin. People in big cities lose their grip all the time. Who’d thought it would ever happen here, and by my close friend? he wondered. I guess one never truly knows people--shoot most people don’t even really know themselves, come to think about it.
Over time, his weekly visits to Logan Correctional Center weren’t weekly any more. They became monthly, then occasionally, until finally, he stopped coming at all—it wasn’t that Deena wasn’t happy to see him each time; no, quite the contrary—she seemed deliriously overwrought, meeting him in the common room with excitations of “Did you bring them, Ian? Did you bring them this time? Please, please, please, tell me you brought them along this time!” She wasn’t pleading for books, photos or mementos, but for rat-traps, and his no, he forgot them, but will remember to bring them next time excuse only punctured her joy with the twin pins of agitation and anxiety.
In late September, Ian’s funk was exacerbated by the weather that was trying its hardest to usurp summer, but was buoyed in spirit by Terry’s presence—so much that he invited him to move into Blackstone permanently, an offer which was instantly accepted. It was going to be a long, sad winter and he would like a companion to help him through til thaw.
Terry McDermott didn’t accumulate much baggage during his time in Nauvoo because his plan was to be a missionary here for only twelve months then return to Utah, so the move went easy—three trips in his car, two in Ian’s—that started in early afternoon and finished just as dusk was falling.
The two men were less worn out by the physical hauling than by the creative lifting of how they might trick out the yard for Halloween. They walked the grass not yet mottled with leaves that had lost their grip, talking about spooks, witches, lights, fog, oversized spiders, and other delightful horrors. Maybe, together, the couple could do some holiday decor, again.
After his last load, Terry lugged his books and personal effects up to the second floor master bedroom where Ian had a soft flame in the fireplace dancing a samba, and a WELCOME LOVE - WELCOME HOME! banner stretched over the mantlepiece. He unpacked little by little, hugging and happy.
“If you don’t mind, the first thing I’d like to do once I’m settled in is take a nice warm soak,” Terry yelled through the bathroom door threshold, as he organized his toiletries. “With or without you.” He stopped to appreciate how Ian had integrated the original white square floor tiles with the vintage high tank pull chain toilet, gleaming enamel wash basin and the ancient claw-foot tub. “What do you think?”
“Sounds like a plan. I’ll get some candles and the essential oils diffuser. Put on some mellow tunes while you make yourself comfortable,” he replied.
“Wonderful! I’ve got a few more things in the trunk of the car and then I’ll be done. Oh, Ian, I think we’ll be so happy here!” he effused with more hugs.
Terry hurried down the back staircase, retrieved the last items, and stopped for a moment to look out over the darkened lot--maybe we should put the zombie graveyard back here, his mind was still racing with potential spook night frights, less street light pollution--haha, even scarier!
He came up the back steps and tried the door. Locked. He circled around to the main entrance, but it was locked. Shoot! Terry left his key-ring on the antique chifferobe upstairs.
2
Methihk-lie lie
Reworking Mark Twain’s trope for the modern era: “There are lies, damn lies, Fox News, and social media.”
The right-wing-leaning news channel was launched on October 7, 1996, to 17 million cable subscribers by Australian media mogul Rupert Murdock. After an attempt to purchase the 24-hour cable news network CNN failed, Murdoch endeavored to create his own cable news channel and enlisted television producer and former Republican political consultant Roger Ailes to oversee the fledgling Fox News network.
In 1967, a 27-year-old Ailes was working on the Mike Douglas Show when he met and impressed Richard Nixon. The following year he was hired as a political consultant to be Nixon’s executive producer for television. Ailes successfully recast the awkward Nixon, whose presidential run in 1960 crashed after a stilted debate with John F. Kennedy, into an authoritative presidential contender.
During the 1968 presidential campaign, Ailes orchestrated a series of televised events in which Nixon would stand, in the round, in what was basically a talk-show setting, smiling and fielding friendly questions. Ailes had made a study of the most infamous propaganda film ever made--the 1935 Nazi spectacular Triumph of the Will, starring Adolph Hitler, and during these appearance’s he shot Nixon from camera angles based on the ones the seminal producer of Nazi propaganda Leni Riefenstahl used to shoot the German dictator. He turned the prickly, uncomfortable-in-his-own-skin Nixon into something more akin to a real person. And it worked--”Tricky Dick” became POTUS and Roger “Leni” Ailes had become the right wing’s supreme propagandist.
But being king-maker has its limits once the king is seated. Off the back of the success with Nixon, Ailes joined Television News Incorporated, a new rightwing TV network in 1974. It collapsed in 1975 and Ailes went mostly back to political consultancy, until Murdock came calling with an offer to run his new cable channel with what he claimed would be fair and balanced news.
The “Fair and Balanced” slogan held true only for those who became regular viewers, as it was heavily slanted towards conservatives and staffed by opinionated “journalists” who blatantly promoted conservative values, misinformation, and damn lies. Fox News also blatantly supported the aspirations of the Tea Party movement. The channel’s political leanings came under heavy scrutiny in 2010 when News Corporation donated $1 million to the Republican Governors Association.
The arrival of Donald Trump on the political scene saw the rise of new opinion stars at Fox News. Tucker Carlson began hosting Tucker Carlson Tonight in 2016, and the following year, The Ingraham Angle debuted, hosted by Laura Ingraham, followed by the words and wisdom of Sean Hannity. The shows were highly popular, the triune popular for espousing views that dovetailed with those of President Trump—state TV for the masses groomed to feel superior in wisdom, ethnicity, and in the “True God” department, and keeping their mostly white and rural viewers constantly angry, paranoid, and resentful.
In July 2016, Ailes resigned from Fox News after being accused of sexual harassment by several female Fox employees, including on-air personalities Gretchen Carlson and Megyn Kelly. Shortly afterward, he became an adviser to Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, in which he assisted with debate preparation.
Ailes suffered from hemophilia, a medical condition in which the body is impaired in its ability to produce blood clots. He died on May 18, 2017, at the age of 77 after suffering a subdural hematoma that was aggravated by his hemophilia. His hate bled out.
Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg, the social media giant, Facebook, is available to anyone over 13 years old with an Internet connection. As of 2020, Facebook claimed 2.8 billion monthly active users, and ranked seventh in global internet usage. It was the most downloaded mobile app of the 2010s.
In a 2020 report, Pew Research found that around half of U.S. adults, or 53%, said they “often” or “sometimes” use social media to get their news. This is spread out across a number of sites, but Facebook is at the top of the list. The study found that 36% of U.S. adults said they “regularly” access Facebook to get news.
But if only news was news. The following expose by national newspaper USA Today reporters explains how Facebook shovels shit using algorithms to divide, enflame, and make tons of money:
“In 2019, two users joined Facebook. Both had similar interests: young children and parenting, Christianity, civics, and community.
“Carol”, 41, was a conservative from North Carolina. She was interested in news, politics, President Trump and the nation’s first family. She followed the official accounts for Trump, first lady Melania Trump, and Fox News.
“Karen” was the same age and lived in the same state. But she was a liberal who liked politics, news, Senators Bernie Sanders and Eliszabeth Warren. She disliked Trump. She followed a local news site, pages about North Carolina and the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.
Facebook’s algorithms got to work, suggesting what they’d be interested in.
Recommendations for sites supportive of Trump led Carol to a group called “Donald Trump is Jesus,” and another for QAnon, a wide-ranging extremist ideology that alleges celebrities and top Democrats are engaged in a pedophile ring. Karen was presented with anti-Trump pages, including one that posted an image showing an anus instead of Trump’s mouth.
The two women were not real, They were created by a Facebook researcher to explore how the social media platform deepened political divides in the U.S. by recommending content rife with misinformation and extremism.
In June, 2020, a company researcher began looking into the rise of hate and violent speech on Facebook after George Flloyd, a black man, died on the South Minneapolis pavement under the knee of a white police officer.
As protests spread, so did reports from users flagging dangerous and offensive content on Facebook. But it was only when Trump warned on Facebook, “When the looting starts, the shooting starts,” that the floodgates opened, the researcher found. Facebook saw a drastic five-fold and three-fold surge in user reports for violence and hate speech respectively. The report found that by June 2, the entire country ’“was basically on fire”.
“They deny responsibility. They deflect responsibility. They delay taking action,” Imran Ahmed, CEO of the Center for Countering Digital Hate, told USA TODAY. “Now it’s clear they have been deceiving the whole world.”
In 2021, former Facebook executive, Frances Haugen testified to Congress that the social media giant was not investing enough “to keep Facebook from being dangerous.” The same year ex-President Trump was accusing the company as being a part of “big-tech tyranny,” angry because they banned him for life for breaching their terms of conduct.
An argument could be made that Roger Ailes and Jeff Zuckerburg are the American Leni Riefenstahls of the 21st century. They willingly allow lies, misinformation, disinformation, mistrust, hate, suspicion—on steroids—to prevail for money and power, thus creating a “red America” where truth becomes irrelevant, slandered, and libeled.
Rock band Green Day’s anthem for the more erudite called, American Idiot, recorded while George W. Bush was president, is a blistering indictment of the power of this blossoming trend—one that Barack Obama used for good to jumpstart his grassroots campaign, but his successor exploited. Billy Joe Armstrong, the songwriter/singer was full Nostradamus on this one, and in 2016, the band performed the song at the MTV European Music Awards, dedicating it to Donald Trump:
Don’t want to be an American idiot.
Don’t want a nation under the new media.
And can you hear the sound of hysteria?
The subliminal mind-fuck America.
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