Tucker Carlson, the darling of hard-right ideologues, was sacked by Fox News immediately after that media outlet settled with the Dominion Voting Machine Corporation for about $750 million dollars. While Fox cleared some $2.1 billion last year, this amount probably caused Rupert Murdoch to grab for his ant-acids. As disgusting and smug as Tucker might have been, he was the undsiputed star of the network, ever since Bill Oreilly exited after a string of sexual harrasment suits. Nothing like the family values crowd to engage in a little hanky-panky.

A number of the conservative darlings have been forced off the network over the past decade or so starting with Glenn Beck back in 2011. Glenn was an over the top conspiracy theorist who may even have stretched the credulity of the Fox brass. Roger Ailes, a well placed GOP activist and consultant, bit the dust in 2016 after acusations of sexual harrassment by another Fox luminary, Gretchen Carlson. The next year, 2017, saw two more casualties. Eric Bolling, another on-air star was let go for, guess what, sexual misconduct. But the big news of that year was the release, a polite way of saying the firing, of Bill O’Reilly, their chief far-right purveyor of nonsense and holder of their prime evening time slot. Finally, in 2020, White House correspondent Ed Henry was pushed out the door for, guess what, ‘willful sexual misconduct.’ Females are advised to enter the Fox empire at their own risk, or at least bring their own security forces.

What does this all mean? Is Papa Murdoch no longer calling the shots or, less likely, trying to make amends for a poorly led life as he nears his own demise? Are his sons and heirs taking charge and leading the network in a more responsible direction? These accumulated changes leave Hannity as the one bright star at Fox and the one remaining household name to push nonsense only believable to the tin hat crowd.

Some have suggested that Fox wants to be considered more of a ‘mainstream media outlet.’ In effect, they would be signing on to the ‘fake media’ world they have attacked with such exuberance in the past. For the network, the problem will be a huge hit to their bottom line. Their core, or target, audience thrives on the red meat thrown to the unthinking bubbas of the world. This core audience wants their priors validated and the their personal hatreds acknowledged … in a sense, blessed. They turn to Fox for a kind of perverse comfort in the fact that their comical, if it were not so tragic, view of the world makes sense and is so widely shared by others. If Fox goes any more mainstream, many of their viewers will seek alternatives to feed their deepest ideological passions in droves. What we can say is that the demise of Fox as a propoganda outlet will not automatically return America to sanity.

This raises a question in my head, which is an interesting place to be. As you may know by now, I don’t always think in a straight line. Granted, my favorite activity involves enjoying the discussions I have with myself. They are scintillating and brilliant and, best of all, no can object or insert any contradictory facts or interpretations. At the same time, my imaginary dialogues wander about in strange ways with unusual connections continuosly being formed. Surely a fun place to be.

Here is my wandering for today. We normally surmise that outlets like Fox generate the kinds of far right beliefs and attitudes shared by a large share of the U.S. population. How else would people embrace such obvious follies as Republicans best represent working people or Obama was a disaster for America or (almost hard to put this in writing) that Trump was sent by God to save us. It makes more sense to conclude that Voodoo is the path to Nirvana.

But here is the disconcerting thought that keeps popping into my head. Outlets like Fox do not create the divisive political climate that dominates the American landscape today. It merely reflects and amplifies what already was out there and which had been lurking throughout our history. The hate and narrowness we see among today’s Republicans has always been there though, in the past, had been muted by the buffer provided by rational members who are now long gone. I recall being repelled by the news that many in Texas and the South cheered at the news of John Kennedy’s death by an assassin, and that plots to attack JFK as a traitor to America flourished in parts of the country. Irrational fear and hate were always there, they just had fewer avenues to flourish given that a limited number of outlets broadcast their version of reality. Walter Cronkite was such a soothing and reasonable father figure during the 1960s.

Fox news thrived, not because it created a demented fan base but because that base existed and insisted on an outlet that would support their priors. The hard right, bigger in America than in most places, needed this kind of network to exist. Rupert Murdoch merely saw the opportunity to provde this demanded service. Fox’s array of stars mostly were college dropouts (with some exceptions) who saw a way to make an easy buck.

I can’t prove this of course. However, I’m a firm believer in two things in policy analysis. One should always get the question right and one should think hard about causal connections including, even more importantly, their direction. It makes a huge difference whether propoganda (the real fake news) shapes belief or those alreadt existing preferences create the demand for certain forms of propoganda. We can more easily work on the former while the latter will prove more difficult to remedy.

My mind then wandered in a slightly tangential direction. We are experiencing a heightened sense of angst and malaise in America. There are small signs everywhere. Mass shootings on a daily basis is one clue. Or take the fact that 1 in 3 high school girls reported serious suicidal thoughts in 2021 (according to CDC data). Persistent feelings of sadness and hopelessness has jumped from about a third of all girls in 2011 to 57% a decade later. For boys, the corresponding rise went from about 20% to almost 30%. The upward trend took off right around Trump’s inauguration and kept rising though the subsequent pandemic which offered additional stressors.

We also know that kids respond to the world created by their parents. How could they not, even as they pull away to become independent. We see higher levels of pathology among adults these days. Some 53 million have some form of mental illness or impairment in 2020. About 28 million alone abuse alcohol and let’s not even get into meth and opioid addicitons. Moreover, some 61% of adults report experiencing one or more serious stresses as kids themselves. We appear to be passing on the accumulating stresses in life from generation to generation.

My wandering internal conversation now takes me to a topic I shared in a recent blog. There are some very happy countries and they are happy year after year. What do most of them share? They have robust and well developed public spheres that ameliorate life’s stresses. Public services such free access to medical care, inexpensive child care, free education through college, labor market assistance to ensure fair treatment to workers, programs to care for the elderly, and so on, take a good deal of uncertainty out of life. Citizens in such countries prize these things so much that are willing to pay high taxes.

In the U.S., we approach things very differently. We foster conflict and competition under the guise that it produces character and innovation, and that it rewards the best people in some Darwinian struggle for success. All this is wrapped up within the soothing mantle of personal freedom and independence. It is the so-called American Dream, you too can be a millionaire. And a number do win the brass ring. But many more struggle amidst lives caught up in uncertainty and the fear that one slip might cast a person and their loved ones into the economic and social abyss. No wonder so many kids, fighting for some advantage starting in elementary school and drowning in debt as they finish college, are so anxious and despairing. The rampant bullying we see in our high schools is merely preparation for the coming battles as adults within America’s demented zeitgeist.

All this is speculation of course. But I have a few dots I’d like to connect. Our conflict and competitive American culture leads to a higher levels of anxiety and angst which in turn generates a pervasive sense of fear and a distrust of others which, in turn, leads to forms of isolation and the search for those responsible for one’s unhappiness. Buying an AR-15, or publicly displaying a weapon around your waist, may provide some comfort. But another balm is watching your favorite pundit lay out for you, in simple terms, why you feel the way you do and whom to blame for it. This becomes your new fix. You can’t really live without it.

If any of this is true, the remedy for our national ills will not be firing a few firebrands on Fox news. It will require rebuilding our society from the ground up. Alas, I am too old to take this on. Time for my nap!