"Sasquatch," a painting by legendary Canadian nature artist Robert Bateman (To learn more about his collectible art, visit http://robertbateman.ca)
By the nature of what I am
fortunate to do, moving peripatetically as an old school dinosaur journalist
from story to story, I spend a lot of time traversing Wyoming, Montana and
other rural corners of the West.
When my family takes
vacations, we prefer road trips over flying, and two-lane highways over
interstates; dirt county roads and small towns, even better. We enjoy eating
pie in local mom and pop greasy spoons rather than at fast-food franchises.
More recently, we’ve
savored podcasts delivered to us via cellphone and satellite radio. But for a
long time passage through the Western hinters insured something else.
You see and hear a lot of
things out on the open road. Second only to sasquatch, one of the most elusive
rural beasts stalking the big open is the mythical “liberal media.”
Oh, sure, it is purported
to lurk but, save for coming within range of public radio, seldom is heard a
discouraging word challenging the constant thrum of commentary heard in the
voices of Limbaugh, Hannity, Beck, Savage, Ingraham and others.
Over and over again their
interpretation of reality is jack-hammered into the skull, feeding into the
whirlpool of a constant feedback loop of “information” that, were it ever
actually subjected to serious rebuttal, would never hold up.
Climate change=hoax
invented by the Chinese. Obama=born in Kenya and involved in a conspiracy to
overthrow capitalism. Democrats=godless because their Jesus is different from
ours. Women advocating for equal standing in the workplace=femi-Nazis.
Wolves=wiping out ranchers, threatening children at bus stops and decimating
our big game herds.
And there’s this: Agenda
21, Free Masons, Jews, the Rockefellers, Tri-Lateral Commission, George Soros,
UN and all non-white males scheming clandestinely to create a “One-World
Government.”
Soon, if we aren’t careful
and vigilant, we’re told, they will succeed in fomenting a take-over of local
county planning and zoning and steal our private property rights.
They want to put chips in
our brains to control our thoughts and establish Sharia law, empowering
health-care death panels that will determine how we live and die and oh, by the
way, black helicopters were recently spotted dumping more wolves into
Yellowstone because the secret unspoken desire of radical environmentalists is
to destroy our elk.
They want to put chips in our brains to control our thoughts and establish Sharia law, empowering health-care death panels that will determine how we live and die and oh, by the way, black helicopters were recently spotted dumping more wolves into Yellowstone because the secret unspoken desire of radical environmentalists is to destroy our elk.
You could/can motor for
hours on end and not escape such banter, like an endless theatrical performance
of Orson Welles’ War of the Worlds.
If you are so inclined to
believe it, advertisers are happily ready to sell you everything you need: gold
for hoarding, freeze-dried food packaged in five-gallon buckets to stow in the
bunkers and lots of guns because, right now, Chuck Schumer, Nancy Pelosi, Harry
Reid and jack-booted thugs working for the federal govenrment are coming for
our 12-gauges and 30.06s.
That’s why it’s wise to be
ready with semi-automatics and bump stocks.
Over and over again such warnings
are repeated daily on rural radio, like incantations recited by a cult,
unchallenged by anything remotely representing reality.
Is it any mystery why the
gospel of alternative facts is embedded so deeply in the psyche of rural
Westerners?
Now the Trump
Administration, along with its allied commentators and the stations broadcasting
them, are telling Congress (including lawmakers raised on the above) that
Americans shouldn’t shell out a penny of their hard-earned tax dollars to
support “leftist” entities like PBS and NPR, the National Endowments for the
Humanities and Arts.
Instead, citizens should,
by act of faith, be pouring billions and trillions more into bolstering
military defense—an area of government that largely escapes serious scrutiny of
wasteful spending, cost overruns, lack of fiscal accountability, equipment that
doesn’t always work, stealth bombers that military experts say aren’t needed,
and billions unaccounted for in the Iraq and Afghanistan campaigns.
Of course, if you’re
listening to media in the rural West, you know that scrutinizing such stuff
doesn’t matter because the “liberal media” is part of a conspiracy to destroy
America. That’s why we also need to spend billions on a wall, not only along
the US-Mexico border to keep unwanteds out, but we must continue constructing
walls between ourselves.
The enemy isn’t coming; it’s
already here.
For proof, all you need to
do is listen to all those liberal media radio channels blaring from the
dashboard of the pick-up.
Oh, you can’t find it?
Strange. It’s there somewhere, and if you can’t see it that’s because the
liberals are succeeding in their Agenda 21 plot to make the dials invisible.
About Todd Wilkinson
Todd Wilkinson, founder of Mountain Journal, is author of the book Ripple Effects: How to Save Yellowstone and American's Most Iconic Wildlife Ecosystem. Wilkinson has been writing about Greater Yellowstone for 35 years and is a correspondent to publications ranging from National Geographic to The Guardian. He is author of several books on topics as diverse as scientific whistleblowers and Ted Turner, and a book about the harrowing story of Jackson Hole grizzly mother 399, the most famous bear in the world which features photographs by Thomas Mangelsen. For more information on Wilkinson, click here. (Photo by David J Swift).
