Last week I was visiting my youngest grandchild, who is a year and half old… and my daughter and son-in-law too, of course. I didn’t pay much attention to the news or the political drama on social media and that was a good change. Yesterday I spent some time online reading news, checked out Twitter crazyland, and got caught up on YouTube.
While food shortages, economic crises, and the Biden border chaos still tend to dominate right-wing media, heading into the full-swing 2022 election season, the liberal, “mainstream” media keep trying to fixate on right-wing extremism, “ultra-MAGA” and white nationalism.
The current baby formula shortage looks like another total failure of the Biden administration. They failed to anticipate and then deal with the growing shortage problem caused by the FDA citing problems and then Abbott shutting down a major plant that produces baby formula. While various right-wing oxygen was given to stirring up a conspiracy theory linking the baby formula stockpiled for the border crisis as the Biden administration trying to starve American babies and send the formula for illegal immigrants, the reality is the Biden administration failure dealing with a major baby formula plant closing was most likely not connected with the acquisition of baby formula to send to the border. Here’s another fact, people on the right won’t like – regardless how disastrous Biden’s border policies are (and yes, they’re a national security and humanitarian nightmare), when US officials take people into custody, they have to provide shelter, food and medical care. So, if our border control officials are dealing with masses of illegal immigrants, many of them infants – they have to feed them.
The Biden administration has been slow to respond to the humanitarian crisis at the border too, so no one should be surprised at their failures with responding to the domestic FDA action that led to the current baby formula shortage. This administration spends more time trying to figure out how to spin problems and blame someone else than they do trying to solve problems. It’s always someone else’s fault according to the Biden administration.
Due to how politically damaging this baby formula shortage situation is to Dems heading into an important election in November, it will likely be resolved quickly- with some combination of reopening the closed plant and allowing the import of some foreign baby formula. It’s not likely to last for months and months and the liberal media will work hard to move past this story, that focuses on another Biden administration failure. Democrats have every incentive to get this baby formula shortage resolved quickly, so it won’t be hanging over their party during the campaign season.
I suspect the liberal media and Democrats are going to run on and hype- stirring up racial animus and a repeat of the Summer of 2020, not economic problems. There will likely be constant damage control efforts to downplay economic bad news and shortage problems. This baby formula shortage problem will likely disappear from liberal media news as quickly as the Afghanistan withdrawal debacle did.
The economic chaos seems likely to escalate, but the activist-wing of the Democratic Party will likely deploy in full-force to create a Summer of Rage, hitting the streets over abortion, racial issues, and most of all pointing fingers at dangerous right-wing extremists everywhere – again.
After Dems unsuccessful effort at trying to energize the American people about January 6th, the problem is more and more people on the right have become reactionary, leap to believe every conspiracy theory floated blaming evil Dems, Biden or some globalist cabal of elites for nefarious doings, and are sick to death of far-left politics being crammed down their throats. I don’t believe it’s a problem of “ultra-MAGA” so much as it is a whole lot of people on the right don’t trust anything the liberal media reports, jump into believing everything floated on right-wing media, even though the right-wing media is as unreliable as liberal media. This sets the stage for too many people on the right reacting just like the people on the left, who rushed into believing every bit of dirt reported by liberal media about Trump and their embrace of a fraud like Michael Avenatti.
Too many Americans on the right are becoming more and more inclined to buy into a whole lot of paranoid conspiracy theories and rush down one bizarro rabbit hole after another. The willingness to assume the worst about every situation and instantly blame the “other side” isn’t a good state of mind, but it seems a lot of people on the right operate from that mind-set now (the American left has been in that same “vast, right wing conspiracy” mind-set for over 20 years now – and look where they’re at).
Both sides in America appear to be more polarized now than in 2020 and that’s bad for America and the center seems much smaller these days.
The inflation situation is projected to worsen, as are shortage situations, for everything from parts to food supply. My prediction is Americans will remain divided and be living in two distinct information bubbles, with the small segment of Americans in the political center shaking their heads wondering how so much of America, both left and right, skid off the rails into constant partisan-fueled paranoia, distrust and rage.
Keeping Americans enraged at the “other side” works spectacularly well, in a country where our politics is now part of churning culture war that lives mostly on social media, not in the real world. Millions of American also prefer to “react” on social media without doing any research or considering differing viewpoints or even reading beyond the incendiary headlines most of the time, it seems. The people who designed social media encouraging people to react constantly were onto a powerful tool at controlling people, that’s for sure.
It’s a safe bet America will experience civil unrest like in 2020 (or worse) and this could make the economic chaos worse, in addition to the domestic political situation. I’m not just pulling this prediction out of thin air. Here’s a Reuters report from 4 days ago: https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-abortion-rights-activists-start-summer-rage-with-saturday-protests-2022-05-14/.
More fun times ahead. On the bright side, I’m glad I’ve been seriously stocking up extra food and supplies since the spring of 2020, when the Covid craziness started. And I’m glad I started growing some vegetables and herbs this spring, That feels like a tiny bit of insurance in these uncertain times.
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