If you can step outside of the current moment, in a way, and consider it from a high-level view, we’re at a morbidly fascinating point in time. We have a person with few tangible business successes, beyond being born wealthy and using that position to build an empire of charismatic grifting, who is now single-handedly setting the country’s trade policy. He evidently made decisions based on gut feelings and then concocted a nonsensical methodology out of thin air (or via AI) to explain those gut feelings. Even the economists cited in his methodology don’t understand why they were included, as their work doesn’t support what transpired last week.

In a sense, some would say we’ve reached the economic version of injecting bleach or sucking down horse deworming medication to fight off novel viruses.

At the same time, this person’s support base / political party appears to be shifting from near-constant complaining about inflation and high prices to either ignoring that entire line of thought (look over there! a trans person!), or claiming that dealing with high prices and inflation is okay now, even honorable, because it’s part of a noble effort that will restore mythical glories of the past.

We’ll all be just fine if we trust the man who found ways to bankrupt casinos (while making millions in salary for himself).

If you tilt your head just right, the casino debacle mirrors what we’re watching right now: illogical, broad tariffs that hurt everyday investors and consumers followed by a push for a tax plan with trillions of dollars in tax cuts for the wealthy. Bad business decisions, but the people at the top make out like bandits.

It reminds me of how the bleach/deworming advice has been long forgotten, or is seen as harmless buffoonery, but public health officials are now Public Enemy #1 for daring to recommend evidence-based policies. People in power, and their supporters, are attacking educational institutions and the co-equal branches of government and firing/threatening funding for anyone who stands up to say, “Wait a minute…maybe these decisions don’t make actual sense.”

Loyalty to an autocrat over country, “feelings” over facts, in a country that purportedly despises kings. Money always flowing toward the wealthy; the rest of us waiting for that magical, ever-elusive trickle-down effect.

Again, from that higher-level view, you have to wonder how we got here, and how this will play out.

Regarding how we got here, I’m sure someone smarter than me could give a long list of reasons. The one that keeps popping up in my mind is the rise of TV news as both entertainment and propaganda, and how common it is to see TVs tuned to “news” channels in the background of so many public spaces – airport terminals, waiting rooms, dentists offices, barbershops, etc.

And then I think of Roger Ailes’ influence over the years, dating back to his Nixon-era memo titled “A Plan for Putting the GOP on TV News.” **

“People,” Ailes wrote, “are lazy. With television you just sit — watch — listen. The thinking is done for you.”

Aile’s plan, as laid out in the memo, was to provide “pro-Administration, videotape, hard news actualities to the major cities of the United States.”

The overall Ailes plan, then, was underpinned by a clear formula: People are lazy + The thinking is done for them (by television) + Pro-Administration messaging is sent out as television “news” = the people are thinking what the administration wants them to think because people are too lazy to think for themselves.

There’s an interesting implication to be unwound from all of that: if people think for themselves, they won’t think what the administration wants them to think.

When Rupert Murdoch launched Fox News in 1996, he made Roger Ailes the CEO. Under Ailes’ leadership, Fox News became one of the most watched news channel in the country (now at the top of the list).

How will this play out?

How do you put more informative content out there in an easily digested form? TikTok dances?

I don’t see a way to re-work how so many of us are programmed, which leaves me thinking that it will take a giant shock, bigger than what we’ve experienced in the past three months, to get people out of their recliners. Carefully researched and well-presented news programming simply won’t garner the same attention as an Ailes-inspired DramaRama.

In the meantime, I still think it’s important to write all of this down. To take notes. To provide any sort of counter to the fire hose of misinformation. And, because we’re at Baghdad Bob levels of communication from the administration and it’s pro-administration channels, it’s important to turn off the TV.

** I’m hosting the PDF, originally sourced from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library, on RFB because I wonder how long it will be before people start attempting to scrub it from history, or bury it behind paywalls. You can also find the entire Ailes files at https://ia800805.us.archive.org/12/items/59037838TheAilesFilesComplete/59037838-The-Ailes-Files-Complete_text.pdf, or you can contact RFB for a copy (it’s too big for our hosting package).

Or: “Begun, the leaf blower wars have.” – Yoda, 2009, somewhere in the Degobah system when the live oaks awaken

While I have noted repeatedly that this blog is proudly unsullied by corporate sponsors, I’m happy to report that we do offer limited sponsorships to certain entities or concepts that prove worthy.

Today’s post is presented by our dear, humble friends RAKE and TARP.

Though I’ve lived in the south for 20+ years, I’m still somewhat surprised each spring when live oaks start dropping their leaves. I happen to be surrounded by oak miscreants so everything is covered in leaves from late February through early April.

I’ve read that trees can share resources and will even favor relatives via underground mycorrhizal networks, and I think the oak family around my house uses that network to plot against me. Rather than six or seven trees dropping their leaves all at once, they time it in the most aggravating fashion. One or two will let loose and then there will be a pause for several days. I’ll wait and wait, get annoyed, rake up the leaves, and then one or two more will immediately start dropping their leaves. We go through three or four cycles of this, me shaking my fist at the canopy, the trees deliberately dropping more leaves and then adding pollen blizzards and eventually the little squiggly catkins that get everywhere, even infiltrating the house.

Most people around me favor gas or battery powered blowers for leaf management, and neighbors on both sides will spend anywhere from 2-3 hours walking back and forth across their postage stamp lawns, blasting leaves to and fro. Everyone’s houses are pretty close together, so often this means a leaf blower-wielding person walking up and down between the houses relentlessly pushing a leaf twenty yards one way, and then twenty yards another way.

This drives me up the wall for two reasons: 1) the sound is horrible and it sets off a fight or flight sensation in my brain that makes me want to jab pencils in my ears, and 2) our friends RAKE and TARP up there can be used to complete this task in a much more efficient, cheaper, and quieter way.

I know this because here at RADIOFREEBEAUFORT we are nothing if not data-driven, and I’ve timed Team Leaf Blower, and I’ve timed Team Rake & Tarp, and I can say with certainty that I can rake and clear every area around my house in less than an hour. All a casual passer-by would hear is the soothing swish, swish, swish of my rake, along with the chirping of birds and the occasional deafening roar of an F-35.

Our dedicated sponsor, TARP, pictured above, has been a faithful helper since Hurricane Matthew hit Beaufort in 2016. This is its ninth season of service. It cost $20 at Home Depot, and you could probably find something similar for $10 or less at Harbor Freight. RAKE came to us three years ago by way of Tractor Supply Company and was also $20. Now, that rake price might seem a little high but the one flaw with the rake & tarp plan is that cheap rakes break easily and you might find yourself rake-less, which messes up the whole system.

Still, $40 along with an occasional rake replacement isn’t too bad compared to ~$100 for an entry level leaf blower (and who wants entry level power? better shell out $200+ for maximum suburban prestige). On top of that, you either have to manage fuel jugs and small engine maintenance, or deal with rechargeable batteries that die every 3-5 years.

Is this method easy? No, and I think that’s the main factor in its lack of popularity. After all, what would you rather do – (a) stand around, and occasionally wander aimlessly, while making a lot of noise, or (b) move your arms back and forth a lot, bend down, and pull things on a tarp in a relatively quiet fashion? Most people would choose (a) before you could even finish asking the question – because wandering around making a lot of noise is the quintessential American activity.

But I’ve been told we are a strong, resilient, bootstraps-yanking nation of patriotic heroes who believe in honest, hard work and callused hands and the satisfaction of a job well done. So I, along with sponsors RAKE and TARP, believe society can change. Throw down your leaf blowers, Beaufort, and any area with conspiratorial live oaks. We can work more efficiently. We can be quiet. We can jump off the consumerist treadmill that has us constantly searching for the latest shiny thing.

Maybe all the live oaks want is some peace and quiet. Maybe I’ll be rewarded when they see that I’m actually trying to scrape lightly over the surface of the Earth rather than blasting everything to kingdom come.

Or maybe my raking is irritating their mycorrhizal networks and I’m the real enemy here. Good thing I have a backup leaf blower.

While it’s way too early to address any readers of this blog, if there were any readers, they might be asking an important question: Which Beaufort are we talking about? The inferior northern variant – “bo-fort,” in North Carolina? Or the superior southern variant – “byoo-firt,” in South Carolina. The answer should be clear: Beaufort, South Carolina. Taking a cue from our Orange Leader, I do not acknowledge the city with the stolen name in North Carolina, nor do I appreciate their pernicious pronunciation.

Working from this superior location makes the RFB concept even more fitting. While Beaufort was at one point the heart of the secessionist movement, it was quickly occupied by the Union Army at the start of the Civil War and subsequently became an interesting (and one could say progressive) pocket of resistance starting in the early 1860s and extending to the present day. My summary here is very brief but I’m sure I’ll touch more on it later. Curious readers should take some time to learn about the Penn Center or the new-ish Reconstruction Era National Historical Park, or contemporary issues like the community’s resistance to book banning efforts.

My broader point is that this is a natural place from which to write with concern about, and opposition to, the ill winds surrounding us. A pocket of resistance. And it’s a place to explore the fact that even within that pocket, there are legislators and community leaders who embrace those ill winds.