Floyd R. Turbo would not be marginalized today

Remember Floyd R. Turbo? People my age certainly do. Sometimes I bring up memories and find younger people to be clueless. Let me explain that Floyd R. Turbo represented "the Trump base" many years before Trump entered the political arena. Turbo was on television in the days of Watergate. He was a character created by Johnny Carson. He talked like a typical member of today's "30 percent" i.e. the Trump base.
And we were supposed to laugh at him. He was the "everyman" who lacked education and had paranoia about the (changing) world around him. We found him to be lovable in the same way as Archie Bunker. That's another name where young people might require a primer. We all assumed back then that America was moving forward despite such dinosaurs among us. Turbo and Bunker were curiosities. Audiences laughed.
Carson had his characters just like our Minnesota radio personality Steve Cannon. Carson was a celebrity in a way that is difficult to achieve today. Carson reigned on nighttime TV in the days of the "Big 3" TV networks. Just about anyone around the water cooler could join in, in a conversation about the previous night's Carson monologue. Carson had his character "Aunt Blabby" who conformed to the stereotype of old people. "She" had a thing for Ed McMahon, remember?
Well, people my age will remember Walter Cronkite was a really big deal. Thing is, my family lived in a neighborhood where our only TV network was NBC for a long time. So, the "big deal" for us was Huntley and Brinkley on NBC. "Good night, Chet - good night, David." We read about how Cronkite made his historic commentary about how maybe it was time to withdraw from Vietnam. Why did it come down to him doing this, and why did it take so long? Our media universe then was top-down, not bottom-up like today. Today, Americans would turn on something like the Vietnam war, and the media universe would readily grease the whole effort. The new media are often an agent for good.
But today we have the "media president," the Twitter president, who is raising all sorts of questions about suitability. And we learned that international politics can get into the realm of media with nefarious motives - it's the Russia thing.
 
Perspective gets altered
Let's be clear that "Russia" or "the Soviet Union" were totally the bad guys in an earlier time. The Cold War was so intense, it affected the way we educated our children, as we felt we had to stay ahead of the "Russkies." The whole space program can be explained by this: our drive to be "first" in getting to the moon etc. Today I think we have come to our senses in education and have made school life less intense and rigid. Why are we having kids if we can't make life pleasant for them?
Today we'd view the Floyd R. Turbo character in a mixed way. We'd have to be careful being too critical. The Trump base, after all, made certain we'd get Trump as president. Every day we are bombarded with news about how absolutely quirky the president is. He is making certain porn stars into household names. He regularly makes assessments that are not grounded in fact. Too often, the media people who try to point this out, like those on MSNBC, are ripped as "biased" and part of the "far left." It puts progressive types totally on their heels.
Gone are the days when the Floyd R. Turbo crowd was seen as an eccentric, regressive minority. Even colleges that should know better have been forced to a degree to kow-tow to the right. Logic be damned. Science be damned. That is our world of today.
Why is it so important for Russia to scheme in order to promote the Trump crowd? Russia along with Trump sympathizers seem to want to argue that even if there was some hacking or intervention, it doesn't matter. Trump constantly asserts he would have won anyway. If the intervention was of no consequence, why was it undertaken? It's like watching Bill Belichick, coach of the Patriots, get caught cheating in some way, and then when forced to explain it, he says "well, it didn't give us any advantage anyway." Well, why did he do it ("deflategate" etc.)? If just one play in a game can be transformed from the (properly inflated) ball bouncing off a receiver's fingers, to a successful catch, it can affect the outcome of the game easily.
 
Peel away to find motivation
So the Russians strive to help the American right wing? Why does it matter? The Russians know that the American Republican Party does not believe in government. Republicans do not want the American people to like government. This is a key defining feature. So if you are out to disrupt America, the Republican Party is a good base from which to begin.
Republicans or conservatives can have a healthy influence toward fiscal discipline when their influence is limited. The real danger sign, one we haven't thought enough about, is when Republicans become the dominant majority. All kinds of bad things can happen when a party takes charge that does not believe in regulations. All kinds of sinister things will eventually happen, the kind of things and motivations we see exposed on the CNBC TV program "American Greed." It takes a while for these things to incubate.
Aside from the Republican Party's intrinsic traits, there is the inherent problem of "one-party rule." The Russians know this is a threat to U.S. stability. The desired checks and balances get removed.
 
Ties with NRA understood
Let's ask why the Floyd R. Turbo Republicans are so knee-jerk in step with the National Rifle Association. Let's review how Republicans distrust government and are even antagonistic. Well, Second Amendment loyalists talk about how our underpinning of gun rights is the potential need for the citizenry to rise up against the government! Thus they'll need their guns, right? Heaven help us, of course, if that sentiment actually begins to take hold. But this is how the Floyd R. Turbo camp thinks.
As a consequence we see government bogged down as if in quicksand when it comes to enacting common sense gun control. We could all assert ourselves and contact our representatives. But we're going up against the gun lobby and its money. It seems insurmountable now. Those wonderful kids from Florida are trying to change things. Will this enlightened drive bite the dust like all others? I suspect it will, sadly. What will rescue us? Perhaps we'll need an economic crisis that scares the hell out of us. Too bad that might be necessary.
But we must pray we can escape the shackles of the Floyd R. Turbo crowd and the porn star president.
- Brian Williams - morris mn minnesota - bwilly73@yahoo.com