As William Jacobson and others have pointed out, the progressive media establishment — after having spent years now trying to pin every last national show of violence on the “right wing,” and having spent the days leading up to the identification of the alleged Marathon bombers yet again rehearsing that same formula — is, in a surreal show of arrogance and contempt for the citizens they supposedly help to “inform,” now hoping to turn angry rebukes against their odious, ideological-driven speculations, as well as factual descriptions about the two brothers responsible for the slaughter and maiming of innocent families and charity runners, into a condemnation of that same right wing, this time for having the temerity to “politicize” the Boston ordeal.
And they are OUTRAGED that anyone would try to map politics onto such a horrible tragedy. Particularly when it’s those filthy, evil, gun-toting, children-hating earth polluters who fetishize a bunch of old white slave owners and stand athwart progress yelling stop, much like another famous group of racists stood in the doorways of schools in order to keep black children subjugated and separate.
Worse, they think either that no one will notice this surreally hypocritical (pardon, anti-foundationalist) tactic, or else that the public is so stupid and so malleable that it will buy into this latest bit of revisionist history, wherein it is the right who “rushed to judgment,” the right who is so quick to condemn, the right who, because of their hatred and bigotry against the Other, poses an existential threat to innocent, peace-loving Muslims here in the US, even though (they’ll tell us) Islamic radicalism had nothing to do with the bombings, that instead, it was the violent US gun culture and a kind of latent cultural racism that the brothers, who are just “boys,” could feel always around them that prompted their rage.
Our contemporary mainstream national “journalism” is nothing more than an exercise is narrative creation and management, manufactured consent, and ideological indoctrination posing as information dissemination. Even those who try to tell the truth have been conditioned by political correctness and fear of indictment in the court of public opinion for insensitivity and “racism” to hedge their bets, to offer qualifiers, to err on the side not of caution, but of staying within leftwing narrative parameters, which they sadly confuse with an exercise of caution and sobriety.
If this past week — and frankly, these past many years — have shown us anything, it’s that the mainstream press, with its institutional collusion and its collaboration with statist government, may be the single largest threat to our democratic republic. Their job — their very political mission, emerging from what they pretend is objectivity — is to create the parameters for public discussion, to drive the direction of that discussion, and then to coax, shame, coerce, confuse, and indoctrinate a pliable public into following their ideological lead.
Which is precisely why they are now hurrying to bracket the fact of Islamism that attaches itself via YouTube channels and FBI and DHS intelligence at least one of the brothers, in order to deflect, to dismiss, and to change the subject, turning their sense of phony self-righteous indignation on the right, who they laughably maintain are trying to profit politically off the terror attacks in Boston — even as they remain caked in the blood of the Newtown children.
I don’t know how to end the real existential threat to our country that the mainstream press poses — and I am not overstating this at all, regardless of who may sneer and say that I am — but I do know that it must be done.
Or else every political battle will be an uphill one.
There’s a reason a center-right country often finds itself in the grip of hard left demagogues. And it ain’t because the vast majority of American are screaming for soda bans, amnesty for illegals, and single-payer health care.
VDH points out that these guys get radicalized not because they’re mistreated here but because they assimilate the evil Western Ways, and out of guilt for not Being Good Muslims, they join up with the jihad to purge their shame.
Or else every political battle will be an uphill one.
When hasn’t it been? Especially since Bush was “selected” in 2000?
I think part of it is that they’re assissimilated into the dominant progressive liberal elite this country and everything in it is evil narrative, so they go outside of the country to find something that’s good.
Because why would anyone want to become a self-hating proggtard?
Such is the trap the anti-foundationalists have created for themselves via there various critical methods.
When hasn’t it been? Especially since Bush was “selected” in 2000?
Or “warmongering” Uncle Ron. Or before that, Goldwater’s “Thunder On The Right”, which was the title of a CBS News hit piece back in the day.
Some days if you were to ask me, I’d say our biggest threat is the apathy of the population that comes from being too comfortable. But apathy can be shaken, and comfort can end. Where can someone just waking up from complete disinterest in matters of liberty turn to learn what is needful to protect his birthright?
That is why I agree wholeheartedly: The Media, and our educational system are our greatest enemies, because they not only misinform and pacify the masses, but they try to alter the present (and thereby the past) by controlling the conversation around current events to encourage a kind of broken thinking that looks to the central government for solutions (invariably more laws and less freedom) to every kind of circumstance.
I don’t know how to stop the Media, but I know their biggest cash cow: Sports. Surely there is a way to starve the beast through some kind of massive sports boycott.
Where can someone just waking up from complete disinterest in matters of liberty turn to learn what is needful to protect his birthright?
Makes a good start, if taken seriously.
I don’t know how to stop the Media, but I know their biggest cash cow: Sports. Surely there is a way to starve the beast through some kind of massive sports boycott.
Only watch Fox Sports?
Good points about the media. Its frustrating but as technology advances, I’m pretty sure you’ll see the mainstream media lose much of its stroke, as even low information voters, begin to use the tools to get their news, that most of us already use. Unfortunately, I’m thinking you’re looking at a good 20-30 years before the MSM’s influence is lessened to such an extent that their “reporting” is also undetermined.
1. Atrocity
2. Rush to judgment/speculation
3. Hedging
4. Warning against rush to judgment/speculation
5. Rationalizing earlier rush to judgment/speculation
6. Opining we may never know
7. Moving to new stories
Lather, rinse, repeat
It’s that nice young Mr Collins.
Somebody opined, “I haven’t seen anyone instinctively ask, ‘why do they hate us?'”
My response? “That’s because they’re too busy defending the idea that we deserve to be hated.”
Can’t fix any of this without going back to first principles, because an establishment which cannot be shamed through exposure of its own unethical misdeeds is permanently out of control.
Want to fix media? Look at how journalists are educated.
Want to fix government? Look at how elected officials, their staffs, and government bureaucrats are educated.
Want to fix academia? Look at how self-described “educators” – a title purposefully chosen to divorce them from the responsibility of being Teachers – are educated.
Want to fix the Republic? Look at how the electorate is educated.
Common denominators: critical thinking is now actively discouraged, history is either ignored or rewritten to fit The Narrative, indoctrination is paramount, the collective is exalted, everyone is entitled to be a “winner”. That’s all on top of the general academic ineptitude and incompetence actively promoted by allowing the federal government to dictate the details of public education based on (a) a lowest common denominator template and (b) iron-fisted union control that has anything but the students’ best interests at heart.
Moral adolescents gravitate to leftist ideology because that ideology, as no other, validates their adolescence and precludes (or actively prevents) their ever having to Grow Up. Once one realizes this – once one realizes that “progressivism” isn’t a set of ethical values that simply derives from a different, but equally valid, point of view from classical liberalism – all sorts of things suddenly become clear.
Each one of us who eventually, finally, at long last, grew OUT of our close-minded, leftist adolescence, needs to understand that we didn’t simply “change our minds” about things – we Grew Up.
http://bit.ly/DmoX7
I miss Dubya. I liked it better when the bad guys feared us unlike now when they jeer at us.
Besides, being liked is overrated.
Moral adolescents gravitate to leftist ideology because that ideology, as no other, validates their adolescence and precludes (or actively prevents) their ever having to Grow Up.
Exactly. They’re hothouse flowers who are so anxious to distance themselves from the vulgar Outsiders that they never, EVER admit that there’s such a thing as frost.
The new aristocrats are cut from the same cloth as the old European aristocracy and its refusal to recognize “the little people” as fully human, like their glorious selves.
::spit::
Each one of us who eventually, finally, at long last, grew OUT of our close-minded, leftist adolescence, needs to understand that we didn’t simply “change our minds” about things – we Grew Up.
– Which most of the populace since the late 60’s have successfully managed to avoid. So now we have children teaching children.
– What other outcome would you expect?
It does make one want to take up one’s Toynbee again, doesn’t it?
Or perhpas one’s Spengler.
Or maybe Rosenzweig.
this is so last week already
as I predicted
Once we get fully inured to this event they will have to move on to fresher, more recent tales of destruction.
How else can they keep us properly keyed up and nervous and compliant to the fascist state?