My boys chuckled and said that in four days, they have heard more negative press coverage, more stories invoking scandal and controversy, more unfavorable analysis of what is actually happening with the incoming administration, than the total of the last four years combined.
Not only that, but we caught a segment on one of the news shows pondering if Trump can live up to his campaigning and fix the economy as he promised. We immediately asked fix what? For three years the press insisted it's a mother beautiful economy. Even on election night, on the ABC round table, they questioned why Americans just couldn't feel the awesomeness of our strong and robust economy. Most likely something to do with many Americans not being able to afford shelter, fuel and groceries was our guess.
But it's so nakedly obvious. All pretense of not being ministries of lies and propaganda for leftwing globalism has long been tossed out the window by the media. Though it didn't work this time, just like it didn't work in 2016. And my oldest son, no fan of Trump that he is, maintains that Trump's loss in 2020 was not some universal mandate for the Left. He believes had Trump not told his supporters to sit on it and reject early voting, he might have won then.
So the idea that the media and leftwing establishment has the power it had, even in 2014 - when BLM could change the appraisal of our history, leading to Talibanish purges of our historical monuments and memorials unhindered, and experts were trotted out to explain that Islamic terror attacks in America is the new normal, and that obviously boys should use girls bathrooms or the Fed will pull your funding - might even less true today than 2016.
Though there is a positive, if you think on it. Years and years ago, at the defunct Catholic and Enjoying It, Mark linked to another blogger who addressed the issue of Catholics voting. At the time, Mark was moving toward his 'pox on both houses' position. But the blogger stated that there was one unarguable reason to vote Republican. Because as soon as Republicans are anywhere close to the majority, and certainly when they hold the White House, the press gets busy and begins telling us just how terrible things are in America and the world. Mark agreed then, and I agree today, with the caveat that now the press isn't content with reporting the bad, but it will report that everything is bad whether true or not.
I'm not sure the early voting thing would have made a difference last time around given the number of shenanigans that occurred with mail in votes. Trump definitely screwed up in Georgia though by telling his supporters not to vote in the Senate runoff there.
ReplyDeleteAnywho, I'm convinced now the powers that be should have just let Trump win 4 years ago. He would have had all the negative press with a press that had some shred of credibility still AND a divided congress. I think even if they had just left him alone, he would have faded away as a "one hit wonder" of sorts. But clearly, they couldn't leave well enough alone and had to pile on a personal raid, ridiculous lawsuits, and then allowed an assassination attempt by omission. All of that while the media kept telling us how evil the guy is and how great the economy is booming! I'm satisfied regular media has overplayed its hand and has exposed itself as Pravda. It will be interesting now to see how the negative press plays out now that their credibility is in the dumps. Will it make as much of an impact as previously? Especially since some Republicans have taken a page from Trump's playbook and started pushing back on leftist talking points to talking heads' faces.
That's probably true. Even the most pro-Trump sympathies must concede that when he took office in 2016, it was a new profession for him. Politics is a job that requires certain skills. True, the chaos and opposition aimed at him didn't help and was beyond anything I had ever seen. But he was clearly learning. Like Obama in 2008, he was outside his comfort zone. But now he's been in the political theater for eight years, and it shows. He still plays the fool and the PT Barnum when needed, but he knows how to play the press, and more, get things done in that realm of politics. He will still be Trump, but a Trump who knows what he is doing and how to do it in that crazy, wacky world of politics.
Delete(Tom New Poster)
ReplyDeleteAs I've said here before: the purpose of a "free press" was never truth as such, but the right of the less powerful to speak as freely as the powerful. The press has always been partisan, as the English press in Dr. Johnson's day, or the French press in Balzac's or the American in the time of De Tocqueville. What is unique to today is the astonishing (and completely voluntary) alignment of the views of the less powerful in US media with the powerful in US government.
Yet perhaps we should not be astonished. Milton, whose Areopagitica can be considered the first modern plea for a free press in English, went on to become a propagandist for the Lord Protector: Cromwell, the butcher of Connaught.
Journalism has never been unbiased. All journalism picks sides and chooses to oppose people and things. It's just that in the past, different media outlets worked against each other and chose different things. Today, most are on the same side, with the idea that those not on the side are somehow hyphenated. That is, rightwing (hyphen) media, and therefore to be dismissed. That is certainly held by those on the Left who enjoy that setup. Greydanus posted an entire article about why he listens to 'the media' as opposed to the crazy on fringe outlets and the internet. Which works if you want to justify being on the Left, since you'll never hear things in a way that challenges that from the different outlets that all share the same bias. But given what happened this year, that monopoly might be breaking up.
Delete(Tom New Poster)
DeleteA breakup with different voices emerging is exactly what's wanted. Balzac's Paris had very partisan newspapers, but they voiced different parties. De Tocqueville said you could go to a different town or even a different part of a large town in early America and hear different views. Let's get back there.
That's so true. I think it was someone on the old GetReligion site that point this out. Those on the Left will say 'the media has always been biased', as if it's no big deal. But they fail to point out that today the problem is that the media share the same bias. And any that don't are considered, often by those same on the left, to be merely "rightwing" - media, or "partisan" - media, and therefore not worth listening to.
DeleteI think all the Dems/lefties ignore the “fringe internet” outlets to their own peril. The fringe, as they call it, gets far more viewers than a vast majority of the MSM outlets these days.
DeleteThe best thing that ever happened in the election of 2020 was that Trump lost. When that happened and people began questioning how Biden after running a campaign from his basement could come up with millions of votes over Obama then people began to realize the fix was in and the dems cheated their way to the presidency. It's obvious the republicans learned from this and made such noise about it shining the light fully on the democrat voting shenanigans and providing thousands more monitors at polling stations and watching the vote count, the dems were not able to come up with the fraudulent votes to win. In 2020 after the Biden win we were subjected to the fraud of the elected officials, the perversions of their trans policies and of the alphabet soup crowd. The arrests of grandmothers at abortion clinics, NO foreign policy which has not made our world much more unstable and an economy not worth damn, the constant invasion of foreign nationals unvetted and transported to the US by the Biden administration. The people had enough of this crap and came to vote in droves, ESPECIALLY in early voting which helped a great deal to secure many states. The dems never saw this coming and have lost every vestige of power and dignity that they ever had. The only way I would have voted democrat, that sick perverse, power hungry, dangerous to life all stages part was if I was dead.
ReplyDeleteI actually early voted this year for the first time in my entire life. I just wanted to avoid any “day of” shenanigans even though in principle I am against this rolling voting set up we have currently.
DeleteI am too Bernadette. I always believed that the vote should be on the day designated. No early voting. The only mail in votes I would accept are military personal and those out of the country during voting day, or those who cannot vote due to a disability, whether it be from age or physical. The GOP did good by monitoring these cheaters. They are still cheating. You guys out there that are democrats, you need to know that the only way democrats can win is by lying and cheating. I hope you feel good about belonging to this party.
DeleteThat is true. I think part of the problem for the Left was simply the disastrous economy. People will ignore or look away much easier when they can by groceries and go on vacations and generally get on well. But when they are losing everything just to keep their houses and their tables filled, they start scrutinizing. And it wasn't hard to see that nobody - the White House, the press, Democrats, and those so aligned - cared about their struggles. And that included minority groups who swung toward Trump in ways typically not seen in recent years. When people spend 70 dollars for two plastic bags of groceries, they are going to start scrutinizing and putting things together. And it wasn't hard to see that we were being led by a self-proclaimed aristocracy that saw most people as lab rats for their mental postulating at best, and happily ignored the suffering of the masses because their guy was in office.
Delete