Toward The End Of A Difficult Year

     This will be brief...I think. With Christmas Day behind us, a single week remains in which to assess this Year of Our Lord 2020, to try to make some sense of it, and to think about how we might improve the “sequel.”

     Most of my drivel here at Liberty’s Torch is about politics, public policy, and the perversities of government. I doubt that will disappear completely from my oeuvre, though I do intend to try to broaden my offerings in 2021. Politics has become too depressing for a regular diet of op-ed. New topics are needed. Maybe I’ll produce a few essays on currency manipulation or strategic weapons planning...no, wait, what am I thinking? Bad commentator! No Nesselrode pie! I’ll have to give the matter some time to percolate.

     Of course, the “big stories” are already known to everyone who takes even a passing interest in affairs. There’s no need for me, or anyone else, to enumerate them for you. But there are innumerable little stories that have been neglected because of the “big” ones. Indeed, we’re surrounded by them. And I shall tell you a terrible thing, an open secret that you might have pondered in years past:

The first job of the media is to get you to ignore those little stories, and to give the whole of your attention to the stories they select and trumpet.

     This is thought-fodder that hasn’t been adequately addressed here or elsewhere. There’s a dynamic behind it that “should” be “obvious,” and so (for a change) I shall refrain from making it explicit. But I’ll point you toward one of the things it’s savaged – and not by coincidence:

     These Americans are the most peculiar people in the world. You'll not believe it when I tell you how they behave. In a local community in their country, a citizen may conceive of some need [that] is not being met. What does he do? He goes across the street and discusses it with his neighbor. Then what happens? A committee begins functioning on behalf of that need. All of this is done by private citizens on their own initiative. The health of a democratic society may be measured by the quality of functions performed by private citizens. [Alexis de Tocqueville, Democracy in America, 1831.]

     What’s this? There’s a need that’s not being met? Quelle horreur! Surely the government must act at once! Private citizens are far too consumed with their own affairs to attend to such a “need!” – Today’s America (and to be fair, also every other country in the world).

     That’s the contemporary attitude, Gentle Reader – and it stems from the media’s relentless portrayals of every “need” as this huge, overbearing, terrifying thing that would make Godzilla run screaming for his mommy. But in pre-Civil War America, ordinary citizens saw to such “needs” according to their own priorities, abilities, and resources. De Tocqueville, a visitor from over-governed Europe, was stunned by our forebears’ readiness to act on their own initiative, without invoking the political sphere.

     There are many components to the thing, but two stand out above the rest: the vulgarized concept of “need” and the collaboration between the media and our native class of thieves, swindlers, fraudsters, and power-mongers politicians and their hangers-on.

     It’s when a “need” is seen as a critical, overwhelming thing that one’s personal abilities and resources could never address that those who desire power over us are best pleased. And yes, it also sells column-inches and commercial slots.

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     Among my resolutions for the New Year, I’ve resolved to try (at least) not to belabor the overwhelmingly obvious for my Gentle Readers. You’re bright folks who don’t need to be beaten about the head and shoulders with stuff you can easily see and comprehend for yourselves. However, as it is still 2020 as I write this, I’ll allow myself a soupcon of Overwhelming Obviousness and leave it for you to ponder:

Every “big need” is composed of many “little needs.”

     Private action is inherently preferable to political action, again for reasons too “obvious” to explain...not that I haven’t done exactly that hundreds or thousands of times to date. If you want to keep government at bay – and great God in heaven, how obvious is the desirability of that! – you must be willing to take a personal hand in meeting the needs you perceive:

Feed the hungry.
Give drink to the thirsty.
Clothe the naked.
Shelter the homeless.
Comfort the sick and the afflicted.
Visit the imprisoned.
Bury the dead and pray for their souls.

     Those seven items are what Catholics call the corporal works of mercy. They are the only true needs, and they are not inherently “big.” If your district has some number of impoverished, or homeless, or sick persons who lack loving relatives, you can assist in meeting their needs. Moreover, you won’t be alone in doing so, for as soon as others notice what you’re doing, they’ll join you, if only to quiet their consciences.

     The hour is late when it comes to the confinement of governments to their proper sphere. We may have waited too long, allowed things to go too far. Yet there is still hope. And yes, your contributions are tax-deductible...for the present, at least. But don’t succumb to the lure of “checkbook charity.” The record of large “charitable organizations” at actually doing charitable work is exceedingly poor, marred by a great deal of corruption and waste. Roll up your sleeves and get involved in the gritty work.

     The United States has never been more than about 10% distant from a condition in which there are no involuntarily hungry, naked, or homeless persons. If the 90% of us who “have it good” were each to put four hours per week into charitable activity, that fraction would drop dramatically...if not all the way to zero. And governments would have no rationale for meddling in what’s properly the domain of the good man with an operating conscience.

     More anon.

Must-See TV

     It’s clear that Tucker Carlson has the courage of his convictions. How much longer he’ll have his commentary perch at FOX News is less clear:

     I’ve downloaded the video, just in case YouTube makes it vanish.

     You may recall that when former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich mentioned the George Soros campaign to purchase district attorneys’ offices throughout America, Harris Faulkner and Melissa Francis ordered him not to mention Soros’s name any further:

     I’ve downloaded that video, as well.

     It’s standard strategic doctrine for an invading force to seize the channels of communication before all else. The suppression of the mechanisms of communication atomizes any potential resistance. In effect, it gives the invader the advantage of fighting a blind opponent.

     The United States may not be dealing with a physical invasion at the moment, but those who seek to topple the nation are as clever as any commanding general. If they can’t seize our communications media by force, they’ll simply purchase them and install their own rules and overseers to enforce them. That, apparently, is what has happened at FOX News. Whether the funds to purchase FOX’s compliance came from Soros, I cannot say...but I doubt he’s distressed over their new “be kind to Nazi collaborators” policy.

The Cost Of Remaining On Defense: An Illustrative Case

     When I wrote that we in the Right must go on the attack against the destroyers of the Left, I was speaking of a shift in our attitudes that will be required of us if we’re to be rid of the Leftist pest that threatens to overthrow our nation. At this time in our cultural and political conflict, the Left has the initiative. Worse, the Right seldom even reacts with adequate vigor to hold its ground. That situation must be reversed if the United States is to continue as we have known it.

     However, even with all the Sturm und Drang that besets us, most decent Americans are still too comfortable in their lives and personal pursuits to be stirred to offensive action. In consequence, those the Left targets are suffering its attentions with very little support, if any. Many of them are even abandoned by family and friends afraid of “catching their condition.” Try to imagine yourself in such straits, and how it would feel.

     This morning, our favorite Bookworm reminds us about some of the individuals caught up in this phenomenon. What caught my particular attention was an article I managed to miss when it was first published, about a young man who became my personal hero: the involuntary focus of the “Covington Catholic” incident, Nick Sandmann:

     Sandmann was one of a group of Covington students from Park Hills, Ky., attending the anti-abortion March for Life in Washington, D.C., when Nathan Phillips, a Native American elder and activist, was attending the Indigenous Peoples' March on the same day.

     Videos documenting Sandmann's encounter with Phillips went viral -- including some clips that did not show the full incident.

     "For Nick Sandmann, he's going to be tarnished with this stigma forever -- that he is some arrogant, racist kid," [Lara] Logan said on "Fox and Friends" on Monday. "Because that's how he was depicted when he was at the Lincoln Memorial... everyone knows him as the 'Covington kid.'"...

     Sandmann returned to the Lincoln Memorial with Logan for the first time since his life was turned upside down by his chance meeting with Phillips.

     "As we stood there, people began to stare at Nick and it became uncomfortable," narrated Logan. "He was mindful of the death threats and bomb threats against him, his home and [his attorney Todd McMurtry]. So we decided to leave. The long looks followed us on the way."

     "Does that happen all the time?" Logan asked Sandmann, as they walked away from the steps through heavy rain.

     "It happens everywhere I go," he said. "From in my community to different parts of the country. Everywhere I go, there is someone that will point me out."

     The unpleasant attentions Nick Sandmann gets, from the unfriendly stares to the death and bomb threats, are entirely because a hostile media establishment found it “newsworthy” – i.e., something that would draw in readers and viewers – to tar him as some sort of bigot. Despite the lawsuits that have followed, in which Sandmann has collected huge sums from the offending media companies, there have been virtually no retractions and no corrections of the initial inaccurate and inflammatory stories about the incident.

     Sandmann and his lawyer have done everything they can to punish the media outlets that have done this to him. It hasn’t been enough. It would take massive public support – boycotts of the offender outlets and their sponsors – to force those companies to change their ways or go out of business. No such support has arisen. The media continue to do as they’ve been doing: slandering anyone in the Right who can be made into grist for the mills of their Leftist allies.

     In noting one recent and especially scandalous Leftist initiative, Sarah Hoyt said acerbically (and in all capital letters, at that) that “THIS IS WHAT HAPPENS WHEN YOU LET YOUR CULTURE BE TAKEN BY PEOPLE WHO HATE THE COUNTRY.” In point of fact, we’ve seen one demonstration after another of the power of a militant minority with a short, coherent agenda. That militant minority is capitalizing on the diffuseness of its opposition: i.e., us. Their aims are few, while ours are many. It’s easier for us to say “I can’t do anything about it,” or “someone else will take care of it,” than to engage in the struggle. Thus we cede the initiative to those who seek to destroy what we claim to cherish.

     There may not be a solution. Decent persons at a distance from such scurrilities are difficult to rouse to action. They have their own lives to live: their own responsibilities to discharge, their own bills to pay, and their own worries to worry. Rallying the majority of the population of the nation against the hatred and lunacy the Left has unleashed is difficult even to imagine. It didn’t happen in Revolutionary times – the consensus among historians of the era is that no more than 10% of American colonials were enthusiastic supporters of the Revolution, much less actively engaged in making independence from Britain happen – and it’s less likely in our current era.

     Yet should we remain passive, we can easily see what will become of us. Nick Sandmann’s case, though of particular importance to me personally, is only one illustration out of many. Bookworm provides several others, a non-exhaustive list.

     We are at war. We must fight or go under. There is no third way.

     Pray.

“Just Because You’re A...”

     No known force has had as much influence on human affairs as religion. Moreover, no imaginable force could compete with it. After all, if you sincerely believe that the Supreme Authority of Existence has commanded that you do this and not do that, and will sentence you to an eternity of unspeakable torment should you disobey, you’ll toe the line.

     Ideologies that posture as above question – we might call them secular faiths – have similar effects on their allegiants, though they’re not quite as compelling and certainly aren’t inescapable. A secular faith is discernible by its resistance to evidence and reasoning that contradict its tenets. Eric Hoffer would say that it attempts to impose a “fact-proof screen” upon the believer. Some such faiths are rampant among us today, Marxism of all varieties (including “progressivism”) being the foremost examples.

     Note that a secular faith is inherently hostile to other kinds of faith. Such opposition is natural between two belief systems, each of which proclaims itself to be the ultimate authority. You’ll occasionally find a Marxist who gives lip service to some religious creed, but when the religion contradicts the dictates of his Marxism, the latter will win the day.

     Ironically, the Marxist is prone to dismiss the contentions of the non-Marxist with a kind of ad hominem: “You just say that because you’re a Christian / conservative / libertarian / [insert your own competing creed here].” It’s a bemusing sort of thrust. Isn’t the Marxist open to the same accusation? At any rate, it constitutes evidence that there’s no point in continuing the conversation.

     I’ve faced that thrust on several occasions. It can be massively irritating. A provocation to behavior that would be considered “untoward.” I haven’t always exhibited restraint at such times. My admiration for one who can maintain his composure in such circumstances is unbounded.

     Which brings me to the actual subject of today’s tirade: the highly impressive new White House press secretary, Miss Kayleigh McEnany.

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     McEnany has rocked the White House press corps onto its back foot. She seems always to be prepared for anything and everything. She delivers ripostes to their “gotcha” sallies that leave them reeling, embarrassed, and angry. In this she displays a degree of political and public-relations acumen that few of her predecessors could claim. Robert A. Heinlein’s prescription to answer a hostile question with a sharper and even more hostile question is obviously a conscious part of her approach.

     The gentlemen of the press deem this as an affront to journalistic prerogatives. They get to ask the leading, embarrassing, tendentious questions; the press secretary is supposed to stand there and “take it.” Were there any credibility to their pretense of non-partisan “objectivity,” they might have a case. However, in such circumstances, counterpunching such as McEnany has practiced would be absent from the scene. Honest, courteous journalists do not operate as the White House press corps has done.

     So of course the Left’s pet commentators, and the NeverTrumpers allied with them de facto, would like to see McEnany boiled in oil. They share the belief that it’s the press corps’ prerogative to ask the hostile questions and the press secretary’s job to “take it;” it was embedded in their psyches long ago. This video provides a recent sample of typical NeverTrumper reactions.

     President Trump has chosen well...which has his opponents in the media riled to the max. The “She’s doing it because she’s a fanatic Trump loyalist” thrusts at McEnany are already accumulating. They allow no possibility that she sincerely believes in her presidential employer’s policies, positions, and administration and is determined to defend them to the best of her ability. No, it must be because of her competing faith – and that, in the sadly degenerated Jonah Goldberg’s opinion, renders her “grotesque.”

     Judging by her performance to date, I predict that McEnany will have a long tenure – as long as she wants to be there – as President Trump’s front-line representative to the press. She’s shown more resilience in the position than Sean Spicer or Sarah Sanders, both of whom I liked but neither of whom possessed McEnany’s impenetrability by the press’s barbs. Indeed, McEnany seems to be enjoying herself. That would be appropriate. A truly gifted duelist enjoys displaying his strokes. He glories in the cut and thrust between him and his adversary. A press secretary who can face down an overtly hostile press corps as McEnany has done should take pleasure in her performance.

     As for the carpers in the Punditocracy, appalled that a presidential press secretary should display serious cojones, their gasps and exclamations of disapproval say more about their own insufficiencies than they do about the articulate, well prepared, impeccably poised, and (by the way) quite beautiful Miss Kayleigh McEnany. Though I do wish she’d lose the false eyelashes; they don’t go with the rest of her look.

The True Crisis Of Our Times

     Normally, I’d spend my Holy Saturday morning in some way other than writing an essay on a sociopolitical topic. The hour we face – dare I say it – is not normal.

     A few days ago, I wrote an article on the psychological dynamic relevant to being bombarded with exhortations to fear. It felt a bit odd to have to say something that seems so “obvious.” Just about all adults have some experience with doom-shouters. The story of Chicken Little is a classic not for its deathless stylistic elegance but because of the lesson it teaches about what a formless fear can do to us. The story of the Boy who Cried Wolf shows us the reverse of the coin.

     But there’s this to consider: I was vilified for writing it. The email was copious. The denunciations were maximally venomous. Some of them verged on criminal.

     Ask yourself why.

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     America is tottering at the brink of a unique form of totalitarianism. Governors, mayors, and county executives from coast to coast have usurped powers never granted to lock us into our own homes. It’s being called a “quarantine,” but quarantines are supposed to confine the dangerously, infectiously ill. Who ever heard of a quarantine that imprisons the healthy?

     There have been numerous cases of peaceable, law-abiding Americans being detained and fined for daring to leave their homes. Some have actually been dragged off in handcuffs. Daniel Horowitz presents some egregious cases at Conservative Review. The Silicon Graybeard lists a few others. At Ace of Spades HQ, Weird Dave lists a few more. And if your appetite is not yet sated, Matt Walsh has a few more still.

     Do not imagine that these are outliers far distant from the norm. They are the norm. The “forces of order” have decided that Americans have no right to leave their homes or assemble. Constitution? Bill of Rights? Meaningless words. Applicable only when everything is copacetic. This is an emergency!!

     Matt Walsh cites the attitude of officialdom:

     All of this may seem quite oppressive and gestapo-ish, but a police chief in Colorado put those worries aside by explaining that the act of leaving your house and going outside is not a right but a “privilege” that can be revoked if it is “misused.”

     Not many are brazen enough to say it openly. The one above will do for the rest.

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     A great part of the attention has centered on the damage being done to the American economy. That’s an important effect, to be sure. Yet the bustling, incomparably vibrant American economy is not a primary but a resultant: the most visible consequence of Americans’ rights – once acknowledged to be from God rather than by permission of the “authorities” — to do as we damned well please. The abridgement of those rights is why our economy has stalled and is in danger of permanent collapse.

     Let’s have a bit more from Matt Walsh:

     Apologists for our newly established police state will tell me that states and localities have the authority to impose restrictions in an emergency. That is true, but the question of how far their authority actually goes is complicated, and in this case made even more complicated by the fact that these stay-at-home orders, in many cases, are based not on a current medical emergency in the respective state, but on models that forecast the possibility of an emergency in the future. For example, Minnesota is under a stay-at-home order despite having only 29 coronavirus deaths among a population of over 5 million. Perhaps the situation will get worse. Perhaps not. The point is that there is no current emergency in Minnesota or many of the other states currently under lockdown. There is, rather, a model that projects an emergency. And if projected emergencies can justify the effective nullification of the Bill of Rights, where is the limit? Haven’t we now granted the government the power to seize near-total control on the basis of any real or phantom threat?

     I added the emphasis. It’s clear that Walsh appreciates the power of precedent. Not many do.

     It’s not “just” that we’re being impoverished. It’s that the authority usurped for this “emergency” will be used again and again – broadly speaking, whenever the political class finds it expedient to separate and silence us. If the elite can create conditions that disarm, impoverish, atomize, or otherwise weaken us under a pretext of “emergency,” have no doubt that it will do so. They are at war with us, and have been for some time: arguably since the presidency of Woodrow Wilson.

     Remember that you read it here first.

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     Back to the subject of the first segment: Why did so many persons write to condemn me for the “Fear Exhaustion” essay? Have you pondered it?

     My thesis is that I was edging close to pulling the curtain away from the wizard, revealing both the mechanism being used to induce compliance and the true agenda of those who work in it. The Mainstream Media are the premier purveyors of fear in our time. The more fear they can induce in common American citizens, the better they like it. It brings in readers and viewers. It sells airtime and column-inches. And it helps to cement their partnership with the Democrat Party, which regards our fear of one another as its best sociopolitical asset.

     A fearful populace is an easily subjugated populace. Any voice that opposes the message of “emergency,” of “crisis,” of imminent threats the citizen cannot counter from his personal or community resources is one that must be shouted down – silenced if possible. Though mine is a minor voice, from the evidence it’s heeded sufficiently to receive that sort of attention.

     It’s unnecessary to bludgeon this further. The time to resist with all necessary force is now. Americans must return to their normal lives by their own decision, without waiting for the “authorities” to give them some sort of notional “all clear.”

     Will it happen? Only if we are really determined to maintain our rights – to remain free.

     We shall see.

One Item Of Knowledge To Take Into 2020

     Over the course of this year that’s about to end, anyone who pays attention to events would have seen and heard a lot of stuff that would make him shrug and say, “So what’s new?” Indeed, 2019 was a year of momentous non-events, mostly the continuation of previously established processes and trends of which any reasonably well informed American would have been aware on 1/1/2019. However, among the discrete events of the year, one thing was established so firmly that there can no longer be a reasonable doubt about it:

The major media are wholly enlisted with the Left.

     Marta Hernandez of Victory Girls has compiled a list of candidates for the ten most egregious “media fails” of 2019. It’s quite a list: a good memory refresher for anyone who’s lost track of some of the media’s hijinks in the Democrats’ service. I’d recommend keeping a copy somewhere for future reference. You know, just in case some shill tries to claim that the media are “watchdogs over government,” or “the guardians of truth in our Republic,” or some such bilge.

     When a fraudulent organization becomes aware that the public is onto it, it tries its best to delegitimize those who have caught it in its deceits. In the case of the major media, that would be the alternative media: those that function primarily and somewhat informally over the Internet. And indeed, that has been one of the themes of major-media commentary in recent days:

     On Sunday, NBC News political director Chuck Todd dedicated the final Meet the Press of 2019 to insisting President Trump had brought about a “post-truth society.” The same network that pushed the totally-bunk Steele dossier for years and tried to sink Justice Brett Kavanagh’s nomination with the ridiculous allegations from Julie Swetnick, wanted to lecture the public about falling for and spreading lies and misinformation. In the process, Todd lashed out at Christians for believing in “fairy tales.”

     “This Sunday, alternative facts. The assault on truth (…) This morning, Meet the Press takes an in-depth look at our post-truth society and how a changing media landscape has created chaos out of order,” Todd indignantly announced during the opening tease.

     Of course, what Todd really dislikes is that thanks to the rise of “citizen journalism” and the World Wide Web, “the news” is no longer a single harmonious tune sung by all “newscasters” from the same page of the same preapproved hymnal. That takes the bullets out of his gun; he and his cronies can no longer “set the agenda” for the national conversation. Note that Brian Stelter at CNN feels much the same:

     The major media’s bias can no longer be concealed. So if you were ever in any doubt about the probity and competence of these “journalists,” Gentle Reader, you can relax now: they are not to be trusted.

     Should you therefore trust those whose journalism – citizen or otherwise – runs against the trends in the major media? No, you should not. Assume, as the default condition of judgment for everything you read or hear that the writer / speaker has an agenda. Assume that he will at the very least be tempted to frame his coverage, or choose his terms, to support the imperatives of that agenda. What’s outside his frame might matter more than what’s inside it. What he writes might be the most tendentious possible way of addressing the subject matter. And of course, there’s always a chance that he’s flat-out lying to you, particularly in his presentations of “statistics.”

     Once again, I must present my favorite quotation from Siddhartha Gautama, better known to history as the Buddha:

Believe nothing,
No matter where you read it,
Or who said it,
No matter if I have said it!
Except it agree with your own reason
And your own common sense.

     Happy New Year.

Wait For The Sequel

     Recently, a young Trump supporter from Virginia named Scott Presler decided to act rather than merely point at a problem and speak about it. What was his target? Why, Baltimore, of course:

     MAGA fan Scott Presler was tired of all the constant bickering in the media about Baltimore's numerous problems, so he personally decided to do something about it. Rather than simply complain or join the online chorus, he has organized a massive trash clean up of the city set to take place in the near future. Presler just wants to help out in any way that he can.

     "I’m so tired of people saying, ‘We should do this, we should do that'....I was just like, ‘I’ve had, it. I’m going to go to Baltimore, even if it’s just me on a street corner picking up trash,'" he told The Epoch Times.

     On Saturday, July 28, the activist told his online following that anybody who wanted to come to help clean up Baltimore was welcome. He encouraged Trump supporters to wear Trump gear but told The Epoch Times that anybody can participate when the event takes place.

     "I just want the citizens of Baltimore to see [that] we do care. We do give a darn. And at the end of the day, we’re all American and if ya’ll are struggling in Baltimore and you guys need help, then we’re going to be there for you," he said.

     "I don’t want this to be an anti-Rep. Cummings event. That’s not what this is about. This is about helping our fellow American citizens," he added.

     Sounds good, doesn’t it? Everyone loves a noble volunteer effort to “help our fellow American citizens.” And how could anyone say a harsh word about the man who organizes one? Don’t expect to hear one from your humble Curmudgeon. But I do have some observations to make about the matter.

     First, as this effort is likely to be heavy with conservatives and Trump supporters – hey, we’re the people who believe in doing things personally rather than delegating them to the Omnipotent State, remember? – a response by Antifa is virtually guaranteed. So Presler has to “keep the specifics under wraps for now.” That won’t preclude such a response completely, though it might help to reduce its magnitude. Given the political leanings of the city government of Baltimore, what provisions will the police make to prevent Antifa’s specialty: violence against people in the Right?

     Second, I’d like to know how many Baltimore residents will take part in the cleanup, both as an absolute tally and as a percentage of the total cleanup force. It’s their city; they “should” participate more enthusiastically than an outsider from Virginia Beach, VA. Indeed, it should be Baltimore residents organizing and energizing the effort. But when it gets under way, my expectation is that the Baltimorean fraction of the cleanup effort is paltry, close to nonexistent.

     Third and last for this morning’s tirade, what will really matter most is what follows the effort – i.e., what becomes of the improved districts once the volunteers deem their effort complete and go home. Mind you, the volunteers, however public-spirited they may be, won’t completely empty Baltimore of its public trash. They certainly won’t exterminate all the rats that plague the city. But I have little doubt that they’ll bring about a visible improvement in some delimited sector. What then?

     You see, all that trash and waste didn’t materialize by spontaneous creation. It was produced and distributed by humans, as are all human products. Moreover, the humans that did so are the previous and current residents of Baltimore. Will more trash and waste replace that which the volunteers remove? If so, how quickly – and what will be done about it then?

     These are questions all decent Americans should be asking, both now and after the cleanup effort is over.

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     Cities attract predators. They also attract those comfortable with the centralization of services that characterize cities. A city in chaos, such as Baltimore, will be full of persons who find the conditions there acceptable. After all, they accept them today. They’re doing little to nothing to redress them.

     So Scott Presler’s well-meaning volunteers might make a difference for the moment. But that they’ll make a difference that persists is doubtful. Indeed, they might encourage the very persons responsible for Baltimore’s trash problems to assume that “someone else will always clean up after us.” That, be it remembered, is part of the nature of a city: centralized, municipalized trash collection and disposal. Sensible persons are already aware of this. That probably includes Scott Presler. So what is he hoping to achieve?

     I don’t know the gentleman. I have no idea of his ultimate objectives. But if he’s thinking clearly, he can only be hoping to embarrass Baltimoreans into taking care of their own city. What hope is there of doing so for this filthy, crime-ridden, utterly disordered city?

     I can’t see it. I’m skeptical about the efficacy of an attempt to embarrass a city filled with welfare clients, petty criminals, drug abusers, and Democrats into better behavior. But I’m not cynical enough to say that it can’t happen. So I intend to watch the sequel as closely as possible.

     In this regard, the news media will be critical. It’s in the character of our contemporary media to suppress stories that reflect badly on blacks, Democrats, and the Left. If they cease to cover developments in the portion of Baltimore most affected by Presler’s volunteers, that alone will tell a very grim tale. Let’s hope there are enough citizen journalists to fill the gap, as the sequel will tell us much about the city of Baltimore, those who live there, and those who rail against criticism of them as “racist” that all Americans ought to know.

The Best Dots Connect Themselves

     A good commentator needs to say as little as possible. Facts should always be allowed to speak for themselves. People trust the opinions they form from direct observation and factual reportage far more than those foisted upon them by others who probably have axes to grind.

     Today I have three citations at hand that dramatize the above rather nicely. First, courtesy of Mike Hendrix, comes this highly illustrative piece from NBC News:

     "The president is absolutely trying to reinforce the feeling among his allies and surrogates that the media went overboard in its coverage of the Russia investigation, that certain lawmakers were reckless in their claims, and that the investigation itself was flawed in its inception," said Bradley Moss, a Washington lawyer who specializes in national security issues.

     "The problem here is that even if the president has legitimate gripes on one or more of those things, his overly aggressive commentary is doing nothing but exacerbating the situation," Moss said in a text message. "There were real and legitimate red flags that justified the investigation. Lawmakers had real and legitimate bases for viewing the existing evidence as reflecting collusion."

     The contents of Mueller's full report remain a mystery not only to the public but to the lawmakers who oversee the Justice Department. Yet even Barr's brief summary acknowledged what Trump has been so unwilling to admit himself: that Russia tried to help him win the presidency.

     Please read it all, if you have the stomach for a cavalcade of blatant, demonstrable falsehoods written in the most egregiously self-righteous tone ever adopted by a “news agency.” Ask yourself: What is the purpose of such a piece of mendacity? What does NBC News hope to accomplish by posting it?

     Second, the indefatigable Sarah Noble provides some fresh scrofulosity from the ever more scrofulous Washington Post:

     The president has rarely seen much value in being magnanimous when he wins. Now that special counsel Robert S. Mueller III’s Russia investigation is finally done, with no further criminal charges forthcoming, Trump is following the same pattern he always has after a triumph: Through half a century in business and politics, his instinct is consistently to keep the battle going, even in victory.

     Since Mueller delivered his report to Attorney General William P. Barr, Trump has been crowing about his “Complete and Total EXONERATION,” even though Mueller specifically said that the report “does not exonerate him.” But he’s also already moving to take his pound of flesh from those who opposed him. Trump said that “there are people out there who have done very bad things, I would say treasonous things, against our country,” and White House press secretary Sarah Sanders said Democrats and media figures who accused Trump of working with Russia have made accusations “equal to treason, which is punishable by death in this country.” For Trump, there can never be enough winning.

     Once again, ask yourself: What is the purpose of such a piece of mealy-mouthed whining? Read it in combination with the NBC News piece. Does that suggest a motive to you?

     Rather than assemble ever more such clips, I’ll cut to the chase:

     Ragin’ Dave’s one-word title seems sufficient, wouldn’t you say?

     Could it possibly be clearer that the Democrats, the media, and their Deep State operatives, who’ve spent more than two years fabricating and promoting this baseless collage of formless accusations of wrongdoing against the duly elected President of the United States, want the attention on President Trump and not on their own marginally treasonous doings? Let’s see, now: Why would the Democrats and the media, a gaggle of persons and institutions that famously love the spotlight, suddenly want it to shine on someone else? Someone they detest?

     Don’t all answer at once, now.

Retrenchment Or Revengement: The Jury Has Returned

     …and the verdict isn’t pretty:

     I'm seeing 2 big examples of how the media are reporting good news for Trump this weekend. It's really embarrassing for them because the 2 stories are very big and very good for Trump and, in both, the same move is made to turn it into something negative and ominous….

     So watch for it. The rule is: When something good for Trump happens, find the nearest bad thing and make that the focus of the news report.

     Miss Althouse provides citations from several sources. If you can control the desire to smash something and scream obscenities out the nearest open window – it’s a bit early to indulge in either of those admittedly rather enjoyable safety valves – read them; they’re worth your time.

     Some news outlets aren’t even doing that much to conceal their desires:

     CNN has a bad case of the sads today. But they still can’t get over the fact that NOTHING that Trump did was illegal during the 2016 campaign. CNN instead is now placing their hopes in the nut job communist Democrats impeaching Trump anyway, even though there is no collusion and no obstruction of justice….

     CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Sunday night reacted to the Mueller Report letdown by wondering if impeachment was still a possibility. Despite the finding of no collusion and a lack of obstruction, Blitzer offered this question to Dana Bash: “And the question is, Dana, very quickly, impeachment. Are they going to do anything or are they going to listen to Nancy Pelosi and say, ‘Forget about it?’”

     Instead of throwing cold water, Bash suggested, “We’re not there yet. I think the most important thing that we’re going to look for next is what Jerry Nadler just said, which is he’s going to have Barr come up, they’re going to grill him on this. Maybe even Mueller. And then they’re going to take the next step.”

     The Democrats’ head lock on the media appears unbreakable. Of course, the media likes having things to “report,” and what could be more “reportable” than the impeachment and trial of a sitting president? Maybe another war? But the Trump Administration is against further American adventurism. Then perhaps a huge natural disaster? Well, maybe if we could have one happen right under Washington, D.C….but I digress.

     If memory serves, when President Clinton was impeached the media’s mantra was “It’s just about sex, it’s just about sex, it’s just about sex…” repeated until Hell wouldn’t have it. Republicans are their preferred targets, and their thirst for blood remains unsated.

     Stay tuned, if you can bear it.

Retrenchment Or Revengement?

     We have entered a significant phase in the political wars. The Main Stream / Legacy / Major Media – if you don’t know which outlets I’m talking about, you probably live in a cave without WiFi, and may God bless and keep you for that — must now make a choice on which their continued existence might well depend. The choice, being rather stark, will undoubtedly cause great pain to many in the “news” industry, from the bottom to the top of their hierarchies.

     The Democrats, their longtime allies in all matters political, have seriously let them down. Schumer, Pelosi, Schiff, et alii virtually promised them insider-supported coverage of the impeachment of President Trump and his ultimate removal from office. The reassurances have never ceased that Robert Mueller and his team of ill-concealed witch hunters would surely turn up enough dirt on Trump that even if the Senate were to decline to convict him, he’d leave the White House out of pure embarrassment. But with the final report in Attorney-General William Barr’s hands and Mueller’s statement that there are no indictments forthcoming, it appears that nothing nearly that dramatic will happen, whether to the president or to any of his relatives, friends, or inner political circle.

     The media must now choose their path forward: will they attempt to separate themselves from their previous, lurid, Democrat-talking-point-laced coverage of the president and the Mueller investigation, or will they perform a major mea maxima culpa before their dwindling audiences and turn savagely on the Democrats who misled them?

     Tough call, eh?

     Considering how difficult it is for ordinary folks to admit to serious errors in judgment, my money is on the former path…but I must say, I shan’t “bet big.” The Democrats’ abuse of their media allies over the past two years goes beyond anything I can remember. Media barons would be entirely within reason to be enraged to the point of vengeance: publicly castigating their abusers for their frauds and permanently disassociating their networks and newspapers from them. An honest man would do so – but how many honest men remain in the major media?

     We might have an answer to that question very soon.

     It’s an old maxim of us freedom weenies that most sins are self-punishing. The sinner learns from the pain and loss attendant upon his misdeed and reforms, or at least tries to. That’s as it should be in a lawful universe. But there are some sins that reward the sinner adequately to compensate for the pain and loss. If it were otherwise, the recidivism rates would be far lower.

     There’s no reason to go much deeper into this. The time has come for us in the Right to do something we generally dislike to do: pay attention to those media that have aligned themselves with the political Left and see what course they elect. They needn’t issue a full-throated endorsement of President Trump and his policies to earn at least a little forgiveness, though considering how good Trump and his policies have been for America, it would surely be appropriate. But forgiveness must be preceded by repentance. Some sort of apology, coupled to some degree of criticism of those who have misled them and (by extension) us, is mandatory. A continuation of the frauds, regardless of the pretext, would be justification for figuratively burning their institutions to the ground and salting the earth where they stood. Liars must not remain in command of the world’s largest megaphones.

     And with that it’s time to prepare for Mass. Enjoy your Sunday.

Mask Slippages Dept.

     We’ve all heard about it already. There’s no need to repeat it. Everyone knows the Left’s response to anything it labels a “crisis” is “Government must act right now!!” It’s just that the “crises” have been getting really...entertaining:

     It might be tempting, then, to dismiss the recent spate of media-biz layoffs as unfortunate but otherwise not concerning. Two hundred workers, including dozens of journalists, were given the slip last week at BuzzFeed. About 800 people are losing their jobs in the media division of Verizon, the telephone company that owns Yahoo, HuffPost, TechCrunch and many other “content brands.” And Gannett, the once-mighty newspaper empire that owns USA Today and hundreds of smaller outlets — from The Bergen County Record to The Zanesville Times Recorder — is letting go of 400.

     But it would be a mistake to regard these cuts as the ordinary chop of a long-roiling digital media sea. Instead, they are a devastation....

     Coming in a time of economic prosperity, at world-historical levels of interest in the news, last week’s cuts tell a story of impending slow-motion doom — and a democratic emergency in the making, with no end in sight.

     Yes, Gentle Reader: you read that right. New York Times columnist Farhad Manjoo is unsubtly suggesting that the layoffs at Buzzfeed et alii call for government intervention. He never says it outright, but the theme underlies every word of this incredible piece. It’s a “democratic emergency!”

     Does Manjoo fear that his own pink-slipping is nearing? He wouldn’t be alone in that. The left-wing media have lost so much credibility in 2019 alone that it’s questionable what fraction of its bastions will survive to the end of the year. The Omnipotent, Omniscient, and Omnibenevolent State must save them! It’s Washington’s Constitutional duty! The damage to the Leftist media constitute a “democratic emergency,” after all.

     Can you say schadenfreude, Gentle Reader?

---

     If you’re familiar with ancient history – in this case, the far-off year of 1971 – you may remember the “Lockheed bailout” and the Sturm und Drang over it in Congress. It was an early, pattern-setting case of “too big to fail.” The Nixon Administration was behind it. Pro-bailout forces mobilized in various ways to pressure Congress to pass the $250 million – that’s right; million, not “billion” — loan guarantee that would keep Lockheed afloat. The measure did pass, but it required that Vice President Spiro Agnew cast a tie-breaking vote in the Senate.

     What’s significant about that bailout is that the Democrats were against it. Lockheed, you see, was a defense contractor, and therefore evil. We’ll have no loan guarantees to naughty makers of weapons that fly around the world killing our little brown brothers! Of course they rationalized their opposition on grounds of “economy:” a notion Democrats only address when the subject is national defense.

     The case for the Lockheed bailout was weak. It would have been barely plausible to argue that America’s largest defense contractor was a vital national asset whose failure would endanger our military preparedness. That argument was barely heard in Congress. No, the pro-bailout forces harped on “jobs:” the 60,000 employees of Lockheed who might be out of work for a while if the company were to fold. Lockheed employees took a hand in the maneuvering:

     Citing the roughly 60,000 American jobs that would be destroyed, Lockheed mobilized machinists and scientists to buy newspaper ads. Displaced aerospace workers "launched letter-writing campaigns, made speeches to P.T.A.'s and even organized a boycott of Wisconsin cheese and beer" to show Wisconsin Senator William Proxmire (a staunch opponent of the Lockheed bailout) that they meant business.

     That was the theme that won enough grudging Democrat support to pass the loan guarantee.

     Keep all that in mind as you finish reading this screed.

---

     A corporatized industry is vulnerable to greater economic dislocations than one whose prosperity is divided among a large number of small businesses. The media have become heavily corporatized; follow the links in Linda Fox’s piece on the subject for details. Worse, today’s media tend to speak in coordination, as if there were a single source behind their “journalism.” Thus, when one outlet publishes something dubious, the story tends to propagate through its colleagues as well. Thus they all lose credibility together.

     Loss of credibility is devastating to a “news” outlet. People don’t read entertainment tabloids to stay informed; they read them to pass the time, and perhaps have a laugh or two, while waiting in supermarket checkout lines. A media outlet that represents itself as a “news” outlet has a different job. If it underperforms at that job, it will lose readership, and therefore revenue.

     That’s business in a free market, Gentle Reader. The customer is king. Do your job adequately or better by the customer’s standards, and he’ll keep you afloat. Do it inadequately, and he’ll turn away as you sink. That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Interventions that prevent it from working that way subsidize inefficiency and incompetence.

     The ever-more-consolidated “news” media have been doing an ever-less-praiseworthy job. The whole of the traditional reporting industry is in serious trouble. Its troubles were brought about by its own sins, most notably its eschewal of reporting in favor of advocacy and propaganda. Farhad Manjoo and the editors of the New York Times view that as a “democratic emergency.” I see it as a cleansing.

     And I shall laugh heartily as it rolls on toward its terminus.

Will Covington Be The Media’s Bane?

     There’s been a lot written about it. There’s been a lot of hand-wringing over it, both before and after the revelation of the monstrous injustice perpetrated by use of the first, deceitfully edited video clip. And there’s been no end to the attempts by the media to exculpate themselves, including incredible claims that the media themselves are the real victims.

     My Esteemed Co-Conspirator Linda Fox is rather tired out by it all:

     I’m gonna assume that most Normal People are like me – drained by the constant warfare, which has traveled from Washington, NYC, and Hollywood, all the way to Covington, KY.

     The Left really does seem to have a hate on for Catholics, don’t they? They won’t be satisfied until every one of us is converted to the Holy Church of Progressive, or dead.

     Preferably dead. Along with all like us.

     But the “constant warfare” isn’t new; it only seems so. Before the presidential campaign of 2000, it was of the “low intensity” variety in which guerrillas and saboteurs, the Michael Moores and Ward Churchills, were the principal combatants. It’s been escalating since then, quite steadily, and climbed sharply with the election of Donald Trump. We’ve entered the “countervalue targeting” phase, with each side straining to destroy the other’s will to continue fighting by striking the other’s “population centers:” traditional religions, traditional family structures, and regions in which those things hold sway. The casualty counts are higher than ever and are still increasing. But the war itself is an ongoing phenomenon. It derives from the motivations of the combatants, which have increased in magnitude but have never changed in direction.

     The question of the hour is what mechanism has brought about the sharp increase in magnitude. Whether for good or for ill, the answer is before us. Covington has made it plain.

---

     The media, those never to be adequately damned bastards who claim to be “purveyors of facts,” are the reason for virtually all of America’s political strife. It was they who shaped the attitudes of the combatants. It was they who stoked the fires of political hostility. It was they who deliberately, with unconcealable malice aforethought, have taken ordinary Americans of traditional political preferences, and have portrayed them as monsters of illimitable evil. And all the while they’ve postured as being above it all, just innocent servants of the public’s “right to know.”

     Glenn Reynolds quotes an unlinked source:

     How could the elite media—The New York Times, let’s say—have protected themselves from this event, which has served to reinforce millions of Americans’ belief that traditional journalistic outlets are purveyors of “fake news”? They might have hewed to a concept that once went by the quaint term “journalistic ethics.” Among other things, journalistic ethics held that if you didn’t have the reporting to support a story, and if that story had the potential to hurt its subjects, and if those subjects were private citizens, and if they were moreover minors, you didn’t run the story. You kept reporting it; you let yourself get scooped; and you accepted that speed is not the highest value. Otherwise, you were the trash press.

     At 8:30 yesterday morning, as I was typing this essay, The New York Times emailed me. The subject line was “Ethics Reminders for Freelance Journalists.” (I have occasionally published essays and reviews in the Times). It informed me, inter alia, that the Times expected all of its journalists, both freelance and staff, “to protect the integrity and credibility of Times journalism.” This meant, in part, safeguarding the Times’ “reputation for fairness and impartiality.”

     I am prompted to issue my own ethics reminders for The New York Times. Here they are: You were partly responsible for the election of Trump because you are the most influential newspaper in the country, and you are not fair or impartial. Millions of Americans believe you hate them and that you will causally harm them. Two years ago, they fought back against you, and they won. If Trump wins again, you will once again have played a small but important role in that victory.

     True, all true – but what bearing does it have on the state of hostilities? Are armistice talks on the horizon? Are they even conceivable? People’s lives are being shattered in wholesale quantities. The simmering animosity of the two years behind us has blossomed into ravening, lethal hatred. Present trends continuing, we’re within a couple of months of assassination attempts that will make James Hodgkinson look like a Boy Scout.

     And it’s about 95% the media’s doing.

---

     Once again, Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics applies with full and terrible force:

Any organization not explicitly right-wing
Sooner or later becomes left-wing.

     The media were among the first organizations in America to be acted upon in this fashion. The Left knew them to be more valuable than any other target in our society. About a century ago, just as the first forms of broadcast publication were emerging, they embarked upon a program of infiltration of all the major information-dissemination organizations in the country. The infiltrators rose through the ranks, acquired the power to influence hiring, firing, and editorial policy, and over time gained the degree of control that would ensure that the conquered organs would emit only what suits their political preferences. That’s how Robert Conquest’s Second Law operates in practice.

     Yes, the Left targeted other, related institutions, especially education and entertainment. But those were adjuncts to its central drive: the conversion of the outlets Americans go to for news into founts of propaganda. As recently as the Sixties the schools were still essentially wholesome, if not particularly effective. By then, the media had already been broken to the Left’s harness.

     Perhaps none of this is news to you. Perhaps you’ve been watching as attentively as I, and reached the above conclusions on your own time and your own dime. There remains a question still: what to do about it. For men cannot sustain a free society in an unrelenting bath of Leftist propaganda, harassment, and conflict-stoking. We are not well armored enough for that, intellectually, emotionally, or morally.

     However, history speaks plainly on this subject: an institution once conquered by the Left cannot be reformed. Its internal dynamics will thwart any attempt to counter-infiltrate and return it to honesty. It can only be destroyed and replaced by something trustworthy.

     That’s why the media are desperate to get out from under the stain of Covington. That event has made the stakes clear. There’s no way to disguise the facts of that matter, and no way for the media to evade the odium for them. They cannot claim it was an honest mistake.

     Covington is a capital-punishment case. The media’s collective behavior, blatantly murderous toward those whose convictions it disapproves, has sentenced them to death.

     Whether that sentence will be carried out, by whom, and in what manner remains to be seen.

Media Consensus

     Sometimes it all seems just too terribly clear:

     After Tuesday night’s debacle in the Oval Office, television network executives should be spending the day in their spacious offices practicing a simple word: No.

     No, Mr. President, you may not break into prime-time programming to fundraise and mislead.

     They’ll need to practice because you can be sure that the request will come again. And again.

     Believe it or not, it gets even worse:

     I wouldn’t suggest, for a moment, that network television and the rest of the mainstream media should ignore what the president says. That would be irresponsible, not to mention impossible.

     Especially with 800,000 federal workers bearing the brunt of an unnecessary government shutdown, there is inherent news value in what’s going on. News organizations are rightly focused on that, including on the president’s attempts to justify it.

     But broadcasting him live and unfiltered — whether in an Oval Office speech, or an impromptu news conference, or at a campaign rally — has been a bad idea for quite some time.

     Instead, whatever news is produced can be presented in context with facts woven in from the start: Truth first.

     Now, no one expects the famously Leftist Washington Post to approve of a Trump initiative ferociously opposed by the Dishonorable Charles Schumer (D, Himself) and his ilk. But what Margaret Sullivan is suggesting in her op-ed is so radical a departure from actual news reportage that there’s no comparison outside such socialist paradises as Venezuela, Cuba, and North Korea – and in those garden spots the media are under government compulsion to deny a platform to its opponents.

     And she’s not the first:

     On Monday night, CNN host Don Lemon suggested that perhaps President Trump's planned immigration speech should be delayed so that monitors can go through and edit it before it's aired to the American people. CNN and some other networks made a big show on Monday about whether or not they would air the speech at all, but in the end, decided they will run the president's remarks live on Tuesday night.

     So we have two respected (by some persons) media figures, employed by two nationally distributed organs, arguing that the President of the United States should not be permitted to communicate with the general public, except as filtered and edited by them! Could any Gentle Reader of Liberty’s Torch imagine even for an instant that their attitude is not generally shared by the Legacy Media?

     Do any of you doubt that that attitude is equally strongly held by the operators of Google, Facebook, and Twitter?

     It’s not treason or sedition. It’s something even worse: a step toward an American Ministry of Truth.

---

     President Trump has spoken persuasively of the crisis of illegal immigration our weakly controlled southern border allows. The Border Patrol confirms his factual citations. The Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) bureau does so as well. The directors of those agencies are agreed that a physical barrier along that border is necessary, if not sufficient, to stem the tide. Yet there’s an even bigger crisis looming: one which President Trump has not yet publicly addressed.

     That bigger crisis is the ongoing, malice-aforethought attempt to prevent data and sentiments that displease the Left, and their handmaidens in the Legacy Media, from being expressed where others can access them.

     In the age of the Internet, one would think that owing to its design such data and sentiments could not be censored effectively. However, the emergence of Internet giants that offer “free” communications services of high convenience has altered the equation. Too many persons are too dependent on the services those giants offer. As they appear to have been colonized and conquered by the Left, which bends its efforts toward all media of communication and interplay, we face a serious problem: a chokehold on our interactions that’s becoming progressively (pardon the pun) more constricting every day.

     Alternatives to the giants are desperately needed. This is especially the case with the Internet payments processors, which the Left has used to bludgeon free-expression alternatives such as Gab until it’s barely able to hold on. But of course to get established requires money, and therefore the (passive) cooperation of an existing payments processor. But the Left has succeeded in cowing Amex, MasterCard/Visa, and Discover nearly as effectively as it’s conquered Google, Facebook, and Twitter.

     This crisis is at least as large and threatening as the tide of illegal immigrants. But as usual, answers to the key questions:

1. What can be done about it?
2. Who is to do it?

     ...are hard to come by. Some of the suggested courses, such as closely regulating the Internet giants to ensure political neutrality in their provision of services, have unpleasant, far-reaching implications for free expression and freedom of commerce. That a great many Americans regard them as worth trying is somewhat chilling.

     A fellow on Gab has just suggested that citizens opposed to this trend can and should take personal action:

     Hey fam, how about we all pull our money out of the big banks and put it into credit unions, and then only use cash & checks to pay for everything from now on? Maybe we can weaken just a little bit the stranglehold that the credit card companies have and their ability to suppress free expression? Just spitballing here.

     I have no better ideas at the moment. Does anyone else?

My Heroine

     I’ve been hanging back from posting much recently, mostly because I’m both physically weary and hard pressed on several fronts. However, I must post this clip of Kellyanne Conway castrating Jim Acosta in front of his colleagues (and a fair number of sound cameras):

     A transcript:

Acosta: Kellyanne, can — can you promise that the President will tell the truth? Will he tell the truth?
Conway: Yes, Jim, and can you promise that you will?
Acosta: I will
Conway: The whole truth and nothing but the truth, so help you God? Am I allowed to mention God to you?
Acosta: I’m not the one who has the alternative facts problem like you do, Kellyanne.
Conway: No, well, you know — Jim, I know that’s a cheap —
Acosta: Will the President — will the President —
Conway: — make sure that goes viral.
Acosta: Okay.
Conway: By the way, this is why —
Acosta: Can you guarantee that —
Conway: — by the way, this is why I’m one of the only people —
Acosta: That the President’s speech will pass with fact-checkers?
Conway: — around here who gives you the time of day.
Acosta: Can you — can you guarantee that the President’s speech will?
Conway: And let me just — let me get back in your face cause you’re such a smartass most of the time and I know you want this to go viral. [Pointing at the other reporters] A lot of these people don’t like you. But just let me be respectful to the media writ large, as I always am. I explained that that was alternative information and additional facts and I explained it many times and don’t you put it back in my face for all the corrections that your network needs to issue. I was on your network 25 or 26 times in 2018 and I’m one of the last people here who even bother to go on and the disrespect that you showed to me personally, I’ll just let pass.
Acosta: Ma’am I’m just asking. Will the President be telling the truth tonight.
Conway: No, don’t call me ma’am to make it up.
Acosta: I just asked. Will the President tell the truth tonight?
Conway: That’s why — go ahead. Please, Mara.

     Acosta pretends that his attacks on President Trump are “journalism.” They are not. What other “reporter” has ever dared to assert that a sitting president had lied, much less was about to go on live television to lie? Did any “reporter” do so after any of Bill Clinton’s flagrant lies? Did Acosta, or anyone else in the press corps, do so when Obama lied volubly to the public? Did they do so even after the fact, when it was revealed that not only had Obama’s statements about Benghazi been false but that he’d known them to be false as he made them?

     Conway just ripped the covers off Acosta’s dishonesty, rudeness, and partisanry in front of the rest of the journalistic trade. Some commentators are of the opinion that she ended his career. We can hope.

Call Them What They Are Cont’d

     Institutions, like individuals, have priorities. At this time the overriding priority of the legacy media is to defame the Trump Administration:

     The New York Times recently ended up being shamed into adding a correction to their story about a State Department expenditure for curtains that was clearly intended to give readers the impression that the purchase decision made by Nikki Haley and the Trump administration instead of the Obama administration.

     On Fox News Thursday evening, Haley said the Times had all the facts but decided to put an anti-Trump admin spin on it anyway, which ended up just adding another item to the mountain of “fake news” examples...

     This would not have been believed sixty years ago. The Gray Lady of the Fourth Estate knowingly propagated a falsehood? Unthinkable! Yet numerous similar cases can be produced by anyone who still tests his patience by reading the legacy media. But if it’s so swiftly and easily found out, why do they do it?

     The only conceivable answer lies in the priorities of the institution. One desideratum overrides all others: degrade the public’s perception of the Trump Administration. But how did the New York Times, once regarded as the world’s most reliable news source, acquire that as its top priority?

     The answer is easily arrived at, albeit massively unpleasant. The paper, like most of the rest of the “journalism” industry, was infiltrated and corrupted by Leftists – and to a Leftist, there is nothing more important than his political agenda. It’s entirely consistent with the fabled Gramscian “long march through the institutions,” which has corrupted education and entertainment with equal success.

     I’ve written about this dynamic many times. Here’s a fairly recent example. What baffles many is how individuals’ priorities become institutional priorities, when the substitution is nearly always unfavorable to the institution’s financial health and its original agenda.

     But an institution is nothing more than the people who populate it: its workers, supervisors, and higher management. If persons who promote politics over profitability can be brought in to replace workers who depart, the institution can be infiltrated and colonized. If those persons then relentlessly advocate the hiring of more like them and work to ensure that “undesirables” are marginalized, the institution can be conquered in its entirety. It’s why Robert Conquest’s Second Law of Politics functions so reliably.

     Of course, a Left-conquered institution will no longer function acceptably in the eyes of those who originally patronized it. It will usually require a sugar daddy, or governmental protection, or both, for market forces are inexorable. The New York Times has a sugar daddy: Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim. Owing to the First Amendment, it’s harder to see how the Times could acquire legal privileges, but the way things are trending for freedom of expression, it would be unwise to imagine that that state of affairs will never change.

     For the above reasons, the entirety of the legacy media is operating in failure mode. All its major organs (and many of its lesser ones) have been targeted, infiltrated, colonized, and conquered by left-wing ideologues with no real interest in reporting the facts. Those organs disseminate falsehoods and propaganda labeled “news.” Every one of them has lost the greater part of its credibility. Every one of them is losing “eyeballs.” Yet every one of them is vehement about its dignity, its “journalistic ethics,” and its reliability as a trustworthy source of information.

     What was that saying about protesting too much?

Prediction: The Appointee to the Empty AZ Senate Seat

UPDATE: I wasn't clear - I think the perioxided twit would be AWFUL as a Senator. However, from her standpoint, it would be "like TOTES GRATE!".

Cindy McCain has been brought to the forefront as the potential appointee by many.

Not gonna happen.

This coming week is going to be all about Meghan McCain's strong, brave appearance in the funeRALLY display. She will be in the limelight, as she shepherds her grieving mother around, taking center stage in the public interviews/photo ops, and generally setting herself up as the Next AZ Senator.

It would be a great move, even if she only manages to hang onto the seat until the next election. She would be able to wear her burnished credentials for every future political commentary opportunity, use it to guarantee her a seat at the news table, even after her looks have faded, and sell a crap-load of books, focused on Daddy's legacy, and how she, alone, can Keep the Flame Alive.

Bet on it.

Quickies: Some Events In Israel

     Sometimes we get a concise report on important events: a report stripped of opinion and other nonessentials, that leaves us to form our own conclusions. This is the essence of honest reporting. The following graphic is a case for study:

     Before all else, we must decide whether to accept the reportage as honest – factual in its details, omitting none of importance. Confirmation from an independent source would help to assure this. In the usual case of exchanges of fire such as the graphic describes, such confirmation is available. At the moment, I don’t have any, so whether to accept the report as honest is up to the reader.

     What evaluations of the events described are possible?

1. That on July 20 of this year, Gazan Palestinians committed cross-border acts of violence against Israel, and Israel’s military performed reprisals upon HAMAS military posts in Gaza in the hope of deterring further such acts;
2. That the report is a fiction intended to justify violence against Gaza by Israel.

     I can’t come up with any others. Can you, Gentle Reader?

     In the usual case, the selection of one evaluation over the other will be a matter of already-held convictions about relations between Israel and the Palestinian irredentists of the Gaza Strip. He who is inclined to believe that the Israeli government is relatively moral will adopt position #1. He who sides with the Palestinians and believes that Israel is an oppressor will adopt position #2.

     Now let’s assume that we acquire confirmation of the above graphic, and can therefore be confident about its reportage. The reader who holds position #1 will smile. (He might say “I told you so.”) What about the reader who holds position #2? What might we expect from him?

     Were the second reader to say, “All right, it seems to be correct,” he would be displaying honesty and personal integrity. However, in the most common recent cases, that reader would either attempt to discredit the confirmation, or would try to change the subject.

     Ideology – a set of convictions founded on a postulated model of the world –can cause seemingly reasonable people to believe, say, and do some very unreasonable things. This is especially so when ideology is combined with the power of group affiliation, as Eric Hoffer has told us.

     The massive foofaurauw about “fake news” that’s been in the air is seldom about misstatements of fact. It’s nearly always about framing and phrasing: the construction of a story so that it will lead the reader to specific conclusions that a bald statement of the facts would not support. It’s far subtler than a blatant lie, and much harder to detect and bypass. Yet skill at framing and phrasing is what media barons value in the reporters they dispatch to cover events such as the ones discussed here. Editorial offices have habitually placed the advancement of their preferred ideology over honest journalism.

     Only the availability of diverse sources and perspectives can countervail the pernicious effects of “fake news.” Which is why it’s more important than ever that absolute freedom of expression, regardless of the specific medium, should be defended to the death.

Ultra-Quickies: Oops!

     I forgot! I completely forgot to put something up at Liberty’s Torch this morning. Blame it on Experienced; I’d finally gotten “into gear” and was pumping it out nineteen to the dozen. Either that or senility is finally making serious inroads. Your Curmudgeon reports; you decide.

     I’m pretty much drained from the day’s adventures. And here it is nearly 3:00 PM, too. Well, just for a “placeholder” of sorts, have a ridiculous little episode from the Trump-Putin press briefing earlier today:

     I hope you viewed that; it’s quite short. It suggests that it must be awfully easy to get a job as a political reporter these days.

Something Must Be Done

     Specifically, about this:

     April Ryan isn’t going to show restraint simply because her rudeness has been pointed out to her. Indeed, to the extent she’s allowed to get away with it, she’ll continue – and more and more of her colleagues in the press room will emulate her.

     Ryan has supporters outside the press room, too:

     If those supporters multiply – and given the number of media figures who both seek to promote black racialism and hate the Trump Administration, you know they will – what remains of the pretense of courtesy and civility in the White House press room will vanish.

     This must stop. It must be stopped: the White House press office must publish a set of rules that explicitly forbid shouting, interrupting, and talking out of turn.

1. First Offense: the offender is not recognized at that briefing or at the next briefing.
2. Second Offense: the offender is expelled from the press room by security and his credentials are pulled for a period of one year.
3. Third Offense: the offender is barred from the White House and its grounds permanently, and his institution is forbidden to send a representative to the White House press room for one year.
4. Should the assemblage of reporters erupt in defense of an offender, the briefing is cancelled at once and the press room is cleared by the Secret Service.

     There is no conceivable reason for White House personnel to tolerate abuse, especially when the abuser is openly hostile and the abuse is openly intended. That should apply to the “ladies and gentlemen of the press” just as much as to anyone else.

Quickies: In Which Direction To Look Next Time

     Do you remember how every talking head with access to a microphone declared with total, unshakeable certainty, that Donald Trump could not win the 2016 presidential election? That he would never be the president? Do you remember major figures in high office, including Nancy Pelosi, Harry Reid, and Barack Obama guaranteeing that there will never, ever be a President Trump? Do you remember how the media ridiculed the few who disagreed, including the endlessly courageous Ann Coulter?

     If you don’t remember, YouTube has lots of video reminders available.

     Do you remember how those selfsame deriders of the Trump candidacy went on to predict disasters, catastrophes tantamount to Armageddon, because Donald Trump had defeated their anointed, pre-certified First Woman President In American History? Do you remember them aghast at how “the best qualified person to be president in history” had lost to the unqualified upstart Trump? Do you remember them nattering about how “much of the country is crying...terrified...fearful for their children’s future?”

     YouTube has lots of reminders of those pronouncements, too.

     This is hubris: the deeply held conviction that one cannot be wrong, that those who disagree cannot be right, that one occupies an elevated plane of knowledge and insight that others cannot reach. This is what comes of “believing your own bullshit,” a sin that Barack Obama admitted to. The Punditocracy adopted that sin long before Obama did – and they simply cannot stand to have reality rubbed in their faces. So they deny it, they scream “fraud,” “cheating,” “collusion,” “racism,” “sexism,” “homophobia,” “xenophobia,” and every other imprecation in the book, and do their damnedest to terrify everyone who'll still listen to them.

     “Defeat is education,” Louis Nizer has said. Being proved wrong is education. It disorients. The more conclusively wrong one is shown to be, the more disorienting it is...also, the more therapeutic. At least it can be therapeutic, if one prefers consciousness to catatonia.

     But for being proved wrong to be healthful, one must admit to having been proved wrong and ask the relevant questions: “What did I miss? What evidence did I disregard or under-weight? What flaw in my reasoning led me astray?”

     Who, among the uncounted talking heads who were certain that: 1) Trump would never be president, and: 2) that his presidency would be disastrous for the United States, has asked those questions and answered them honestly, without allowing his prejudices to seize upon evasions or excuses?

     I suppose what I’m asking is whether there are any honest partisans in the media. Are there? Have any of the opinion-mongers I’ve described above displayed even a glimmer of increased knowledge or deepened understanding? Because if there are any such, it would be worthwhile to pay attention to them. They might be the ones who are right the next time around.

     Think about it.