Rearguard Actions

     There may be no creature on Earth lower than Jim Acosta. You may remember his interminable badgering and hectoring of President Trump during his first term. Trump showed more restraint at his antics than I would have expected, far more. He even managed to restrain himself when a court ruled that he could not, on his authority as the president, expel the troublesome tosser from the White House press pool.

     This might have been the supreme example of Acosta’s arrogance and entitled-ness: demanding that Sarah Sanders, then the White House press secretary, contradict her boss in public:

     CNN fired Acosta awhile ago, perhaps out of recognition that he was the opposite of an asset to their viewership and sponsorship. But one of his ilk doesn’t disappear quietly these days. (Cf. Keith Olbermann) He’s sought out alternative channels by which to pump his vitriol into the national discourse. And of course, as there are many today, he’s found one:

Jim Acosta: The real worry is the right’s “exploitation" of Charlie Kirk’s death causing violence.

CNN presented this loathsome, unhinged radical as an “anchor” for years:

“There's exploitation going on of his death and it's happening on the right and it's absolutely… pic.twitter.com/TqCvYIPhgY

— Western Lensman (@WesternLensman) September 11, 2025

     It would be foolish to expect Acosta to focus on the actual impact of the Charlie Kirk assassination. No, his bent compels him to look for a way to downplay the actual killing in favor of his political allies. So he trumpets that the Right is exploiting the atrocity!

     This is not something to dismiss with a growl. Acosta is something of a standard-bearer for his ilk. He may be the most obnoxious of them, but he represents their attitudes and preferences very well. His approach has already been adopted by other Left-aligned commentators in the mainstream media.

     That’s the Leftist approach to anything terrible their allies precipitate. They don’t reflect on causes and consequences. No, it’s always “Republicans Pounce,” or something to that effect.

     It’s been clear from all the open Leftist jubilation over Charlie Kirk’s death that the killing of an effective conservative activist gladdens their hearts. A few have actually said that they wish it had been their deed, rather than that of an as-yet-unknown assassin. Do we really need any more evidence that they’re at war with us? Real, flying-lead, take-no-prisoners war in which Charlie Kirk’s death is something to celebrate?

     Other conservative activists have been pondering whether they should adjust their schedules, perhaps take additional security measures. May God watch over all of them at every moment. It’s clear that the cream-pie phase of this struggle is over.

     As distasteful as it is, we must keep watch on the mainstream media and their favored mouthpieces. Yes, they’re wounded and falling back, but “a wounded lion is a lion still.” If the Acostan message – i.e., that what matters most about Charlie Kirk’s death is how the GOP can benefit from it – should gain traction, the national discourse will be twisted to their advantage yet again. It wouldn’t be the first time the reptiles of the Left have pulled the rhetorical rug out from under us.

Enemies

     Do you have enemies? If you believe so, are they known to you individually? If not, by what criteria do you identify them?

     I’m not talking about board games, Gentle Reader. An enemy is someone who would like to see you come to harm. The nature of the harm need not be physical, though that would certainly count.

     The crime statistics suggest that there are a lot of people out there doing harm to others just now. In a great many of those cases, the “harmers” don’t know the “harmees.” Not as individuals, that is. They choose their targets by other criteria.

     Crime statistics can tell us a great deal, but they don’t elicit the kind of horror or passion for vengeance that the murder of Iryna Zarutska has awakened. Yet this, according to all we know, was an impersonal crime. The murderer was not acquainted with the victim. They had never previously encountered one another. Neither had said a word to the other before the killing took place.

     Individual crimes seldom evoke mass movements or large shifts in public opinion. Even utterly vicious killings don’t usually have that effect. A gang that knocks over a convenience store, killing a clerk in the process, is usually just treated as one more dreadful statistic. Until the statistics are studied for patterns, that is. Then the game changes.

     The murder of Iryna Zarutska had a special quality. The mass media were aware of it from the start. They could sense the kind of avalanche in public opinion it would loose. So they declined to cover it. Their explanation? “Just another local crime story.”

     When the media finally did deign to mention that murder, they tried to make it about – what else? – race and politics.

CNNs reaction segment tonight about the horrific murder of Iryna Zarutska tonight was to express sympathy for the suspect and harshly criticized social media pundits.

Van Jones decided to weigh in, criticizing @charliekirk11 due to alleged racial hate mongering.

He claimed that… pic.twitter.com/6i2LPK6sTF

— Media Lies (@MediasLies) September 9, 2025

     Reflect on that for a moment while I put up another pot of coffee.

---

     I could go in a dozen directions about this, but you’ve probably read my other tirades about the race war in progress, so I’ll spare you that set of rantings. No, today my focus is on the mass media.

     We’ve known for quite a while that the media are boughten allies of the Left. Journalism attracts the Left-inclined ab initio, for reasons I’ll address some other time. Leftist activists and politicians have had great success at seducing journalists into supporting and promoting their causes. But above all, the media have been most useful to the Left in embracing and promulgating the Left’s narratives.

     Leftist politics requires that certain narratives get traction. The most prominent of them has been the oppression narrative, particularly in matters of race. The notion of ongoing race-based oppression probably matters more to the Left than any of its other themes. Therefore, its allies in the media must take care:

• To cover any event that can be framed so as to lend support to the notion that whites oppress blacks;
• To refuse to cover, or to minimize or distort, any event that leans in the opposite direction.

     Some time ago, I wrote:

     Word gets around. Something as atrocious as the rape-torture-murders of Christian and Newsom cannot forever be kept from the light of day. People talk: policemen, forensic investigators, neighbors, reporters, reporters' clerical assistants, cleanup specialists, garbagemen, the families of the victims, their neighbors, and their neighbors' kids. There's simply no hope that the story won't sooner or later be told. When it is told, after a long interval of silence, people will naturally ask one another, "Why haven't we heard anything about this before now?" They will suspect conspiracy.
     It's easy to suspect conspiracies, and difficult to disprove them. Conspirators are secretive by nature, seeking always to conceal or disguise their identities and deeds. Successful conspirators are well prepared to deflect the blame for their crimes onto wholly innocent others. With this as the model, one who begins to suspect that he's being deceived has a long, hard road to travel to disabuse himself of the notion.
     Journalists who downplay or conceal inter-racial crimes out of the mistaken notion that they're helping to avert further hostility are either deluded or hopelessly stupid. By furthering the conviction among private citizens that we're being lied to, they advance the concomitant conviction that "the other," about whose deeds we're being denied full and accurate reports, really is someone to be feared...someone to be located and destroyed, or cast out of our midst, for our own safety's sake.
     Thus, whatever their conscious motives and intentions, politically correct journalists who spike stories about horrific crimes by black perpetrators are the new segregationists. It is their decisions about which stories should be emphasized and which ones must be buried that will persuade white Americans that their black neighbors cannot be trusted and must be expelled from the body politic.

     An insistence that reality must be shoved aside – denied or suppressed – to make way for a counterfactual narrative is the height of delusion. Word gets around. The supposed purity of the deniers’ motives cannot hold back the tide.

---

     Most Americans first heard about the murder of innocent white woman Iryna Zarutska by black multiple felon Decarlos Brown Jr. on X. For the first two days after the event, the media wouldn’t say a word about it. “Local crime story” was the rationale. But the “coverage” that followed gave the game away.

     White Americans are angry now. Angry enough to do what? Perhaps not angry enough to start lynching the blacks around them. But they’re angry at the media, for sure. The media have revealed themselves as our enemy.

---

     During the 2002 war to depose Saddam Hussein, a lot of jokes were cracked about Iraqi information minister “Baghdad Bob,” who was known for denying every report of American advances against the regime. One picture, in particular, became commonplace:

     Baghdad Bob’s behavior is easy to understand. He was working for Saddam Hussein. He had to serve the interests of the regime or lose his job... and quite possibly his life. There was no reason to doubt where his allegiance lay.

     But the mainstream media claim to work for us. It’s become all too clear that that is not the case. The media are enlisted in a cause that threatens our very lives. In advancing that cause, they repeatedly deny the reality of events. When that’s no longer possible, owing to independent journalism, they strive to obscure the causes and the implications. Shall we impute to them the foreseeable consequences of their actions?

     Draw your own conclusions.

Gauleiters

     I can no longer remember where I first encountered the title word. It may have been in Thomas Sowell’s writings. In any case, I’m sure it was some time ago. Dictionary.com gives its meaning as “the leader or chief official of a political district under Nazi control.” It’s a rough equivalent to a word of great importance in the late, unlamented Soviet Union. That word, when transliterated from the Cyrillic, is usually spelled zampolit. It refers to a political-orthodoxy officer, one of which was attached to every Soviet military unit of any size.

     The gauleiter was an important figure in Nazi Germany, just as the zampolit was in the Soviet Union. He was de facto the superior of those in his charge, regardless of formal considerations of rank. Regardless of whether a Leftist regime is structured along Nazi or Soviet lines, maintaining absolute conformance to Party doctrine is an important aspect of all such regimes. Dissent from Party doctrine is such a regime’s greatest enemy.

     The United States doesn’t have gauleiters. Of course not! We’re free. We can believe whatever we please. Saying it out loud, though...well, that can have consequences.

     Consider the following tweet:

     Consider also this story:

     Secretary of State Mike Pompeo derided "multiculturalism" and other "-isms," tweeting Tuesday that they "distort" the nation's founding.

     "Woke-ism, multiculturalism, all the -isms — they're not who America is," he said. "They distort our glorious founding and what this country is all about. Our enemies stoke these divisions because they know they make us weaker."

     His comments came after a speech last week when he attacked "censorship, wokeness, political correctness."

     “Systemic racism” and “multiculturalism” are Leftist doctrines. If we had a Leftist regime, the gauleiters would be all over Carol Swain and Secretary Pompeo, immediately silencing them and removing them from any perch from which they could promulgate their heresies. But we don’t have any such officials in these United States...or do we?

     See for yourself. Do a couple of Google searches: the first for “Carol Swain” AND “systemic racism;” the second for “Mike Pompeo” AND “multiculturalism.” Survey what those searches bring you. Then decide for yourself.

---

     We don’t have gauleiters who wield the force of the State...yet. We do have plenty of folks who’d love to fill such positions. Many of them work in the “mainstream media.”

     In his book A Time for Action, William E. Simon wrote scathingly of the “media megaphone.” Have a choice snippet:

     One episode especially vivid in my memory arose when there was speculation that I might be President Ford’s running mate on the ’76 ticket. This possibility prompted several major media outlets, including Newsweek magazine, to bankroll an “investigative” task force to look into my background. A reasonable investigation into the views and record of anyone mentioned for higher office would not, of course, be objectionable. But this, I found, was something else.
     I first heard about this venture when friends of mine in the press corps called and said that people were poking around trying to plant stories that, when I was with Salomon Brothers, I had been involved in laundering money for the Mafia! The idea was so ludicrous I simply laughed at it. Then I started hearing rumors picked up by my staff that a major newspaper in the Midwest was planning an expose of me, including the aforementioned charge....
     A second episode occurred after I had left public office. In late 1978 I was involved in negotiations to buy the Baltimore Orioles. I am a longtime sports nut, and owning a major league baseball team would have been, for me, a boyhood dream come true. It appealed to me both as a business proposition and as an outlet for my interest in sports.
     For some unknown reason, this touched off alarm bells at the Washington Post. I was back working in New York and wasn’t aware of the paper’s concern until General Al Gruenther called form Washington and advised me I should sue the Post for libel. That aroused my curiosity, and when I got a copy of the paper, it was every bit as unfriendly as he suggested.
     Played across the top of the Post’s first sports page I found a long attack on my personality, work habits, and service as Treasury Secretary. The author described me as a formed “bond salesman” and a “political and financial gadfly,” accused me of being a “darling of right-wing Republicans,” derided my stand for balanced budgets, attacked a “tour” I had made to the Soviet Union at the end of my tenure at Treasury, and made me out to be an ogre with my staff. What did all this have to do with sports? Answer, according to the headline: I’m used to playing “hardball” (get it?). In fact, the article—written by a political-financial reporter—had nothing to do with sports, the Orioles, or anything else except intense dislike of William Simon’s philosophy and politics. If you can’t destroy the message, someone once said, destroy the messenger.

---

     When the message is conservative, pro-freedom, pro-Christian, or pro-America, the major media immediately whip out the big guns. They are too deeply in bed with the Left to permit any such messages to gain popular attention—because the Left cannot argue successfully against them. But for that reason, the guns are trained on the messenger, having first been loaded with all manner of libels, rumors, and innuendi. If the messenger is tarred with sufficient slander, the reasoning goes, no one will give his message any credence.

     Gauleiters? Persons assigned by the State to ensure conformance with Party doctrine? Persons empowered to remove or destroy those who dare to depart from the official line? Of course not! We don’t have any such officials.

     Not yet. Not officially, anyway.

     One final observation: Many have spoken of a “revolving door” between government and the major media. There is a steady flow of persons between the two...but the door revolves freely only for persons on the Left. Former members of conservative administrations are excluded from major media positions from which they could make their viewpoints and arguments heard by many. Yea verily, even during Leftist administrations, despite the media’s claims of being in “an adversary relationship” with government.

     Ask yourself why.

Anger Swells

     “If you are to rule France, you must learn restraint. Keep cool in battle or in sports. Be angry, but in cold blood.” – Alexandre Dumas pere, The Man In The Iron Mask

     There’s ample justification for the conviction that in 2016, American voters were motivated, in large measure, by anger at the political Establishment and the status quo. Here we are, four years since that campaign and its momentous result, and the anger has not dissipated. Indeed, it seems to have swelled to an unprecedented height. Why?

     My thesis is that while the reason for voters’ anger is consistent with 2016, the focus – the specific people and institutions we’re furious at – has shifted somewhat. Our focus has broadened: we’ve found that we have room in our anger budgets to include the media along with the political Establishment.

---

     Allow me to tell you a personal story. It’s about someone I’ve met. I’ll call him Stu, because that’s his name.

     Stu is about my age, has lived in northern California for some time, and is loosely connected to my little family in a way upon which I shall refrain from expanding. I’ve met him exactly once. I think you’ll agree with me that once was more than enough.

     On the occasion of that meeting – which, for reasons beyond the scope of this tale, could not be averted – the C.S.O. tried her best to prepare me for the experience. She told me that Stu would have advice for me – about everything. He would overlook nothing: my occupation, our children, my home, my animals, my preferences in entertainment, and so forth. Moreover, he would strive to elicit my opinions about all those things so that he could find fault with my ways and offer his advice about them. She assured me that it would be a trying experience.

     I resolved not to cooperate with Stu. A good thing, too, because he lived up to his billing. After less than an hour in his company, I was nearer to homicide than I’d been since...well, than I’d been in quite a long and storied time. I have never been so glad to see the back of anyone’s neck.

     No, it wasn’t then that I learned to hate the word should. But my experience of Stu certainly contributed.

     Don’t you bristle when you’re made the target of a torrent of unsolicited, unwanted advice, Gentle Reader?

---

     When governments act, it’s with force: “the Rods and the Axe,” as we learned in Latin class. That’s the nature of governments. They have no other tools. Oh, they can offer their “advice” on various subjects, such as it is – i.e., usually wrong – but when they seek a particular outcome, their methods are compulsion, prohibition, and expropriation, with threats of forcibly imposed penalties for those who dare to dissent.

     But those outside government cannot (legally) compel, prohibit, or expropriate you. They’re limited to noncoercive methods to get what they want from you. In the case of the media, it’s via implied applications of “should” and “shouldn’t,” and the outright suppression of stories unfavorable to their “narrative.”

     The media’s “shoulds” and shouldn’ts” are seldom spoken aloud. Instead prominent media figures will attempt to imply them by assembling sequences of events that seem to militate toward particular conclusions. Sometimes those sequences can be shown to be deceits; the supposed relation of carbon dioxide emissions to global temperatures is a good example. At other times, the sequence is accurate but the implied causal connection to what follows is fallacious. And there are still other times when causation is omitted from the argument in favor of appeals to “compassion” or “social justice.”

     But always, behind the curtain, the “shoulds” and shouldn’ts” are at work, striving to make you conform to whatever pattern of behavior the media have decided would best suit their allegiances and interests. When the revolving door turns afresh, the same persons go from being anchors and newsreaders to policymakers and advisors. Then the “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts” are shelved in favor of “musts” and mustn’ts.”

     “First they nudge, then they shove, then they shoot.” – Glenn Beck

---

     Before the rise of the alternative media and the citizen journalism it makes possible, Americans would listen with moderate respect to the media’s “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts.” They were our information conduits. We had to trust them, for we had nothing else. Sometimes their failures were immediately and riotously apparent; at other times, we had to wait years to learn that we’d been misled. We were seldom offered anything resembling an explanation, much less an apology.

     But then came cable news, the World Wide Web, inexpensive sound and video recording, and the proliferation of outlets for evidence and views we’d neither seen nor heard before. Americans’ eyes were opened. We became angry. We expected the traditional media to offer explanations for its failures. We never received any.

     The traditional media could have salvaged some fraction of our regard had they merely admitted to their faults, apologized for past sins, and changed their ways. They preferred to “double down.” Traditional-media commentators went on the attack against their new-media competitors. The offerings of the new media were derided as “fake news.” We who found the new media informative and persuasive were castigated for it. Some trad-media figures called us dupes.

     And our anger swelled.

     At this time, with a presidential contest before us, our anger is at a height Americans haven’t experienced in more than a century. The superciliousness of the traditional media has been joined to an unabashed and incomprehensible favoritism. They’ve striven to protect and promote a candidate whose lies are so thick on the ground that we can’t walk between them. There are so many failings, deceits, and flaws to his name that his party would have been better advised not to run anyone at all. But we, who prefer a candidate whose record in office is four years of newly perfect success, are once again being derided – sometimes even condemned – for our preference.

     I don’t think our anger has reached its peak yet. Do you, Gentle Reader?

     (See also this fine piece from sundance at The Last Refuge.)

The Twisted Thinking of Revolutionaries

In First Things, there is a long article explaining the philosophy of many Russian revolutionaries - and, boy, does it sound a lot like the thinking of the Woke!

If you can call that confused meandering process Thinking.

I'm having a lot of trouble understanding many of the Progressives, and how far many of them seem to be from rational thought. I'm hearing about interests in archaic religions - or, rather, quasi-archaic religious beliefs, such as Wicca (QUITE popular with many younger womyn).

A lot of their social media posts seem designed to create a very emotional connection to others, and provoke a kind of stroking response ("I completely understand - you are too good for those people.") They wear their hysteria like a badge of honor, only somewhat pacified by the validation of their 'feewings'.

I started seeing a pattern in the rise of these ideas - they seem to occur over a hundred or so year-cycle, where overly emotional people, often single, and frequently female, gather together in a group that is self-congratulatory, focused on their inner emotional state, and often violent (in words, certainly, but also, too often, in action).

Their lack of a spouse or other anchor for a stable life is often a factor. While some have children, their main connection seems to be with others who will echo their convictions and angry outcries. Truly, it seems to be a 'girl group' that substitutes the lacking male presence with female bonding. They feed off the frenzied outbursts, and compete to express ever more violent fantasies.

And, too often, act on them.

Most of these adherents of Revolutionary Thought cannot stand the underclasses - they routinely deride them as bigoted, stupid, and with poor moral character.

They preen about their paper credentials, while dismissing skill sets that include competency at managing to earn a decent living as beneath them.

October 1 Update: I was reading Ace of Spades, and found that he's also been following the twisted reporting of the media. In this post, he notes the attempt to lie about Kyle Rittenhouse, his motivations for being in a riot zone with a gun, and the 'connections' that he does NOT have to 'White Supremacists'.

The Official Media has always had an agenda - just as often as the agenda was Left, it was also pro-Right. However, although the Left Media could - and often did - extend to outright Socialist, the Right stopped at GOP. Fascism never got a foothold in the US Media.

Over time, newspapers and TV moved Left. Conservative publications died off when their founders did. They may have survived, in name, at least, but the slant veered decidedly Left.

At this point, the best the Right has, is tepid journals, like National Review, and fearful news networks, like Fox News.

That's it. And, they seldom take a stand, even when the 'opposition' hits them hard with smears and lies.

Allowing Rittenhouse to be accused of being a White Supremacist is a bridge too far. We cannot allow a kid to be smeared publicly, and his family hounded into penury, without pushing back. They need to be sued. They need to have to stand up - in court - and admit that they recklessly LIED about him. And, to face the massive payout that would semi-restore that family's finances, if not their name.

There needs to be a reckoning, and it needs to happen now.

Nick Sandmann was a good start.

Let a thousand Sandmann's bloom!

This Trend Will End In Genocide

     Does anyone else remember Cannon Hinnant? No? I mean, why would you? He was just a five-year-old. Hadn’t been nominated for an Oscar. Couldn’t smack the ball out of the park. No hits on Top 40 radio. Just the innocent victim of a vicious black murderer.

     Well, now Cannon Hinnant is not alone:

     The media reacts quickly and with righteous indignation when a black person is shot by police, or by someone white, no matter what the facts of the case are.

     But far too often, even in the most heinous of cases, when the perpetrator is black and the victim or victims happen to be white, the headlines and reporting are not anywhere near the same.

     We have seen it in the case of 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant, who was executed by a black man in August, and we are seeing it again in the death of a 4-year-old white child in a targeted attack by a black man, WKBN reported.

     The shooting occurred in Struthers, Ohio, on Monday at around 1:55 a.m., Four adults were also shot and are hospitalized: Andre Stephon McCoy, Jr., 20, Yarnell Green Jr., 30, Cassandra Marsicola, 20, and Alexis Schneider, 22, of Struthers.

     The suspect, 24-year-old Kimonie Bryant, turned himself in to police after a massive manhunt began to find him.

     How many more such killings will occur before white Americans decide they’ve had enough? Is the media’s policy of concealing them founded on the fear that allowing the public to learn of them would trigger a bloodbath? Should they continue such concealment much longer, a bloodbath will be guaranteed. Word, as we know, eventually gets out.

     Decent, law-abiding blacks must step up and discipline their unruly co-racialists. The time they have left to do so is running short.

Cannon Hinnant And “Exploitation”

     If you read about this unbelievable atrocity, which I linked to in this piece, you may be aware that the head of steam building under it is cresting toward an explosion. This morning, courtesy of Ninety Miles From Tyranny, we have a couple of logs more for the fire:

     The tragic, heinous murder of white 5-year-old Cannon Hinnant has brought many together in their demand for justice for this innocent child who was executed by his black neighbor....

     One man, again a generous term, on Facebook, who listed his place of employment as Taco Bell, appeared to openly celebrate the murder, Nationalist Review reported.

     “Ion (I don’t) give a sh** he is white it’s time for revenge we tired shit over with now we shooting yall go cry to you moma,” an account belonging to Terrell Kent, who lives in the same town as the victim, said.

     After being bombarded with hate mail for the abhorrent comment Kent posted again, this time saying that it was his brother, not he, who made the statement.

     Is steam pouring from your ears yet? But wait! there’s more! From the same Federalist article:

     But sadly, the comment on Kent’s page was not the only comment of celebration regarding the death of the innocent 5-year-old child.

     “Blew his little white privileged brains clean out of his head #BlackLivesMatter,” a person by the name of Dante Salvador said on a post about the murder.

     A certain Michael A. Lewis dislikes that we’re a bit exercised over this:

     This is not a contest. People are exploiting this heinous, disgusting crime and it is sad. Some are talking about who didn't cover it. Others are comparing it to the Floyd matter, some are doing the if the colors were reversed.

     ALL need to stop it. Nobody is talking about what matters. This little angel was killed in a painful, horrific and senseless attack. The man who did it and is in jail without bail. He can rot there for all I care. He should. Personally I wish he could get shot in a different place every day until the day he dies. This is not about coverage, Floyd, racial divides... This about Cannon Hinnant! It is horrible what happened to him. The family deserves and shall receive justice.

     To which I replied thus:

     You don’t like it, Mr. Lewis? You aren’t happy that a crime of the very worst sort has been ignored by the major media because the races involved don't fit their “narrative,” but now that word’s gotten around the outrage is explosive? You call the outrage “exploitation?” That’s really too bad. Imagine how whites feel about the “exploitation” of the deaths of George Floyd, Rayshard Brooks, Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, and so forth. Imagine how we feel about several of our cities being reduced to embers and rubble by mobs rage-fueled by such “exploitation.” And after you’ve gotten past those imaginings, imagine what’s going to come of it should American whites decide that we’re one side in a race war, and that it’s time to go to the guns.

     That’s the perception American Negroes are feeding. The riots, the looting, the “knockout games,” the demands for “reparations” – I never owned any slaves; have you ever picked any cotton? – and the constant shrieking about how “oppressed” your people are have gotten on a lot of nerves. We’re close, Mr. Lewis, very close. Don’t bother protesting that you and yours “aren’t like that.” By tolerating and protecting the criminals, looters, and vandals among you, by passively allowing the agitators to fill young Negro heads with envy and anger, and by keeping silent when they act up, you’ve made the worst among you the emblems of your race. As a number of others have observed, if the switch flips we whites won’t care about anything but the color of our targets’ skins.

     Perhaps you should talk to Anthony Kent about “exploitation.”

     The time for the “we aren’t like that” sort to take responsibility for having tolerated and shielded the “yeah, we’re like that and what are you gonna do about it, honky?” sort is long past. Unless the “we aren’t like that” types among American Negroes get the upper hand and prove it:

• By demanding that the media cover interracial crimes objectively and evenhandedly;
• By toppling the Jesse Jacksons, Al Sharptons, Louis Farrakhans, and Maxine Waterses from their perches;
• By taking a hand in disciplining their own: especially black criminals and black unwed mothers;
• By utterly condemning all further discussions of “reparations” and political initiatives toward any such;

     ...there will be war. Even the best possible outcomes won’t be pleasant.

Widening The Fault Lines

     Divide et impera. -- Roman maxim.

     They who seek power over you will attempt to set you and your neighbor against one another. Regardless of the reason for it – if any – division and conflict among private citizens are assets to the power-monger. Indeed, it might be the asset he values most.

     It follows that if a power-monger should find a pre-existent crack that divides some Americans from others, he’ll seek to widen it. If he can, he’ll make it unbridgeable. Then he’ll do whatever it takes to cause us to focus on that gulf. Fear of “the Other” absorbs a great deal of the fearful one’s emotional energy. If exploited to the hilt, it can keep the fearful one from noticing the existence of other threats...or doing anything about them.

     The crack in America on whose widening the Left has labored longest and hardest is, of course, the racial gap. Some of us are Caucasian; others are Negro; still others are Mongolian. As persons of Mongolian ancestry have integrated smoothly into American life, the Left has concentrated on intensifying the Caucasian / Negro divide. Our current sociopolitical chaos arose from those efforts, particularly the efforts of the Left’s media handmaidens.

     But you already knew all that, didn’t you, Gentle Reader? What you’d like to know is what can be done about it. Well, so would I.

---

     Many commentators have observed that to prefix the word justice with any modifier perverts the meaning of justice, at least as Westerners have traditionally employed the term. Thus, the term racial justice perverts justice in the direction of racial collectivism. Whereas justice is about the defense of the rights of the individual, racial justice is about the imposition of injustice upon individuals in supposed pursuit of “racial equality,” a collectivist notion that has no objective referent. As more and more Americans have come to understand this, the Left’s tacticians have modified their approach with an adroit linguistic substitution.

     Quoth Zach Goldberg:

     Countless articles have been published in recent weeks, often under the guise of straight news reporting, in which journalists take for granted the legitimacy of novel theories about race and identity. Such articles illustrate a prevailing new political morality on questions of race and justice that has taken power at the Times and Post—a worldview sometimes abbreviated as “wokeness” that combines the sensibilities of highly educated and hyperliberal white professionals with elements of Black nationalism and academic critical race theory. But the media’s embrace of “wokeness” did not begin in response to the death of George Floyd. This racial ideology first began to take hold at leading liberal media institutions years before the arrival of Donald Trump and, in fact, heavily influenced the journalistic response to the protest movements of recent years and their critique of American society.

     Starting well before Donald Trump’s rise to power, while President Obama was still in office, terms like “microaggression” and “white privilege” were picked up by liberal journalists. These terms went from being obscure fragments of academic jargon to commonplace journalistic language in only a few years—a process that I document here in detail. During this same period, while exotic new phrases were entering the discourse, universally recognizable words like “racism” were being radically redefined. Along with the new language came ideas and beliefs animating a new moral-political framework to apply to public life and American society.

     Longtime analysts of media manipulation will nod over this; it’s anything but news. However, Goldberg takes note of a critical lexical substitution that’s central to the Left’s current offensive against the American conception of justice:

     One of the primary drivers behind the conceptual creep around racism is the idea that all observed disparities between different groups in a society are a product of bias. This view as well as its policy implications for any institution that takes it seriously are captured succinctly by one of the most influential voices in the racial consciousness industry, Atlantic magazine writer and author Ibram X. Kendi. In a line from his book Stamped from the Beginning, Kendi writes: “We have a hard time recognizing that racial discrimination is the sole cause of racial disparities in this country and in the world at large … When you truly believe that racial groups are equal, then you also believe that racial disparities must be the result of racial discrimination.” Kendi is saying that any evidence of uneven outcomes between groups—for example, Black people being underrepresented in a particular profession relative to other groups and their share of the overall population—is necessarily evidence of racism that should be remedied by discriminating against the non-Black groups. Yet this reasoning is intuitively appealing only when (in addition to ignoring the various nonwhite groups that outperform whites) it utilizes the very same racial categories that those like Kendi rightfully criticize for being arbitrarily or socially constructed (if statistically and politically convenient)....

     For decades, the term “racial equality” was the ubiquitous framework for understanding and evaluating racial justice. This is now changing as "equality" gives way to newer concepts such as “racial equity,” which refers to the redistribution of resources from the supposedly privileged to the supposedly disadvantaged as a means to redress claimed discrimination. As Ibram Kendi puts it: "If discrimination is creating equity, then it is antiracist. If discrimination is creating inequity, then it is racist ... The only remedy to racist discrimination is antiracist discrimination. The only remedy to past discrimination is present discrimination. The only remedy to present discrimination is future discrimination." Thus the goal is no longer 'racial equality' or equal treatment under the law. It is, rather, the attainment of a state of the world in which all groups have equal outcomes—even if some are deliberately disadvantaged in the process. Until very recently, "racial equity" was a largely unfamiliar phrase only rarely featured in the pages of the major newspapers. But this has changed dramatically in the last few years. In 2013 “racial equity” constituted 0.000003% of all words in The New York Times. One year later, it was being used six times more frequently (0.00019%). And, by 2019, nearly 32 times more frequently (0.000096%). Remarkably, in The Washington Post, “racial equity” was not only being used 27 times more frequently in 2019 (0.00032%) than in 2013 (0.00012%), but it’s rate of usage actually surpassed that of “racial equality.”

     Goldberg’s article is marvelous, a treasure trove of both data and astute analysis. It deserves to be read and savored in full. However, for me the passage cited above is the haymaker. It illustrates a fundamental and insoluble problem:

If American Negroes will not be satisfied with anything but “racial equity,” then given that the races are innately unequal, how can the racial tensions the Left has inflamed be assuaged?

     That is the problem before Americans today.

---

     It’s time for a little C. S. Lewis:

     No man who says I'm as good as you believes it. He would not say it if he did. The St. Bernard never says it to the toy dog, nor the scholar to the dunce, nor the employable to the bum, nor the pretty woman to the plain. The claim to equality, outside the strictly political field, is made only by those who feel themselves to be in some way inferior. What it expresses is precisely the itching, smarting, writhing awareness of an inferiority which the patient refuses to accept.

     And therefore resents. Yes, and therefore resents every kind of superiority in others; denigrates it; wishes its annihilation. Presently he suspects every mere difference of being a claim to superiority. No one must be different from himself in voice, clothes, manners, recreations, choice of food: “Here is someone who speaks English rather more clearly and euphoniously than I — it must be a vile, upstage, lah-di-dah affectation. Here's a fellow who says he doesn't like hot dogs — thinks himself too good for them, no doubt. Here's a man who hasn't turned on the jukebox — he's one of those goddamn highbrows and is doing it to show off. If they were honest-to-God all-right Joes they'd be like me. They've no business to be different. It's undemocratic.”

     [From Screwtape Proposes A Toast]

     As a Christian apologist and polemicist, Lewis was concerned with the attitudes, convictions, and actions of individuals. Yet his observation applies with equal validity to racial groups. Racial agitators claim that American blacks’ aggregate inferior social, political, and economic position is the result of being oppressed, marginalized, and held back by “whitey” and “white justice.” Were it not for that, we are invited to infer, American Negroes would be equally (i.e., proportionately) represented in all social, political, and economic categories. Never mind:

• That American Negroes test a full standard deviation below American Caucasians on standard intelligence tests;
• That American Negroes commit eight times as many felonies per capita as Caucasians;
• That seven out of ten live births among American Negro females are out of wedlock: babies raised without fathers.

     Whenever we might hear it and whoever might utter it, I’m as good as you, as Lewis notes, is always “a good, solid, resounding lie:”

     I don't mean merely that his statement is false in fact, that he is no more equal to everyone he meets in kindness, honesty, and good sense than in height or waist measurement. I mean that he does not believe it himself.

     A perfect characterization of those who demand “racial equity.”

---

     For some years I’ve wondered how anything so obvious could be overlooked. Indeed, I overlooked it for much of my life. But “obvious” means “overlooked.” Indeed, it seems that the more unpleasant a fact, the more we strive to overlook it – and later on, when it bites us on the ass, we proclaim it “obvious.”

     Well, when we have an immense media megaphone continuously blaring lies into our ears, and all manner of pontificators demanding that we accept those lies as absolute truths, never to be gainsaid on pain of personal destruction, resisting the pressure to do so can be supremely difficult. I have a lot of sympathy for those who’ve “overlooked” the facts in response to that pressure. But that doesn’t make it any less of an error...or any less destructive to the fabric of our Republic.

     We must expect that the Left and the media will continue to pull at the racial fault lines that afflict us. It’s their best hope of reversing the pro-freedom currents that gained ascendancy with the rise of Donald Trump. But we don’t have to kowtow to them. With that, I’ll let Rod Dreher close this tirade:

     How can we fight it? Almost every single day I receive an e-mail or a message from somebody who says, “I agree with you, but I can’t say so, or I would risk losing my job.” I understand. But we are not powerless. In Live Not By Lies, I cite Solzhenitsyn:

     “We are not called upon to step out onto the square and shout out the truth, to say out loud what we think— this is scary, we are not ready,” he writes. “But let us at least refuse to say what we do not think!”

     For example, says Solzhenitsyn, a man who refuses to live by lies:

• Will not say, write, affirm, or distribute anything that distorts the truth;
• Will not go to a demonstration or participate in a collective action unless he truly believes in the cause;
• Will not take part in a meeting in which the discussion is forced and no one can speak the truth;
• Will not vote for a candidate or proposal he considers to be “dubious or unworthy;”
• Will walk out of an event “as soon as he hears the speaker utter a lie, ideological drivel, or shameless propaganda;”
• Will not support journalism that “distorts or hides the underlying facts”

     “This is by no means an exhaustive list of the possible and necessary ways of evading lies,” Solzhenitsyn writes. “But he who begins to cleanse himself will, with a cleansed eye, easily discern yet other opportunities.”

     We can do at least this. We can stop believing what these propagandists are telling us. We can refuse to hate ourselves, our neighbors, and our country, just because they want us to. And we can prepare ourselves for strife to come. Read Michael Vlahos. What our media have been doing is Othering. It’s not going to stop there. The history of the 20th century shows very well how effective mass media propaganda can be at stoking racial and ethnic hatred to serve the goals of those in power.

     So moved and seconded. Who will say aye?

Misdirection Chorus

     In the usual case it is a mistake – an epistemic category error – to believe something to be true simply because many people are saying it. And once again, the wisdom of the Buddha is relevant:

     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.

     Scott Adams, who in recent years has become a major commentator and analyst of current events, has produced a video that addresses the media’s attempt to get millions of people to believe the reverse of the facts of a most important matter:

     Yes, it’s twelve and a half minutes long. However, it’s eminently worth the time of anyone concerned about what can be done to treat COVID-19 in individual cases. It’s even more important as an illustration of the mainstream media’s attempts to manipulate public perceptions and opinions. It points up something the media is desperate that you not know. Please view it.

     Conrad Black, another relatively recent star in the commentary firmament, has written an essay highly relevant to my topic for today. Like Scott Adams, he highlights the media’s “don’t look at that; look over here!” method of misinforming the news consumer. A snippet:

     In its July 4 issue, the Economist solemnly intoned that Trump would have to reverse the supposedly rampaging coronavirus pandemic, accelerate the economic recovery, and generally be a more empathetic chap in order to have more than the one chance in nine that the magazine gave him for reelection. Biden was extolled as naturally popular and his rather glaring shortcomings, including his shaky intellectual stamina and prodigious past financial abuse of public office, were simply whitewashed....
     In what its readers presumably imagine to be a thoughtful analysis, the Economist did not mention the likelihood that much of the Obama-Biden Administration is about to be indicted for the most colossal constitutional crimes in the country’s history in trying to alter and then undo the 2016 presidential election result. It did not blink at the complete political and practical impossibility of the program that Biden has now embraced.

     What the media leaves “outside the frame” is presumed not to matter. Yet sometimes it matters more than anything the media say.

     The point of media misdirection is to get millions of people to infer incorrectly from its presentations of “the facts.” Persons thus persuaded will thereafter talk as if those inferences were Gospel truths. They become things “everybody knows,” implied to be above the possibility of refutation.

     Consider how media manipulation by misdirection synergizes with these other ongoing phenomena:

• The attempt to atomize us through the COVID-19 scare;
• The calumnies aimed at commentators on the Right who dissent from media-espoused positions;
• The “deplatforming” being waged by “Big Tech” against anyone who espouses a conservative position.

     It’s a variation on the Big Lie raised to unprecedented potency by the media’s subtlety, its global reach, and the age of its institutions. Yes, it requires them to work in coordination, but all the major media are so thoroughly Left-conquered that that’s no impediment whatsoever.

     There isn’t a lot more that needs to be said about this. Just be aware of the misdirection technique, regard every media assertion of fact as subject to independent verification – the more strident the assertion, the wiser it is to be skeptical about it – and remember that priceless statement by the Buddha.

Emily Litella Lives – And She Has A Byline!

     If you’re old, cranky, and possess a near-perfect memory, among the things you’re likely to bitch about on occasion is the descent of comedy into the depths of banality and vulgarity. One who remembers Monty Python in its heyday, or the great comedians of the Fifties and Sixties, is unlikely to be impressed by most of today’s “comedians.” A generation that remembers Milton Berle, Joey Bishop, Sid Caesar, Jimmy Durante, Jackie Gleason, Bob Hope, Jan Murray, Red Skelton, Danny Thomas, and Dick Van Dyke will not cotton to contemporary “humor.”

     And then we have the original cast of Saturday Night Live. Great God in heaven, what a treasure trove it was! Dan Aykroyd, Bill Murray, Garrett Morris, Laraine Newman, Jane Curtin, Chevy Chase, John Belushi, and the immortal (though sadly departed from this plane) Gilda Radner. Those folks could teach comedy: the centrality of incongruity, composing a skit, timing it properly, accuracy in caricature, and all the rest.

     Radner did several skits at the end of SNL’s “news” put-ons in which she played Emily Litella, an old woman who habitually got the news wrong and complained about it in a side-splittingly funny fashion:

• “What’s all this fuss about the presidential erection?”
• “What’s all this fuss about busting schoolchildren?”
• “What’s all this fuss about eagle rights?”
• “What’s all this fuss about violins on television?”
• “What’s all this fuss about endangered feces?”
• “What’s all this fuss about saving Soviet jewelry?”

     And so on. “Newscasters” Chevy Chase or Jane Curtin would correct Litella’s misapprehension, and Litella would then say “Never mind.” As predictable as the skit came to be, it was one of the funniest bits the SNL crew had in its repertoire, largely due to Radner’s gift for caricature.

     Know what else has become entirely predictable, Gentle Reader? The response of our “serious” news media to having their blatant, politically charged errors revealed to the public. They don’t “fess up.” They seldom present justifications for their misreporting. Like Radner’s Emily Litella, they say (though unlike Litella, under their breath) “never mind” and pass on to some new, equally erroneous and politically biased “story.”

     John Wohlstetter makes note of this in a compendious article on “Our COVID Future:”

     A major issue that will drive turnout of Trump’s base is countering efforts by mainstream media — nearly all leftist — to monopolize the coverage and interpretation of administration actions. On Feb. 22, 2017, MSNBC Morning Joe co-host Mika Brzezinski committed a major Freudian slip (full video clip, 2:14), complaining about Trump’s influence on his supporters:

     Well, I think that the dangerous edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that … is our job.

     Daniel Henninger’s Wall Street Journal Trump/Lysol video (4:05) shows blatant media bias aimed at helping defeat Donald Trump; Trump mused aloud during a coronavirus briefing that perhaps injecting disinfectant was “not a bad idea” but added that “it is up to the doctors.” That caveat was tossed aside by media enemies, and the falsehood that Trump advocates people doing this was spread. Not even Dr. Deborah Birx’s telling CNN’s Jake Tapper that the media should stop using Trump’s musings has dimmed their ardor. Henninger is right that Trump should not extemporaneously speak on medical matters, as adversary media can be counted upon to distort and exploit such talk. And it may, Henninger notes, cost Trump the election.

     Further evidence of media bias came when a reporter tried to quote-shame (1:27) the new White House press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, by confronting her with virus-related statements she made while serving as adviser to the Trump presidential campaign. She answered by reading quotes from various reporters and publications downplaying coronavirus. When she gets answers from them, she said, she would address the question.

     Even worse, mainstream media denigrates red-state governors who reopen their state economies as “anti-science,” whilst lavishing praise on blue-state governors whose states have the highest infection and death rates, as Robert Stacy McCain describes for The American Spectator. The one governor given regular open access to America on national TV is New York’s Andrew Cuomo, whose state is the worst basket case in America — and one of the worst on the planet.

     Sailors have a saying: “Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. Three times? Sound general quarters.” The Old Media are far beyond that third occurrence.

     For us in the bleacher seats, there isn’t much to be done. Ignore the “mainstream” media to the greatest possible extent, for they have demonstrated an institutional agenda that has little to do with “reporting the news.” When a story with important implications floats your way, don’t merely accept its representations as stated; cross-check it as deeply as you can. Distrust opinion-mongers, for they exist to sway opinions, and many of them are allied with one of the major political parties or interest groups. Yes, distrust me too, for I have an agenda as well, even if I am open about it.

     Above all, remember what Buddha said:

     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.

     Your reason and common sense are more trustworthy than any “authority.”

Age, Humility, And Wisdom

     A college classmate once said something extremely insightful to me. However, the insight only became apparent with the passage of much time. The irony in this will soon become clear.

     The classmate, whose name was Jay, opined that “old people” who don’t succumb to senility almost automatically become “incredibly wise.” I, being a sprat of no great wisdom at the time, let Jay’s statement pass “in one ear and out the other,” with no digestion occurring during the journey. (I was playing chess at the time, but that’s no excuse.) Today, with a few more years under my belt, I can see, more clearly than the college kid I was, not only that Jay was right but why.

     As the median age of Liberty’s Torch’s Gentle Readers is approximately 83.27 (5:30 AM Eastern Standard Time), I’ll bet you can see it too.

---

     The stimulus for this essay is, of all things, a tweet:

This is a good time to maintain some humility about how ridiculous it is to
believe any of us, including experts, know exactly the best thing to do and how soon to
do it. We’ll be guessing and correcting to the win. Some of us will later seem psychic,
but we don’t know who NOW.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 28, 2020

     Just in case you’ve been immured in an Anchorite’s cell or perched atop Saint Simeon Stylite’s pillar these past thirty years, Scott Adams is the creator and author of the Dilbert comic strip that’s delighted everyone in America (other than a few pointy-haired bosses) for decades. He’s 62 years old as of this writing: “getting old” but not yet “old” (except in the minds of younger ignorami). But though Adams might not yet be one of Jay’s “old people,” it seems he’s absorbed more wisdom than most from his years on Earth. The above is a demonstration thereof.

     In the last analysis, the essence of wisdom is humility.

---

     Given my own failing memory – yes, it was once better than it is today, really and truly – I can’t be perfectly certain about the attribution of the following:

     “Most people are willing to give up their preconceptions, once they’ve had them tattooed on their heads with a blunt instrument.” – Keith Laumer, in one of his “Retief” novels

     “Preconceptions,” as Laumer used the term above, might better be termed misconceptions: mistaken notions about people and causality formed by one of limited experience and inadequate humility. Limited experience tends to be a characteristic of youth, though an older person who has led what was once called a “sheltered life” could be equally limited.

     The correlation of limited experience with personal arrogance – the attitude of the “know it all” — is very strong. It takes extensive acquaintance with reality – with people in all their variety, and the myriad ways in which our enterprises and schemes can go astray – to teach most of us how little we really know. That requires more than a couple of dozen trips around old Sol.

     It is not recorded how old Socrates was when he said that “Only one thing do I know, and that is that I know nothing,” but I’ll bet he wasn’t in the bloom of youth.

---

     At this time, America, like the rest of the world, is coping with the Wuhan virus. It’s brought about a number of (hopefully) temporary alterations to our patterns of life. These have not been easy adaptations for most of us. Our vibrant economy is badly hobbled, our social mechanisms are largely idled, and our politics has...wait just a moment...great God in heaven! Nothing has changed about our politics!

     That’s right, Gentle Reader: Even though the whole nation is suffering, no one knows what’s going on epidemiologically, and no one is quite sure what can be done about it, our political squabbles continue unaltered and unabated. In the political realm, it’s still war to the knife.

     A couple of commentators have wished we could unite in resistance to this new threat, just as the terrorist attacks of Black Tuesday, September 11, 2001 seemed to bring us together. In retrospect, our surge of national unity after 9/11 was more illusion than actuality. It took about three weeks before the Democrats were in full and vicious cry against anything and everything the Bush Administration did or proposed. The pattern in recent political fusillades is comparable.

     Kim Hirsch delineates the media front in this conflict. Her piece is worth reading in its entirety, but it’s her closing I’ll excerpt here:

     Trump is doing what he thinks is best for the country. Dr. Deborah Birx, along with Dr. Anthony Fauci, are advising the President, based upon their examination of scientific data. They’re the experts, but they’re learning, too. And no one in the media knows what goes on when Trump meets with his advisory team, either.

     The media ghouls should shut up about things they don’t know about, and let the grownups do their job.

     If only! But the media have abandoned reportage and journalism in favor of political combat on the Democrats’ side, so the prospects for “letting the grownups do their job” are very poor.

     The humility deficit on display is one of the most garish on record.

---

     Mark McCormack, in his book What They Don’t Teach You At Harvard Business School, wrote that the three sentences people in business have the most difficulty mastering are “I don’t know,” “I was wrong,” and “I need help.” Each of those three sentences is an admission of limitation, of fallibility – and a demonstration of humility. But if humility correlates with experience, it becomes plain that we should not expect such admissions from young persons...nor from persons who’ve been protected from the consequences of their arrogance.

     “Journalism” is a protected space in which you can be an arrogant idiot and get away with it. There are other such spaces, notably academia and entertainment. (See a pattern there?) None of the reporters or opinion-mongers slathering President Trump and his Administration with sarcasm and contempt will ever have to make decisions of great moment under the pressure of momentous developments. They’re safe, protected by their trades from having to make such decisions and answer for the consequences. The worst consequence they face is being termed “fake news:” a characterization they resent but richly deserve.

     It would be foolish to expect that such persons would have amassed the degree of humility that would militate them away from their current behavior pattern. They know how to do the boss’s job better than the boss. We don’t even need to ask them; they tell us so morning, noon, and night.

     Yet they wonder why private Americans deem the media far less trustworthy than the president they despise and habitually ridicule. It is to laugh.

“Which Side Are You On?”

     The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary. – H. L. Mencken

     I’ve already said it many times, most recently in this piece. Frightened people who believe they cannot defend themselves are the most easily subjugated of all. Subjugation – the fascistic arrogation of unbounded power over us that the Left seeks – would ultimately be far deadlier than the Chinese coronavirus (which I’m thinking of re-christening the Communist Chinese coronavirus). While many Americans realize this, many others have closed their eyes to the danger, their good sense overwhelmed by the media-powered panic over a disease that’s not even as dangerous as common influenza.

     It must cease. The panic must be countered. There’s excellent evidence that the Chi-Com Crud, while irritating and more communicable than we’d like, is easily defeated with American-quality medical care. Granted that seniors with other diseases are at some risk, the rest of us, given some ordinary precautions, are not. That makes the principal urgency of the day a swift return to business as usual.

     The alternative isn’t just subjugation; it includes impoverishment as well.

---

     This morning, Independent Sentinel presents a letter from a professor at Bard College. It’s a must-read piece, of which I’ll excerpt only the tiniest snippet:

     Fellow Americans,

     Look at the front page of the New York Times. It screams about depression and paralysis in the United States. It announces that the coronavirus recession is in full swing. It is a war, folks, a war on America. This war is not with some foreign power; it is not a war among Americans. It is a war that American elites wage on American people.

     Please, please read it all, I beseech you! The writer, Professor Gennady Shkliarevsky, knows whereof he speaks: his concentration is in Russian and Soviet history.

     The Soviets controlled their media in their time. Pravda and Izvestia could only publish what they were allowed to publish. Our media aren’t under such constraints; they’re merely serving the wishes of the Democrat Party, which is so avid for a return to federal hegemony that it will plunge the nation into poverty, if necessary, to get it.

     It’s time to ask them, in a place, a time, and a format which will compel them to answer candidly: “Which side are you on, boys?”

---

     By now my Gentle Readers have read about the exchange of fire between NBC’s Peter Alexander and President Trump. Trump was plainly angered by Alexander’s obvious agenda. That anger was expressed in his response to Alexander’s tendentious “question.” But of course the media and the NeverTrumpRump have proclaimed that “question” perfectly legitimate, deserving of an ordinary answer, while Trump’s reply was intemperate and evasive.

     For three years the media have attacked this president. They’ve denied him credit for his achievements and have laid every negative development they can think of or concoct at his doorstep. They’ve questioned his character, his self-command, his agenda, his marriage, and his preferences in cuisines. (Was any other president ever held up to ridicule for preferring his steak well done with ketchup?) Yet Trump has soldiered on through it all, in a performance in office that entitles him to the highest of praise.

     Certain Trump-versus-the-media events have taken on an iconic status. The antagonist featured in many of them is CNN’s detestable Jim Acosta. Consider the famous event that got Acosta ejected from a Trump press conference. Consider Acosta’s public dressing down by Kellyanne Conway. Consider Acosta’s relentless badgering of Sarah Sanders, the first White House press secretary ever to need Secret Service protection.

     Fascinatingly, those events are viewed in completely opposite ways by pro-Trump and anti-Trump persons...in other words, by American patriots and enablers of Left-wing fascism.

     At this point it should not be necessary to ask which side the media are on...yet too many Americans still believe what they read in the papers and see on TV news.

---

     There isn’t much more to be said about all this. The fear-mongering by the media over the Chi-Com Crud, when counterpoised to the objective evidence about the virus, makes it plain that the press has an agenda other than the well-being of the American people. The NeverTrumpers who defend them are complicit in their offenses against the body politic and equally deserve to be shunned. They cannot and must not be forcibly silenced – that would be un-American – but it is imperative that these open enemies of the most effective, pro-American administration since Calvin Coolidge get no more of our credulity.

     Similarly, the various governors and mayors who’ve arrogated authorities never delegated to them in any constitution or charter must be sharply rebuffed. For each of them to be dragged from his mansion, tarred, feathered, and run out of town on a rail would be fitting. While that’s unlikely, at the very least we can turn them out of office at the next opportunity, before they can do more harm.

     If we’re to get back to business as usual before this becomes more than a minor inconvenience, it’s high time to know our enemies and name them. Grant their fear-mongering no more credence. Sensible precautions only:

• Keep clean;
• Cover when you cough or sneeze;
• Minimize physical contact with non-family members;
• No kissing random strangers!

     End the paralysis! Ordinary Americans – especially those who work in and own America’s four-million-plus small businesses – must take their freedom into their hands and insist on it. The hour is late indeed.

     No power is strong enough if it labors under the weight of fear. – Marcus Tullius Cicero

Biter Bit Dept.: The Left Wing Media Takes It In The Shorts

     This is so good that I have to share it:

     Chanel Rion of One America Network News did the nation a huge service – or will have done, when word of this beautiful comeuppance to the mainstream media gets around. The “reporters” from the establishment networks and cable channels were furious about Miss Rion’s question. Yes, it was a “softball,” in the venerable terminology of political interviewing, but it highlighted an important point. Things are often named, albeit colloquially, after their places of origin, and Covid-19, the Wuhan coronavirus, a.k.a. the Kung Flu, originated in China. Indeed, it is in the nature of the virus, which arose from certain practices found only in China, that it could have originated nowhere else.

     Then again, Leftists have been shrieking for some time that to call the Fourteenth Century pneumonic version of the bubonic plague the Black Death is racist, so this insanity has a pedigree of sorts.

     It’s no secret that the major media’s press corps is all but unanimously anti-Trump. It’s been that way since he defeated their Anointed One, Hillary Clinton, and invalidated all their preprinted editions and magazine covers. Trump has racked up success after success in defending and promoting the interests of America and Americans. Yet the media’s thirst for revenge against Bad Orange Man has only swelled. Now as ever, the meanest thing you can do to a celebrity – and make no mistake, Gentle Reader; major-media “reporters” think of themselves in the same category as movie stars – is to make him look stupid.

     Make this one go viral, Gentle Reader. You’ll be able to tell political friends from foes by the colors their faces turn upon viewing it. Besides, it’ll be good for your own blood pressure. Laughter is the best medicine, don’t y’know. (That having been said, if you’ve already tested positive for the Kung Flu, you might want to look into a hit of chloroquine as well.)

Two Clichés To Accommodate

     You know the old clichés about causation, don’t you, Gentle Reader? The one about the cart pulling the horse, and the one about chickens coming home to roost, are the ones on my mind this fine morning. It seems certain persons in the media have forgotten them, to their own detriment.

     Here’s the evidence:

     There is no better example of the shamelessness of the media than how “Wuhan coronavirus” or “Wuhan virus” or “Chinese coronavirus” have all been declared to be racist because used by Trump or Trump supporters.

     Yet the same media-types themselves used the terms....

"Stop calling it Wuhan virus. It's racist."
"Here's you guys calling it Wuhan Virus for weeks."
"This is what you're worried about?" https://t.co/1yR76dIC7i

— Stephen L. Miller (@redsteeze) March 12, 2020

     There also is a media push to weaponize the crisis to defeat Trump. The same people who screamed that the restrictions on travel from China imposed over a month ago were racist and xenophobic all but ignore that the restriction is credited with substantially slowing down the spread of the Wuhan coronavirus to the United States, buying important time.

     New York Times reporter and CNN analyst Elaina Plott tweeted:

     Have been talking to lots of Trump supporters across the country these last couple of days, and the disdain for and distrust of the media right now is worse than I've seen at any point throughout this presidency.

     — Elaina Plott (@elainaplott) March 12, 2020

     That a Times reporter should remark thus endangers the stops on my irony meter. The media, with the Times leading the charge, have actively denigrated and defamed the Trump Administration, the Trump agenda, and Trump’s supporters for four years. While they’ve occasionally resorted to undisguised condemnation, their preferred techniques have been disproportion and distortion: broadly speaking, the under-reporting (or outright concealment) of the improvements and the exaggeration of the costs to the national economy, security, and society that have arisen from Trump’s policies. And by implication, we who support President Trump and his policies must be (ahem) stupid.

     It hasn’t been President Trump condemning “fake news” that’s produced our disdain for the media. It’s been the media’s shameful behavior toward Trump and his Administration: its fabrication and promotion of fake news. But that was merely the fulfillment of the media’s sub rosa commitment to supporting the Democrat Party at every turn.

     You can’t get away with that kind of behavior for long...indeed, in these days of the Internet, not for long at all. If the Times is unhappy about its diminished reputation among American news consumers, it should look first to its own conduct for the reason.

     Now for a bit of prognostication. I feel this will be a safe call, as it will follow a pattern that has gone unbroken since 1956:

The Times will endorse the Democrats’ 2020 nominee for president, no matter who that proves to be.

     It won’t matter whether the Democrats nominate a man demonstrably in the grip of ingressive senile dementia, an unabashed socialist who hates everything this country stands for, or a sick, drunken, bitter old hag all of whose enemies have “suicided.” The editors of the Times will endorse the Democrat nominee as the candidate to prefer...because shut up, you ignorant chauvinist Neanderthal rube, you.

They endorsed outright racist Lyndon Johnson.
They endorsed inept, melodramatic Hubert Humphrey.
They endorsed mush-brained George McGovern.
They endorsed muddled peanut farmer Jimmy Carter.
They endorsed nonentities Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis.
They endorsed lying philanderer Bill Clinton and his vicious, unprincipled “wife” Hillary.
And of course, they endorsed lying, vacuous, anti-American Barack Hussein Obama.

     But we who support President Trump, celebrate his achievements, and seek a second term for him are the stupid ones. They can’t imagine why we distrust their “reporting.” Remember that you read it here first.

Why Hasn’t This Received 1,000,000,000 Views?

     This was uploaded in April 2018:

     Most people remain unaware that this degree of coordination prevails among the “real” news media and their mouthpieces. A video such as the one above – it’s less than two minutes long, Gentle Reader – highlights the phenomenon and makes it unmistakable. I encountered it only this morning at A Nod To The Gods. Please spread it around!

A Media Loser Bares His Teeth

     I stumbled across this article yesterday. It’s the only way I would have known about Andrew Marantz’s new book. I’m grateful for that – in more senses than one:

     America is in the midst of a democratic revolution. Anti-establishment conservatives have used the internet to break the mainstream media’s control of the national conversation. In doing so, they were able to win over a critical mass of ordinary Americans, dealing a deathblow to traditional gatekeeping. This is the revolution that made a Trump presidency possible....

     A significant new book by Andrew Marantz, a staff writer at the New Yorker, has reinvigorated the gatekeepers’ efforts to censor the internet. Antisocial: Online Extremists, Techno-Utopians, and the Hijacking of the American Conversation is an account of our ongoing democratic revolution, a historical moment that brings into relief two realizations for Marantz: (1) conservative influencers are now able to out-compete legacy media outlets, and (2) it was this that lead to the election of Donald J. Trump. “[T]hey helped propel their man to the presidency,” he writes.

     For Marantz, these two realizations justify all-out censorship of the internet. But his extremism comes as little surprise when you recognize that, from start to finish, Marantz’s argument is grounded in his contempt for the intellectual and moral capacities of ordinary Americans.

     Mind you, Marantz’s opinions are neither unique nor new. Consider what Hillary Clinton said, as quoted in Ann Coulter’s 2002 blockbuster Slander: Liberal Lies About the American Right:

     Hillary Clinton has also expressed concern about the “accessibility and instantaneous information on the computer.” Too much free speech! This was in a press conference on February 11, 1998—or two weeks after Matt Drudge broke the Monica Lewinsky story being suppressed by Newsweek. Not surprisingly, Mrs. Clinton raised the need for some “kind of editing function or gate-keeping function” for the Internet. Saying “It is just beyond imagination what can be disseminated,” Mrs. Clinton said, “We are all going to have to rethink how we deal with this.” There are, she said, “competing values.” To wit, her electoral viability versus the First Amendment. So the First Amendment’s got to go, the children need her.

     [Yes, my memory really is that retentive. And for the doubters out there, Miss Coulter’s meticulously footnoted book tells us that Clinton emitted those sentiments in a press briefing on the “Millennium Project, Part 5 of 5, U.S. Newswire, 02/11/1998.” If you have access to Lexis / Nexis, you can look it up for yourself.]

     Show me someone who demands the power to censor others’ free expression of their convictions and opinions, and I’ll show you a whiny loser. As usual, Mike Hendrix cuts to the core:

     The title of Marantz’s book is where the sad irony really lives and breathes. It isn’t any “hijacking of the American conversation” that so frustrates and enrages him; it’s having the ignorant serfs speaking up without permission he finds so damned galling. Unapproved views are now being freely expressed, rather than all and sundry listening in enraptured silence to his exalted pontification, as he so much prefers. Oh, there’s a conversation going on all right, but he’s not invited. Nothing has been “hijacked,” but a few things have been left behind. People like Marantz have nothing new to say, nothing to contribute but more of the same-old same-old. Is it any wonder that fewer and fewer of us seem interested in hearing their tired, century-old lecture recited all over again, only louder and more spitefully this time?

     Indeed.

---

     No one likes to be shown up. Media institutions and their barons hate it more than most. Remember the “Covington Catholic scandal” of a year ago? Remember how the media strained to persuade us that those high-schoolers, who were in Washington D.C. for the annual March for Life, were really vicious racists? Remember how common citizens’ video-recorded evidence of what really happened utterly refuted the media’s attempts to destroy the life of Nick Sandmann and besmirch the classmates who stood with him?

     The media haven’t forgotten – and we mustn’t either:

     On the weekend of January 18, 2019, a short video appeared on Twitter that purported to show a group of Catholic high school boys—one young man, Nicholas Sandmann, in particular—harassing a Native American elder named Nathan Phillips on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

     One year later, the media's reckless mishandling of the story stands as an important warning against the kind of agenda-driven, outrage-mongering clickbait that unfortunately thrives in the world of online journalism.

     But no less noteworthy was the news cycle that followed the initial flawed coverage, which featured a host of ideologically-motivated partisans doubling down on their initial assumption, digging for new information to justify it, and reassuring themselves that they were right all along. Sandmann and his MAGA hat-wearing friends had identified themselves as members of Team Trump, and thus the national shaming they endured was deserved, this thinking went. Indeed, those who had defended the boys by disputing some aspects of the encounter—including me, in an article for Reason that changed many people's minds about what had happened—were engaged in "gaslighting": trying to make people think that something they saw hadn't really happened.

     That’s right: The mainstream media outlets that originally misreported the story to smear Sandmann and his classmates, when their coverage was revealed to be tendentious to the point of slander, then leaped to attack those who had dared to refute them. They cannot bear to have their actual status – i.e., as boughten allies and handmaidens of the Democrat Party – revealed to the public. So they did their best to persuade their audiences that it was their fraudulently edited video clip and their coverage of the interaction of the Covington Kids with Nathan Phillips and the Black Hebrew Israelites the was authoritative.

     That, Gentle Reader, is the nature of the Establishment Media in our time.

---

     If there’s any “red thread” that unites the media’s attempts to don a mantle of unquestionable authority, it’s the consistency of its promotion of “the narrative.” For any news story a media institution seizes upon, its reporting will conform to a prescribed narrative: a moralistic uber-story that frames the reportage in a fashion that promotes the institution’s ideological preferences. In the case of the “Covington Catholic” story, the narrative was about white racism toward minorities, always one of the media’s favorites. Note that the mainstream reporters at the Virginia gun-rights rally this past Monday was framed in much the same way – and note also that copious video-recorded evidence is available to refute that narrative. None of that evidence has made its way into mainstream coverage.

     It’s what they do – and when they’re called on it, they react with fury. They never apologize. Their retractions and corrections always appear on page 53, at the lower right. And after a “decent interval” — i.e., when they think enough time has passed that they can get away with it – they will posture as if they were right all along. Read the cited Reason article in its entirety and follow the links.

     The last arrow in their quiver is to silence the citizen journalist, the citizen videographer, and the citizen editorialist. They’ve striven to enlist “Big Tech” in that cause, and have made no small amount of allies therein.

     Buddha, you’re up again:

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.

     And do have a nice day.