Why do Americans entertain the press as safekeepers of democracy? We are not a democracy, nor is such deep trust in the press warranted by history.
When George Washington sat at the head of the table at the Constitutional Convention, he allowed no daily briefing of the press and forbade notes to leave the room. Washington, like President Trump, did not take kindly to leakers.
Washington recognized that if the public heard the details of the debates and disputes at the convention day in and day out, all filtered through the back and forth of the partisan press (which, for all its faults, was at least honest about its partisanship—unlike today’s “objective” journalists), the people might well be excited into losing hope in legitimate political processes. The father of our country had little confidence in the power of the press to inform the people properly.
A few of President Trump’s critics in the media and politics recently received packages of spare parts, some of which “contained powder from a low explosive or a pyrotechnic, as in fireworks,” or, in the cases where it didn’t even qualify as that, “energetic material.”
Members of the excitable press, who insist that Americans thank them like soldiers “for their service because they devote themselves to protecting our freedoms,” went into hysterics over the “devices” that they insisted on calling “bombs.” Sure, they were “missing a crucial component for a functioning explosive device,” but you say “tomato,” they say “bomb.”
Never ones to let an opportunity to politicize a crisis or take shots at Trump go to waste, the whole of the establishment media (including the effeminate wing of Fox News, Shepard Smith and Chris Wallace) made the bombathan appear to be a national emergency. Many people scratched their heads at the rhetoric. The media has lauded Antifa, which has been inciting and engaging in political violence since Trump was elected. Now all of a sudden, the nation had a crisis of “right-wing terrorism.” It was strange to see.
The press blames the president for his “attacks” on them, only to turn around and run headlines such as: “Don’t compare Donald Trump to Adolf Hitler. It belittles Hitler.”
Of course, questioning the narrative of the “bombathon” only made the managers of public opinion livid. So much so, that they couldn’t even keep their attacks on the president coordinated.
“There is a total and complete lack of understanding at the White House about the seriousness of their continued attacks on the media,” said CNN President Jeff Zucker on October 24.
“I didn’t hear one CNN employee on TV or privately accuse anyone other than the bombers of being responsible for the devices. Not one,” said CNN’s Jake Tapper on October 25. Is Tapper a liar or an ignoramus? The two, perhaps, are not mutually exclusive.
Then some 200 journalists signed a letter condemning what they perceived as the president’s attacks on the media, accusing Trump of inciting violence against the press. Trump, they say, should “claim personal responsibility” for these “bombs,” though these signatories were conspicuously silent when a Bernie Sanders supporter attempted to kill Republican congressmen in Northern Virginia last year.
In the midst of the mailings, some people on Twitter speculated about the possibility that the actions of the “bomber” were some kind of false-flag operation. That’s irrelevant now, because the press has used the event exactly as it would have used a false-flag operation: to advance a narrative, to demonize their enemies, and to call for retribution against a straight white male president who refuses to be cowed by them. They are banking on the incident and subsequent skirmishes between the president and insignificant members of the “objective journalism profession” to shift popular opinion. And it’s worked. Just look at all of the neoconservatives and NeverTrumpers—people even the Left can’t stand—who have parroted the media line on the “bomber.”
Meantime, the press continues to whitewash and cover for left-wing political terrorism. The violent black-clad leftists of our time seek “peace through violence,” we are reliably informed by CNN.
CNN’s Chris Cuomo has gone on the record to defend Antifa, claiming that though the are perhaps too excited when they viciously maul police officers and bystanders, “fighting hate is right,” and “those who oppose it are on the side of right.” In other words, Cuomo excuses the political terrorism of leftists, because they are aligned with his preferred ideology.
Don Lemon, arguably CNN’s biggest stooge, has also defended violent leftists for being on the side of “right.” While “no organization is perfect,” said Lemon, what matters most is that Antifa is “fighting racist fascists.”
If Lemon has made it his “obligation as a journalist” to call President Trump, and by extension his supporters, racist, and if he condones political terrorism by Antifa toward “racist fascists,” is this not something like the press inciting violence from the left?
Consider that in a typical presidential election, Washington correspondents vote 93–7 percent for the Democrat, while the rest of America votes somewhere around 50–50, according to Timothy Groseclose of George Mason University. The reason that we will never hear our moral superiors in the press condemn Maxine Waters, Tim Kaine, Keith Ellison, or Eric Holder for their endorsements of political violence, then, is that they do not see it as political violence. In their view, it’s self-defense against those who threaten their ideology.
There is a reason, as Chris Buskirk notes, Americans have seen very little coverage of the recent attacks and actual terrorism against Republicans:
Kellen Michael Sorber has been charged with setting fire to the Albany County Republican headquarters in September. On October 11, the windows of the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York City were smashed and a message was left stating, “Our attack is merely a beginning.” The Nebraska Republican Party’s headquarters had their windows smashed and “Abolish ICE” was spray painted on the wall [say when]. The windows at House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy’s Bakersfield office were also broken.
Then there are the physical attacks on people. Last month, a knife-wielding man named Farzad Fazeli attacked San Francisco Bay Area Republican Rudy Peters, who is challenging Eric Swalwell, one of the most leftist members of Congress. According to reports, Fazeli charged at Peters with a switchblade while yelling, “F— Trump! F— Trump!” Wilfred Michael Stark, a progressive activist who works for David Brock’s American Bridge 21st Century, seems to like assaulting Republicans. His most recent arrest charges him with assaulting Kristin Davison, the manager of Adam Laxalt’s gubernatorial campaign by “trapping” her in a doorway and twisting her arm behind her back and squeezing it so hard she screamed in pain.
Now, I’m not saying that president’s critics deserved to receive “suspicious packages,” but I am saying that no one group has done more to promote political terrorism, and excuse it, in this country than the Left—and they should be reminded of that, good and hard.
The fault for the number of incidents of political violence, as well as the number of people actually killed (Charlottesville included), can be attributed disproportionately to the Left. Moreover, the Left has consistently shown little remorse for the hatred and pain that they’ve sown.
The alleged “bomber” is off the streets, and although no one was hurt and the “bombs” themselves weren’t actually bombs, the press will only continue to plunge headlong into more histrionics. But ask yourself, why should any American care what the leftists of the New York Times, CNN, MSNBC, et. al., have to say?
These people have made fortunes polarizing the country and promoting the destruction of our civilization. Political terrorism is a means to an end for the Left, and we must not forget that, as Angelo Codevilla writes, “they turned the Democrats and other leftist recipients into pretend-victims and really victimized Trump and the Republicans on the eve of important elections by imputing to them responsibility for political violence.”
We must not be cowed into silence by the revolutionists waving the bloody shirt that they, not we, have soaked.
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