Some yearn for the ancient monopolistic days of network news, the adolescent years of public radio and TV, and the still reputable New York Times—when once upon a time the Left at least tried to mask their progressivism in sober and judicious liberal façades.
An avuncular Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor, Jim Lehrer, or Abe Rosenthal at least went through the motions of reporting news that was awkward or even embarrassing to the Left. Their agenda was 1960s-vintage Great Society liberalism, seen as the natural evolution from the New Deal and post-war internationalism. Edward R. Murrow, the ACLU of old, and Free Speech Movement at Berkeley—these were their liberal referents. Those days are gone.
Yet even during the Obama years, when studies showed the president had received the most slanted media honeymoon in news history, overt media bias was, at least, as hotly denied as it intensified. There were still a few ossified, quarter-hearted efforts now and then to mention the IRS scandal, the surveillance of Associated Press reporters, the various scandals embroiling the Veterans Administration, General Service Administration, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, and the Secret Service. But even that thin pretense is over now, too.
Rejecting Objectivity
What ended liberal dissimulation about slanted reporting is a new pride, or rather an arrogance, about bias itself. The new liberated defiance is something like, “We are biased. Damn proud of it. And what exactly do you plan on doing about it?”
Jim Rutenberg infamously announced in January 2017 his profession’s proud defiance of now ossified norms in a new age in which reporters would “throw out the textbook American journalism has been using for the better part of the past half-century.” Christiane Amanpour felt she was now released from the old chains of professed “objectivity.” “Much of the media was tying itself in knots trying to differentiate between balance, between objectivity, neutrality, and crucially, the truth,” she said just a few weeks after the 2016 election. “We cannot continue the old paradigm.” Michel Foucault could not have said it any better.
Univision’s Jorge Ramos more or less ridiculed classical journalistic training and embraced the liberation from the old bourgeois idea of “neutrality.”
Saying that reporters should abandon neutrality on certain issues and choose sides may seem at odds with everything that’s taught in journalism school. But there are times when the only way we journalists can fulfill our primary social responsibility—challenging those in power—is by leaving neutrality aside.
Or as the New York Times’ Jim Roberts in 2016 put the new “Walter Durantyism”: “Yes. The media is biased. Biased against hatred, sexism, racism, incompetence, belligerence, inequality, To [sic] name a few.”
So said them all. In Orwellian terms, Roberts’ media has now come to adore the omnipresent progressive party line: “You must love Big Brother. It is not enough to obey him: you must love him.”
When early on in the Trump Administration, the liberal Harvard Kennedy School’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy found that in the first 100 days all news coverage was on average 80 percent anti-Trump—93 percent negative in the case of CNN and NBC—no one seemed embarrassed.
Again, since May 2017, the bias has not merely increased but is now a badge of honor—whether it was the months of “walls or closing in” fake stories of imminent Mueller investigation indictments of the Trump family or the serial “Trump is finished” psychodramas about the Logan Act, the Emoluments Clause, and the 25th Amendment. No one in the media, to this day, after the Mueller implosion, the findings of Inspector General Michael Horowitz, and the recent releases of Russian intercepts about the Clinton gambit to fabricate a “collusion” election narrative, has ever said “We were wrong”—because they really think they were “right” in pushing even untruth, given their hatred of Trump.
Cooking the Debates
We can see the new arrogance manifested in a variety of ways. In the recent debates and town halls, the moderators were as praised by the media as they were a turn off to many in the public who were disgusted by their arrogance in making no attempt to appear fair.
The most anti-Trump Fox News figure currently is Chris Wallace. Naturally, he was deemed a perfect moderator—not so much in the old style as the token conservative, but in the new liberal hope that more at Fox, too, have come to love Big Brother.
Wallace performed as expected, directing his gotcha questions to Trump and softballs to Biden. When pre-debate observers predicted that Wallace would return to his earlier 2016 debate questioning mantra of “white supremacy”—once more selectively editing the old saw of Trump’s Charlottesville remarks to eliminate his denunciation of white supremacists and the KKK—Wallace not only met but exceeded their expectations with his “When will you stop beating your wife?” hammering.
Susan Page, the vice-presidential debate moderator, also as predicted, adopted the same unbalanced tactic with Vice President Pence and Senator Kamala Harris (D-Calif.). She is currently writing a likely favorable biography of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.)—apparently no more worrisome a fact than had a debate moderator from American Greatness announced that she was currently at work on a hagiography of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.).
No wonder Trump said “No!” to a town-hall zoomed remote second debate—the medium in which Candy Crowley had hijacked the 2012 debate and joined with Barack Obama and her preselected questioners to advance her own agenda.
The now-canceled second debate moderator Steven Scully, of course, was a former Biden intern. He had tweeted a request to the unhinged, arch-Trump hater Anthony Scaramucci, seeking advice on how to best respond to Trump’s prescient accusations of his bias.
When that request was inadvertently publicly posted on Twitter rather than in an intended private chat, Scully did not just lie by claiming, after Carlos Danger, that he had been “hacked” and never had done such a thing. He also then kept silent in the expectation that the media class, in Joy Reid fashion, would swarm to his defense, prior to any formal investigation of his improbable charges of computer malfeasance. And they did so on spec, from Chris Wallace to C-Span and the federal debate commission itself. Scully is now seen by the Left not as a prevaricator, but as a tragic hero. The subtext of his fall is not that he was biased, but that he was oafishly so. Thereby in his legitimate activist and righteous hatred of Trump, Scully rendered his prejudice politically ineffective.
The two town halls proved that they could have been easily combined into a second debate. Both were live and conducted quite safely. But health concerns were not the criteria that got the town hall debate canceled. Rather, it was legitimate fear for Biden’s ability to appear again on a live stage with an aggressive Trump.
Both separate town halls followed predictable scripts without worry that they were embarrassing themselves. Former key Clinton aide George Stephanopoulos asked questions as if he were conducting an obsequious PBS profile. Savannah Guthrie, the spouse of a former Al Gore campaign traveling chief of staff, Democratic activist, and current liberal lobbyist, Michael Feldman, sought to showboat her left-wing bona fides (given that Guthrie had been criticized by the Left for the crime of appearing on stage with Trump). From the outset she assumed the role of the missing Biden, and heatedly debated Trump—but with the twist of knowing all the questions in advance and adjudicating how much time each would have in answering. All this was considered not just fine, but absolutely necessary by the Left–a fact known in advance by the careerist Guthrie.
Big Tech’s Censorship
In the old days of the early 21st century, Silicon Valley and other tech giants went through the motions that they were more interested in providing social media access, online buying, and internet services than massaging them all to indoctrinate the public. Even during the Obama years, they protested vehemently suggestions that they had given campaign cash inordinately to leftist candidates, or were beginning to massage internet search results or asymmetrically blocking conservative users.
Not now. Big Tech has offered no coherent defense of its censorship of the Hunter Biden laptop scandal, or even appeared to worry about the hypocrisy that they had gladly let Trump’s illegally obtained and published tax returns fly through the cyberworld, in the manner that Christopher Steele’s leaked and made-up hoax was freely promulgated online during the late critical days of the 2016 campaign.
Now Twitter, without much worry, just shrugs that it blocks even conservatives in government from posting. White House public health and coronavirus advisor Dr. Scott Atlas routinely is censored and shut down by Twitter for referencing scientific studies that have found in a cost-benefit analysis no arguments for lockdowns and blanket mask-wearing by the public.
Facebook couldn’t care less that it has been taken to task for its systematic bias in censoring social media content. Their collective attitude toward government insistence that they not censor oppositional views seems to be something like, “When we were a multibillion-dollar industry, we feared you. Now that we are a multitrillion-dollar business, we despise you.”
Recently Amazon’s many “platforms” temporarily banned access to documentarians Shelby and Eli Steeles’ new film “What Killed Michael Brown?”
Amazon apparently was protecting its high standards so that it can continue to sell and show serious documentaries like “Tickled” (From the show’s description: “The less you know about David Farrier’s descent into the strange world of ‘competitive endurance tickling’ before watching his 2016 documentary, the better. Suffice it to say that the answer to who’s making videos of young men tickling each other while restrained is simultaneously shocking and exactly what you think it is.”)
Yet Amazon considered exploration of what really happened at Ferguson not to meet such high “content quality expectations.” It defiantly added just three days before the documentary was to be shown on Amazon platforms that it would not “be accepting resubmission of this title and this decision may not be appealed.” So there!
One is left wondering whether a content-conscious Amazon will now pull the misogynist “Bang Gang” and “Night Call Nurse” from its online film catalog.
Tainted Popular Culture
The new defiance and the glee that comes from open bias have now saturated our culture, as if the liberated Left in today’s globalized market has no need of half the U.S. population—the supposed loser, unwoke half.
The NBA intensifies both its worship of the Chinese Communist Party and its utter disdain for American democratic culture. When revenues crash from eroding viewership and public criticism of collaboration with a government that institutionalized concentration camps, democracy destruction, and state-sponsored racism and murder, the woke players fire back in defense of China, with “So what?” certainty.
Liberal writers used to warn us of “dark money,” as in the anti-Trump Koch family donations to libertarian causes. Now there is no such thing as money being “dark.” The Left is proud that most of the Fortune 400’s top-20 multibillionaires are generous progressive-giving leftists, and that George Soros and Michael Bloomberg promise to infuse tens of millions of dollars not just to fortify leftist candidates, but to massage the rules of voting itself by reexamining voter eligibilities and methods of voting to enhance progressive agendas.
Pollsters used to highlight moderate liberal leads to jack up enthusiasm. But in the final few days of a race, they began offering more realistic numbers to ensure that if the vote went south, they would not go down with the ship.
Not now. At a time when the Zogby, Trafalgar, Democracy Institute, or Rasmussen polls show Trump’s favorability climbing, and the race tightening in the last three weeks, we are to believe YouGov, Reuters, or Politico that the president fights a 10-15 percent negative favorability gap. Perhaps. But one wonders why, in the context of 2016, we never saw a symmetrical split, half of the polls believing Trump would lose sizably in the Electoral College, and half winning by a substantial number.
Given the similarly asymmetrical record of the Senate in grilling and voting on Supreme Court picks, one would have thought after the Kavanaugh hearing, which cost Democrats a chance to take back the Senate, the Left would have tried to appear respectful and professional in questioning the brilliant, learned, personable, and charismatic Amy Coney Barrett. Such an expectation was not absurd, given that in just a few weeks they bragged that they would recapture the Senate in a way they had failed in 2016 and 2018.
Left unsaid was the tic of the Left to destroy not just the nomination chances of a Robert Bork, Clarence Thomas, and Brett Kavanaugh, but their very characters and careers—while assuming that an Elena Kagan or Sonya Sotomayor deserved overwhelming bipartisan support given they were progressive and enlightened.
Forget the Old Rules
But in the climate of the new defiance, the Left now believes that even the appearance of fairness and empirical objectivity is proof of weakness or lack of revolutionary bona fides and fervor. So they did their best to smear Barrett as a veritable Medieval Catholic monarchist, an unthinking clone of the late but still very much hated Antonin Scalia, a wacko cultist, a veritable murderer who would bring back-alley abortions and cancel health care to those in the throes of cancer.
Behind all this unabashed venom lies a reasonable strategy. There is a long history of conservative and Republican-appointed justices who eventually acquiesce, and, with hands over ears, cry that they cannot take such social ostracism any more. In the manner of Harry Blackmun, William Brennan, Lewis Powell, David Souter, John Paul Stevens, Potter Stewart, and Earl Warren, many Republican appointees eventually come to accept, and learn to love, the Left.
Add the examples of the dishonest, discredited but very much alive “1619 Project,” or the unapologetic admission of discrimination against Asian-American university applicants, and we can sense not so much a brave new defiance, but a more calculated insolence that the Left is at last soon going to dominate and alter politics as they have the major American cultural and social institutions. They see their efforts bending in a preordained historical arc that ends with ultimate progressive justice—and retributions. And in that context there is no longer any need to play by the rules of fairness, or even to say that such rules need to exist or indeed ever existed.
On November 3, we will see whether they are justifiably arrogant or suicidal.
All this is very finely said; as always from Professor Hanson.
Yet I take issue with one remark: “They [the Left] see their efforts bending in a preordained historical arc that ends with ultimate progressive justice—and retributions.”
I think it is all-important to abandon the charitable notion that most Lefties actually desire to see a better world than the present one.
This is not true.
They tell themselves they want a much improved version of society, but actually they LOATHE CIVILIZATION, the very idea of it.
They want to destroy what there is of it, and make the world a place of vile tawdriness of every kind.
There are a few people who profess and call themselves Socialists or Communists who do indeed want to better humankind; but they are a small minority, supplying the others with valuable propagandistic cover.
Most Lefties are of the Devil’s party.
They wish to see mankind become as morally tenth-rate, as ethically contemptible, as possible.
To this end every kind of degradation is a help.
Tent cities in Los Angeles, homeless everywhere, people relieving their bowels openly on the streets; high taxation driving out enterprise, filth of every kind ruling the roast? – This IS the Socialist Utopia, the happy hunting-ground of their dreams. A failed state is in their view not a bug, but a sublime feature.
If you ask how the Tech and other zillionaires who fund them find their own accounts in the prospect of inhabiting such a nightmare, I think the answer is that they don’t look ahead and see any such outcome for themselves.
Their hitherto always successful greed has made them self-besotted. They assume that IN ANY WORLD OF THE FUTURE they will always be secure in their gated compounds, protected by a phalanx of skilled bodyguards, buying government favour, protection and influence to their hearts’ content.
Success has stupefied them. They are like the big business honchos who talked President Hindenburg into putting Hitler into the German government in 1933. They wanted him to stamp on the trade unions and rein in his private army, the SA, so that it no longer carried on beating people up in the streets.
He delivered on both counts; but he also made the Big Business chieftains helpless prisoners of a terror regime, like everybody else.
Peter,
I am saving your comment to my file. Not only is it well-written, it is …. true. What really, have liberals and progressives successfully “managed” or …. “improved?” Our public schools? Big cities? The Federal Government? They are ignorant self-absorbed grifters, into improving their own financial well-being at the expense of everyone else. The Clintons and Obamas quickly come to mind.
Your projection fails.
Add the Bidens to that list of Leftist/Democrat crime families.
Peter – this is why the country is in an uproar. Fox News and other conservative news outlets have poisoned your views on the world to the point where you actually believe that your co-citizens want the make the “world a place of vile tawdriness of every kind.” How many of these villains have you had conversations with? How many have you spoken to in order to understand the place that they come from and what they are looking for in the world? It is more likely that 98% want a stronger, safer, fairer country just like you, they just have different views on how to get there. I hope you can lose you pessimistic view of the world and be a part of the solution that brings this country back together.
You believe this author is being led by the nose by conservative media? Funny coming from a liberal who does not abide by honest debate or critical thinking. If Biden wins the election we will see him quickly replaced by Kamala and the history of this country will be taken apart. Either you believe that you will be a new master or you are not smart enough to see the enemy at the gate. I wish you luck if you get your wish.
In The Usual Suspects, Roger “Verbal” Kint said words now immortal, “The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”. William Cooke proves that Verbal was right. Leftist Democrats are dismantling the greatest government in the history of mankind in plain view, aided and abetted by a biased press which spews everyday now, “who are you going to believe – – me? Or your lying eyes”. Sadly, there are many William Cookes who are so delusional as to look bald-face lies in the face with a shrug. Even the prospect of destroying the third branch of the federal government by packing it with Justices is justified to these pathetic souls – – all in the name of “…wanting a stronger, safer, fairer country just like you, but just with different views on how to get there.”
Fox News is not extreme or radical in any way. They are a necessary counterpart to CNN and MSNBC. I know you’ve read and absorbed all the Media Matters propaganda about them, but it’s just idiotic to call out Fox as the problem while ignoring CNN and MSNBC being far more radical and inflammatory. I personally dislike all cable and broadcast news. It’s generally vapid, lazy journalism with far more editorializing than reporting. That said, the famously misrepresented study claiming Fox viewers are less informed than those who watch no news, is just not accurate. Aside from being a single study that has never been repeated, it didnt say what Media Matters claimed. The study actually found that people who got their news solely or primarily from cable news networks were less informed than those who rely primarily on print or internet reporting. CNN and FOX viewers were statistically tied, but all 3 networks were deficient as a reliable primary source of info. In the years since that study we’ve seen what Mr.Hansen describes in the above article. CNN and MSNBC went all in on the debunked Russia hoax, and were forced to fire several reporters for sloppy dishonest journalism on multiple occassions. Fox had to retract ONE story in that time. CNN in particular makes no distinction between opinion and fact based journalism. Their main White House correspondent is an openly partisan pundit. Imagine if Fox News made Sean Hannity their main White House correspondent during the Obama administration. There is no journalistic difference between that and sending Jim Acosta into the White House press pool. We all get that you dont like Fox or their millions of viewers, your vitriol is a well worn clichè. It’s the arrogance that goes with that idiotic belief that confounds many of us. Fox is not my cup of tea, but they are not illegitimate, radical or in any way less credible than their competitors.
William
I wish your interpretation of the left was accurate but unfortunately after attempting what you suggest it appears my co citizens fall into several categories none of which lend to use coming together as a country.
Too large a percentage of this contingent are unquestionably programmed socialists who believe that form of economic government is the only answer to the problems of the world. They will not discuss their beliefs, they will only tyrannically inform you why you are wrong and need to bend to their uninformed ideology. They do not believe in any middle ground.
The scariest element is the elitists. I cannot figure out if they are truly that naive, that arrogant or that stupid. They are holed up in their enclaves in New England and California and seem to believe they are in control of the actions of the extreme left (Portland, Seattle) as if they are a machine that can be turned off and on at will. They also believe they will remain removed from the results of their actions. They are either ignorant of history or believe that this time they have the revolution under their control. Since the beginning of the socialist/communist era the wealthy at the top have always been some of the first to be devoured by the mob, it will not be any different this time. Of course the elites do not wish to discuss the issues, and certainly not with the inferiors who dwell in any area outside their enclaves.
I would love for your comment to be fact, however I don’t see the divide being healed quickly. The previous administration spent 8 years prying the country apart, it will probably take twice that long to repair the breech.
Wholeheartedly concur.
Well said! The elite Left may prat about ‘equality’ (of results, not opportunity), but “Some animals are more equal than others” is their real aim. A mammoth Venezuela is fine with them, so long as they are on top.
My daughter lives in Santa Monica, Ca. She voted for Obama twice, and Hillary in 2016. I shared an article with her by Michael Anton, an excerpt from his book, about the dysfunction in California. She is now thinking of voting for Trump. What you write about the filth on the streets of Los Angeles is hitting home with lots of younger people in California. They are beginning to wonder who is letting this happen, etc. It may come to pass that in the future, the “woke” generation of younger Californians, will wake up, for real, and vote for sane people who will restore law, order and public health.
I’ve been waiting my entire adult life since I realized I was a conservative in 1980, for the true consequences of liberalism (Marxism-socialism-communism-progressivism, all in the family), and the disasters it causes wherever it goes, to wake people up. You would think they are getting so obvious that they simply can’t be denied any longer. Let’s hope there are many others who join your daughter in opening their eyes, finally.
A salvation by voters waking up is, of course, a matter of timing. Unless there is a critical mass of the electorate awake in the short term, there is much more damage and much less hope for the long term.
I think they are true believers who deceive themselves. Their path to enlightenment has been shown time and again to be a path to human despair and death. But they think this time since THEY are in charge it will be different. All the while many of them speak of the need for retribution, which is what causes all the trouble in the first place.
My goodness Peter, I think you might be on to something. They really want to live in a dystopian society. They have completely given themselves over to Satan, the Destroyer, the Lord of the Flies. It is Satan worship pure and simple.
“……in the latter times some shall depart from the faith, giving heed to deceitful spirits, and doctrines of demons.”
We are living is a post Judeo-Christian world, which implies post-Constitution order.
“My dream is a hemispheric common market, with open trade and open borders,” Clinton says in an excerpt from a speech to Unibanco Itau, a Brazilian bank. “We have to resists protectionism [and] other kinds of barriers to market access and to trade.” Hillary Clinton
Let’s not forget the basis for the narcissistic rage we are seeing from the left. The open borders plans of international corporations (and others) would have removed all the power a democratic nation gives to it’s people. Owning media and the establishment politicians of both parties, they saw nothing in their way-even when Trump came down the escalator. The past four years have been one long, outraged conniption fit and hatred toward deplorable ‘upstarts’. Now, all the considerable resources those groups can gather are being used to take back this country they utterly believed was already theirs. Their control of information puts the people at a serious disadvantage. I hope the smug confidence of globalist allies such as Hillary and Sasse is misplaced, but only the election will tell.
Dr. Hanson has aptly described the near-end product of the Gramscian “long march through the institutions.” The ultimate destination of the long march is a hellscape of totalitarianism, cruelty, slavery and slaughter. Those who would be our masters would far rather rule in hell atop a pile of smouldering ruins and stinking corpses than leave the rest of us alone to live our lives as we see fit. And they are not about to simply shrug their shoulders and walk away when they lose this November. Here’s the reason why:
It is my opinion that the horrors of the last 150 years are the direct result of the rise of the will to power and its usurpation of the role that individual conscience, moral restraint and religious sanction traditionally played in Western human affairs. In modern times, the will to power has expressed itself in the desire for the power to control the lives of others down to the smallest details. Worse, it has expressed itself as the desire to kill without restraint or fear of consequence. The great irony is that this interventionist (and ultimately, eliminationist) mindset is precisely what modern ‘progressives’ accuse conservatives of harboring. Yet, all available evidence points to the fact that those who call themselves ‘progressives’ above all desire to wield the power to decide who lives and who dies.
Here is the Vulcan mind-meld translation of the core premise of the modern progressive Left: you have no right to live. By their lights, you are no more than a thing, an animal, or a machine. Therefore, you have no right to the fruits of your labors; which means: you have no right to your own life. You become mere property of the state, a fungible asset to be used, to be disposed of, and ultimately to be eliminated on a whim. This premise is, has been, and continues to be central to those who have engaged in the wholesale slaughter of hundreds of millions of human beings in modern times, and who have enslaved, impoverished and tortured hundreds of millions more. By their lights, you are a ‘resource’ at best. Or you are in their way and must be eliminated. There in a nutshell are the last 150 years of bad ideas and their practical consequences.
So here’s a bold assertion that some of you will dismiss out of hand: there are those in government – and those who seek control of your government – who simply want you dead. They would kill you with neither hesitation nor remorse if they could get away with it. Why? Because you are in their way and because your very existence is an affront to all that they believe. Failing that, they would settle for taking everything you have if they felt that they could do so without being held accountable. They would use the apparatus of the state to censor your speech, punish you for your politically incorrect thoughts, confiscate the fruits of your labor, seize your property, disarm you and thus render you helpless and defenseless, and in the end, dictate the very terms of your existence if they could do so with impunity. And worse, far worse – they would see you suffer simply because they can. Because they want to. And worse still, because, they like it.
Here’s your picture: Open warfare in this country is inevitable because there is no reconciliation possible with those who claim that your life simply does not belong to you. You cannot make peace with those who demand not only your economic submission, but your intellectual and spiritual surrender as well. The price of surrender has been and always will be more than anyone of reason and good will can ever care to pay. As philosopher Sidney Hook once wrote:
“Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they would not betray to stay alive…”
There are many of us, myself among them, who constitute an entirely different class of humanity than these killers without conscience and their enablers. We are neither interested in power nor its abuse. We are satisfied to live our lives in peace with ourselves and with others, and we derive great satisfaction in seeing others enjoy life as we do. We believe that our lives and our minds are sovereign, and that the fruits of our labors are not forfeit to the first thug who demands them at the point of a gun. We are never the initiators of violence. We judge others solely by their competence and by their character. We hold dear the defining values of our Western Christian culture as they were described so eloquently by renowned historian Carroll Quigley:
“Love, humility, brotherhood, cooperation, the sanctity of work, the fellowship of community, the image of man as a fellow creature made in the image of God, respect for women as personalities and partners of men, mutual helpmates on the road to spiritual salvation, and the vision of our universe, with all of its diversity, complexity, and multitude of creatures, as a reflection of the power and goodness of God…”
These basic aspects of Christ’s teachings are for all intents and purposes totally lacking throughout the hearts, minds and outlook of the killers without conscience, their agents and their followers who seek to lay waste to our world.
The final first-principles question is this: To whom does the world belong? Does it belong to those of us who wish to live free of coercion or to the killers without conscience? Does it belong to those who uphold the core outlook of Western Christianity as the standard of their values, or to those who uphold the standard of death?
Can those of us who are passionately committed to the ideals of life, liberty, and the sovereign dignity of the individual hope to persist in the face of such an inevitable tragedy? Our one hope is that this pack of will-to-power driven monsters will turn upon themselves and consume one another before they have time to get to the rest of us. Those of us with the wisdom to prepare and the courage to step forward and rebuild our uniquely American civilization after the fall of this republic are our best and only hope for a decent and humane civilization.
Mind you, even if we prevail, we will not have seen the end of these monsters, these killers without conscience. The desire to control others and to harm others without consequence appears to be ‘black code’ that’s written into our all-too-human DNA. Modern ideology – that is, all of the modern totalitarian ‘isms’ – communism, socialism, fascism and so on – provide the perfect environment for that ‘black code’ of the will to power to prosper and flourish. This is one of our great human failings, an aspect of our tragic nature that must always be recognized, resisted, fought and destroyed, even if only for a little while. But for that, we’d be out among the stars by now. We may make it there yet.
I conclude this with a quote from G. Warren Nutter, the late, great University of Virginia economist and proponent of liberty:
“The greatness of a society does not come from its monuments but from the kind of people it produces. Justice, responsibility, and humanity – these are the qualities of greatness in a people. Only the humane can remain free, and only the free can remain humane…”
Dorrity has produced a dissembling polemic that should warm the hearts of the Trump True believers. It is verbose nonsense. He has misrepresented Gramsci’s political theory in attempt to paint Democrats as Marxist criminal conspirators intent on destroying America.
“The ultimate destination of the long march is a hellscape of totalitarianism, cruelty, slavery and slaughter. Those who would be our masters would far rather rule in hell atop a pile of smouldering (sic) ruins and stinking corpses than leave the rest of us alone to live our lives as we see fit. ” That is totally wrong , perverse and most of all disgusting.
It is another baseless conspiracy theory.
You make very complex what is essentially an easy question. Which is: do your favor individual liberty or state control of the individual? Or put another way, are your rights granted by government or by nature (God if you’re religious)?
How the people in aggregate answer those questions will determine how long this Republic will endure. Lincoln was right. So was Ben Franklin. I do wonder whether we can keep it or not.
Ward Dorrity, the answer to your question is a Constitutional Republic and the Rule of Law.
Your caricatures of the Democratic party are bizarre and hysterical. I don’t know what the remedy would be for a cankered mind such as yours — perhaps to take five to ten years off from thinking about politics altogether, and then return to try whether you can see things in their true nature and proportions.
Please read what Dr. Jordan Peterson has said on the individual vs the collective. What we have is the rise of the collective, in which individuals have no value and can be “removed.” The genius of the West was that individuals were elevated. When the individual is accorded rights and protected, the society thrives, because everyone is a member. When the collective takes power, then those in the circle are protected and those out of the collective attacked. The problem is, which those supporting the Left do not realize, is that the numbers allowed into the collective become smaller and smaller. The collective began when we accorded special rights to members of certain groups: women, the disabled, people of color, the disadvantaged, sexual minorities. Now anyone in those groups who doesn’t support the leftist agenda are also out. And if they come to power, the collective will kick out anyone they perceive as a threat. Those they brand as outsiders can be disposed of. It is the triumph of the collective over the individual.
Bullshit on abindining civilization. Double shit that the left is more biased than the right. Liberals look forward to the future as better and wide and duverse. Yet conservatives it is the past is better and closer and like me is better
If you are right and I am wrong, why is it almost exclusively in every case the Left which is rioting, looting, burning buildings, destroying businesses (numbers of them small businesses owned and run by and employing black persons [how is this helping to make black lives matter?]) and committing horrible acts of murder and grievous bodily harm on their fellow human beings – several sheerly at random – in the streets?
Why is it far-left District Attorneys (many of them helped into office by George Soros’s money) who in city after city release without charge the assailants who have committed such deeds?
Why is it Democratic Party governors in various states who in every practical way give their blessing to such cruelties?
In nearly every instance it is not people who essentially agree with Prof. Hanson, or Conrad Black, or Rush Limbaugh – or President Trump – who are behaving like that.
Antifa, like its very name, professes hatred of Fascism; but it resembles Fascism entirely, not least in its preferred path to political power – physical thuggery, coercion, intimidation. Mussolini, who began as a Socialist, would have fitted in with them like a hand in a tailor-bespoke glove.
Well said. The only factor missing, is a charismatic voice to emerge from the antifa-BLM ranks, and America shall have her very own Hitler.
Neal, The Right wing has its own ” charismatic voice” , Donald Trump . He has a large cult following . To suggest that Antifa or BLM is going to lead an progressive revolution, is risible. It is however a Trump Talking point .
What is more concerning to me is the Trump Fascist movement to undermine the Rule of Law and responsible government , to pack the Federal judiciary with conservative judges, to continue to exacerbate the growing income gap by further cutting taxes for the wealthy and well connected and continue voter suppression .
Nicolas,
To suggest that the Brown Shirts were also going to lead a revolution resulting in the seating of Adolf Hitler in the German government was also risible at that time. Remember George Santanaya’s quote regarding repeating history.
You people who conflate the left with Hitler never cease to disappoint me. It just doesn’t make sense. Or are you going to claim that leftist terrorists are actually racial nationalists?
Dear Mr. Dority,
Well and horrifyingly said. “Those who say that life is worth living at any cost have written for themselves an epitaph of infamy, for there is no cause and no person they would not betray to stay alive…”
I watched the bio of a Belgian Nazi that perfectly depicted this exact philosophy. A complete sociopath and pathological liar who survived—unlike the victims he betrayed in “Bernie Madoff” style. His victims went like lambs to slaughter, despite evidence of his duplicity, WANTING to believe in salvation til their last breath.
I wonder how close we are to losing our Country. VERY, I suspect.
Very interesting bringing up the role of German Big business in the rise of Adolf Hitler. A point for all concerned, patriotic Americans to ponder is the FACT that Adolf Hitler, the most evil and nefarious dictator in all human history, was DEMOCRATICALLY elected to government. Once in government he legally advanced his influence and power such that in January 1933 he was sworn in as German Chancellor (after having been appointed to that position by President Paul Hindenburg). Following this appointment Hitler continued to build his coalition in the Reichstag (utilizing threats and covert/overt acts of violence against rivals as well as “legitimate” legislation such as the so-called Enabling Act and The Reichstag Fire Decree) until eventually he had control of both the Legislative as well as Executive branches of German government. When Hindenburg died in August 1934 Hitler abolished the office of President merging its powers with those of the Chancellor. Thus the Third Reich and Nazi dictatorship was born with Hitler assuming the mantle of “Fuhrer und Reichkanzler” (i.e. leader and chancellor) that was very soon thereafter just shortened to “Der Fuhrer” (The Leader). The rest is history. The German nation was one of the most educated, advanced, technologically superior, and cultured nations on the face of the Earth (probably more so than we Americans) yet this flagrant power grab went on right under their noses within a very short period of time. Don’t ever think that things such as this can’t happen here and that as Americans we are immune to abuse of power by “elected” politicians metastasizing to tyranny or even dictatorship. To do so is to invite disaster.
It does have to be added that Hitler, if anything, was not of the Left, slaughtered Socialists by the hundreds of thousands and espoused total Right-wing fascist centralist control via his dictatorship…
A warning from history is that the furthest in the Left-wing are more likely they are to meet the furthest Right-wing….
and agree.
No. Adolf Hitler was never elected to any office. He achieved dictatorial power through the passage of the “Enabling Act” in March 1933, not through the death of Hindenburg the next year.
Using history to demonstrate your viewpoint is much more effective if you actually know the history you’re trying to use.
I have lived in a socialist country and it is horrible. You can’t get good medical attention. You have to stand in line to have surgeries, and even when your surgery is scheduled the doctors can call you and put it off several times. The doctors and dentists do not have the latest equipment. I was amazed I had a crown fall off and I had to go to a dentist and have it reglued.They had one of those bowls that you spit in at the dentist office. So outdated! And furthermore your taxes will be upwards of 50%. The government controls everything you do everything you get.
Hi Beverly, Good points, and you might add that here in the US, we have some areas where the feds provide schools, housing, food and medical care. Ask any Tribal member about the quality of their schools, housing, food and medical care, all ran through the Federal programs for many miserable decades before the Tribes decided to run things themselves with casino revenues. the problem with government (re: socialist) provided services: There is no reward for excellence and no penalty for incompetence.
Then the need to read Atlas Shrugged
Ron, Ayn Rand’s work glorifies greed. It extols the virtues of our Predatory Capitalism . Why , in this day and age, would one consider her works relevant and informative ?
It’s ultimately rooted in “environmentalism.” Humans (especially American humans) are destroying Mother Earth, and need, themselves, to be destroyed.
Of course, they never get to the point where it’s their turn to be exterminated or to live without electricity — that fate is for other people. But not our enemies, because they’ll help wipe out Americans, except (again, of course) themselves.
That’s why “environmentalists” attack progress in America, but leave the big polluters like China and Indonesia out of the discussion. Whether because they think Chinese or Indonesian pollution is okay, as long as we get cheap manufactured goods, or because they’ve never head of China or Indonesia… it’s still misguided, and a reflection on their own arrogant stupidity.
Perhaps at 61 years old, I am still naïve…….but while agree that many of the “professional influencers” of the left (including most media, activists and political operatives) are somewhat evil – I believe in my heart that most of their followers are simply ill-informed, somewhat brainwashed and illogically devoted to “their herd”. They believe that no Democrat ever did anything wrong, that ALL Republicans and their supporters are the evil bad people. I don’t know when the importance of critical thought in our society lost its place to Tribalism………….
We are an amazing people and nation; truly the melting pot of ethnicity, national origin, religious or non-religious beliefs – AND a melting pot of differing viewpoints and ideas. That one-half of our nation actively seeks to silence the half that has other views will NOT survive – unless we allow it. In my view, the current state of the media is the greatest danger to our Democracy since its formation.
So, the left believes its’ own BS. Victor Davis Hanson also believes his own BS. Rush Limbaugh believes his own BS. What a trivial observation. For the pretentious Conrad Black we’ll say: what a jejune observation.
Neither VDH, Rush Limbaugh or “the pretentious Conrad Black,” seek to force their bias down everyone’s throat through the force of law or the force of the violent mob.
Yet that is exactly what the left has done as stated clearly and with numerous examples in VDH’s editorial.
On the other hand, VDH, Rush Limbaugh and “the pretentious Conrad Black,” woo other minds to their way of thinking with reasoned rhetoric and scrupulously researched editorial.
Excellent!
You have to be kidding. That is exactly what right wing media does. Relentless radio and Fox News force their dark vision on their audiences. That you see them as wooing people with factual arguments says much about your grasp of reality and love. These people actively sow fear and misinformation, this is undeniable. This article was poorly written and embarrassing sloppy with quotes taken out of context and misconstrued data in an attempt to accuse liberals of something the author was doing with this very publication. Will the right wing gaslighting ever stop?
I’ve never been to this site, I occasionally look for thoughtful conservative writing, but what I generally find is content like this: divisive, factually and logically flawed writing pretending to be something it isn’t. If this so called professional had submitted this kind of work to any credible university, it would have most certainly be marked “fail”.
Excellent article. The author has described perfectly the newest manifestation of the leftist “religion”.
So…what handle did you troll AG with before-with Discus?
It is not a normal troll, those trolls wouldn’t know that the word “jejune” exists, much less use it. But it obviously is a troll, which status automatically confers Socialist/Communist Party predilection.
And sadly, we can no longer block this sniveling pos.
Yes indeed.
We should listen to the opinion of someone who’s afraid even to put his name to his rant, Begemot?
At the apex of Christian Western Civilization sits the Declaration of Independence in which the new Americans demanded among the powers of the earth “the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them…”
Without “the Laws of Nature and Nature’s God,” knowledge becomes myth and justice becomes bias, or as Plato put it in his Republic, “the advantage of the stronger.”
American justice has become leftist bias. And since the left owns nearly every American institution, justice is always to its advantage since it is the stronger political force. Or as Donald Trump would say, “the fix is in.”
That is what I understand from this latest VDH editorial.
I disagree. Trump and Barr have clearly undermined the Rule of Law. They have actively intervened in the cases of Stone and Flynn seeking special treatment. Trump has directly intervened in cases involving military personnel and the UMJ system. So now the notion of Equal Justice is just a slogan carved into the SCOTUS building. Trump’s cronies are above the law, the rest of us, not so much.
Trump have used the DOJ to pursue Trump’s alleged political enemies . He has fired 5 Inspectors General who took decisions he did not like. The Durham investigation has yielded only one indictment. It was of a FBI lawyer who changed 3 words on a FISA request. No other indictments have been forth coming.
For the left to win, they only need to win among themselves. They care not a wit about the vast deplorables that put presidents and senators in their position. This means they see themselves at the top of the leftist food chain. Their position and assistance to the leftists in power allow them a seat at the table.
But they have double downed on their own power. As if being louder is all you need to do to be heard. More microphones in unison will not stop Americans from casting their votes and if, God willing, Trump is our president and we can unseat Democrats in the House and Senate, there will be a major shift in power structure again.
Their disposition will not change, they will only become angrier. Either they win and lavish in their utopian lives under a Biden presidency or they become less and less relevant.
As a young man I can admit that I too, was sometimes blinded by my own bias. I think almost everyone could realize that as well. But seeing an entire class of folks, left leaning liberals, so consumed by hate and bias is really quite astonishing. But being so blinded by hatred ultimately harms the individual, constantly looking through the bias lens leads one eventually to a great fall. The next 2 weeks are going to be interesting to watch. Pass the popcorn please, extra butter!
No Joe, not Corn-pop, popcorn!
In the ensuing 2-3 weeks, If Biden wins the presidency and the Dems get control of both houses, then it will be appropriate for the Dems to turn to the Repugs and say, paraphrasing Thomas Friedman from another context, “Suck on this.”
In two weeks the Liberals will run all three branches and you all can go back into the dark dank caves you people came from.
Now why would all the liberals want to go back in their dark caves if they won? Liberalism is a disease and youre critically ill with it
The American political landscape has become so dominated by the screamers on the far end of both ends of the spectrum. You hate each other for the insane radicals at either end. Rational moderates have been completely silenced. It’s ironic that the generalization, loudmouth, opinionated characteristics of American phsyche are the very things undoing the country in front of our eyes. This is end of the American era and you guys are too busy shouting at each other to even see that China continues to grow in vacuum your hate of each other has created. Just my opinion as a Canadian. I think American lost its way when there was no longer an external threat from the USSR or Iraq, or bin laden now you only have each other to hate in your political sphere. It is such a shame because the country had such promise and a rich history or being the exceptional standard that made it so great in the past.
Whine some more about conspiracy theories
First, let’s call the the “Left” what it really is…a satanic, communist (but I repeat myself), evil, despotic, murderous entity that has been around since the Garden of Eden. The Serpent. Only when the description is correct can we begin to oppose them.
C’Mon, that is pure nonsense >
It’s truly an alternate universe the pseudo-intellectual left have created fit themselves, but they don’t understand they can’t force normal folks to live in it with them.
Their minds are closed and like that old saying-
“A closed mind is an empty mind”
It’s truly an alternate universe the pseudo-intellectual left have created for themselves, but they don’t understand they can’t force normal folks to live there with them.
Their minds are closed and like that old saying-
“A closed mind is an empty mind
Excellent column Mr Hanson. Sociopathy is the real pandemic in America. When criminality has no fear of reprisals, it flourishes as a cancer metastasizes and kills the host, in this case, American society.
And it is sociopathy: relentless lying, causing chaos harm and death, showing no remorse for consequences caused, and brutal mocking and disdaining healthy accepted boundaries set by society for generations.
When people reflexively cower and kneel to hate and lust for power, life as we knew it for independence, autonomy, choice, and most importantly, hope and faith, is not lost, but crushed and discarded.
The Left is a sociological cancer, and it won’t be simply excised, no, it needs to die it’s intended death by letting it exhaust its nutrients and supports.
Healthy responsible caring attentive Americans need to move on, and let the Left kill themselves. Far from our view!…
Couldn’t agree more
As someone who spent nearly 50 years doing journalism, I find Hanson’s comments quite telling, but not QUITE giving us all the truth as I witnessed it. My college Journalism prof told us that it was the job of a journalist to report on what HAS happened (past tense) or what IS HAPPENING (present tense). After I had been doing exactly that for over 30 years, I came to see a paradigm shift in the rank-and-file reporter with whom I worked. They seemed annoyed at such a mundane description of what they considered the ‘duties’ of a noble calling. Several of my colleagues who were quite vocal in their anger at this description, said ‘…we are NOT ‘STENOGRAPHERS’! (The implication to apply a balm to their ruffled EGOS was they were somehow better than a stenographer.) Some even went as far as dredging up a comment, originally attributed to Chicago humorist Finley Dunne who back in a 1902 column opined “…the newspaper….comforts the afflicted, and afflicts the comfortable…” To suggest that ANYONE today who does journalism as a living would consider themselves as ANY form of a stenographer would be enough to cause the folks at Webster to redefine the term in print. Much of this is due to ego. And hell hath no fury as a so-called journalist scorned.
Both right and left need to clean up the outside edges —- if they don’t, someone else will do it. Talk is cheap but actions count. The left opened the door to a lot of their own troubles and the right walked in — why would it not be otherwise? My instinct is that the ‘great middle’ of us have long ‘self-criticized’ anything that would torque off the extremes including the ones that own media and have made their positions, uh, supposedly ‘the norm’ – extreme anti-discrimination, extreme interpretation of first amendment, etc. We are reaping the ‘what’s good for you is uh good for me’ rebound from journalists/broadcasters and others . . . right has used the left’s arguments/positions to plumb vulnerabilities in democracy, the media and civil rights. All is being inflamed and propagandized by social media. We can work out of this – going to take time.
had to stop reading at the out-of-place Orwell quote nine paragraphs or so in. you should find someone who’s actually engaged with left-wing theory to critique it.
The right largely abandoned any pretense of objectivity in journalism ages ago, and VDH is whining that the left is finally following suit now? There’s a word for that: chutzpah.
The difference mainly is in the ability to project this bias. In this, the left wins the print and video media, the right wins in talk radio. More people are influenced by the former two.
That is hilarious. The projection is so strong with the author and Orenv. Have you ever seen a Trump rally? No facts, only lies and emotion. Stoke the fear of the other. Logic and facts are on the side of the left and when the discussions become longer than a bumper sticker the right loses interest and screams Trump 2020 and runs for cover. The lack of introspection and the level of projection on the right is beyond measure.
You seem to be forgetting FAUX News.
There are words for you, too…
Oh the idiocy of a website that calls itself the self proclaimed American Greatness commenting ..or more like the crybabying of how the media is so liberal. What most of the media does is recognize that perhaps America has faults. What you are afraid to do is look at yourselves and the country with a rational eye and voice and not just be this silly rah rah we are so great nonsense. You complain about the Obama and Clinton years because you are jealous that they were well liked and with of course failings like we all have, generally improved the country and our standing in the community. What the problem is now is that you have attached yourself to a vile lying human being like Trump..so you have no choice but to cry about the media tolerating racists, etc because you do not have the B–lls to call Trump what he is. But in 2 weeks your time is done. All three branches will be in the control of the liberals and you will all go back in the disgusting hole you came from.
You’re delusional. You also repeated yourself in another comment. Saying it twice doesn’t make you right. In fact hearing your dribble once was quite enough.
Khrushchev was right, America will be destroyed from within. But he was wrong about not firing a shot for some have already died for America from leftist guns.
My only quibble with this great VDH column is his comment that the Berkeley Free Speech Movement really believed in free speech. They did not. I was at Berkeley in 1964, and with two others, debated Mario Savio (who was in New York) on a nationwide hookup on the Les Crane show. Savio’s movement was a direct attack on western civilization. He and his followers cared nothing for free speech, only for their free speech. It is not different today as Dr. Hanson points out. Savio was just an early progenitor of the Orwellian nightmare that now sits at our front door.
BINGO
The left incites the masses through emotion. This year’s emotion is hate. It is only a means to the end of power, control, and wealth (see Clintons and Obamas) serving the purest emotion—greed.
VDH, presumably out of respect for the incumbent, did not mention Chief Justice Roberts, but I will.
Conservative civility be damned!
Woke progressives have accomplished something quite extraordinary: they dominate politics, business, academia, news, entertainment, and art and non-profit institutions, even though only about 15% of the U.S. population actually agrees with their ideology. It is no wonder that woke progressives abhor populism and are experts at manipulating both the truth and the public through identity politics and other Marxist power games. For those of us who are left-leaning centrists committed to the classical liberal traditions of equality, freedom, fairness, racial harmony, patriotism, and objective truth, we are now orphans without a party and without any worthy leaders. Maybe the end of the Cold War wasn’t such a good thing after all. It seems to have removed the incentive for people to cooperate in the civic realm.
“…removed the incentive to cooperate…”. That was Augustine’s observation of what happened to Rome after it defeated Carthage.
Which figures from the arts and entertainments of the 20th century do the Woke progressives claim to be fond of? Which former household names from stage and screen? From music? Which now-long-ago movies, shows, songs, music do they think well of?
Maybe they do not say in case they give the impression that America may not have been after all a nasty, horrible, horrible place. Maybe they do not say so in case they remind Americans that America has talent, and a pedigree of talent. That would suggest clearly that America was alright all along.
They would not want Americans to dust off their old records in order to find new inspiration in a saturated digital age.
It’s amazing it has been left to a non-entertainment-industry figure, Trump, to rattle off in the public sphere formerly household names of America’s top-of-the-range artists and entertainers, which he did at Mount Rushmore.
Though he could have added Rodgers and Hammerstein, and a whole host of others.
Just not a pip from the Dems on anything from the past whom they are fond of. Was Elvis born in Khazakstan?
I too am a bleeding heart liberal feeling orphaned. The vitriol and hysteria of the last 4 years is a humiliation to me. We need to accept that populist outrage is a warranted check on the educated elite and the aggressive globalization agenda. We have lost sight of what it means to be self-evidently equal and espouse ideologies that undermine the very freedom that made progressive ideas possible in the first place. Truly tragic! I will be voting republican for the first time in my life.
I use the term ‘the Leftist Cult’ to describe this group.
They are the most dangerous enemy America has ever faced, because they are an internal enemy.
Hint: Quit playing word games. If you are a “left leaning centrist,” you are still a leftist.
There is no such thing as an “objective” viewpoint (indeed, the two words largely contradict each other). This piece is, I would hope consciously and deliberately, a piece of political polemic – it is “biased” though could it be otherwise? Note that this is not the same as saying “everything is relative:” reality is contested and (re)constructed. Objective reality may indeed exist but is inaccessible to any individual human being. What we do is form social understandings of reality, which may bear more or less resemblance to the real thing.
So is the left biased? Oh, absolutely. But the implication there – in this text and in the responses – is that there are some other “non-biased” viewpoints. We often see this when people try to depoliticize their views: the ACB hearings are a good example. To many originalist/textualist legal scholars, they are engaged in an “objective” exercise whereas “activist judges” are engaged in a subjective political exercise. This is nonsense: there is nothing “objective” about the originalist view. Rather, they are making a normative-political point reflective of their own preferences. Incidentally, I will admit that some on the more professional left go too far in pretending “science” is not political – it absolutely is.
But ultimately, that is the point: all of human existence is politics. We are perpetually engaged in a conflict to shape what our society views as right and wrong. This sort of piece is silly because it tries to pretend that the politics are all from the other guy. Defending ostensibly “traditional” (usually anachronistic but I digress…) practices and beliefs is still politics, just as surely as radically pressing for change.
And as for the underlying point here: yeah. “Our” (left) vision is better than your vision of what society can look like – at least that’s what I believe. That’s what politics is: fighting for your worldview. While Conservatism has a lot going for it, what Trump has whipped up in America is anything but conservative. It’s radical, racist, reactionary, and increasingly unpopular. The sort of “bias” championed by outlets like this one, most people recognize as emblematic of humanity at its worst.
More importantly, the Trumpist social construction of reality so badly lines up with actual reality (on so much) that it makes anyone defend it look like a complete fool.
I disagree with everything that you had to say. And if that makes me a fool so be it. I’ll accept that label from you with honor, because for it to matter to me would mean I respect you which I do not.
There is no such thing as an “objective” viewpoint (indeed, the two words largely contradict each other). This piece is, I would hope consciously and deliberately, a piece of political polemic – it is “biased” though could it be otherwise? Note that this is not the same as saying “everything is relative:” reality is contested and (re)constructed. Objective reality may indeed exist but is inaccessible to any individual human being. What we do is form social understandings of reality, which may bear more or less resemblance to the real thing.
So is the left biased? Oh, absolutely. But the implication there – in this text and in the responses – is that there are some other “non-biased” viewpoints. We often see this when people try to depoliticize their views: the ACB hearings are a good example. To many originalist/textualist legal scholars, they are engaged in an “objective” exercise whereas “activist judges” are engaged in a subjective political exercise. This is nonsense: there is nothing “objective” about the originalist view. Rather, they are making a normative-political point reflective of their own preferences. Incidentally, I will admit that some on the more professional left go too far in pretending “science” is not political – it absolutely is.
But ultimately, that is the point: all of human existence is politics. We are perpetually engaged in a conflict to shape what our society views as right and wrong. This sort of piece is silly because it tries to pretend that the politics are all from the other guy. Defending ostensibly “traditional” (usually anachronistic but I digress…) practices and beliefs is still politics, just as surely as radically pressing for change.
And as for the underlying point here: yeah. “Our” (left) vision is better than your vision of what society can look like – at least that’s what I believe. That’s what politics is: fighting for your worldview. While Conservatism has a lot going for it, what Trump has whipped up in America is anything but conservative. The sort of “bias” championed by outlets like this one, most people recognize as emblematic of humanity at its worst.
More importantly, the Trumpist social construction of reality so badly lines up with actual reality (on so much) that it reflects poorly on his supporters
*Not sure why the first post was kiboshed by moderators, especially since nothing I posted was any more controversial than the op-ed above. Now I’ve removed anything even remotely objectionable.
Our objective ought to be that of developing a better understanding of our leaders, general human behavior, the world, and our place within it. That is how we can confidently and reliably act today, to create a better tomorrow for ourselves and for others. The major media sources over these last four years have repeatedly demonstrated through what stories they cover and how they cover them, that their objective is to obfuscate cause and effect for the general public. They wish to destroy the common mans ability to reason, to understand, and thus to act with confidence in his own best interest. They have destroyed their own credibility by their own actions. Trump is not a perfect man. But to absorb the slings and arrows of outrageous media coverage these past years for the benefit of any citizen paying attention, is an honorable thing and we should all be greatful.
All three Abrahamic religions, and a few other major world religions seem to have a few things in common. First, a story about an ancient flood that wiped out the non righteous. Secondly, they define evil in the same way….as those who lead otherwise good people away from truth. Often they use religion itself to do this. And the left has become a New Age religion. And its as evil and toxic as Scientology or any other.
Something is terribly wrong when organisations like the NBA go out of their way to NOT find fault with China, yet go out of their way to find fault with America. It’s hypocrisy at its finest.
Are the faulters Black or White, especially those led by Lebron James. He is pathetic, similar to the
worthless Mulatto, Black 44 and his football player so-called wife. What needs to be addressed, is to
cease catering to the Blacks, the Muslims, and other splinter groups whom have proven deterimental
to the survival of the United States, when in the future, provided someone out there maintains the
President’s ear, that since 1973, when the DRAFT was eliminated, and replace by an all volunteer force,
as common sense maintains that anything that is voluntary, soon loses its edge and worth. Therefore,
it has been written that the United States is divided, therefore, to unite the United States so that everyone
is on the same page patriotically, disciplined, and nationalistically, that “UNIVERSAL CONSCRIPTION”
should be the name of the game, where all future, eligible seniors, male and female, graduating from our
high schools across the nation, would not be permitted to accept a civilian employment position, nor to
matriculate into a college or a university, until they have fulfilled their 4 year military contract in any of
our 5 services for which they qualify, and then, when they have fulfilled their contracts, there will no
longer be Communists/Democrats, similar to George “NAZI” Soros, Hillary Rotten Clinton, and Black 44.
It should be noted that Hillary Rotten Clinton, wrote her Thesis on the life of Saul Alinsky, the turd who
wrote the book, “RULES FOR RADICALS,” which is the daily Bible for turds such as Black 44 and Alinsky
whom were nothing more than Community Organizers. Community Organizers, are Americans whom
are steeped in Marxism, because the find that they are odd-balls, and find fitting in, difficult, in the
same relationship that an uneducated Black or Muslim, turns to crime to survive, and Hillary Rotten
Clinton and Black 44 maintain a plethora of views that HRC did not fit in, in college, and Black 44 did not
fit in to his contemporaries, because Black 44 had been brain-washed by his supposed father, Frank
Marshall Davis, who was a card carrying Communist, that the FBI were aware, and to think that the
American people elected these 2 animals to subvert the visions of our Founding Fathers.
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, whine. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Whine.
The right is just as bad as the left.
The modern right-wing will be one day be remembered as the biggest bunch of whiners and complainers that ever lived. Mainstream media bias, debate moderators tossing softball questions to Democrats, expecting the same treatment of Supreme Court nominees even though one is an accused rapist and the other hasn’t been accused of anything, biased polls (even though the national polls in 2016 were correct). I have to give the right credit: By constantly whining about supposed left-wing media bias, it has somehow forced the media to bend over backwards to air the right’s every little grievance and accusation, not least of all the Hillary Clinton email fake scandal. Now they’re trying it again with Joe Biden and his son’s laptop, but fortunately, the media isn’t going for it this time.
I have a question for those of you on the right: The laptop story came from Rudy Giuliani and Steve Bannon. How would you feel if a negative story about Trump came from Rachel Maddow and James Carville?
Really, stop your whining already.
“How would you feel if a negative story about Trump came from Rachel Maddow and James Carville?”
That would depend on how factual it seemed to be. We’ve seen such a torrent of lies about President Trump that most people’s reaction would be “more of the same old garbage.” However if the story developed a sound factual basis — as for example Hunter Biden signing the repair order for his laptop, his attorney asking for its return, and the absence of any statement from Biden or his campaign that the claimed emails are fabrications — most of us would change our views.
Messenger only matters on day 1 because one tends to discount stories from serial liars. Facts win.
I long thought that the beliefs of the left, which I held as a younger man, were based on a false notion of a reliable “they” out there. “They” can fix this, or “they” can do that. It was only when I became a “they” or really saw the “they” in action, that I realized it was really only me that was going to be responsible for my outcomes.
Now, and I really hate to say this, the belief I have is not very charitable and it gets reinforced virtually every day. The left are driven by a lack of confidence, even self-loathing, that results in a belief that all problems stem from over-population and, for most, that humankind is not worthy of existence. It’s symptoms are a lack of optimism, doubt in everything, and strong notions that the ends justify the means.
I would also like to know how the author perceives Trump’s approval rating as climbing over the past three weeks. The Rasmussen poll has had it going down then up then down and up and down.
September 29: -9
October 7: -15
October 15: -9
Today: -7.
Where is this climb? Everything is within the margin of error.
Yes, in the post-truth world in which the Left have faith, they hold the power to control the narrative, and thus, in their minds, need fear no one. They control education, media, entertainment and much of unelected government. If conservatives don’t contest them in these places with positive alternatives, the arrogance Professor Hanson brilliantly describes will be warranted.
I pride myself in reading every side, left, right, evangelical, Fox, MSNBC. I listen to right wing evangelical’s such as Daubenmire, Rios, and Fischer. Yes the “main stream” does bend the news to suit their beliefs but they don’t, as a rule, use lies to push their agenda as Fox and the right wing media do. I find myself believing about 75% of what I hear on the left while I’m hard pressed to believe anything on the right.
Vegemont, you believe your own BS….AND IT IS BS
The flipside is that fair-minded people are now relieved of the burden of regarding “leftwing journalism” as being fact-based. Leftwing “journalists” will regret making this transition possible. A good part of the effectiveness they once enjoyed was due to the reluctance of fair-minded people to see them as they really are. This also frees leftwing “journalists” to feed the dupes who believe their nonsense as much of it as they can swallow. Now, that is real liberation.
For the benefit of the American people who are still sitting on the fence-post, debating whether or not
to vote for Trump for reelection, and if my crystal ball remains clear, has any other American
besides myself, noticed that whenever a candidate for POTUS, selects his Vice President to be a female,
that party looses, and that is a “STAR SPANGLED GIVEN.”
I don’t think so. It’s the same complaint that Mcarthy had. It’s the same complaint that Calhoun had. And Nixon.
And the media has always been biased. Read your history. I don’t mean just going back to the 1960s, I mean going back to the 1850s and even the 1700s. Look at the New York Tribune of the mid 1800s. Look at Horace Greeley (editor thereof); he was a Fourierist (Marxism before Marx and actually Karl Marx worked for Horace Greely).
“Study history, study history. In history lies all the secrets of statecraft .” -W. Leonard Spencer C.
“In the manner of …” judges learning to love the Left, you forgot John Roberts
Wow, Rush woos other minds with reasoned rhetoric and scrupulously researched editorial? That statement is so opposite of the truth it’s unbelievable that anyone could possibly believe it. Rush spews lies, emotion and nonsense. There is nothing researched about his bile. Your lack of connection with reality is mind boggling.
Tom, You just expressed your intense bias as leftist myth exactly as I described in a previous comment. Can you name one lie that Rush has told?
Plus, emotional appeal is a show biz element characteristic to all successful broadcasting. Otherwise, no ratings. Consequently, criticizing something for being what it is by nature is just more of your own leftist bias based in myth.
Rush is excellence in broadcasting. He is so well schooled and trained that after you listen to him, everyone else sounds like static. You will also be amazed at how friendly and affable he is.
When you are shutting down the opposition, it means that your beliefs, your agenda have failed.
The only remaining question is the size of the butcher’s bill.
I’m not sure when that particular bill will be delivered, but absent a strong change in course that bill will be particularly large. The oft claimed mantra of the Socialist/Communist Party, in regard to expanded handgun carry statutes, that the streets will run with blood may well have been actually an expressed wish. It is likely that should it come to that, they will wish they never gave voice to that wish.
What 3 criminal Musketeers, are responsible for the Left’s craze to bring the United States to Her knees:
George “NAZI” Soros, Hillary Rotten Clinton, and Black 44. Therefore, my fellow Americans, once these
3 turds have vanished as if they have never existed, planet Earth can return to rotating normally on its
axis, and that is a “STAR SPANGLED GIVEN.”
The Vietnam War was the turning point for biased media! Up until that time political differences never really overpowered the news itself. But during that time period we saw the beginnings of what we are forced to live with today. Only now we have watched media, big business, and democrats join together in a triumvirate that has attempted to overpower everything and everyone else, forcing their world view and self serving agenda on the rest of America. This group has worked to force Conservatives, Republicans and a good share of the American public against a brick wall, they thought! However, we don’t give up easily and many of us are darn smart. Trump arrived on the scene at the right time and he is the only one who has been able to stand against them so far. However, the American public is behind him for the most part, and they are dedicated. I look forward to seeing Hunter Biden in jail and his father, if not there, then destroyed and left in total disgrace. Next let’s take on the biased press and big business that has WAY over stepped their bounds.
Seems to me like a very stable genius would be able to deflect any attempts from the left.
I did not think my depression about the state of our country could get any worse and, because of my admiration of VDH, l decided to read this article. The well written cogent piece has caused my cup of depression to run over as I now think things are worse than I thought. May the Lord in his Goodness have mercy on this once great nation.
Just letting you know that the views expressed in this opinion piece are not agreed-upon fact, but the views of an aggrieved minority trapped in an echo chamber of mutual admiration. I understand that you may feel that your history, for example, is being taken away but, in fact, it is being added to. As historians take on a more diverse hue, documents and records that were once ignored take on a level of importance and increased relevance in an updated understanding of the complex series of events that we refer to as history. Nothing is being replaced. The history is still the same the picture is now hi-def rather than black and white. For those of you who have become besotted with the idea that people can and will not behave in an unbiased matter, I don’t know what to say. Since education level correlates with political leaning and more education correlates with more liberal views, you must, therefore, reject expertise. It’s a conundrum that forces you to accept the word of amateurs and hacks and reject the advice of people who might be helpful. I feel your pain.
Woke Democrats have a fatal deficiency. They can’t think straight
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/289372
Leftists want to dismantle America.
They want to displace USA’s founding people.
They want to burn down Western Civilization.
They are Maoist Cultural Revolutionaries.
They want to ConquerDC & LootUSA.
True, which is strange, since it seems obvious that if they succeed, they will be lording over a kingdom of dirt.
So? Ain nobody gonna do nothin’.
Conservatives never fight.
White people in general don’t fight.
It’s over
You lied again, professor. The town hall debate was not cancelled to protect Biden. It was cancelled because Trump refused to show. Try telling the truth, sir.
As for being biased and unapologetic, you are correct, I am. Because I am tired of living under the reign of the worst POTUS in US history. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/10/16/opinion/donald-trump-worst-president.html?action=click&module=Opinion&pgtype=Homepage
We are going to win, and you can go pound sand.
^ Found the nutjob.
Projection.
Did you read the article? It was canceled because Trump did not want to have a virtual debate. There was no reason that debate couldn’t have been in person again with social distancing rules applying
Did you read the article? It was canceled because Trump did not want to have a virtual debate. It should never have been changed to virtual. There was no reason that debate couldn’t have been in person again with social distancing rules applying
Yes, Trump refused to show for a virtual debate.
“Or as the New York Times’ Jim Roberts in 2016 put the new “Walter Durantyism”: “Yes. The media is biased. Biased against hatred, sexism, racism, incompetence, belligerence, inequality, To [sic] name a few.”
Sorry, I’m missing something here,
Do you actually want:
– media bias,
– hatred,
– sexism,
– racism,
– incompetence,
– belligerence and
– inequality?
Radical Islamic Terrorism espouse these
Why are these not bad?
So who gets to decide and define these things?
I have returned with two memes and written explanations of the content.
=================================
One is information about the Hunter Biden hard drive, and what is being revealed. This is an ongoing meme, with more information to be posted as I have time.
Revelations of the ‘Biden Crime Family’…….
One Picture Equals 1000 Words…..
https://www.flickr.com/photos/141620822@N02/50506405616/in/dateposted-public/
[link to Giuliani’s video explanation of what is being revealed]
======================
The other meme may be the most succinct summation of what this election is about that you, or your friends and family may see…..all in one meme……Share It !
Polar Opposites – Leftism vs Americanism
This election is NOT about president Trump….
………..It IS about the most dangerous threat the American nation has ever faced…..Leftism.
One Picture is Worth 1000 words…….
https://www.flickr.com/photos/141620822@N02/50502967906/in/dateposted-public/
“On November 3, we will see whether they are justifiably arrogant or suicidal.”
No, IF they loose, they’ll just kick the can down the same road for another for years.
And IF they win, we will have lost America’s most basic freedoms. Forever.
“… IF they win, we will have lost America’s most basic freedoms. Forever.”
Well, no. If they win they will within weeks take actions that kick us into civil war. If conservatives win quickly the damage to the country will be moderate. If it drags out for years as is entirely possible we’ll be Venezuela but with better prospects for the future at least in some areas.
But patriotic Americans can and I believe will prevent the left consolidating a government in which multiple parties run candidates but only the government’s approved candidate has a chance of winning.
You make very complex what is essentially an easy question. Which is: do your favor individual liberty or state control of the individual? Or put another way, are your rights granted by government or by nature (God if you’re religious)?
How the people in aggregate answer those questions will determine how long this Republic will endure. Lincoln was right. So was Ben Franklin. I do wonder whether we can keep it or not.
VDH left out a sad example of the media boasting that ‘dishonor’ is their new ‘honor’. That was when, in early 2017, the Washington Post added to their masthead the sophomoric fainting couch slogan “Democracy Dies in Darkness”.
Ridiculous as it is, it recalls the famous “badges” scene from the film “The Treasure of Sierra Madre” in which the bad guys drop their pretense of being honest men. The WashPo might have better adopted the slogan “We don’t need no stinking badges!”
Rather than trying to make a misplaced metaphor, citing “The Treasure of the Sierra Madre”written by B. Traven, you do better to read his “The Ghost Ship” and consider his comments about governments and immigration.
Now that’s interesting! I assume he said something like governments use immigration to break down their own societies, so as to make them easier to tyrannize.
Traven, (the nutty anarchist) novelist doesn’t matter. What matters is John Huston’s intent. Huston wrote the screenplay and won an Oscar for it. He meant to show that these bad guys are the real evil and that despite the flaws of Bogie, a quantum level worse. Sorry, but the people at the WashPo are the bad guys, and thus the metaphor is apropos.
I don’t see any difference between being “on the right side of history” and divine right monarchy. In both cases, whatever you do is completely justified. Under both there are no limits to power. When Joe Biden says, “I am the Democratic Party,” I hear Louis XIV saying, “The state, that’s me.” The only difference is that Joe can only wish for the power of Louis XIV. Joe’s actual role is as the powerless figurehead King Louis XIII, while Kamala Harris plays the real power behind the throne, Cardinal Richelieu.
You underestimate Biden, perhaps due to sexism on your part.
He said absolutely nothing in his comment for you to make a claim of sexism. Ridiculous
Mass immigration guarantees a continued leftward political shift. So what happens when millions of Americans finally realize that they have no representation, that their rights and way of life have been destroyed, and that there is no political solution, due to the rigged electoral state of affairs? What then, leftists?
We realize that due to slavery and the Electoral College that gives representation to land not people our representation is highly reduced relative to our numbers. We don’t like departures from one man, one vote. We don’t like tyranny of the minority. Ergo, we are considering statehood for DC and Puerto Rico, term limits for SCOTUS justices, etc.
But YOU are the minority – minus the NEW ELECTORATE you treasonously imported, that 100% Americans never wanted. Look at Trump’s vote among Heritage (pre-1900) Americans. He will win it in a landslide. You cheat by bringing in aliens, and giving them citizenship.
Re DC and PR – try it. If GOP returns, we in the base will DEMAND the blowhards RESCIND those statehoods. And then we will do what I have advocated for 30 years – grant PR independence.
States do deserve equal representation. We are a union of 50 states. I suggest you take a civics class, because you obviously don’t understand the need for an electoral college
States do deserve equal representation. We are a union of 50 states. I suggest you take a civics class, because you obviously don’t understand the need for an electoral college and why the framers put it in place
“The new defiance and the glee that comes from open bias have now saturated our culture, as if the liberated Left in today’s globalized market has no need of half the U.S. population—the supposed loser, unwoke half.”
Yeah that’s their mistake, they’re alienating more than half the population, the leftie bubble amplified by the majority of talking heads, news organizations and Twitter doesn’t mean their numbers are as great as they believe it to be.
The leftist ethos is they’d rather be the totalitarian dictators of a sewer than equal participants in a republic that functions. They crave power and power alone at all costs. The goal isn’t necessarily a failed state but if they can rule over it, it’s fine by them.
Projection.
Spot on.
Excellent again but not one mention of where they learned to be this way.. They taught to hate America in America by Americans… If we really want to fix this go after education and fix that… If we do we will continue our republic if we don’t we lose the country..
It actually wasnt Americans. It is organized though.
HowAmericaFell.com
The civil war cannot come soon enough. The Left must be dealt with to save this nation
Ain’t gonna be no CW. Conservatives never fight. They never do sh*t.
Except Kyle.
Depends. There are Conservatives (the William Buckleys, George Wills, Reagans, etc), and there are conservatives, plain white people who want to live in a conservative land. The former are useless; the latter are still, alas, in the early stages of awakening to the threat the Left poses to their morals, families, property and lives.
The civil war was fought and you lost. Get over it.
Wow, what a massive b*tch-fest in the Comments by a bunch of people who will do jack sh*t about the problem. Everybody feel better now and go about your way and the situation just gets worse.
Conservatives are losers. They lose every battle. Have since the 1960s. Conservativism is a rear-guard action. The Republican Party is packed with cowards, traitors, and cowardly traitors.
There is a third way.
Too bad it took a 17 year old to show us how it’s done.
We will see. Just wait and be careful what you wish for.
The idea that the New York Times is in any way left-leaning is laughable at face value. It’s generally centrist in its politics and liberal in its cultural coverage.
William
I will answer for Peter. My co-citizens do want to ruin what’s left of my neighborhood and my City and my State. My co-citizens seems to want a recreational marijuana store on every corner along with a title pay-day loan store, a vape store, a liquor store, and an Asian massage parlor (aka happy endings for all). They seem to want the above in cheap corner strip malls to dot every single corner in my city. They also seem to favor more Native American casinos (they keep building them so someone is depositing money there) to surround my city. The do good-er lefties have placed a methadone clinic on every other corner along with a free needle distribution (avoid shared needles) clinic. The druggies line up every Monday. The left wing churches (mainline not evangelical) have large soup kitchens for the lines of bums they feed and the pop up tent cities have made all the parks un-usable by any children. The only place to consider living is a gated community. Work has security guards and codes for all the doors and parking. The only place to shop is Sam’s club and Costco as you have to have a membership to get in. The local universities offer as required courses – sexually deviant classes and all white people are racists classes – screw math or science. The other mainline churches have banded together with several large so called pro-bono militant lawyer groups to help about 50 thousand illegals get asylum so as to demolish public schools (you can only send your kids to private schools). The east side of town has become like little Somalia – women can only go there in a Burka. Trilinguilism is required to make a purchase at any fast good drive thru – It must be a requirement that you be ‘illegal’ to work at fast good. Despite the nastiness of town, the City fathers and State keep raising taxes….
Retribution by the Left is guaranteed. First to feel the wrath will be the Trump family, then all who spoke up in defense of the Trump presidency.
We are seeing just a glimpse of the Left’s use of raw power and intimidation by it’s goons and thugs. If they should take total control of the machinery of government then we will see the true and unbridled nature of the Left. If you think it can’t happen in America then think again, as you have just experienced an attempted coup.
The left identified a great majority of the electorate as “deplorables”. They despise the people too stupid to recognize that our country is racist, hateful, and bad, that our Constitution and Bill of Rights needs to be replaced. Woke people recognize that our betters will tell us how to think and live and we will all be happy and live better lives.
They have proposed that Trump will lose and refuse to leave the Whitehouse and need to be removed by the military that they hate. They believe the police they hate will take guns from our homes. I will die as a deplorable rather than live as a serf.
The mention of Michel Foucault offers an opportunity for readers to discover more about Foucault. Here is an excellent summary of Foucault’s methods and his force behind the identity politics of the Left:
https://www.takimag.com/article/the-whip-hand/
Keep it up, Marxist Rats. . . keep it up. . . .keep cranking it up with talk of “retribution”. . . .when you’re stacked like cordwood in the streets, then tossed onto the nightly funeral pyres (look AlWhor3 and DiCRAPio. . .we’re saving electiricity!). . . .AFTER we’ve pi55ed on your desecrated corpses, then tossing your worthless phosphates into the pig sties to be mixed with their base elements. . . . .maybe then, maybe then, you’ll have figured it out.
What happened to Disqus?
Anyway, the only issue for anti-leftists is this: do you want to WHINE about the left, or DEFEAT them? If the latter, the ONLY way you will do so is by HALTING ALL IMMIGRATION. Immigration = Democrat Voter Importation. Ask any Californian. Our state used to be solidly “Lean Republican”; now a Republican cannot even win a runoff place on a statewide “jungle” ballot. Why the change? Since 1970, CA has lost an absolute half a million whites, while ‘gaining’ over 25 MILLION nonwhites (thanks solely to mass immigration). This has happened to NV, CO, VA, AZ, and it is happening everywhere.
If you care about the conservative side of ANY issue, the place to start your march to victory is with ending immigration, the issue above all others.
Somewhere in his head Vic realizes that the Trump train is actually the Titanic. You can remain aboard without a lifejacket or find refuge. Sane voters have chosen the latter option and on November 3 we will see that the majority of Americans will make the same choice.
I have a dream…that on Wednesday November 4, 2020 I awaken to a re-elected Donald Trump, a Roberts proof majority in the Supreme Court, a Republican Senate, and a House, if not Republican, at least scared s..tless. As far as the eye can see, fulfilled FOIA requests, and hundreds of new Federal Prosecutors tasked with prosecuting the guilty, both big and small, Republican and Democrat. I see 65 million Americans deliriously happy to be able to live their lives as they choose, and about 25 million blubbering helplessly as they realize they will need to get a job. I see blue state Governors having to get their state’s financial houses in order because help is not on the way. I see Federal Troops maintaining law and order. I see troops returning from Afghanistan and Iraq. I have a Dream.
God, there ought to be bets on which will happen first–the Right will stop whining, or the Right will stop lying. It would merely be the type of pathetic loser talk that every party about to get crushed in an election engages in if it wasn’t so full of bull droppings at every single level.
“Wallace is the most anti-Trump voice on FOX.” Ok, well how about most of the rest of FOX? Pure pitiful studies in “Big Brother” Trump sycophancy, so they’re not mentioned.
“Susan Page is writing a book about Pelosi.” OMG!! And wrote one, glowingly, about the Bush family as well. Not mentioned here. And recently paid for a party for Seema Verma, who is currently on Pence’s COVID task force. Not mentioned. It is mentioned that one of the moderators interned in the mailroom for Biden’s 1988 campaign, though, as though this is such evidence of bias that it needs to be in the article.
“Sotomayor and Kagan were assumed to have deserved bipartisan support, so it’s so unfair that Kavanaugh didn’t get that support.” Aww, just because during his confirmation hearing he invented baseless conspiracy theories, badgered Senators about drinking problems, acted like a belligerent jerk with no judicial temperament, lied 16 times, and his rape accuser was even called “credible” by Trump? Wow, what meanies the Left are. Ok, what about Merrick Garland, whose qualifications no one questioned? Oh, right, not mentioned. The stealing of that seat was awesome to the Right, just like the stealing of the 2000 was…in part by the services of Kavanaugh. And Roberts. And Barrett. But shhhh, we’re blaming the Left for having negative feelings about constant Republican overreach and cheating. They’re so biased about this stuff.
“The IRS scandal.” Not to say that the other things weren’t actual scandals (the online Left BTW was furious about many of them–not mentioned), but you led with this one. It never happened. Darrell Issa selectively leaked, from information only he had, that the IRS was using keywords to group categories of 501-c-4 seekers into piles so that their cases could be reviewed by the same agents, since a lot of the required research was the same if the groups were similar. He said that they were using terms like “Conservative” and “Patriot” as keywords, prompting the Right to have its latest conspiratorial freakout. The amount of total and utter “Big Brother” fealty to this Republican talking point by the entire Rightwing media landscape? Not mentioned here. Turns out they were also grouping applications using “Democrat,” “Progress,” “Israel,” “Palestine,” and other words. Where was the “I’m Sorry”? The Republican media business model is agit-prop, because the GOP base lives off of virtually nothing other than fear, hatred and revanchism, and this has been the case since talk radio in the 80’s.
“Health concerns weren’t what nixed the 2nd debate, it was fear of Biden being onstage with an aggressive Trump.” W…what? Trump himself said he wouldn’t participate, because he didn’t want to sit in front of a computer. He had ample opportunity to speak his mind over Zoom, with the same rules as Biden would have had (as long he didn’t interrupt and therefore get muted), but the man-baby was upset about not getting his Mr. President podium. Trump probably had COVID during the first debate, where he showed up too late to be tested, his family took off their masks against the mandate of the rules, and he interrupted more than 100 times when it wasn’t his turn to speak. Which part of this was the Left’s fault? If this had been a Leftist plot, why wouldn’t they have kept “aggressive Trump” away from Biden for the other two debates? Also, why did Trump himself pull out of the debate? Also, if it was such a fear, why did the polling show that “aggressive Trump” lost pretty handily to Biden? The polling might possibly be wrong, but at no time has it shown that any of Trump’s actions in the last month have instilled fear into Biden or his sympathetic media contingent. Also, Candy Crowley interjected ONE TIME to say that a fact that Obama was stating was in fact true. This is what caused the NEXT great Republican freakout–the fact that a journalist did one fact-check. Doesn’t she know that you’re supposed to simply sit back and let the candidates lie and then somehow expect the audience to “decide” which things are true? Doesn’t she know that FOX’s motto of “We report, you decide” is as far as journalism is supposed to go for the Rightwing? “We have alternative facts, so let’s let the audience decide.” The Rightwing whining about the rare occasion of a journalist doing his/her job of informing the public is utterly endless.
“collaboration with a government that institutionalized concentration camps, democracy destruction, and state-sponsored racism and murder,” Do you mean the United States here? What are the detention centers on the border, the ones with the black tape over the windows that even US Senators can’t get into to survey, if not concentration camps? What is the attempt to get millions of mail-in ballots thrown out, if not the destruction of democracy? What is Trump’s pardoning of Joe Arpeio for flagrantly defying a federal judge so that he could continue illegally harassing Brown people, if not de facto state-sponsored racism? What is shrugging away the dismembering of a journalist because “the Saudis give me money,” if not rationalizing murder? These are just a tiny handful of the examples I could give for literally every one of these four things. However, because Trump and the GOP have decided that China is the enemy we need so that Trump can be a wartime president, you dutifully echo the exact words of the administration. Almost like you have come to love Big Brother Trump.
“Denunciation of White Supremacists…” Yeah, ok. The president who says that Nigerians who visit America “won’t want to return to their huts” isn’t a White Supremacist. The president who dismissed a judicial ruling because the judge was of Mexican descent, the president who asked to see Obama’s college records and said “you won’t believe the things my guys are finding out about Obama’s birth certificate in Hawaii,” the president who wanted the Central Park 5 executed even after they were medically exonerated, who wouldn’t rent to Black people, whose father attended KKK meetings, who referred to S—hole countries and threw paper towels like a child at a drowned Puerto Rico before giving Ryan Zinke’s two friends a no-bid contract there, who constantly calls Black women that challenge him dumb, takes days to Tweet about White Rightwing violence but 10 minutes if it’s a Muslim or a Mexican committing violence, and somehow found a way to defend Rittenhouse for bringing a gun to a protest and shooting people, but called Kaepernick an SOB for silently protesting, yeah, he’s obviously not a White Supremacist. Even though he is in the party for which 2 of the last 4 chairs have literally apologized for the flagrant racism of the Southern Strategy. Even though all of the voter suppression just happens to be taking place in minority neighborhoods. Yes, Kanye West kissed up to Trump long enough for a tickled Trump to sign a criminal justice reform bill that he now openly regrets. He also believes that Black people are inherently lazy, just as Jews are “good dealmakers” and the Chinese are “crafty and squirrelly.” He is a White Supremacist, and the modern Conservative movement is built upon White Supremacy–the narrative that the hard-working, God-fearing (White Christian male) citizen is under siege from the creep of the undeserving rabble (i.e., non-Whites) and their government programs. The entire purpose of Republican policy is White Supremacy. Which is why Trump absolutely cannot nominally denounce these groups without making 90% of his comment some caveat that they are totally necessary and wonderful because they fight “The Radical Left,” who, horror of horror, would prefer that the police not shoot them for no reason.
I strongly dislike Biden and Harris, I strongly dislike the MSM, I don’t have a kind word to say about almost anyone mentioned in your article, laughably considered by you to be “the Left.” I think Facebook should be broken up, I think Soros and Bloomberg are absolute scourges on any concept of free and fair elections, I think the New York Times lost most of its credibility 2 decades ago (including by promoting and manufacturing consent of Bush’s Iraq War efforts–not mention here, of course), and I think Bezos should be taxed 100 Brinks trucks worth of money. None of these people are what I consider to be “the Left.” But this article just shows how the Right is so biased it doesn’t even see the jaw-dropping scope of its own hypocrisy. “Trump received mostly negative coverage for his first 100 days.” He claimed with no evidence that he had won the popular vote because of millions of illegal aliens, he violated the Emoluments Clause every single day, he viciously derided and threatened the safety of Muslim Americans–should he have gotten 50% favorable coverage just so your Rightwing feelings weren’t hurt? What if 90% of the things he did were objectively bad and validly warranted that negative coverage? Also, how was Obama treated by Rightwing media during his first 100 days, let alone the next 1000 days?
So I have a solution for you, Professor. It’s called the Free Market. Conservatives pretend to like it. Instead of whining about the media, go and build yourself a perfectly “neutral” alternate media, and outcompete the so-called “Liberal” media, and then it doesn’t matter what they say, because no one will be listening to them. Build an alternate Facebook and Amazon and Twitter and wipe these companies out by outcompeting them. Or perhaps nominate a president whose approval rating can be above water for more than 5 days out of 1400, because he actually does things that the majority WANTS. And then if the media is mean to him, they’ll be the ones that suffer, rather than them being able to get their preferred candidates into office. Also, since you want an “I’m Sorry” for things that never happened, maybe you can do an “I’m Sorry” article if the race doesn’t actually tighten and the polls were generally correct.
More and more I believe I practiced in a kind of golden age of journalism, when accuracy and objectivity weren’t ridiculed by those who think their mission is not to inform but to advance “social justice.” The slide began when opinion leaders like the NY Times’ James Reston suggested that journalists were incisive thinkers whose analyses should contribute to policy debates. Later, as our degraded universities began to spew forth intellectually deficient professors, these philosophically challenged academics began to argue that objectivity was just too difficult — in fact, impossible — for the human mind. Basically, they argue, one should just do one’s best to be “fair.” Now, as Prof. Hanson has nailed it, it is not only all right, it is praiseworthy for journalists to give vent to their opinions — provided those opinions are the correct opinions.
We seem to be slipping back to the advocacy journalism of Freneau and Fenno, without the diversity of opinion. With objectivity dead, the Web still offers some hope at least for vigorous and intellectually sustainable argument, but only of Internet monopolizers are crushed.
The etiology of our present predicament is related to the fall of the Soviet Union, and no I’m not making the argument that some made about Carthage’s destruction — that it softened us for not having to focus on an existential threat. Actually the power of the Soviet empire was so formidable because it was fortified by an extraordinary demonic presence. However, beginning in the 60’s when so many Americans threw off their Judeo-Christian heritage, embraced eastern religions, were willing to dally with Communism and most significant of all, opened the portals of their souls to psychedelic drugs, the demons inhabiting the Soviet Union looked at each other (with their leader’s approval) and said “What are we doing lingering here when the west is beckoning us with open arms, especially when we have so thoroughly trashed this country?” And so the great demonic migration began and has continued to the present time. Of course they left a contingent force behind to maintain appearances, a spiritual Potemkin village. Reagan, Thatcher and Pope John Paul deserve much credit but the Soviet Union was a hollowed-out shell but the time it actually collapsed. And now we find our country inhabited by these same unclean spirits whose primary weapon is the Lie. So we are bombarded daily by an onslaught of falsehoods sometimes mouthed by people we care about, but who are unaware of how they are being used. ” For we do not wrestle against flesh and blood, but against the rulers, against the authorities, against the cosmic powers over this present darkness, against the spiritual forces of evil in the heavenly places.” (Eph 6:12)
Two takeaways from this verse: People are not our primary enemies, no matter how greatly deceived and secondly, if we are to prevail we will need Spiritual help, not from any alliance with unclean spirits but with the Holy Spirit. We pray that this election will gain us a reprieve, but even if it does there is still much work to do.
People may falsely assume that all this manipulation in the media and tech is just opposition to Trump and once Trump is gone, the manipulation will end. Nothing could be further from the truth.
If the manipulation works, those employing it will only become emboldened. It will continue to be used to stifle all dissent of the approved agenda. With the primary target – Trump – gone, the manipulation will be turned against less obvious targets.