Thanks to our great President Donald Trump the “fake news” has been exposed for being the scandalmongers and pamphleteers that they really are. Since the beginning of our country the press has looked upon the freedom they enjoy under the 1st Amendment as a license to instigate and advocate partisan positions. This is exactly the way it was at the beginning of our country when in 1796 the factions that were to become political parties were evolving. The Federalist—Washington Hamilton, and Adams and the Republicans—Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe, capitalized their own newspapers and propaganda networks. They made no excuses for their underwriting “the fake news” of the day. People knew when they were reading a Republican or Federalist newspaper and they knew up front that they were not being given just information, but propaganda.
Today the liberal press and media networks underwritten by the likes of George Soros and others pretends that they are disseminating information without a bias. I really think that we should go back to the old days where the people who disseminate the news let the public know up front what the readers (on tv reporters and pundits) and writers of the news point of view really is. The majority of people today watch MSNBC and CNN and think they are getting an unbiased representation of what is actually going on in the world. Anyone who believes that is naive.
Full disclosure—I am a Christian, Constitutional, Conservative in case you couldn’t guess. What is Jay Tapper? What is Rachel Maddow? What is Betsy Russell? What is Idaho Public Broadcasting or the Idaho Statesman?
I find most of the people reporting on the news to be less than the “cream of the crop”. Most could not survive 4 years in a STEM major course of study. They certainly cannot be defined as being professionals, because professionals are supposed to subscribe to a CODE OF ETHICS and have principles—though watching many lawyers and more than a few doctors over the past couple of years one has to wonder if there are any professionals left in our world.
Immediately after our Civil War General William Tecumseh Sherman expressed a view of the media that has been shared by politicians and the public in general throughout the history of our country. His words: “The American Press is a sham and a shame and a reproach of the American people. When a man is too lazy to work or too cowardly to steal, he becomes an editor and a manufacturer of public opinion.”
Just like in the political world, the reporting in the technical scientific literature has been tainted by opinion and a narrative not based on empirical observation or fact, but rather on exploiting a political position and narrative. How many people at the highest levels of Academia receive NIH or CDC grants? Are they publicly or in a scientific journal going to disagree with the likes of Dr. Fauci or another similar government bureaucrat who may have to pass judgement on a grant request?
In reality, the press doesn’t see “the log in their own eye”. For the most part, they lack the integrity or curiosity to examine their own actions. It is even deeper than that however.
“Unskilled people lack the skill necessary to evaluate their own skill” or put another way the skills necessary to be competent at a task are the same skills necessary to evaluate the performance of the task. This is the very essence of the COGNITIVE BIAS that is demonstrated to us every day by the media and I am not just talking about the national media, but the local media specifically those covering the antics that happen for three months every year at our State House in Boise. The biggest impact that the media has on forming public opinion is the stories that they don’t report on or that they “blackout”. Think about the Biden-China story or the election fraud that has just happened.
Think about the contra arguments presented in the scientific literature regarding CO2 emissions and climate change. Think about the blackout in the news when impeachment failed or when the Mueller report proved our President and his people were innocent. Or what about the news blackout about human rights abuses of Christians and Muslims in China. How many of us understand that there are more people today living under conditions of slavery or who are in gulags as political prisoners than there has been at any time in the history of the world, and yet every night we see BLM and ANTIFA thugs marching for reparations in our country without recognizing the sacrifice of 600,000 people in our own civil war. The reason the majority of the public has lost a perspective on all these issues is because of a leftward leaning media, who themselves do not believe in the principles of our founding or recognize that it is precisely because of those principles that so many people sacrificed and are still willing to sacrifice to make things right and “square the deal”.
The marriage of individual liberty and capitalism that has lifted the masses out of slavery and grinding poverty that had been the way of the world for the past 15,000 years and is still the way for 3billion out of 7 billion people living in our world today are never reported upon. The march from tribalism—Feudalism—mercantilism—colonialism—imperialism—socialism—communism and State fascism is moving backward with “crony capitalism” looking more like state sponsored economic fascism—think Mussolini’s Italy or today’s China or Russia.
The policy of the “foot in the neck” cannot go on forever. “The ruling oligarchy will find less arduous or wasteful ways of governing and satisfying their own lust for power and can just as easily be satisfied by suggesting that people should love their servitude” and slavery—Aldous Huxley.
WE are today in our country and State moving in the wrong direction.
It will get worse after January 20th.
In order for conservatives and libertarians to stay in the game, they have to be willing to embrace the fight and believe in our hearts that we will eventually win.
Like in previous generations of Americans, losing is not an option for our children and our grandchildren.
