IS THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA TRULY INSANE?

21 Jan. 2019

Dear Friends and Patriots,

          Today is Martin Luther King’s birthday, which we celebrate as a national holiday. I’m always a bit interested that on our nation’s holiday calendar you’ll find only one other actual birthday celebration, the one for George Washington. We used to celebrate Abe Lincoln’s birthday, but no more.   Christmas is on the calendar, but not as the birthday of Jesus. If we were celebrating his birth, wouldn’t it be called Jesus’ Day? Of course, if it was Jesus’ Day we wouldn’t be allowed to celebrate it. It could just be that our government celebrates Santa Claus, Rudolph, and Frosty.   I’m never quite sure.

What’s odd is neither King’s nor Washington’s holiday is fixed on their actual birthdate. MLK was born on 15 January but we celebrate it on the third Monday of January. George Washington was born on 22 February, yet his holiday is always the third Monday of that month. MLK Day actually does fall on his birthdate once every seven years. Washington’s never does. He’s been chronologically dispossessed.

          I think of ML King often these days. There’s a lot to learn from him. He was truly a martyr for his cause. There are many unanswered questions about his death, but it’s his life that intrigues me. He gets a lot of credit for his emphasis on passive resistance. He didn’t invent the concept. Buddha taught the principles of passive resistance in his lifetime. A few hundred years later there was Jesus, who taught his followers that all forms of violence are evil. In our own modern age Mohandas Gandhi became world famous for his non-violent protests, marches, and fasts. King was following a very long and well-established tradition. What made King so unusual was the context of the time. Race riots were relatively commonplace in the 1960’s, when Dr. King’s most noteworthy civil rights activities occurred.   While he didn’t condemn rioters in specific for their violence, he did condemn the entire notion of rioting. He taught that it was counterproductive and only created destruction and animosities that were hard to resolve.

          Now I think about ML King in the context of today. We celebrate the birthday of a man dedicated to accomplishing all his goals through peaceful means; persuasion, reason, and demonstrations of faith and unity. What is so strange is the juxtaposition of the reasons we celebrate the day with the majority of the stories we see pitched by the so-called main-stream media (MSM). The MSM has become, in one word – NUTS! On a day when all should be contemplating how to bring more peace and justice into our lives the MSM is forcefully pitching divisiveness and hatred.   They’re so heavily invested in their Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS) they assign blame to Trump for every social slight and phony incident that comes along. Today is no different, though it’s a great example of why I believe the MSM now exists in a state of literal insanity.

          There is an oft-quoted line that’s misattributed to Albert Einstein. We all know it … “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.” The truth that Einstein never said any such thing is sort of beside the point. It’s a great quote! Most people don’t exactly get it. What the quote is exemplifying is not all of the realm of insanity, but a particular kind - obsession. It’s obsession to the point of insanity that leads the MSM to bring up that piece of discredited ops-research, the Steele Dossier, as if it’s actual evidence of Donald Trump’s crimes. It’s obsession that keeps the MSM focused on allegations of all manner of criminal activity committed by Trump, though after over two years of constant investigations not a single bit of evidence has come forth to validate any of them.

          If you’ve paid attention you’ll note the MSM has to constantly eat their most hyperbolic stories. They breathlessly proclaim the existence of smoking guns and eye-witnesses to events that never occurred. Many stories seem to be invented on the fly. One media outlet will create a narrative and within the span of an hour all the others who are infected with TDS will parrot the story, often using the exact same adjectives to embellish the core untruths.

          The past week was fairly momentous. The MSM had to recant on two of their major BREAKING NEWS stories.   They’re worth the time to examine in detail, if for no other reason than to highlight the degree of obsession of the MSM. Later I intend to explain the reason they’re obsessed to the degree they are.

The first story last week involved Michael Cohen, President Trump’s former personal attorney who is going to jail for several crimes not related in the least to the President or his campaign. The story put out by BuzzFeed and spread like wildfire throughout the MSM’s universe was that Cohen declared Donald Trump had instructed him to lie in his testimony before Congress.   Two BuzzFeed reporters declared they had seen documents and had information directly from Special Counselor Robert Mueller’s office that indicate the Mueller team has the goods on Trump and his misdeeds. Yes, indeed, BuzzFeed declared the President’s obstruction of justice was now conclusively proven and confirmed by Cohen’s sworn statements and that his impeachment is a foregone conclusion.   Only it isn’t. How do we know it isn’t? Because Special Counselor Mueller’s own spokesman said so. He characterized much of the allegations of the BuzzFeed story as “not accurate.”

          One should ask why Mueller’s office released such a statement when no special prosecutor had ever responded to a media frenzy before. If you understand the story, there’s many allegations there. There are allegations of statements by Cohen that might not have been made. There are allegations of actions by Donald Trump that could be misinterpretations or quite possibly and totally untrue. There are also inferences that there are leakers within Mueller’s own operation. You can easily look at the statement released by Mueller’s office as a bit of self-protection. Who can say if there are leakers in that office? BuzzFeed doubled-down on their allegations and says they’re true. If so, then someone on Mueller’s team is speaking behind the scenes to the media.  If so, that’s a huge story in itself. It would mean someone could be leaking secret grand jury testimony, which is a felony. But, if other indications from the Mueller office are true, it’s most likely the entire story is bogus.

          The bottom line on the BuzzFeed/Cohen story is most of the MSM has walked away from it. They want BuzzFeed to hang for it, but otherwise are trying to paint themselves as victims of someone else’s bad journalism. Gee! I’m so glad it’s only BuzzFeed that gets it wrong. I’d hate to think the entire MSM was so careless and cavalier. OH, … WAIT … !!!!

          The second great revelation from the media that we all should have captured involved a bunch of Catholic school students from Covington, KY who were in Washington D.C. for last weekend’s big Right To Life rally.

The students were near the road in front of the Lincoln Memorial, waiting for their bus transportation and not bothering anyone when a group of black demonstrators from a group called Black Hebrew Israelites began hurling insults and epithets at them. Evidently they were incensed by the MAGA hats some of the students had on their heads. In response to all the noise raised by the black demonstrators the students asked their adult chaperone if they could chant one of their school spirit cheers. They wanted to answer insults with something more positive. While they were chanting members of another protest group moved in their direction, banging on drums.   It was a group of Native Americans who were protesting something nearby. One person from the Native America group headed directly into the heart of the assembly of students, beating a traditional native drum as he walked.   That man was later identified as Nathan Phillips, a 64 year old ex-Marine and tribal elder of the Omaha Nation. Phillips is a nationally known Native American rights activist who often represents Native American veterans’ causes.

The “incident on the mall” was provoked by Mr. Phillips. He marched into the middle of the body of students, still beating his drum until he stood face to face with one of the students. The student didn’t back off. He just stood silently while Mr. Phillips beat his drum and the rest of the students continued their spirit chant.  

A video of the entire incident was sent to the media, who released an edited version to accompany an interview of Mr. Phillips. In the interview Phillips described being surrounded by screaming teens and said they were trying to intimidate him. No mention was made by Phillips or the media reports of the role of the Black Hebrew Israelites, who actually initiated the entire incident with their rude, crude and obnoxious taunts.  The media reaction was swift and certain. The students were pilloried for their “bad” behavior and intimidation tactics. Some of the usual idiots in Hollywood sounded off in their usually idiotic fashion declaring the students to be budding terrorists. Even some who tend to identify as conservatives and Trump supporters retreated from what appeared to be a significant exhibition of racism and issued statements declaring how much they abhorred what apparently went down. Many accounts of the supposed confrontation included statements that laid the blame at President Trump’s feet. After all, he established the current climate of divisiveness, hate, and intolerance as far back as the earliest days of his presidential campaign.   This was just another in a long series of Trump provocations.   This was a group of rowdy and dangerous teens; quite possibly a white nationalist youth group.

On Monday the media narrative changed. It had to. The full length video was put up on the Internet and the lies were exposed. On that video the taunts of the Black Hebrew Israelites could be heard. The students’ spirit chant could be understood. Lastly it was clear that Nathan Phillips marched into the middle of the crowd of students.   They surrounded him, but only because of his own actions. He moved to them. They never moved at all until their busses finally arrived. The media had to alter their narrative and admit to the basic truths. Someone played their audiences for a bunch of suckers. It may have originally been CNN. It doesn’t matter. Regardless of who did it first, the rest of the lapdog press happily carried the story and just as happily registered their total disgust at yet another horrible example of Trumpism run wild.

One might think the media would learn. No. No, they don’t. They keep making the same mistake over and over again. They keep getting caught reporting outright lies, distortions, and half-truths dressed up as gospel. Their TDS compels them to indulge in their obsessions with no hint of thought.   Yes, they truly meet the definition of insanity. Any sane individual would have paused long ago and sought a different narrative. Any sane organization would care about their credibility.   Any sane audience would walk away from those who’ve been proven to be liars over and over again.

Know this about that, though. This TDS insanity is not without purpose. The hope of progressives rests in the age-old Leninist tactic of the oft told lie. They actually do believe if they keep repeating their lies people will line up and believe them. It worked in Russia. It worked in Germany. Surely it’ll work here.   Their goal is to complete their slow coup and unseat our President by any means necessary. No lie is too improbable or outlandish. No invention of the mind is too far-fetched. In their zeal those with TDS have exempted themselves from any semblance of professional or moral standards.   They see themselves as holy warriors for a just cause.

There’s a whole lot of insanity out there, folks. But, I’m not one of them, and neither are you. As long as you seek, find and tell the truth, you’ll maintain your sanity, even though you might be surrounded by absolute loons. If you learn to emulate that young guy in Washington, a teen named Nick Sandmann from Covington, KY, you’ll do more than just keep your sanity.   You’ll help expose the games afoot. Maybe one day the tide will turn and our country will understand TDS for what it is. If so, it may be that sanity might appear once in a while in the MSM instead of the unending babble of idiots.

I now wonder exactly what Buddha, Jesus, Gandhi, and ML King would make of our MSM. I can’t conceive that it would be anything positive.

In Liberty,
Steve