Views on the News
Views on the News*
By every measure of personal and national prosperity, the
nation is better off than it was a year ago, and it's thanks to the integrity
of our leader. President Trump promised in his first inaugural address that
his administration would be guided by one “crucial conviction: that a nation
exists to serve its citizens.” He went on to say that “every decision on trade, on taxes, on immigration, on
foreign affairs, will be made to benefit American workers and American families.”
His first year in office has been
the story of promises kept. While the president’s critics reflect on a year
full of sound and fury, he and his supporters will take satisfaction in a year
of successes despite unyielding opposition. By every measure of personal and
national prosperity, the nation is better off than it was one year ago. The Trump administration has overseen a
renewed respect for citizenship. Gone is the lofty sounding rhetoric of globalism that led to
unwinnable foreign wars and open borders. Back
is talk of what we can do together as Americans. You’d hardly know of his accomplishments by watching
cable news, which continue indulging its perverse obsession with Russian
conspiracy theories, West Wing intrigue and the president’s Twitter
feed. Also conspicuous were the dogs that didn’t bark.
These are the predictions of imminent calamity certain to accompany a Trump
presidency that have failed to materialize. For one, nuclear war did not break out,
despite this being one of the Trump detractors’ favorite predictions. Nor did the president sell the country
down the river to Russian President Vladimir Putin; he didn’t ignore
court orders; didn’t shut down the free press; and didn’t fire
special counsel Robert Mueller. After a year of peace and prosperity, more people are
likely to believe that such outlandish predictions tell us less about the
president and more about the temperament of his critics. Trump appointed an all-star
Cabinet that has been quietly and dutifully implementing the president’s
agenda even as their boss runs interference for them, taking the slings and
arrows of a hostile media. He has appointed more judges to the federal bench in his
first year than any president ever, including Neil Gorsuch
to the Supreme Court, and they are constitutionalists, which will resound for
the next few generations. Under
Trump, construction has begun on the Keystone XL and Dakota Access pipelines
even as the United States will soon achieve oil production of 10 million barrels per day, becoming
a net exporter of oil sometime in the next decade, and set to rival Russia
as the world’s largest oil producer by 2019. Add to that
low unemployment, rising wages, a booming stock market and a tax cut that
will put more money in middle-class pockets and you have the makings of a very
successful presidency. At
the border, illegal crossings are down as much as 60%, showing that a
willingness to enforce the law and end incentives to enter the country
illegally will change behavior. Trump has also overseen a change in national security
policy from the globalist moral imperialism of his predecessors to the
interests based in realism that he calls America First. His speeches in Poland, and Saudi
Arabia, were triumphs. They encouraged our friends and put our enemies on
notice. After all the talk of
Russian conspiracies, Trump has taken a tough stance with Putin, willing to
work with him where it advances U.S. interests but also arming Ukraine in
its ongoing fight with Russia.
In the Middle East, ISIS has gone from a burgeoning caliphate stretching
from the Atlantic to the Levant to a failed pseudo-state, while Trump has
revitalized our decades old alliance with Saudi Arabia and its
new, reformist crown prince. Trump’s appointees are quietly cutting regulations
pursuant to one of his first executive orders, which instructs
them to cut two regulations for every new one they put in place. There is
much yet to be done. There is a wall that the president has promised to
build and infrastructure he has promised to rebuild. There are more judges to be appointed and
a swamp yet to be drained. To Trump’s critics I say, go ahead, keep
talking, because while you’re doing that, Trump is governing.
(“While Trump’s
critics keep talking, our president is fulfilling his promises” by
Christopher Buskirk dated January 18, 2018 published
by USA Today at https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2018/01/18/while-trumps-critics-keep-talking-our-president-fulfilling-his-promises-christopher-buskirk-column/1041117001/
)
President Trump’s stature is only growing in the
eyes of the people responsible for American job creation and wage growth. No
matter what spin the media put on the first year of the new administration, the
numbers don’t lie, that the Trump rally in November 2016 has turned into
the Great American Economic Renaissance. Since
Trump was elected, the stock market has skyrocketed to never-before-seen highs,
setting records and creating $5 trillion in wealth for pensions, retirement and
savings accounts. The economy’s ongoing expansion already is the
third-longest in U.S. history, with a chance to surpass the record set by the
1990s economic boom. American
businesses have created nearly 1.5 million new jobs this year, as the economy
expanded by at least 3% for two quarters in a row after eight years of
lackluster growth. We are seeing a
turning of the tide in public opinion, especially with our tax code overhaul
expected to increase the pace of growth.
The president is doing exactly what he
promised during his campaign: Make America Great Again. Our nation’s business
leaders can clearly see the impact of his efforts to slash government
regulations, restore the balance of trade and unleash American prosperity. A byproduct of
the president’s work in his first year is shoring up America’s
relationships with its allies.
Trump’s America First energy policy has freed domestic producers
to export more of our rising supply of crude oil to customers around the world,
allowing oil buyers to avoid patronizing hostile regimes. These strengthened ties will make the
world a safer place, emboldening investors to continue contributing to our
nation’s historic economic growth.
Trump’s first year in office has been
revelatory, showing everyone who is paying attention what his policies can do
to spur the American economy, but the best is yet to come. We
still have at least three more years, and hopefully as
many as seven, to enjoy the fruits of the president’s labor: a resurgent
economy that will create new jobs, higher wages and unprecedented prosperity
for all Americans.
(“Trump’s First Year:
Historically Good for America” by Harold Hamm dated January 12, 2018
published by Real Clear Politics at https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2018/01/12/trumps_first_year_historically_good_for_america_135994.html
)
Can you believe those crazy Liberals from Hollywood are
screaming for Oprah Winfrey for President? They must
perceive the requirements for the office of President of the United States to
be popularity and fame. Yes,
Oprah is popular and famous. She is
a great entertainer, and I always enjoyed her show. I respect her for
her accomplishments and her abilities, but I do not believe she is a Public
advocate type. I see Donald
Trump as a Business Politician. To succeed in Business as he did required the ‘art
of the deal:, the ability to read and know people; the ability to
understand Human behavior; to know how to speak in the proper manner; and most
of all to know his audience. Now, most
professional Politicians know their audience when publicly speaking, but what
they do not get is how to make promises that you can keep; promises that the
entirety of those you need support from will expect you to keep. Donald Trump did his homework. He knew before he even started,
what the voters needed and wanted. He knew and accepted just who the majority of voters would
be: their frustration, their hopes, and what they wanted for their Country.
He saw how
his predecessors only said what their current audience wanted to hear, and how
they ignored everything they promised, and only did what their financial
supporters wanted.
He knew from his research, and understood the actions and reactions of
their decisions. He saw their
mistakes. Trump
was criticized for not being more Presidential. He understood
the people didn’t want another “political” President: they
wanted a leader that could get things done; that would keep the promises; and
would get America back on track. We, in this Country, do not need any more Political
nonsense out of Washington, D.C. We need someone who knows his way
around the World, and knows his way around Washington. Trump was an active supporter of the
right people in Washington when it was needed for his particular business
agenda. During his campaign for
President, he knew how to play the field. He knew the Middle Class and the
minorities. He was a businessman from New York, saw first hand how the Politician’s verbally catered to
them; promised them the world, and delivered nothing. New York State is a premier Socialist
governed community. He saw the
despair among the minority communities, and he saw the anger and frustration
within the middle class. It wasn’t difficult to know how to
organize his campaign with a good agenda, a good solid understanding, and, of
course, his money was helpful, and his family. We, the
United States of America, have made the right choice. Our Founders would be proud. We have
chosen someone who can get the job done, without procrastination, without false
promises, and with strong leadership.
President Trump has certainly made his
share of verbal gaffs. One must
consider he has been operating in “back room
Boardrooms” for several years. In the heat of battle it is more than
understood such words are possible. Previous
Presidents were so shielded and protected from embarrassment they had no worry.
The Media was quick and loyal to
“bleep” out
mistakes. Trump is very transparent
and we must consider that such verbal mistakes may happen. If President
Clinton can be forgiven for his disgusting and
sickening behavior with a young Intern in the Oval Office, I would proffer we
can forgive anything. President Trump has worked so fast and deliberate on
carrying out his promises, there must be room for forgiveness. He and his family
have suffered from outrageous attacks from the Media and the Liberal faction,
that it would only be understood that in his endeavor to control his words in
the anger of dealing with such people that he must, it is easy to slip with the
tongue. Previous Presidents
were afforded the luxury of the Media blanking out mis-spoken
words. Our
President is not God; he is only human; and we must treat him fairly, and be
thankful for the progress he has made.
(“We are Gaining – and
the Others are defeating themselves” by Jean
Coulard dated January 12, 2018 published by iPatriot at https://ipatriot.com/gaining-others-defeating/
)
What a sad commentary; nasty and ill-tempered comments in
the mainstream media, political class, and the rest of a rogues gallery of the
usual suspects, were out with their venomous inflammatory rhetoric following
the publication of the Michael Wolff book “Fire and Fury”. Your
first inclination is if none of the accusations made by his detractors in the Democrat
party, media, Hollywood and the universities, on multiple issues that have
surfaced over the past year against the president have had no effect, then
let’s try mentally incapacitated and bring to floor of the Congress
consideration for the enforcement of the 25th Amendment. They’ve thrown everything at
him, but the kitchen sink; Russian collusion, confronting dictatorial regimes,
his tweeting, bravado, brash sometimes ineloquent language, and now
questionable mental state. These are all part and parcel of their plan that began back
on November 2016 when their world collapsed around them and they began an
effort to undermine and hopefully remove Trump from office at any expense,
while at the same time distracting the American people from the more important
issues. These excuses to
destroy this president were all for one main reason, and that is his vision for
America is antithetical to their morally corrupt hedonism, and self-serving
agenda. Following
the recklessness, the acquiescing, and sometimes unconstitutional and
questionable policies and executive orders of Barack Obama, a course correction
down the Right path was necessary to save America from the ravages of the
radical left wing. Damage had been done, but with the right person in
office it was not irreversible. Trump has made numerous course corrections, reversing or
replacing the radical social and international changes made by the previous
administration. With each of
these efforts his detractors realizing their agenda of open borders, unfettered
abortions, dismantling of traditional values and institutions, have screamed
and shouted their hatred and dismay. They have proven
they will do anything, stop at nothing to bring this president down. The pathetic and hysterical Trump
haters, because of their insults, invective, uncontrollable outbursts, and
hate-filled rants have allowed their inner most demons have surfaced thus
threatening Americas’ goodness. As for Wolff’s book, even some of
the president’s harshest critics have dismissed much of its contents as
mere observations and fabrications and not to be taken too seriously. If anyone
needed their head examined, let’s start with the entirety of the Democrat
Party, mainstream media, Hollywood, and a few psychiatrists and university
professors.
(“Who’s
Unfit?” by Bob Pascarella dated January 12,
2018 published by iPatriot at https://ipatriot.com/whos-unfit/ )
Nothing scandalizes a leftist like the truth. Point out that
women and men are different, that black Americans commit a disproportionate
amount of violent crime, that most terrorist acts are
committed by Muslims, and the Left leaps to its collective feet in
openmouthed shock. This is
racism! This is sexism! This is some sort of phobia! I’m shocked, shocked to find facts being spoken in
polite company! This is
simply a form of bullying. The Left has co-opted our good manners and our good will in
order to silence our opposition to their bad policies. The idea is to make it seem impolite and
immoral to mention the obvious. Here
in the states, the First Amendment has so far allowed old-fashioned American
loudmouths to fight the system whenever they could find ways around our
monolithic corporate media. But the Empire of Lies is quick to strike back. Google/YouTube now stands charged by
multiple accusers of singling out conservative voices for censorship, “fact-checking,” and demonetization. Hidden-camera videos released by Project Veritas this week show Twitter employees conspiring to
“shadow ban” conservatives on
their system. On campus,
intelligent conservative speakers of good will like Ben Shapiro, Charles
Murray, and Cristina Hoff-Somers have faced violent protests meant to shut them
up. No
person of importance on the right seeks to silence anyone on the left. The Left, on the
other hand, is broadly committed to ostracizing, blacklisting, and even
criminalizing right-wing speech. Enter President Donald Trump. He is a rude and crude person. He speaks like a Queens
real estate guy on a construction site. Because he does not have good manners, he
thoughtlessly breaks the rules with which the Left has sought to muzzle those
who disagree with them. If Donald Trump’s boorishness crashes like a bull
through the crystal madhouse of their leftism, well, good,
it’s about time. I don’t
know exactly what Trump said in a closed-door immigration meeting with senators
at the White House. Unnamed sources
say that he referred to some African countries and Haiti as “shitholes.” In any case, when it comes to a chance to
attack Trump, our journalists don’t waste time with fact-gathering or
source-identifying. Let’s state the obvious: some countries are shitholes.
To claim that this is racist is
racist. They
are not shitholes because of the color of the populace but because of bad
ideas, corrupt governance, false religion, and broken culture. Further, most of the problems in these
countries are generated at the top. Plenty of
rank-and-file immigrants from such ruined venues ultimately make good Americans,
witness those who came from 1840s potato-famine Ireland, a shithole if ever
there was one! It takes caution and skill to separate the good from the bad. For these
very reasons, absurd immigration procedures like chain migration, lotteries,
and unvetted entries are deeply destructive. Trump’s suggestions to vet
immigrants for pro-American ideas and skills that will help our country are
smart and reasonable and would clearly make the system better if implemented. So, when it
comes to the Great Shithole Controversy of 2018, my feeling is: I do not
care, not even a little. Sorry that it takes someone like Trump to
break the spell of silence the Left is forever weaving around us. I wish a man like Ronald Reagan would
come along and accomplish the same thing with more wit and grace, but that was
another culture. History deals the cards it deals; we just play them, and
Trump is what we’ve got. For all the bad language, I would rather hear a man speak the
truth to the press than have him neutered and gagged by a system of good
manners that has been misused as a form of oppression. Better
impoliteness than silence. We
have seen the effect of uncontrolled immigration on Europe, and it is very,
very bad. Some countries are shitholes, and I don’t want the U.S.
to become one of them.
(“Of Crudeness and
Truth” by Andrew Klavan dated January 12,
2018 published by City Journal at https://www.city-journal.org/html/crudeness-and-truth-15668.html
)
Donald Trump is not an ideological man. He appealed to
the sentiments that unite most working-class Americans, much like Ronald Reagan
did in 1980. Working-class
voters from factory employees to plumbers and electricians appreciated the
themes Trump ran on during the 2016 election. Promising to
“Make America Great Again” through cultural renewal,
economic revitalization, and military strength, Trump ran as a fixer. In 21st century America, the
greatest threat to our quality of life is not terrorism or Russia. Rather, it is bad government. A major reason
that America’s government has gone bad is that the Democrats and
Republicans have stopped talking to each other. They did this because both parties have
been captured by special interests with radical agendas.
A dynamic of winner-take-all
politics has become the norm, and nomajor issues have
been addressed in at least a generation. The government of the United States was
not created to operate under such a zero-sum paradigm. Essentially,
America’s pipes were clogged and the country needed a plumber, not a
politician. Donald Trump is America’s plumber. A plumber has no ideological motivation
either for repairing or for not repairing a stopped pipe. If he
doesn’t repair the pipe, sewage gets everywhere, and then we really
have a mess. The saddest
thing about present-day America is most of our problems could be easily
surmounted if our two political parties weren’t so consumed with sniping
at each other and appealing to a monied donor class
with interests that often don’t comport with the common good. One of our
biggest problems is immigration. Most Americans favor immigration
enforcement; they want a border wall, and most are willing to give the beloved
“Dreamers” amnesty. Trump invited
both parties to sit down at the White House, and have a public
discussion about immigration reform. Unfortunately,
Democrats haven’t produced their own version of a plumber yet. So they remain uninterested in sharing
ideas on reform; preferring instead to stick to their partisan agenda, pleasing
an ideologically driven and extreme base (as well as self-interested donors),
but doing no good for their country or the majority of Americans who want a
sane immigration reform. For decades both parties have known that immigration was a
problem in need of repair. For
years, both parties promised to do something about immigration policy. Neither party, however, was motivated to
work toward a solution. They lacked the leadership to overcome the problem. It’s not unlike when one knows
their pipes need repairing, but no one wants actually to go through the trouble
of calling a plumber, waiting for the guy to show up, and paying the bill. After all, they reason, water is still
coming through the faucets; most of the toilets are still flushing… maybe
things aren’t bad enough yet to call the plumber. In Congress, the
legislative pipes have been clogged with money from special interests and
ideological extremism for years. Necessary legislation that could ease the
immigration problem has been delayed, clogging the system, and choking America
on a ceaseless wave of economic uncertainty and political instability. What Trump is
doing is unclogging the pipes, so that he can push the sludge through. Trump offered that he’s willing to
allow the “Dreamers” to stay,
so long as America gets a physical border wall and real immigration
enforcement. Like any good plumber, Trump assessed the damage to the
pipe and offered the Democrats a solution at a fair price, but, the Democrats thought that solution was far too costly
for them politically. So,
naturally, the Democrats have taken to lying and exaggerating about what Trump
said behind closed doors to undermine the president’s reasonable case for
immigration reform. America’s Founders established a government that
governs least, but, they certainly didn’t
envision a government that didn’t govern at all. For years, the government has failed to
govern in a way that protected American interests or served the majority of
Americans. Trump
recognized that trend in 2016 and is repairing the damage, starting with
immigration. Rather than
accept Trump’s reasonable offer, the Democrats are trying to make it
impossible for Trump to govern. The question remains: will the American people let Democrats
distract them, and prevent the pipes from being repaired again, especially when
there might not be another plumber available again for quite some time?
(“Trump is America’s
Plumber” by Brandon J. Weichert dated
January 14, 2018 published by American Greatness at https://amgreatness.com/2018/01/14/trump-americas-plumber/
)
Trump is commonsensically
undoing, piece by piece, the main components of Obama’s legacy. Contrary
to popular supposition, the Left loathes Trump not just for what he has done,
but rather, it despises him mostly for what he superficially represents. Trump is also the Prince of
Anti-culture: mindlessly naïve American boosterism;
conspicuous, 1950s-style unapologetic consumption; repetitive and limited
vocabulary; fast-food culinary tastes; Queens accent; herky-jerky mannerisms;
ostentatious dress; bulging appearance; poorly disguised facial expressions;
embracing rather than sneering at middle-class appetites; a lack of subtlety, nuance,
and ambiguity. There is not even a
smidgeon of a concession that some of Trump’s policies might offer tens
of thousands of forgotten inner-city youth good jobs or revitalize a dead and
written-off town in the Midwest, or make the petroleum of the war-torn Persian
Gulf strategically irrelevant to an oil-rich United States. Yet one way
of understanding Trump, particularly the momentum of his first year, is through
recollection of the last eight years of the Obama administration. In
reductionist terms, Trump is the un-Obama. Republicans have not seriously attempted
to roll back the administrative state since Reagan. On key issues of climate change,
entitlements, illegal immigration, government spending, and globalization, it
was sometimes hard to distinguish a Bush initiative from a Clinton policy or a
McCain bill from a Biden proposal. There was often a reluctant acceptance of the seemingly
inevitable march to the European-style socialist administrative state. Few Republicans in the executive branch
sought to reduce government employment, deregulate, sanction radical expansion
of fossil-fuel production, question the economic effects of globalization on
Americans between the coasts, address deindustrialization, recalibrate the tax
code, rein in the EPA, secure the border, reduce illegal immigration, or
question transnational organizations. To do all that would require a president
to be largely hated by the Left, demonized by the media, and caricatured in
popular culture and few were willing to endure the commensurate ostracism. Trump has
done all that in a manner perhaps more Reaganesque
than Reagan himself. In
part, he has been able to make such moves because of the Republican majority
(though thin) in Congress and also because of, not despite, his politically
incorrect bluntness, his in-your-face talk, innate cunning, reality-TV
celebrity status, animalistic energy, and his cynical appraisal that tangible
success wins more support than ideology.
Even his critics sometimes concede that his economic and foreign-policy
agendas are bringing dividends. In some sense, it is not so much because of innovative
policy, but rather that he is simply bullying his way back to basics
we’ve forgotten over the past decades. It took the
efforts of a 24/7 redistributionist agenda of tax increases, federalizing
health care, massive new debt, layers of more regulation, zero-interest rates,
neo-socialist regulatory appointments, expansionary eligibility for
entitlements, and constant anti-free-market jawboning that created a
psychological atmosphere conducive to real retrenchment, mental holding
patterns, and legitimate fears over discernable
success. Obama weaponized federal agencies including the IRS, DOJ, and EPA
in such a manner as to worry anyone successful, prominent, and conservative
enough to come under the federal radar of a vindictive Lois Lerner, Eric
Holder, or a FISA court. Trump has sought to undo all that, point by point. The radical upsurge in business and
consumer confidence is not revolutionary but almost natural. The same
about-face is true on the foreign-policy front, as the ancient practice of
deterrence replaced the modern therapeutic mindset. Obama blurred, deliberately so, the lines
between allies and hostiles. America experienced the
worst of both worlds: We were rarely respected by our friends, even more rarely
feared by our enemies; loud rhetorical muscularity was backed up only by
“strategic patience” and “leading from behind.” On the supposedly friendly side, Europe
assumed that the United States would fawn after the virtue-signaling Paris
Climate Accord. The Palestinians
concluded that there was no shelf life on victimhood and that America simply
would not, could not, dare not move its embassy to
Jerusalem as the Congress had chronically showboated it would. NATO just knew that endless subsidies
were its birthright and prior commitments were debatable. The West apparently lapped up
Obama’s Cairo speech: But when even the European Renaissance and
Enlightenment were seen as derivatives of Islam, there is not much left to
boast about. On the unfriendly
side, China sensed there was little danger in turning the Spratley
Islands into an armed valve of the South China Sea. Russia understood that America was
obsequiously “flexible” and
ready to push a red plastic reset button in times of crisis. The common
denominator was that the Obama administration, in quite radical fashion, had
sought a therapeutic inversion of foreign policy, in a way few other major
nations had previously envisioned.
Trump’s appointees almost immediately
began undoing all that. There
were no more effective avatars of old-style deterrence than James Mattis and H. R. McMaster. Neither was political. Both long ago
embraced a realist appraisal of human nature, predicated on two ancient ideas:
We all are more likely to behave when we accept that the alternative is far
more dangerous to ourselves, and the world is better off when everyone knows
the laws in the arena. Just
as Obama’s pseudo–red lines in Syria signaled to the Iranians or
North Koreans that there were few lines of any sort anywhere; so too the
destruction of ISIS suggested to others that there might be far fewer
restrictions on an American secretary of defense anywhere. On the cultural side, the Trump team figuratively
paused, examined its inheritance from the prior administration, and apparently
concluded something like “this is unhinged.”
Then it
proceeded, to the degree possible, to undo it. Open
borders, illegal immigration, and sanctuary cities are the norms of very few
sovereign states. They are
aberrations that are unsustainable whether the practitioner is Canada, Mexico,
or the United States. Calling a
small pond or large puddle on a farm’s low spot an “inland waterway” subject to federal
regulation is deranged; undoing that was not radical, but commonsensical. Trump sought
to revive the cultural atmosphere prior to Obama’s assertion that he
would fundamentally transform what had already been a great country. It was Byzantine that a country would enter
an iconoclastic frenzy in the dead of night, smashing and defacing statues
without legislative or popular democratic sanction. The Un-Obama
agenda was not simply reflexive or easy given that Obama was the apotheosis of
a decades-long progressive dream. After all, in year one, Trump has been
demonized in a manner unprecedented in post-war America, given the astonishing
statistic that 90% of all media coverage of his person and policies has been
negative. Obama was a
representation of a progressive view of the Constitution that about a quarter
of the population holds, but in Obama, that view found a rare megaphone for an
otherwise hard sell. One would have thought that all Republican presidents and
presidential candidate would be something like the antitheses to progressivism.
A
President Nobama could prove to be quite a change.
(“President Nobama” by Victor Davis Hanson dated January 16,
2018 published by National Review Online at http://www.nationalreview.com/article/455453/president-trump-undoes-obama-legacy-commonsense-nobama
)
Journalists are forever harping on Trump’s “lies,”
but what really bothers them is his blunt truth-telling. His refusal to
conform to their political correctness infuriates them. Political correctness is just one
big lie: a denial of reality in the name of this or that “sensitivity” or ideological demand of the
moment. The
media devotes almost all of its coverage to policing deviations from those
lies. That is why Trump’s ruthlessly reality-based approach to
politics is such a shock to its system. The media had grown used to skittish
Republicans jumping to attention and discussing issues only within the parameters
of decreed lies. A “responsible” Republican
wasn’t supposed to notice the problems of illegal immigration from
high-crime, high-poverty countries. He wasn’t supposed to notice the
militancy of Islam. He wasn’t supposed to notice any number of problems. Rather, he was
expected to second the lying sanctimony of the media. Trump came along and exposed that charade, and the media
has never forgiven him since. The media goes on and on about the importance of “facts”
in the age of Trump, but it could not care less about facts. It operates entirely in the realm of
feelings. It
spends most of its energy suppressing facts in the name of feelings. Almost every single controversy it has
ginned up against Trump revolves around some fact or truth the media wishes
suppressed for the sake of protecting the feelings and interests of a liberal
constituency. Go down the media’s feverishly assembled lists of
Trump’s “racism” and all you will find are dissents
from the approved lies of the media. CNN’s hosts recite these lists like
robots, then crowd their shows with panelists who call
for the most color-conscious policies imaginable. The casual
reverse racism contained in the remarks of guests fresh from this or that
“black pride” rally are never questioned. Foul-mouthed journalists get to
pronounce on Trump’s “vulgarity,”
pundits who wish him dead comment on his “hate-filled”
heart, and pols and celebrities who announce their
desire to beat him up are nevertheless treated as experts on presidential
“temperance.” In politics, a
confederacy of dunces and demagogues always forms against the rare politician
who tells the truth. The
Democrats, having become the foreigners first party,
saw a chance to silence Trump by casting hearsay as evidence of racism. Their real
objection is not to his crude word but to his clear thought, a truth they
simply don’t want to hear: that high immigration from destitute and
dysfunctional countries weakens America. For Dick Durbin, who has never seen an
illegal immigrant he didn’t want to turn into a Democrat, Trump’s
truth had to be discredited at all costs. He had to shift the discussion from the
validity of Trump’s concern to the propriety of his language. Naturally, the
tactic worked in a media climate that is saturated with cheap emotion and
thrives on sanctimonious grandstanding and the endless recitation of PC
pieties. Talk show hosts choked up as they offered misty-eyed tributes
to their underpaid nannies and gardeners. None of this can be taken
seriously, except as evidence that the Democratic-media alliance favors
unlimited illegal immigration for the most cynical and frivolous of reasons. It hypes up any
introduction of common sense into immigration standards, the common sense that
every functioning country on earth uses, as “nativism”
and “racism.” For
Trump, an irrational immigration system is a problem. For the Democrats and the media, it is a
solution. That is one of the
principal reasons why Trump won. He understood the power of rudimentary nationalism
against a failed and phony ruling class that denies the existence of problems
and forbids anyone from speaking seriously about them, much less solving them. The
American people can forgive an obscenity
from a president who is fighting battles others are too cowardly to confront,
but what they won’t forgive is a party that preened about “shitholes”
while America turned into one.
(“Government by Sanctimony
and Smears” by George Neumayr dated January
17, 2018 published by The American Spectator at https://spectator.org/government-by-sanctimony-and-smears/
)
A Pew survey revealed Americans trust our media even less
than the Russians trust their media. Trump has drawn
attention to the constant biased “errors” in mainstream reporting,
referring to them as fake news. Almost every week there’s another
story about false reporting, with a biased media organization forced to issue a
retraction. We’re at a crossroads,
where the mainstream media has lost so much credibility it may never recover to
its former lofty status. CNN, MSNBC, NBC, ABC and CBS dominate TV
news. The New York Times and The Washington Post
dominate print media. Everywhere
you turn you can’t escape their presence. CNN is carried in far more markets than
Fox News. President Trump
complained about having CNN but not Fox News when traveling in hotels overseas.
Google News artificially elevates The New York Times and The Washington Post on its
homepage and in search results. Since the Fourth
Estate is so powerful, the best way to combat it is from multiple angles. First of all, stop sharing articles on social media from
left-leaning publications, because more than two-thirds of American adults get
news from social media. Forty-five
percent get news from Facebook. Eleven percent get
news from Twitter. If you find a
news article you want to share, look and see if Fox News, Townhall,
or another site on the right has also written on the topic. Start sharing
multiple sites and authors on the right, not just the most well-known ones.
We need to get people used to
seeing a full spectrum of sites on the right to choose from; have them become
household names. Stop watching left-leaning network and cable news. Cable news is rapidly losing subscribers
as people switch to streaming. Fox
News has shows available to watch over streaming TV, including live over
YouTube, which can be watched on TV with a PlayStation. There are conservative news stations that
are generally online-only like NewsMaxTV. The Sinclair Broadcast
Group partners with local TV stations to provide conservative leaning content.
Find
out which station in your area hosts their content and stick to that station if
you’re going to watch a local TV station. There will need to
be some larger steps taken by wealthy conservatives on the right. Sites
competitive with Google, Facebook, YouTube and
Twitter will have to emerge. Right now there are a few minor
competitors but none that are large enough to be effective. With the increasing censorship of
conservatives on the big tech media sites, it is becoming even more imperative
that alternatives emerge. There are already
some signs it is happening. The
rise of fake news exposed the fact that conservatives on Facebook
are far more likely to share articles from conservative sites than liberal
ones. Conservative
Facebook groups are powerful and have escaped Facebook censorship. The
left-leaning media is helping to do itself in. The New
York Times and The Washington Post
only provide a few free articles before putting up a paywall.
They have
not adjusted to the reality of internet advertising and so are losing readers.
While the Drudge Report still
frequently links to those sites, sending over generous amounts of traffic, the
average American, and the average conservative, doesn’t subscribe so
they’re not reading and sharing. Once
Trump started praising Fox & Friends regularly, the show shot up in TV
rankings. It is the number one cable news morning show. GQ calls it
“the most powerful show on TV,” but Trump can’t do it all.
If every
red-blooded American just says enough and replaces the dishonest media with
alternate sources, we can greatly diminish one of the most powerful left-wing
influences in society.
(“Replacing the Mainstream
Media” by Rachel Alexander dated January 15, 2018 published by Town
Hall at https://townhall.com/columnists/rachelalexander/2018/01/15/replacing-the-mainstream-media-n2434513
)
There is so much
published each week that unless you search for it, you will miss important
breaking news. I try to package the
best of this information into my “Views on the News” each Saturday morning. No updates have been made this week to
the issue sections.
David Coughlin
Hawthorne, NY
http://www.returntocommonsensesite.com/