Yeeee-hah!
I’ve been angry all day about the absolute perfidy and vicious dishonesty of the news media, magnified by the hate-fed gullibility of my friends on social media. I wanted to wait until my fury subsided before composing the warm-up. No luck.
1. The most egregious example of incompetent, biased, mob journalism yet? Meh. That story of how online left-wing gossip site BuzzFeed concocted a fake report that suggested impeachable conduct by Donald Trump, and how it was accepted without question by the mainstream media which spent all day feeding a buzz about imminent impeachment until the Mueller investigation had to make a public announcement that the story was crap? The New York Times had it on page 11. The original false story, of course, was on the front page, above the fold. Just for giggles, I checked to see what Rachel Maddow was saying at MSNBC, since she is supposed to be the Best of the Worst, and MSNBC had been reveling in a virtual impeachment orgy. I guess she has been learning at the knee of Al Sharpton; maybe his office is next to hers. She went full Tawana Brawley. Rachel’s spin was that just because this didn’t happen doesn’t mean it couldnt have happened, because we all know that Trump should be impeached and thus this doesn’t really change anything. Then she brought on the editor of BuzzFeed who told her audience that he stands by his story.
I’ve been feeling a lot like Cassandra lately. Long ago I concluded that Maddow was a charismatic fraud, smug and pursuing an agenda, and completely untrustworthy. “Oh no!” protested several of my moderate and progressive friends in the ethics field. She’s wonderful! Funny! Fair! Never biased!
One reason I’m angry is that so many of my friends have allowed themselves and their integrity to be corrupted. I expected better of them. Maddow is an ethics corrupter.
2. Then there was the Catholic schoolboy in the MAGA hat. This was a flash Ethics Train wreck I stumbled upon it on Facebook: one of my friends there posted a CNN link with a video about an ugly episode after the March for Life in which a group of Catholic school teens wearing MAGA hats harassed and mocked an elderly Native American man who was engaged in some kind of religious ritual. In response to a comment, my friend wrote that this was one more ugly example of what the current “racist environment” had created—in other words, it’s all Trump’s fault. Since the guy is in a profession in which integrity as well as objective and unbiased consideration of facts is part of the job description, I felt this cheap shot was not only unwarranted but misleading to others who might regard him as more than just the usual Facebook goof, and so I noted that a) wearing a Trump campaign cap doesn’t make you racist and b) because someone misbehaves wearing a Trump hat no more implicates him than wearing a Boston Red Sox cap implicated Alex Cora. His response was to write me a terse note demanding that I not comment on his edicts, and then he blocked me.
That turned out to be just the beginning. I hadn’t followed it, but the story turned out to be yet another manufactured fake news story in support of an anti-Trump narrative. The video was deceptively edited. The Native American Man confronted the kids, not the other way around, and a couple of them smirked at the old wacko beating a drum in their faces. He turned out to be a serial activist who had pulled such stunts before, trying to provoke confrontations. He, it turned out, was mocking the boys, not the other way around. Meanwhile, a radical Black Nationalist group was also shouting at the kids.
Never mind. The news media, and even a lot of the conservative news media, accepted the distorted account and condemned the teens. The New York Times called the incident “the latest touchpoint for racial tensions in America.” The Catholic school, Covington Catholic high school, apologized for the boys’ conduct based purely on hostile hearsay without doing any investigation. While CNN and NBC were banging their own drums about young racist abortion opponents, a least one held its fire, and was rewarded. This morning, as the story began to unravel with the discovery of unedited video, “Good Morning America’s” Erielle Reshef told viewers, “Overnight, new video calling into question just how this encounter began. Appearing to show Phillips approaching the crowd of boys as they chant their school letters.” In the blog world, Ann Althouse reviewed the unedited video and wrote,
Shame on the adult professionals who latched onto this as something to make into the big issue of the day. Total fake news. I ignored this yesterday, but my ignoring something doesn’t have any effect on the total amount of noise. So I have to speak up and rephrase my silence into words: This is nothing. AND: The man holding the camera narrates, accusing the schoolboys of “mockery” and so forth. But you’re a fool if you watch the video and see what he’s telling you to see. It’s a microcosm of fake news, and big media responded and amplified.
Suddenly apologies were being posted on Twitter by the conservatives who bought into the smear so quickly after the last fake news fiasco. Less admirably, the Never-Trump National Review quietly killed the link to its story excoriating the boys and Trump, and substituted this post, an indictment of the media, but not, curiously, itself. In another post, Rich Lowry, NR’s editor wrote, “It’s another reminder — even for an old hand like me — that it’s best not to make snap judgments and to wait for all sides of a controversy to have a chance to be heard.”
Back to Facebook, however, my Trump Deranged friends refused to believe the new revelations. One said that the Catholic School wouldn’t have apologized if the kids had not done something wrong. Others claimed that they couldn’t find any sources debunking the original story, which is a tell: they get their news exclusively from the biased mainstream media. It is true that Newsbusters only cares about anti-conservative bias, but it does a good job on this sort of thing, After I had traced the deterioration of the report, I checked Newsbusters, and sure enough, it was on top of it.
No, I haven’t received an apology from the Friend Who Blocked Me (wasn’t that a James Bond novel?) Since he’s buried in the bubble, I doubt he even knows that his “racist’ incident was a lie.
3. As I calm down, I hope..I recommend that you read Gail Hariot’s scholarly paper on news media bias, which you can download here.
___________________
Graphic: Tim Cox
Ethics Alarms 
Thanks for the reference to Newsbusters. It is a source with which I am unfamiliar. But I am totally pissed that you would say I get my info from the biased media. Quite the contrary and you, of all people, should no better. I am deeply disappointed in your characterization of my search for a source.
Was it appropriate for the Mueller investigation to make that statement? I can see why they would want to in this case, but I was under the impression FBI policy was they weren’t supposed to comment on an ongoing investigation, no matter what.
Since when has Mueller follows FBI policy? If Trump is the target, the FBI overall seems to not follow policy
This is a pretty clear case of Ethics Incompleteness Theorem. The FBI rarely publicly comments on an ongoing investigation. Here, however, the integrity of the investigation itself was threatened. Leaks allegedly from directly within the Mueller investigation suggested impeachment was imminent, when apparently no such smoking gun evidence existed. There was a real possibility of the appearance of cover up if so serious an alleged leak were not immediately disavowed publicly .
If only there wasn’t already so much evidence of a likely cover-up…
…like (ahem!) that there was real collusion with Russians… from Democrats? Hillary? Paid for dossier… from Russians? Wire tapping a presidential campaign on made up evidence?
Progressives always project: whatever they would do, or have done, is what they accuse the right of doing.
It’s my opinion that progressives and social justice warriors have won the battle of the minds if they don’t fuck it up and I think these stories are just more pieces that support that opinion. There seems to be an automatic assumption that progressives and social justice warriors are always right, and Republican/Conservatives are always evil, and everyone should make their business and life choices specifically to keep the attack dogs within the progressive and social justice warrior movement at bay.
I was talking to a variety of people this past week in an area of the USA that I haven’t spent much time in before and what I heard was outright fear of noncompliance with progressives and social justice warriors.
Does anyone other than myself see strong similarities with what progressives, social justice warriors, the left media, and antifa are doing in the USA and what the NAzi’s did in 1930’s & 1940’s Germany?
Please note that as of this moment I have completely stopped using a capital letter for the word progressive; why, because I no longer consider it a noun defining a group instead I now consider it a social infection not worthy of a prominent name, it’s just an adjective describing how they intend to destroy the USA – a slow progressive malice infection.
Enh…Antifa is doing exactly what Antifa was doing in Germany in the 1920s and 30s. The SA was originally formed to defend against Antifa attacks.
Absalom,
Please explain you comment in more detail.
I can help here. I am going to repeat a ‘narrative’ which may or may not be ‘true’. In the 1920s and 30s there were great waves of Marxist and Communist activism that threatened Europe. By those who opposed it, this was seen as a formidable and very real threat. This assault (as they understood it) was opposed by various fronts: one being the religious community given that the Church has metaphysical opposition to Communism and its basic doctrine: materialistic atheism. But there were other sectors that also opposed the Marxification.
Most of those people, then, tended to gravitate toward a right-leaning alternative to Marxist assault. This right-leaning faction was described as ‘fascist’ and fascism is a reactive construct against Marxian imposition. One could say that an activist and militant Marxism requires a defined and organized militant opposition to it. And one could then say that the hard right and ‘fascism’ represented, then, that answer (that reaction).
And there you have at least some part of an answer. There is a similarity between the Marxist activists in Europe at that time and the Antifa of today. And there is a similarity between the numerous (more radical, more extreme) right-wing militant groups and the various ‘defense brigades’ of those groups defending ‘society’, the existing hierarchies, the Church, and the general structures of civilization from the onslaught brought against these entities by radical Marxism. Their stated object is to infiltrate, subvert, and cause to fall those institutions they violently and ideologically oppose. They have a specific and stated vision of what they desire to install in place.
You work always within the same trope! Some years back (I can’t believe it! It was now 3 years or more!) you referred to The Wave (I might have been the only person who watched it through!) Now, you are still working in the same trope. But, you confuse an established American Anti-Nazi Narrative with one that should more properly be ascribed to a Stalinist regime.
But this fits. You (and also Jack and most others who write on this blog) define yourselves as being in a center position between these two, distorted (and dangerous) extremes.
You are advocates for the multicultural America that has been constructed out of the ideological ruins of WW2. Thus: the *American Project* as God and America’s divinely ordained solution to these branches of extremism. Consumerism and ‘democracy’ one might say in a radical economism. (Though there is no way that America can be truly considered democratic if it is examined closely. It is a plutocratic system that depends on the established Media System which, now, you begin to question when you see what it actually does and what it is capable of).
It is horrifying to you that the American Construct is coming undone at the seams. The Multicultural Project is disintegrating quite literally *before our eyes*. You observe this and you wring your hands and beat your breast. No! It can’t be! The Project of Righteousness is being subverted by Evil Activists.
What stands now to be done is to team up, ideologically and in will, with the ruling class, with its concentrated capital, with its Multicultural Economic System, and agree that the Intelligence Agencies of the land — a frightening assemblage of para-military power — attack and defeat both extremes. Targeted assassinations (as had been the modus operandi by US intelligence internationally), COINTELPRO-type programs. Embroiling activists in lawsuits. Media slander. Behind the scenes machinations. And not least: the concoction of some crisis which rallies the people to support government and to allow a purge to go forward.
If I am not mistaken it was this *group of tools* that was used in the US in the Sixties to defeat the activist groups challenging the status quo. (This has all been documented extensively).
What is the meaning of all this? What side am I to take? With what and with whom shall I ally?
I suggest that *the only way* to see these large machinations of powers and entities far outside our control, is ‘meta-political analysis’. Some point-of-view well above and outside the fray. Like Lucretius!
Excuse the pretension, it comes too naturally to me. 🙂
What I am trying to say though is that we need a point from which we can see Our Present. And begin to talk about it in other terms than mere tropes.
Alizia,
I’m certainly glad that you were available to share how Absalom understood what was written, what the heck would we do without you here to speak for others.
Z.
You would languish for unnecessary years in miscomprehension.
I am intellectual quicksilver!
I saw “The Wave”!
It’s hard not to see things in past tropes when the Left is constantly using those same tropes to define the present.
Since Absalom hasn’t graced us with more details about what Absalom wrote, I’ll take it for face value and comment on that.
Absalom wrote, “Antifa is doing exactly what Antifa was doing in Germany in the 1920s and 30s.”
I call bull shit!
The problem with Absalom’s statement is that antifa in the 1920’s and 1930’s was actually opposing real fascism, the modern day antifa in the USA is not opposing fascism in anyway, they are ignorantly painting those they oppose as fascists because antifa in the USA is full of fucking imbeciles. Any claim that antifa in the USA is opposing fascism or the rise of fascism is a bald-faced LIE! If antifa in the US wants to see the face of real fascism in the USA they should look in the damn mirror.
I’ve reviewed his previous comments, and that interpretation would be out of character. But I don’t know what else he could have meant…
Jack Marshall wrote, “I’ve reviewed his previous comments, and that interpretation would be out of character.”
Maybe but I don’t have anything else to go on but the words that Absalom actually wrote. I’ve never had any interaction with Absalom.
Jack Marshall wrote, “But I don’t know what else he could have meant…”
That was exactly my thought but I figured I’d give Absalom the benefit of the doubt and ask for more details.
You didn’t include the clause that followed.
To my view, your whole interpretation is messed up. Not completely inaccurate, but not accurate either. Therefor, sort of worse. Not very useful.
Everything hinges on *interpretation*. It is an hermeneutical issue of gravity. Examine the Twitter feed of Jake Trapper that Jack linked to (in relation to the Catholic HS kids/American Indian confrontation). All the people commenting offer an *interpretation* of what they see there. Each one is distinct. They do not agree. It’s amazing! That we can look out on the world, on the same event, and make completely different interpretations of what is going on.
Your adamant statement is hot with emotion! You seem gripped by it. It forces you to make a particular and tendentious interpretation with elements of truth. But you do not seem to see the larger picture. What is it? A crisis in how the world is seen. A crisis in what is considered ‘good and desirable’ and what is considered ‘wrong and undesirable’. And a ‘chaos of incommensurate and conflicting narratives’.
The progressive and liberal faction in the US is doing now what they were trained to do after the Nuremberg Trials. They were told that those who did not *take action* were complicit. Kids asked their parents “Why didn’t you do something?” and held them accountable. Now, the large part of a generation is taking up this task.
This is part of the narrative that informs these people.
They are also carrying forward the precise tenets of Americanism — a New Americanism — that developed during and after the Second World War. The multicultural Republic. The notion of a radical *inclusive* America. You are now living in it. It turns against you. You freak out. You seek interpretation. You grab after what is there. It is not adequate.
You are not seeing the *nexus of relationship* between the Communist/Marxist groups and the rise of fascism as part of a resistance movement. A counter-attack if you will. How unfortunate that your interpretation remains so shallow! Right-leaning forms of an authoritarian nature rose concurrently with the infiltration of Marxist operatives. And Germany was going to be the next revolutionary front.
Does anyone other than myself see strong similarities with what progressives, social justice warriors, the left media, and antifa are doing in the USA and what the NAzi’s did in 1930’s & 1940’s Germany?
You can believe that I do. Brown Shirts coming soon.
Well, when did I first suggest that the Democratic party was acting like nascent totalitarians? It was at least as far back as October 2016.
Jack Marshall wrote, “Well, when did I first suggest that the Democratic party was acting like nascent totalitarians?”
It was October 20, 2016 · 12:19 PM in this blog post.
Thanks. I thought it would be around then.
Why, I ask, do you focus on Nazis when the better example is a) Maoist cultural revolution and b) Red Terror of the Bolshevik variety?
Trotsky:
Zinoviev:
@Z: Well, Antifa (at least in the U.S.) are obviously a Brownshirt equivalent, though, thankfully, less organized so far. The left tries to dance around this by claiming their actions can be tolerated because they label themselves as “anti-fascist” (while ironically behaving as equivalents of the Nazi’s violent minions).
I don’t use “progressive” either, as the term carries a bit of a positive connotation as implying movement towards a good outcome…”making progress”. For now, I just stick with “left”, “leftist”, etc., which has problems of its own, but doesn’t suggest any notion of an underlying good.
And, of course, they haven’t been truly ‘LIBERAL” for some time now…Rather controlling and repressive..
Two strikes for the biased media in one day. It’s getting more and more embarrassing.
Unfortunately, your characterization of my request for source (for which I thanked you when you gave it) illustrates quite clearly that you are not beyond “shading” info to suit your narrative. Makes me sad.
Fact: more than one commenter challenged my statement that the story had been debunked. Fact: the fake story proof was all over the place. I don’t doubt that you missed it, Michael. but you said you had searched, and this impugned my honesty (I spent over an hour tracking that story down.) How is it “shading” to say, “Others claimed that they couldn’t find any sources debunking the original story, which is a tell: they get their news exclusively from the biased mainstream media.”? is there another explanation?
I do not regard you as Trump-Deranged, you know that, and thus you know I was not referring to you with that description. I apologize for my phrasing that made you think I was criticizing anything but your research techniques (which are usually excellent) in this instance.
Yes, I admit that your challenging my statement, thus opening the door for more attacks, surprised and annoyed me. But then, as I said, I’m still very pissed off. Any attempt by me to break though the constant anti-President propaganda on Facebook is swimming against the tide, and I didn’t expect you to be bolstering the opposition.
But I was not shading. That’s exactly how I saw it and interpreted the exchange.
And I appreciate the thanks. I would have appreciated a little trust even more. I think I’ve earned it.
You certainly have.
Agreed. But I also doubt that those who asked you for a source (like me) were all seduced by the biased media. My question did not impugn — or was not intended to impugn — your honesty or integrity. Rather, I could not find the source and was asking for it so I could continue correcting those who do knee-jerk. (And, by the way, when I went to ABC to find the correction they had reposted the original story 2 hours before).
I accept that it wasn’t intended to impugn, Michael. But it felt like that at the time.
But I was also ahead of the accepted (wrong) narrative on Facebook, and got flack nonethless. Note that I assumed that the story was being hyped even before the story was definitively debunked. Why? Because I’ve seen this before, many times. Because I an suspicious when some equates “make America great again” with racism. Because I am objective, and capable of reisti g propaganda.
Now the New York Times admits that the story was distorted, while subtly trying to excuse itself. And Reason.
Here’s NBC finally doing some journalism rather than repeating hearsay: https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/young-man-d-c-march-video-denounces-outright-lies-about-n960801
I don’t know much about dramaturgy but the entire situation — black Biblical activists, American Indian activists, Catholic kids, and the whole strange scene (very postmodern!) could become the base for an interesting and intense play. For example, if they all wound up together having to struggle to survive in a severe storm, or if their vehicles crashed together on the highway …
The entire scene looks so totally absurdiste, and yet underneath each issue there is a great deal of solid material.
Do you think a modern day Edward Albee could pull this off? I read (and watched) Who’s Afraid of Virginia Wolff. It would be interesting if someone with his grasp of the emotionally intense and the deep underlying pain of situations left unresolved could come up with something…
This may be related.
http://reason.com/archives/2019/01/20/deplatforming
Deplatforming is completely unlike a baker refusing to design and bake a wedding cake for a same-sex couple.
It is just like a bakery supply shop refusing to sell flour to a same-sex couple because it might be used to bake a cake for a same-sex wedding.
Absolute agreement, Michael, this is asinine in the extreme.
I watched both of the stories you’re referring to. One thing i want to mention is how “polite” the young man stood while the Indian banged his drum over and over yelling at him about 2 ft away from his face. The young man didn’t waiver, not once. Just stood there politely. I don’t know if I could have done that. So what’s the answer? I’ve weeded all radicals and progressive “friends” and family out of my life. I have absolutely nothing in common with them because of ideology. I mean, what are we if we’re not what we believe in? Yes, Diane, the Dogma lives loudly within me. I have a lot of contacts in the sports area and it’s even permeated them. It’s everywhere. So, please Jack, don’t leave us. You’re about all we have left.
Having lived on both the Navajo and Hopi Reservations, my experience with Indians (I refuse to use the term native Americans, as they are no more native than we are) has been pretty much negative. Both reservations have an alcoholism rate of slightly over 75%, and the highest SAT score at the Navajo boarding school at which I worked was 16. Draw your own conclusions. Had I been present at this obvious provocation, I would simply have gently moved this obviously frightened and slightly intimidated young man out of the way, and replaced him. I doubt if Phillips, I think was his name, would have been willing to try this intimidating tactic with another ‘Nam vet. And, yes, I wear my baseball cap a lot.
Think you meant ACT instead of SAT.
At the time, Navajo Schools were using a California generated test of basic academic skills. It was roughly equivalent to either the SAT (Scholastic Aptitude ? Test) or the ACT. I want to say it was something like the California Basic Skills Test, but this was a long time (1985-6) ago and memory fails. However, this is tangential to the point…the individual scores on the test were abysmal. And the BIA didn’t seem to care. Nor did the Navajos themselves.
Update: Just spammed two more posts by banned Orrin. That’s five now. Not the record for refusing to abide by a ban, but closing in.
The last one was that old whataboutism classic, “the media owns up to its mistakes, but Trump never does.” Yawn. “mistakes” The “mistake” is not practicing ethical, objective journalism, and the media has yet to own up to THAT.
“One said that the Catholic School wouldn’t have apologized if the kids had done something wrong.”
Something? Or nothing?
Your typo? Or somebody else’s?
-Jut
As the odds would suggest, MINE. I’ll fix that. A missing “not” as usual.
1 Incompetent journalism
These friends you speak of appear to be weak-minded fools. Maybe you should reconsider your friendship with them.
2 Covington Catholic Full disclosure: I reside and have lived most of my life in Kentucky.
Consider these four tweets by John Yarmuth, the moron unfortunately elected by apparent morons to represent my interests in the people’s House:
Obvious joke? That was no joke, except in retrospect. Yarmuth would be quite happy to ban MAGA hats. When it fell flat and he got called out (and oh, he did), he crawfished like the crustacean he is. This guy is the worst of the worst.
He has yet to apologize for his “appalling” tweets, which blame the innocent, or at minimum the young and naive behavior rather than that of the old and experienced.
When I retire, leaving this town will be one of the highlights of my new life.
3 The Heriot et. al. research paper
We see this every day in people’s willingness to be led by the nose by the mainstream media. In fact, it’s unsurprising the media gets so much wrong. Pressure to make profits and get page views predisposes them to snap judgments and providing viewpoint selection which will get them the most attention.
Further Heriot et. al.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I find this unsurprising. People holding liberal views appear to hold them more tightly than folks holding conservative positions, almost to the point of religious fervor.
A fellow kentuckian! *fist bump*
So a group of Kentucky teens were going fishing on the Cumberland, across from Tennessee. As they prepared to set their poles, on the opposite bank a teen appeared from the underbrush and started making rude gestures at the Kentucky boys. One got offended, and swam the river to deliver a good thumping, just to keep the offender in his proper social place.
The boys disappeared in the brush, and the Kentucky boy did not return. The same Tennessee native came out and started making the gestures again. Now several Kentucky teens, upset that their friend may have been hurt, swam the river and chased the offender into the brush. This time, there were yells and loud noises, and again, the Tennessee boy came back out and started his routine.
Properly upset now, as large group of 12 Kentucky boys went to set things to right. Loud noises, crashes in the underbrush… then silence. A lone Kentucky boy comes crawling out, battered and bruised, to the river bank. “It’s a trap’ he rasps, “there’s TWO of them!”
I heard that one years ago, but it was the Red River, and the one kid was a Texas boy taunting some Oklahoma teens.
Well, until I was 12 years old, I lived in Bristol, TN. So I am the best of both states!
Back atcha!
Re Covington Catholic School. Who in the world would be surprised with what any Roman Catholic institution does? From The Vatican on down, pedophile priests have been defended, ignored, moved to new parishes to abuse other children, and most recently the Pope said in essence, it was the parishoners’ duty to pray for their priests, so if they are immoral, unethical, sexual predators, regular old Catholics just aren’t praying enough! The number of cities around the world with Catholic clerical abuse of children is in the 100s, and nothing is being done about it.
So why would a Catholic School bother to search for truth before making some blanket statement? Take your cues from the Pope, boys. First, the kids did no wrong. And second, if they had, whose fault would that have been? Had they not been praying enough for their priest schoolteachers, thus enabling them to act in a Christian manner? It certainly hasn’t worked for the clergy, and I have that straight from the Pope.
The greater Christian charity displayed by the actively harangued conservative teenager than his (obviously) liberal (heretical) diocese is not lost on ‘us’, believe me. I don’t think this behavior can be termed anything other than ‘abuse of a minor’; the lavender vampires are just finding new means of doing it.
# 2 When this came out, my lovely and long suffering wife (a career Lefty) was ding nigh inconsolably weepy.
I told her to bide her time because things aren’t always as they appear to be.
When evidence not supporting the narrative began to trickle in yesterday, guess who’s sources were the ones requiring…um…full body scrutiny?
Anywho, even NBC’s Today Show was walking it back this morning.
Seems the media has not only completely abandoned the more prudent Look-Before-You-Leap-If-Your-Mother-Says-She-Loves-You-Check-It-Out approach, but now appears to be actively seeking out big steaming piles of shit into which they spring head first.
“Seems”????
No kidding. And how did that feel having someone refuse to accept new revelations? 😉
Sorry, Jack, just hilarious to me to finally watch the shoe on the other foot. Thanks for the laugh, and for seeking out the truth in this incident.
Whoops! Meant to add, here’s a link to a longer video of the incident in case you want to post it or examine it for yourself.
So, it looks to me like the Indians came up on the Memorial looking for a fight. They went after the black preacher first, then went after the kids?
I haven’t seen any video of them going after the black hebrews. Looks like they were wondering around and then went after the kids. In one of the videos you can see the teens have their backs to Nathan Phillips who watches for a few seconds before approaching them.
Exactly what previous “new revelations” do you think you are referring to?
Oh, right. I forgot that you still think that Trump was not mocking a reporter’s disabilities when he did a dead-on imitation of a spastic and later lied that he didn’t know the man was handicapped. That’s not a “revelation.” That’s called “denial.”
It was arguably a spastic imitation, but the reporter in question did not have a disability involving spastic movements, and Trump does the same gesture when he mocks other people.
Still stupid, but not mocking a specific disability.
Found an article that breaks the whole thing down:
https://www.catholics4trump.com/the-true-story-donald-trump-did-not-mock-a-reporters-disability/
I saw that. I also have several that conclude otherwise. I saw the videos of the man talking and Trump’s imitation, and I’ve seen other imitations by Trump. As a state director, I have some expertise in such matters, and I just don’t buy the excuse. At all.
What’s the smoking gun, in your opinion?
Whoops. Didn’t see your embedded reply.
But again, similar. You argue the new information is irrelevant as well as special knowledge that grants you insight into the man’s mind. (I believe you meant “STAGE director”) As if Trump is disciplined enough to practice a move that would subtlety insult the target without ever vocalizing it. That I also find hilarious as I thought the most common complaint about him was the lack of filter and unrestrained id. Seems out of character then for him to be so subtle.
Wait, what did I type? I’m afraid to check…
lol you’ll have to use blockquotes to narrow down which part you mean
We could be talking past each other – X vs Y kind of thing. 😉
Oh did you mean what was the typo?
–> “As a state director”
Depending on the state could say a lot about your directing abilities. XD
I cannot find that typo!
It’s in the comments. I’ll repost the whole thing and bold the bit.
Jack Marshall
January 21, 2019 at 2:58 pm
I saw that. I also have several that conclude otherwise. I saw the videos of the man talking and Trump’s imitation, and I’ve seen other imitations by Trump. As a state director, I have some expertise in such matters, and I just don’t buy the excuse. At all.
The dust up you and I had in this post a few weeks ago. Your lament was making me laugh because I knew that feeling well.
Nate Winchester posted this extraordinary video. A true ‘document’. Very worthy of careful study I have to admit I watched it with my jaw dropped. Maybe I am overreacting … but …
This video offers a general prototype, a mold of a great number of ‘social movements’. (A template). Here it is shown absolutely raw. In others it has a different patina. But it is the same at an intentional level.
What this shows you is a Republic overrun with barbarians. I mean this in the sense of an accurate descriptive term. There is no other interpretation possible. Well, I guess there is but this is mine! This is the Republic you want? This is the ‘multiculturalism’ you worked for? This is what ‘America’ means today? This is what we are to unite around? This is what you are bombing other nations in order for them to create this sort of political and social nobility?
I think this requires a wee bit more thought!
These are barbarians. They cannot participate in your Republic. They have no intention of doing so. Yet you give them political power! Indeed, you have established it as a matter of principle. They are now overrunning the Nation. In the space of 50-60 years this is what *you* have created. Who else did it? In a few short years they will eclipse you. They have no good will toward you: none. Not a drop. You are their enemy.
And you are identified as such: Cracker, Peckerwood: everything that you and your people worked for and all that you love and value: they will trample on it / they are trampling on it. They see the structures that you built all around them, and their object is to tear them down. What could these people create?
What is going to happen — it is obvious and evident — is a cultural and political separation. These people cannot participate in the Republic and they are inimical to it. The original demographic, for all its warts and wrongs, but understand that this cannot go on. It is now time to see that political separation must be contemplated.
Either contemplate that, and act toward it, or you will have to accept being absorbed into the new demographic of barbarians and imbeciles. If that is what you desire, well then so be it.
Strangely enough, we reached almost the same conclusions from that video. The Indians came up on the Lincoln Memorial looking for a fight…or at the very least, someone they could vilify. Unfortunately, they ran into a black evangelical preacher and a bunch of young men who had no clue how to deal with them. Sad, that, but you are right…the barbarians have snuck past the gates and are among us. Unfortunately, I have no clue how to fix the problem. Your thoughts?
The way I see it — I think this has been constant in my writing — is that I accept that these people (in this case African Americans and Indigenous) have a total right to their sentiments and their ideas. I think I have that view because I have read extensively Black Liberation and American Indian liberation literature.
The will and the desire to create a Multi-ethnic and ‘egalitarian’ society arose, I guess, in certain people with high idealism. It came on the scene in the 1950s but it had been developing in the 20s and 30s. Some part of the intellectuals who dreamed this up have definite Marxist/Communist connections. And some too are oriented more from their Christian principles.
But the establishment of the Multiethnic Republic was, largely, an economic decision by powerful players — the Rockefeller class. The creation of this ‘New Republic’ required social engineering. That means both public relations and propaganda and the intrusions of intelligence agency operatives as well as police-military intervention as for example in the forced integration in the South.
This points to ‘shadow power’ that operate para-democratically: backroom decisions and what I call *impositions*. My understanding is that the cultural and social (and economic) world we now live in in the US was a creation by powerful cliques and factions with business interests. The nature of their interventions is what ‘social engineering’ means. In their Machiavellian efforts to create ‘the Great Society’ they have done, in truth, tremendous harm. And one of their greatest misdeeds was to have deliberately chosen the path of demographic dilution: to have shifted the demographic from 90% European-American to now 65% European-American. We now live in their ‘Walmart America’. These people are not patriots, they are traitors. They represent the class of individuals that in Plato’s Republic are those to whom decision-making power should never be given.
The model that they have created is a pseudo-America. It is similar in this sense to a TV production, a spectacle that cloys and tricks. They present this image of *America* that they have concocted and jazzed up into a smoke & mirror show and they say ‘This is our strength!’ This is why we are ‘great’! This is what ‘freedom’ is and this is what is worth dying for. And they then say this is what America always was. It was this in embryo and now, thanks to *them*, it is now in its perfected form.
The larger portion of this is lie. The nature of these lies are that they infect the mind but do not reach the heart. The ‘heart’ is where one’s *identity* is found, one’s fundamental conviction. Walmart America with its layers of empty assertion is no part of the heart. If it really were America would not be in this crisis! The heart is what carries life forward.
This false American Dream, this engineered America, this pathetic Walmart imago, is cracking apart while we watch. However, we have been trained to believe that this is our “hearts’ desire”, our genuine love, that is disintegrating. It is not. What is disintegrating is the lie and the deception and the engineering intrusion supported by shimmering TeeVee images. Not only in America of course. But as part of a larger phenomenon which, I suggest, has to do with people discovering their ‘true heart’ and jettisoning the structure of false sentiment that powerful elite players use to control and corral them.
In my view the first order of business is clarifying vision, clarifying perception. What this means, if you take what I have written here as a guide, is seeing through the false narratives. This is interpretive work. It has to do with arriving at what amounts to a counter-interpretation to propaganda and public relations *stories* that have been presented, essentially to children. It has everything to do with education and to indoctrination which has become infused with 1) general perception and 2) self-definition.
The project of reinterpretation is an intellectual and philosophical one. In my own case it has involved *jumping over* the established narratives concocted mostly in the Postwar, and jumping back to what can fairly be described as classically Liberal viewpoints.
I will mention two classically Liberal philosophers and historians who are now thoroughly vilified in America: Lothrop Stoddard and Madison Grant. They foresaw everything that is now occurring. They gave the warning 100 years ago. They were dismissed and rejected. Their grasp of things is not ‘radicalism’ and it is not ‘extremism’, it is (I only came to realize this recently) pure common-sense Liberalism. The basis of good, solid, clear-headed European thinking.
My view is that we can only consider ourselves to be in a period of intense research, conversation and reanalysis. The only way forward is to clarify, with acid eyes, what is really going on and why.
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The other part, or another part, that I am beginning to conceive as needed is a stance that must arise in response to anyone who suggests the elimination of whites or white culture. The ‘tic-toc time’s up’ narrative [an essay written that used the refrain ‘tic-toc time’s up for white people’], any suggestion of violence against whites as whites (exactly the language one sees in the above video used against those white kids); any use of terms such as “dumbass f****** white people” or statements that celebrate that soon [whites] “all go extinct soon”, should mark the point where internal toleration ends. That is, if you say such things it must be understood that you really do mean them and that this indicates, absolutely and finally, that *you* cannot share the same space with *us*.
And finally the building of relationships — intellectual and cultural — between European America and those people in Europe (and the former English colonies, as well as South Africa) who are concerned about all that is going on.
To recover the capacity to think freely and to get out from under coercion.