The brilliantly orchestrated news drop
Here’s a piece about how brilliantly orchestrated the “Trump the sexual harasser” news drop was.
A careful drip, drip, and then a flood.
Wouldn’t it be nice if the right could learn how to do this? There’s a little problem, though: the whole thing must be coordinated with a cooperative and willing press. For the right, most of the time (or perhaps all of the time), even bigger news can’t get traction because instead of spreading the news, the press stifles it.
That is quite the uneven playing field. And yet—unless the right can come up with better alternative news sources, and plenty of them, and do it quickly—that is the playing field we’ve got.
And here’s an interesting piece about what we’ve learned from Trump’s campaign, although I can’t say I agree with everything in it. I object in particular to this, at least in part:
One huge advantage held by professional politicians is that they’ve already been vetted, faced opposition research. Trump, despite having been a public figure for more than 30 years, never faced the same scrutiny, as we learned in the dizzying final weeks of the campaign. Why? Because it was never in anyone’s direct interest to take him on. If he had run for any significant lower office, the resources of a political party would have been focused on destroying him by digging up dirt from his past. Any public figure with skeletons in his closet should assume they will be not only found but fetishized.
There’s certainly a general truth to the fact that a professional has usually been fully vetted. But for Trump, it isn’t relevant, because as a public figure for many decades, for Trump all the information was out there. No, we didn’t have that Billy Bush tape, but we already had its equivalent (or even worse), and it was all just out there to be easily obtained by Googling or reading a basic biography. I did it; anyone could have done it, too. I wouldn’t even dignify it with the word “vetting.” It required minimal effort, and there was such an embarrassment of riches that it was impossible to cover it all.
The press could have easily done it. Candidates could have easily done it. The latter were afraid to do it—as I mentioned two days ago—because they thought they could wait for the other candidates to drop out first, and they didn’t want to draw Trump’s considerable fire prematurely.
This is not 20/20 hindsight on my part. I wrote about the phenomenon in January of 2016:
Commenter “Wooly Bully” said that “Trump has a very large closet that holds many skeletons.”
I don’t know about Trump’s closet; the phrase usually refers to something heretofore hidden.
The thing that strikes me about Trump is that a great deal of his bad behavior is out in the open, fully accessible. And his behavior had been very bad. I don’t mean things like infidelities, although that’s certainly part of his past. I mean things that are directly relevant to his ability to govern.
The material is fully accessible, as I said””I’ve encountered quite a bit of it, and probably only the tip of the iceberg, because prior to this campaign I’ve never had the slightest interest in Trump’s biography. But it’s right there in public, in terms of articles and books. However, it’s not common knowledge to most people…
This information is all in the public domain, and so far his opposition isn’t using it. Perhaps his GOP opponents haven’t used it so far because they thought he’d fade on his own. Or each one of them didn’t want to become his special target. Or they thought they could attack him on his politics. That hasn’t seemed to work so far. But it seems to me that, if a guy is making a lot of promises to you, and telling you what a great negotiator and dealmaker he is, and that’s why you should elect him””he’s a doer who does great things””you’d do well to look at some of his deals that went bad, his behavior during them, and the consequences. If he’s a liar, he might just be lying to you.
One thing I think we can safely say is that the Democrats will use this stuff against Trump if he is the nominee…
In that piece I focused on Trump’s behavior in Scotland when building his resort and predicted that the Democrats would use this line of attack in the general, pointing out his anti-common-man and elitist stance there. Although I was wrong about that—it turns out that the Democrats haven’t needed to use it because they found other avenues that give them more bang for their buck—I certainly expected many other lines of attack from them, as well. Many. The two they seem to have fastened on have been the sexual stuff and the idea that Trump is a loose cannon who might start a nuclear war.
[ADDENDUM: In terms of a successful news drop by the right, I recall the Swift Vets in 2004. I don’t have time to go back and look at all the sources right now and link to them, but to the best of my recollection the Vets tried to get their story out to the press in a press conference and with press releases, and it was barely covered initially. That’s why they ended up putting out a book and some ads, in an attempt to get past the press. The press reacted by smearing them (as of course did the Democrats) and trying to debunk them. But it didn’t quite work; the Swift Vets are considered to have been at least somewhat instrumental in Kerry’s defeat. It helped that Kerry was such a terrible candidate, and that he had relied so strongly on his military history in promoting himself.]
While I agree the left owns the means of getting information out to a large part of the population, we must also admit Trump has managed to get plenty of publicity without paying for it. Sure, some of it has been negative, but reflect for a moment on how much money Trump did NOT spend during both the primary and general campaign, yet he has received abundant press coverage. I don’t remember the figures now, but I do remember thinking at the conclusion of the primary that his expenditure for press coverage was minuscule compared to what his opponents had spent.
Now that we’re in the general, most of it is negative. That’s in the nature of a liberal Fourth Estate. Still, he can’t be accused of having slight name recognition!
If he did have a political background, the media would savage him with that as they would have done it to Cruz if he’d won the nomination. Distorted as necessary and convenient.
Even if the right learned how to do this dripdrip thing, it would never get traction if the MSM did not wish it to have traction.
The Case for Hillary Clinton has never been anything more than Not Trump. The case for Not Trump has never been anything that has not already been excused and suppressed by the press many times on behalf of Dem candidates (inexperience, shifting/inconsistent political opinions, incompetence, sexual misbehavior, vulgar opinions, racism).
The media is picking the winner. Don’t let them!
The media are getting plenty of help from Trump himself, especially from the now “unshackled” one.
Paul Mirengoff at Powerline looks at Trump’s continuing bizarre behavior and nails the reasons for it:
AMartel:
Nice try, but no.
As I wrote the other day, it is a given that the press would have attacked any GOP nominee with great vigor. But Trump was uniquely vulnerable to these attacks on a host of topics. That—among other things—is what made him a weaker candidate than the others, and more likely to lose than virtually any of them. The attacks have no trouble getting lots of traction with Trump.
You also write, “Even if the right learned how to do this dripdrip thing, it would never get traction if the MSM did not wish it to have traction.”
Untrue, as I pointed out in this post, with the ADDENDUM about the Swift Vets. It’s hard, but it can be done. I am convinced that there are few people on the right with the patience and guts to do it.
It’s a given that Republican candidates will be attacked. For instance, Romney gave a guy a haircut that apparently caused the guy to committ suicide a few decades later. But that doesn’t mean that we have to make it easy for the press. Compare and contrast the difference between the NYT’s claims that McCain had an adulterous affair with a lobbyist (which got shot down hard) with the stuff we’re seeing about Trump. The NYT ended up coming up with a ridiculously weak charge that was shot down by nearly everyone almost instantly for something that we’re not really supposed to care about anymore.
The press doesn’t have that problem with Trump.
Is some of the anti-Trump stuff made up?
Probably.
But we don’t know which stuff is made up because of the kind of person Trump is. It all sounds *plausible*, even if not all of it is true. If, say, Romney had been attacked like this, then people would have rightly rolled their eyes and mocked the press because the idea of Romney acting that way was absurd.
I wouldn’t be surprised if Mr. Trump was very angry at how this has all been reported. He has been a public figure for decades, and in all that time, those people—both public and private figures, journalists and celebrities and politicians, too—were happy to go to his parties, and hang out with him, and be photographed with him, and eat his food, and now they turn on him.
And for what? Mere words, and a kiss or two, compared to the far more significant actions of Bill Clinton, and what we now know of John F. Kennedy (apparently so reckless that some scandal might have come out that would have ended his administration).
And they say Trump is the one who can’t be trusted with the military, from the same people who turned Libya into a worse mess, and who seem to be eager to have a confrontation with Russia over Syria?
Trump can’t be trusted with the military because it appears that he couldn’t anticipate that the media would turn on him, now that he is an opponent of their preferred democrat. How would he fare when dealing with far less predicable threats to the nation?
For those who didn’t catch it earlier, Mollie Hemingway’s piece at The Federalist on this subject is well done too, I think (h/t to CV for the link): The Lockstep Partnership Between Clintons And The Media Is Bad For America
Hemingway captures quite nicely an aspect of the gaslighting and pooh-poohing which went on against early warners of the probability of these subsequent events, among other things.
The thing to remember is that these people, in their heart of hearts, are totalitarians. It’s all for the good of others but a “benevolent totalitarianism” is their motivation. Rationalized by the end sought justifying whatever means are necessary. Thus the dismissal of Bill Clinton’s sexual ‘peccadilloes’ and of Hillary’s criminality.
Coercion justified by good intentions has no natural limit. And tyranny… has an insatiable appetite.
Many Americans are proving Martin Luther King, Jr.’s astute observation, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
Many Americans are proving Martin Luther King, Jr.’s astute observation, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
I agree, GB, but probably not in the way you intended.
Could this be a contributing factor… trump blocking his campaigns own oppo on trump?
http://www.bloomberg.com/politics/articles/2016-10-13/trump-said-to-block-campaign-s-requests-to-do-self-opposition-research
If true that was extremely foolish, and no wonder they seem blind sided – because THEY ARE!
Perhaps not coordinated by the GOP and “conservative” media, is there not some kind of the same operation wrt clinton’s emails?
The Swift Boat story got traction back during the 2004 presidential election. It’s a different age now and I doubt it would get traction today. The stories about Clinton’s hypocrisy and double-dealing and constant lying are so much worse than Kerry’s ridiculous self-serving Viet Nam fictions but somehow they are not getting traction.
AMartel:
Then you are not remembering the Swift Vets correctly—the timeline of how it happened, and how extremely hard the media fought them, first ignoring them, and then attempting to discredit what they said and to smear them personally, as well.
It was every bit as bad an action by the press as anything that has happened since. Or perhaps it was even worse. The only reason the Swift Vets got any traction was through their own assiduous and tenacious efforts.
I remember it very well. I wasn’t a blogger myself yet, but I was doing my own private version of blogging, writing to friends to alert them about the charges against Kerry, and I followed the story hyper-closely.
I had heard that the group of veterans who served with Kerry were going to put out the news and I was looking forward to the public and press reaction, and instead the press simply didn’t cover the story, or covered it so summarily and downplayed it so much that most people didn’t even know it had occurred. Then the Swift Vets went past the press, wrote their book and promoted it, and launched a big ad campaign. Then the press started with the fake debunking (each of the debunkers’ points was easy to refute if you were familiar with the book, which I was, but they counted on the fact that most people were unfamiliar with it and would remain so).
In 2008 I wrote this post about some of these points.
More information here and here.
Neo:
Beldar, one of your commenters, was very active on the Swift Boat “controversy.” He may have had family that were in the know, I don’t recollect all the details.
AMartel:
Also, if Kerry had been running against Donald Trump in 2004, no one would have cared one bit about the Swift Vets’ tale. Kerry would have won, just as I believe Hillary Clinton will. And if she were running against someone with a better record than Trump, more people would be paying attention to her history, too.
It’s really quite simple. Candidates don’t run in a vacuum. They run against other candidates, and are weighed against them rather than some objective standard.
Bill,
Probably not but since I hold the opposite viewpoint in that regard, we’re even.
Geoffrey Britain:
You write:
It could just as easily read this way:
Insatiable on left and right, I might add.
“Many Americans are proving Martin Luther King, Jr.’s astute observation, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”” – GB
The words are true, but it matters the context.
Too many use that sentiment to dismiss others too easily.
Folks on “our” side dismiss the dems as “stupid” all too frequently, but then, look at the title of this article above – they are hardly stupid at all.
When “our” side does this we alienate those who we disagree with, but who might be persuadable.
Perhaps more importantly, we underestimate those leading the left with our dismissive feeling of superiority.
I do indeed remember how hard the Swift Boat veterans had to fight in 2004 which is why I think their story would not have gotten traction in 2016.
Elections don’t happen in a vacuum. Other elections are illustrative but not persuasive authority. There are too many other variables. One of the important variables that differentiates 2016 from 2004 is that the US population has had an additional 12 years of heavy-duty media conditioning. All those eps of weepy Real Housewives, etc., all the ancient Cosby gossip that magically turned into lawsuits, all that reality outrage in all its various formats etc. etc. ad infinitum informs the reaction to these allegations and Trump’s vulgar but by no means astonishing off-the-record talk. Another important variable is that a lot of people who were knowledgeable and cared about the facts (about the Viet Nam War and history in general) have died, to be replaced by millenials who think GW Bush is responsible for more war deaths than Stalin (or whatever the horrifying statistic about millenials du jour is). Our collective intelligence and respect for objective fact has been diluted and our collective Pavlovian and emotional responses have been further conditioned. It doesn’t take much.
I, too, believe that Cruz (or Fiorina or Walker) would have been a better and stronger candidate than Trump, but not by much and maybe not enough to win this election, either. Any and all GOP candidates are savaged with equal feverish hatred by the left/media. Weighing and balancing whether they are actually “good” or “bad” candidates is irrelevant to the left. They just destroy. Don’t think for a minute that the 2016 media would not have found weak spots, real or imagined, and drilled down for all they were worth, just as they are doing to Trump. All that dirt that Trump threw up about Cruz during the primaries, that no one but the trump true believers actually believed, would have come back x100 along with unquestioned “proof.” Sounds stupid out of context but then so does the belief that these ladies waited years and years, until just before election day, to “come forward” about sexual assaults by a rich guy or that NBC had this tape but didn’t know about it until just recently. 2004 may be the last presidential election that the media was not allowed to decide. They’re not aiming to let it happen again.
“It’s really quite simple. Candidates don’t run in a vacuum. They run against other candidates, and are weighed against them rather than some objective standard.”
My point is quite simple, too. The voters are not the ones doing the weighing anymore. Trump is bad in many many ways. I pointed this out in great detail during the primary. The primary is OVER. And Clinton is so much worse, by every measure including the ones that are being deployed to measure Trump.
I don’t dismiss the Dems as stupid, necessarily, but it’s hard to lose when you have so many weapons in the culture and the government and the means of communication on your side. I don’t think they’re brilliant either. They throw everything at the wall and whatever sticks, they run with it. They’re opportunistic, that doesn’t take brains. Clinton is not brilliant.
AMartel:
You speak as though your opinion is a self-evident truth.
I don’t understand why some Trump voters—and I include certain reluctant Trump voters here—cannot understand that their opinion is an opinion. You have arrived at that opinion based on your best analysis of the situation; I understand that. But please understand that NeverTrumpers on the right have arrived at their opinions based on their best analyses of the situation, and they differ with you.
Many of them simply don’t think Clinton is so much worse. They have their reasons; let’s say, for example, that they think Trump is far more likely to cause a nuclear conflagration. You don’t have to agree with that—you may think it’s absurd, or completely wrong, or whatever you happen to think—but understand that that is what they think.
People who disagree with you are not ignorant fools who simply don’t See the Light that you have seen. They disagree with you.
It may seem that I’m attacking you, but I really don’t mean to do so. I’m criticizing a lot of people who seem to not credit the opposition with good-faith disagreement, albeit disagreement on a matter of vital importance.
I see each side as having a good point, and I have no idea who is right or who is wrong. I know that the Trump early adopters have placed us all in a terrible dilemma, a lose/lose one, IMHO. In other words (as I said in some other comment), I think that the moment Trump clinched the nomination, Hillary won the election.
If everyone on this blog voted for Trump, it wouldn’t make a particle of difference to that result.
What about the current narrative that Trump wants HRC assassinated?
AMartel:
And by the way, I think most of the other GOP candidates would have beaten Hillary. Many of them were consistently beating her in the polls, and although plenty of dirt would have been flung, I think that it would not have stuck, particularly to those who are far more personally likable than Hillary (Cruz might have had more trouble than Rubio, for example).
That said, we’ll never know. We don’t have an alternate history; it’s your opinion vs. mine. But I knew that Trump was the worst candidate because of all the obvious dirt and his obvious flaws that made all the dirt so plausible and believable. The original pro-Trumpers were deluding themselves, and they often were quite nasty and insulting about it, and quite cocky and certain that he would win the general and that the media couldn’t touch him.
I don’t see a single one of them coming back here and saying they were wrong, and if Trump loses (and I expect him to), I don’t expect to see a single one of them making their apologies. They will merely be accusing others.
If I am wrong and Trump wins, I will say I was wrong in my predictions. And if he is a good president, I will be happy to say I was too pessimistic about him.
Neo:
“I’m criticizing a lot of people who seem to not credit the opposition with good-faith disagreement…”
It seems you make this statement about the various factions on the right, and if you exclude the alt-right, I agree. But it has been at least since 1972, a date many mark as the hostile takeover of the Democrat Party at their convention by the New Left Marxists, that there has been actual “good faith” about anything by the left.
Another point about the Swift Boat Vets is the the Left is still reflexively treating them as WRONG – by using terms like “he’s swiftboating his opponent” to mean (in their POV) that “he’s using false allegations to smear his opponent” — when in fact the SBVs were telling the truth, not smearing Kerry but outing him as a fraud.
Geoffrey Britain:
The thing to remember is that these people, in their heart of hearts, are totalitarians. It’s all for the good of others but a “benevolent totalitarianism” is their motivation. …
Coercion justified by good intentions has no natural limit. And tyranny… has an insatiable appetite.
Many Americans are proving Martin Luther King, Jr.’s astute observation, “Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.”
* * *
I’ll see your MLK and raise you a CS Lewis:
“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be “cured” against one’s will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
― C.S. Lewis, God in the Dock: Essays on Theology (Making of Modern Theology)
* * *
NEO: It could just as easily read this way:
The thing to remember is that these people, in their heart of hearts, are totalitarians. It’s all for the good of others but an “America first totalitarianism” is their motivation. …
Insatiable on left and right, I might add.
* * *
That’s the point about tyrannies: the actual ideology is irrelevant; it’s the conviction that they know what you should do (or, that they prosper most when they control you) that marks them out as to be opposed wherever encountered, even if among your own faction.
Socialism is a tyranny from the get-go, as Hayek conclusively demonstrated IMO; nothing it touches survives unstained, even if it starts with the best of intentions and the most compassionate goals.
Posted my earlier comment before I followed one of Neo’s links above.
It’s worth quoting more fully what she said in 2008:
I’m relieved to hear that there’s a new book dedicated to undoing the “swiftboating” of the Swift Vets–that is, the “swiftboating” directed, in Orwellian fashion, against them. The book is titled To Set the Record Straight, writeen by Scott Swett and Tim Ziegler. Here’s a review:
Time and again the book shows how major media either misrepresented the group’s claims, coordinated with the Kerry campaign, or went to extraordinary lengths (unsuccessfully) to discredit the group.
Back in 2004, I tried to get some of my Kerry-supporting friends to read Unfit for Command, just to see for themselves what all the fuss was about. To their credit, three of them did. Two of those people subsequently refused to vote for Kerry; and one voted for him anyway despite believing the charges in the book. But the vast majority of my friends simply refused to read it at all–they didn’t want to know what was actually in it; the MSM told them all they needed to know.
I’m glad someone has done this work to try to rehabilitate the Swift Vets themselves. But I’m not overly optimistic about its chances of reaching the very people who should be reading it. After all, “a mind is a difficult thing to change“–especially when it refuses to expose itself to information that might counter its entrenched beliefs.
Herman Cain was on Judge Janine’s TV program last night. He indicated that he sued the three women who falsely accused him of making advances during his 2012 Presidential race . It turned out TWO of the women were PAID MONEY to make those false claims. I think that is going on now with Trump. I wonder if the Clintons are using funds from their Clinton Foundation funds, George Soros’ money, the unions, or one of their foreign donors!
Neocon-I don’t feel attacked but I clearly prefaced my comment with “I think” and also put in “I believe” indicating an opinion. Not sure what else I’m supposed to do. My comment is my opinion.
Neo – I differ with you on what may be a single word.
You say that the “press” didn’t do their job of vetting Trump during the primaries. You may mean “media”.
In fact, the press — by which I mean the big newspapers and important magazines — did expose after expose of Trump during the primary season. (If you need examples, take a look at some of the Joe Nocera columns I linked to during that time. Or at the article (Atlantic?) that listed his 20 worst scandals.
But — as far as I can tell — the usual transmission belt from the press to the TV networks did not work, as usual. For whatever reason (and I suppose I should do a post about this), the TV networks did not hammer away at these scandals.
(One reason may be that, as Les Moonves confessed, they were making millions off their Trump coverage.)
As a result, those who got their news from TV got a rather different picture of Trump from those who were reading serious newspapers and magazines. And then got that picture reinforced when they started watching Trump rallies, uncritically, on line.
I thought that was self evident. Ha. And we are in complete agreement about many of the original, primary Trump voters. They’re jerks who don’t know what they’re talking about. I think (actually I know as a fact, having asked) they had this notion that they were getting their very own Obama who was going to direct the flow of free stuff their way. Also, the racial/tribalist element was extremely off putting. Orangebama. I think, given the absurd foreign “policy” and domestic agenda of the current admin that there’s an excellent chance that the we’re all going to be in a world of hurt no matter who is in charge.
And for what? Mere words, and a kiss or two, compared to the far more significant actions of Bill Clinton, and what we now know of John F. Kennedy
Oh, come on. This is pathetic.
a) you would never accept that about a Democrat. If Bernie Sanders had accusations like that you’d have been all over it. (There were Republican presidents with poor histories, but somehow only Democrats came to your mind? Why pick on JFK and ignore LBJ who was even less discreet?)
b) Once in office you think Trump would stop? You think given that sort of power and opportunity he would be able to keep it in his trousers?
c) “A kiss or two”. Sure, only if you consider groping people a “kiss”. Never mind his first wife accused him of rape until the settlement that made it drop.
This is why Hilary continues to look lead. When people excuse pretty much anything, provided it’s not Hillary, then the Democrat voters are pretty much given free rein to do the same.
You want to clean up the Democrats? Run clean Republicans. If you’d done that, you’d have won.
it is difficult for me to admire the artistry of news drops. the media today is shilling outright for a candidate who is visibly in poor health and about whom much evidence has been presented of her either breaking the law or performing so unethically that she qualifies perhaps to run a banana republic only. the collusion between the clinton campaign, the obama government, and the media is mind boggling to me. i am no pollyanna, but this is a dangerous path when opposition is not represented in America. also if i hit a tab or a cap everything disappears. apologies.
As many have noted, anyone who did not see this coming truly needs a weatherman to know which way the wind blows. (A nod to Bob.)
And yet–unless the right can come up with better alternative news sources, and plenty of them, and do it quickly–that is the playing field we’ve got.
Force the White House and other government organs to put bloggers like instapundit with the press rooms, as well as exclusive content and deals.
If you can’t compete directly with the “anonymous” sources of the Left’s MSM air wing, the alternative source isn’t effective. This is the art of propaganda as an adjunct of the art of war, rather than what most people use alternative news sources as, as a way to ignore the dominance of the MSM.
VoxDay, for example, has InfoGalactic, an alternative and in reality, an attempt to replace wikipedia’s market share. The key is to make yourself look similar to what you are replacing, but have different substance or content. Facebook also took over MySpace in the same fashion.
What most people do with the MSM, is they provide “alternative news sources”, which the MSM just copies or plagiarizes. It doesn’t reduce the MSM’s market share, it just adds to it, because the MSM has their own sources plus your blogger sources now, which they won’t credit.
Bittman Says:
October 17th, 2016 at 10:41 pm
Cain has a far better ethical and moral structure and spine than Trum. As such, they couldn’t find dirt on him so they made it up out of whole cloth, sorta like Bush’s military AWOL or Palin’s corruption.
Trum is an easier target because Trum is a 70 yo Democrat, that just happens to have won the Republican Presidential candidacy and nomination. A Democrat always has issues the media helped cover up before, because they were a Demoncrat first and foremost, for no other reason. Now they don’t need to make stuff up, they just need to stop hiding it.
Socialism is a tyranny from the get-go, as Hayek conclusively demonstrated IMO; nothing it touches survives unstained, even if it starts with the best of intentions and the most compassionate goals.
The Mayflower compact is a good example of what happens when people honestly and for the right reasons, start a commune. When it doesn’t work, the mayor changed economies. But the problem with human totalitarian tyrannies, is that the leader isn’t always honest or acting for the right reasons.
Christians have a habit of starting communes, on the division of property, due to stories in the Bible. But until they actually try it out, they don’t realize that free will and de-centralized control is an important part of ensuring that property is distributed well. It probably wasn’t the case that property was equalized in Biblical times, rather the clans and classes that had the most, voluntarily chose what and when to give clothes and food out. They were incorporated as various minor organizations, these clans and city councils. The end result was equality, of a sort, but the way equality happens is under the dominion of a strong or absolute leader or authority.
Any system of government is correct and righteous, if the leaders and the followers are correct and righteous. It doesn’t matter whether it is a theocratic oligarchy like Iran, an oligarchy of wise philosophical leaders like the Founding Fathers, or a representative democracy or republic. It doesn’t even matter if it is a dictatorship or monarchy. What matters is who is in power and who they are dealing with.
All a system can do is choose what type of leaders people get, or get rid of bad ones. The disadvantage of monarchies and empires, is that they are centralized, yet inflexible. When an evil comes to power, people obey it. When an enlightened king or emperor is in power, people become prosperous and safe. Democracies or Republics were designed to evade this up and down cycle, but it just lengthens it to centuries instead of years.
Chester Draws Says:
“You want to clean up the Democrats? Run clean Republicans. If you’d done that, you’d have won.”
We did – Perry, Walker, Jindal, Fiorina, Cruz, Carson, Rubio, even Kasich and Bush, all squeaky clean. And besides being actual Republicans, NONE of them carried the leviathan personal baggage that Trump has proudly made public his entire life.
There were actually so many “clean” Republicans that the conservative faction split their votes and the other Republicans split theirs, allowing the vile alt-right and Trump free rein to slime, smear and lie about the “clean” ones with the help of a couple billion in free media PR to Alinsky them with.
You either have a very selective memory about what happened in the primary, or you’re one of the “burn-down-the-damned-GOP” crowd.
We had a great chance for an honest-to-God, genuine principled conservative to take over the Republican Party this year and begin the long turnaround of this nation, and instead, as usual, we allowed the media to pick our worst candidate, a NY liberal Democrat, attention-whoring blowhard.
geokstr:
I was with you till that last sentence.
The media didn’t pick Trump. For months, at first, they excoriated him. His support built despite that. Certain media personalities liked him from the start, though (Limbaugh, Coulter, a few others), but certainly not “the media” in general.
Later on, the media played along and pumped him up, because he was so good for ratings. They were either sure he wouldn’t be nominated, or felt they could destroy him if nominated.
But people were free agents, and I don’t fault the media for this one—unless you consider the worker ants of Conservative Treehouse the media.
NOT orchestrated, Collectivist…
ie. they do not need to be orchestrated if they know what the collective goals are and they know because they are taught the goals instead of knowlege
Poll: Millennials desperately need to bone up on the history of communism
http://www.marketwatch.com/story/poll-millennials-desperately-need-to-bone-up-on-the-history-of-communism-2016-10-17
Students told term ‘be a man’ represents toxic masculinity
http://www.thecollegefix.com/post/29527/
‘Lesson made it seem like masculinity was an unacceptable human trait’
High schooler records teacher’s racism lecture: ‘To be white is to be racist, period’
http://eagnews.org/high-schooler-records-teachers-racism-lecture-to-be-white-is-to-be-racist-period/
Sorry, i forgot th money quote
There’s a lack of historical perspective, according to the foundation, that the survey showed among a big chunk of the younger generation. For instance, a third of millennials say they believe more people were killed under George W. Bush than Joseph Stalin.
i guess when feinstein laws were negated and the last one taken out of place (mentioned here at neoneocon by me), the implication was ignored in favor of jello or something… ie. cant we actually play “what happens next”?
for instance…
if the birth rate hasnt collapsed due to feminism as it did in russia, then why import people to replace them to preserve a tax base?
Robot Babies Used to Encourage Population Growth…
https://theconversation.com/robot-babies-from-japan-raise-all-sorts-of-questions-about-how-parents-bond-with-ai-66815
Driven by a declining population, a trend for developing robotic babies has emerged in Japan as a means of encouraging couples to become “parents”. The approaches taken vary widely and are driven by different philosophical approaches that also beg a number of questions, not least whether these robo-tots will achieve the aim of their creators.
every westernized state that follows that dictum has had a population collapse… but its like arguing 10 years ago what would happen in venezuela… no one can accept a fait accompli projection 10 years out in advance.
but note this.
we are teaching the majority (minorities now), that all whites are racist… what do YOU think will happen when they are a super majority (minority) and the others are the minority (majority) and that mass of indoctrinated people will want to exterminate the people responsible for ruining the world… (and the women that make them too)
pay attention peoples…
your watching fast passing nothings and completely ignoring the glacial changes that are even bigger and lead to even worse ends than any single election.
Artfldgr:
This post of mine from yesterday was about that survey.
neo-neocon Says:
“The media didn’t pick Trump. For months, at first, they excoriated him.”
If by picking, you mean affirmatively choosing or endorsing, I’ll agree, but that’s just semantics.
From the beginning, every time Trump said “lyin’ Ted”, or “Cruz is Canadian”, or “Cruz is for amnesty”, or “little Marco” or “pathological, homicidal maniac” about Carson, and much more, which was almost every time he spoke until each dropped out, that was gleefully re-broadcast into tens of millions of LIV homes.
Early in the primaries, you discussed polls that showed Rubio, Cruz and others as having a positive rating with the public, and how they would beat Hillary if the vote were held back then, even before all the recent scandals about Hillary broke big and drove her negatives into the toilet.
So how did Cruz go from positive then to negative and unelectable now? I don’t recall anything that he himself did to shift the public opinion of him. The media, while perhaps not directly favoring Trump, were happy to carry his water to destroy his opponents. Remember, they knew all along that they had reams of dirt to throw at Trump, and that he would be easiest for Hillary to beat.
Cruz himself pointed out all the free publicity that Trump got from the media that allowed him to build his momentum. Ooooh, look at Trump having a super big rally! Here’s the highlights from his campaign speech, let’s listen in!!! Wow, that’s a lot of people cheering!!
Fox backed Bush and then Rubio, the establishment guys. Cruz was always an afterthought in the analysis. The conservative outlets were neutral as between Cruz and Trump. The mainstreams derided all GOP candidates while giving lots of airtime to Trump. And sitting on what is now being portrayed to be damning evidence of unfitness for office. Also, I believe one of the Wikileaks addressed how Clinton’s campaign viewed Trump, and to a lesser extent Cruz, as most beatable. And I think we know to a certainty that whatever the Clinton Camp wants, the mainstreams will move heaven and earth to deliver.
geokstr:
So you say that the media covering Trump is equivalent to picking him? I don’t think so.
No, his voters chose him. A plurality of people who voted in the GOP primaries. The media didn’t twist their arms.
At RCP today, as it stands, clinton has four paths (three of which are mutually exclusive) to victory with these swing state results:
1) Win FL
2) Win NC
3) Win MN, NV
4) Win MN, NH, ME
On the flip side trump must come close to running the table on the swing states (can only afford to leave 12 ec votes on the table – e.g. MN and ME)
Maybe the Right should start trying to level the playing field by making liberal “journalists” disappear mysteriously.
“Maybe the Right should start trying to level the playing field by making liberal “journalists” disappear mysteriously.”
As someone said a few months on his blog (I can’t remember if he repudiated again and went back to Trump) – I didn’t join the conservative movement to become a fascist.
I hate this election season. It has poisoned everything.
@Bill – that was Ace from AOS website, who then “recanted” (by action, not by words, unless I missed them), and excoriates conservatives who cannot bring themselves to vote trump.
He’s been one of those I categorize as “talk like a loud know it all” bloggers / media personalities – this seems to work to gather followers / audience.
IRL, that has been a red flag for someone to be wary of. Since 2012 that has become a red flag for me on “conservative” media as well.
That probably works because people realize they each don’t have all the answers, so they gravitate to someone who sounds like they do.
Con Man is short for Confidence Man.
Any press that successfully demonized Romney could pull it ou out on any Republican. Truth is irrelevant. If there is nothing they will simply make it up out of whole cloth and keep repeating it.
Rubio just cautioned against trusting Wikileaks because it might be disinformation. It makes me wonder what they have on him. Luckily I have not voted in the Florida elections yet.
I eagerly await the next Wikileak – there must be a lot there for Kerry to have leaned on Ecuador to shut him down.
fiona:
But as I’ve said many many many times, Trump was uniquely vulnerable, and it didn’t require much digging, and all the bad stuff was extremely believable, and some of it was in his own words and already in the public domain.
There is no analogy. None. Of course, the press would have tried to work its negative magic on any GOP nominee, as they always do. Trump gave them a golden opportunity.
I wrote an entire post about this recently. Please read it.
Right. There is a difference between lies that are exaggerations and/or are demonstrably false, and using the candidate’s own words and behaviors to make the case against him/her.
Recall that the “demonization” of Romney were nowhere near the depths of issues that they pillory trump on.
47%, bullying 40+ years ago a fellow student, dog on crate atop their car, binders of women, etc.
They pale in scale and scope to what is brought against trump, some of which trump brings on in real time – e.g. talking over clinton in the debait – adding to his bully image.
The Left preferred Trum as a puppet to beat, because the last time they tried to make stuff up, Dan Rather AWOL caught up with them.
See, the BEST propaganda is 99% truth. It’s not 99% deceptive false lies.
The Left has probably figured that out. Has the rest of America?
They pale in scale and scope to what is brought against trump, some of which trump brings on in real time — e.g. talking over clinton in the debait — adding to his bully image.
he’s a 70 yo Democrat robber baron. They’re not much different than Ted Kennedy or MPAA or the Democrats that looted the housing crash.