Losing children? It’s only news when the right does it
Last week, Axios reported that the Department of Health and Human Services has lost contact with more than 4,500 children who’d crossed the border illegally after it had released them into the country. That’s a third of the migrant children it was supposed to be tracking.
But don’t worry – the MSM is on it.
Not:
As of Sunday, the New York Times hadn’t mentioned it. Nor had the Washington Post. Nor any other major newspaper. There’s been no mention of the findings on the network news, on CNN, or on MSNBC. The story has been picked up only by some conservative news outlets.
This is all in glaring contrast to the reaction to the New York Times report in May 2018 that the Trump administration had lost contact with fewer than 1,500 migrant children.
That story set off a tidal wave of outraged news articles, commentaries, and tweets. Every press outlet covered the story. Reporters demanded answers from White House officials. The hashtag #WhereAreTheChildren started trending on Twitter – peaking at 35,000 mentions an hour.
Politicians and celebrities joined the frenzy.
The MSM does this because it works. It’s as simple as that. There is no guiding principle involved except that the news that’s fit to print is the news that favors left over right, and if there’s a story that cuts the opposite way, it’s best to spin it or kill it. They know that their readers will never read news from outlets on the right, which they are told give out “misinformation” and lies.
I don’t care how low the MSM sinks in the polls, or how many people get news from other sources, the reality that I see and hear is that the MSM continues to shape the viewpoints of a majority of Americans or close to it. The MSM members are neither stupid nor unaware. They are skilled politically-biased operatives who like to pretend they are objective. They are blatant in the skewed nature of their coverage, but because it still works to shape opinions they now are also shameless about it.
Talking about mis-reported news, I see now that Rolling Stone has retracted their story about Oklahoma ER patients being turned away because of a glut of ER patients presenting with Ivermectin OD problems. Whole damn story was bogus, and they finally (only took 3 days) took it back. I see lots of my leftist “friends” reported the original Rolling Story on Facebook; I wonder if they’ll report the retraction? I damn sure will.
Which raises a proposal: Neo’s readers should start writing letters to the NYTimes and WashPost asking if they will be reporting on the missing children. If we reach a critical mass, perhaps (who am I kidding?) they will do so.
neo writes, “I don’t care how low the MSM sinks in the polls, or how many people get news from other sources, the reality that I see and hear is that the MSM continues to shape the viewpoints of a majority of Americans or close to it.”
It thoroughly permeates the cultural and sociopolitical atmosphere. It’s the zeitgeist. It’s *everywhere*. It’s a major reason why, for example, almost any serious right-leaner can repeat very ably the left-leaners’ views on the major issues du jour, but so many left-leaners might come up with only a caricatured or snarky version of right-leaners’ views on those same issues.
Reference: Jonathan Haidt
Perhaps the greatest of delusions is to rationalize the embrace of evil. Blinded by ideology, clueless to a terrible irony. That truth stands upon its merits, it has no need for lies, nor does a just cause need the support of lies and deceit to withstand scrutiny.
In order to flourish, that a proposition requires deceit is definitive evidence of its illegitimacy.
No truly just world can be built upon a foundation that rejects rational examination.
A crop of anger and hate is a sure indicator of poisoned ground.
Do you know another name for the 4500 lost children who illegally crossed the border? That’s right, future gang members.
By rights, I should post this on the Open thread. But … since we are talking about children …
https://abc7chicago.com/chicago-shooting-mass-shootings-violence/11003112/
Chicago shootings: At least 60 shot, 4 fatally, in Labor Day weekend violence across city
6 children shot in 12-hour span
Includes a 4 year old boy.
Roofer dude:
I know another name – current child abuse victims.
I have to agree, Neo. The mainstream media still retains control over the narrative. I keep hearing conservatives talk about the internet, and while I know it makes it easier to hear the other side, the mainstream media have substantially more power in shaping thought. It is infuriating because, as you say, they are wholly and utterly corrupt. Fox News, for the most part, is in on the game as well.
I read the other day that a national poll showed that 89% of Democrats still approved of Biden’s job performance!
To coin a phrase… “Jesus H. Christ, lady. There’s your problem right there!”
Nothing will change until Your People (define how you like) own *and* control (two very different things) the NYT / WaPo + Networks + Big Tech + Ad Agencies, and the Ivies and everything down to Podunk State Teachers’ College.
Good luck with that 🙂
Gleichschaltung, Baby.
It’s not as easy as it looks. Not a game for genteel ‘Conservatives’ or dress up LARPers. And then having somehow won, you have to Hold. And how long do you think you and your successors can do that for? Current well-known records are 12 years, 36 years, and a slightly more obscure but really nicely done 43 years (Bacalhau FTW). South Americans don’t count in this game so leaving them out.
Progressivism is a Cancer driven by some flaw in the Western Cultural DNA — or possibly in some real bio DNA for that matter. You don’t get to cure it. It’s always metastasizing and requires constant clubbing down like a really bad day for a Baby Fur Seal. Who has the stomach for that around here? 🙂
To put it in really blunt and simple terms:
The Left can and always will defeat you on the Installment Plan. There are no policy tweaks and moral rearmaments or other mystical incantations in the Public Square can change one whit of this truth.
You can only beat them on the Night of the Long Knives Plan. And then you need (let’s not trigger any of you delicate souls too much) Sparta’s Krypteia and a formalized annual Purge to keep them beat. Also, Mistakes Will Be Made ™. And you must keep this up Forever. The slightest faltering and the cycle repeats. Any takers? And that’s the problem. Left can win by being ‘nice’ … You/We cannot.
Zaphod:
Why stop at DNA? Perhaps the Left is the political manifestation of entropy, the state of disorder towards which the universe tends.
Surely I’m not the first person to think of this.
@Huxley:
Entropy’s a Bitch. Unless you’re into encoding information, I guess.
Civilization has always been hard work. The really perverse bit is that the need for this hard work becomes more necessary the less apparent the need is. By winning we condemn our pampered progeny to losing.
There are hacks which work… but they require brutal pragmatism and rigorous pruning of the inheritance tree + adopting hybrid vigor when necessary — What’s kept some Japanese companies rolling along for centuries.
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200211-why-are-so-many-old-companies-in-japan
Needless to say the BBC article doesn’t refer to the bits about pruning the family tree and making sure only the most competent inherit and the rest get the boot… that’s just not GloboHomo. So as usual, GloboHomo talking points miss the point.
GloboHomo Media also pays little attention to how Foundations work in the West and how family wealth and influence is preserved.. You’re not going to read in-depth reporting on the Rothschilds, the Turn und Traxis family… and I’d predict that the relatively newish Quandts will be around and quietly loaded 500 years hence unless an asteroid hits. There’s thousands of these families. Ask anyone in Wealth Management. But doing it on a civilizational scale is Unsolved.
Zaphod:
Let’s take it easy with the bits-pruning talk…
Current problems notwithstanding — “The Future’s Uncertain and the End is always Near” and all that — there’s never been a better time to be human in terms of basic needs and even more advanced needs.
If things keep getting better overall, however unevenly and imperfectly, how pessimistic should we be? Are we not like Paul Ehrlich betting against Julian Simon in 1980 that raw materials will be more expensive in 1990, then losing badly?
@Huxley:
“bits-pruning talk”
Relax… this Lempel-Ziv won’t hurt a bit.
And all the Paul Ehrlich Club of Rome Types have mutated into GloboHomo Climate Changers who are hell-bent on pruning humans to a degree not envisaged even by me.
A Pollack or Ruthenian born in a Steel Town in 1970 America could realistically look forward to a better future. Did he and his offspring get it? Mostly nope. What they got was Fentanyl and Oxy.Contin. It’s sunny uplands for some.. I’ve done OK, so have you and most of those present here. But I wouldn’t call Progress and present trajectory an unqualified success. Not by far. We’ve unconsciously ridden the wave of a bumper crop of sown seed corn.
Cultivate Garden yes. Pangloss no.
Zaphod:
I did say “unevenly and imperfectly.” That was my Inner Whig speaking.
In the seventies I was an Ehrlichite. I figured if I made it to when the year turned over into the 2000s, I would be looting expired canned goods out of abandoned supermarkets.
So Every Day is a Blessing!
@Huxley:
Copped a compulsory enema of Ehrlich and Friends at university.. They were trying to turn us budding Engineers into Unabombers I guess. I never did take to Ehrlich. Also remember thinking with gung ho youthful disdain what a wanker Jacques Ellul was. Today I’m still for burning Ehrlich at the stake but find myself more and more sympathetic to Ellul’s thoughts on Technology.
I’ve got a giant stockpile of not-quite-expired Brazilian Corned Beef dating from 2019 Hong Kong Interesting Times and Early Days Covid prepping, if you’re interested. No guarantees implied or offered as to whether or not the ‘beef’ is CJD-free… Although I seem OK so far… My ataxia is more of the Strangelovian sort.
I came by Ehrlich via Stewart Brand and the Whole Earth Catalog. Brand had been a student of Ehrlich’s at Stanford and Brand passed along Ehrlich’s eco-pessimism in the Whole Earth publications.
Brand spun off a magazine titled “CoEvolution Quarterly” which had a regular feature titled “Apocalypse Juggernaut Hello,” which almost scarred me for life. However, said Juggernaut kept being postponed until further notice and Brand dropped the feature in favor of voluntary simplicity, mild cultural observations and living the good post-hippie life, while beginning the ascent into the PC Revolution.
Mentions of “Apocalypse Juggernaut Hello” have almost vanished from internet. One of the few is mine from 2015.
https://thelukewarmersway.wordpress.com/2015/01/28/climate-commenter-of-the-year-2014/#comment-6447
So, some of my resistance to conservative doomsaying is from being burned by the eco-apocalypticism of my youth and my subsequent discovery that humans are very resilient.
@Huxley:
Interesting… bet Brand later kicked himself for merely going commercial with a publishing venture and not co-opting the entire system of Western governance and finance to enrich himself Algorewise.
Did reading and commenting at that blog you just linked ever give you any kind of embolism? I know I’d soon blow a fuse. I just took a quick look and the blog owner @#$%tard was suggesting that if USA adopted a Green New Deal it would end up looking like Norway. Does this moron even *know* where Norway gets all its rivers of gold from?
@ huxley > “Perhaps the Left is the political manifestation of entropy, the state of disorder towards which the universe tends.
Surely I’m not the first person to think of this.”
Oddly enough, AesopSpouse said this very thing a couple of days ago!
Maybe you are joint first-prize winners.
Zaphod:
I believe Stewart Brand comes from a certain amount of money and class. He attended Philips Exeter and later Stanford. He bought into the sixties ethos, he was part of the Kesey acid scene, and he helped create the counterculture, while preserving an ornery contrarianism.
Money is not that big a deal with him. He’s lived on a tugboat in Sausalito for decades, which is fancy enough. He’s devoted himself to Big Think visionary projects, though with age he has slowed.
He’s one of the sixties guys whom I still respect. He remains an environmentalist, but he’s changed his mind about nuclear power and cities. He’s avoided stupid bad character stuff.
Disclaimer: I worked at Whole Earth for several months and I’ve been a stone fan of Whole Earth from the first time I saw the Catalog.
It’s worth picking up an old Catalog if you get the chance or back issues of CoEvolution Quarterly and Whole Earth Review.
Zaphod:
The ‘tard blogger you mention is Thomas Fuller. I wasn’t a regular at his place. We were unlikely comrades-at-arms at Keith Kloor’s Collide-a-scope blog, where we fought off the truly vicious climate change fanatics.
Kloor had one of the few blogs in the 2000s where climate got debated from both sides. Kloor was a liberal, climate change proponent but he did have an odd acceptance for free speech debate.
Fuller was a standard issue, old-school Democrat and journalist. He didn’t see through much of that, but he wasn’t a new-school Red Guard either. A decent chap.
Oddly enough, AesopSpouse said this very thing a couple of days ago!
Maybe you are joint first-prize winners.
AesopFan:
It would be an honor!
@ huxley
https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse1.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.RMOVHPYyjAYxBvkXifzdTgHaHa%26pid%3DApi%26h%3D160&f=1