On the fine art of describing something before it occurs
According to the MSM and pundits on the left, Trump’s 4th of July Mall appearance and speech was going to be a partisan usurping of a national holiday.
It wasn’t. It was this:
…[A] soaring presidential address — a celebration of the greatness of our country. “As we gather this evening, in the joy of freedom, we remember that we all share a truly extraordinary heritage,” Trump said. “Together, we are part of one of the greatest stories ever told — the story of America.”
He went on tell that story — from our struggle for independence, the fight to abolish slavery and secure women’s suffrage and civil rights. He called out the many great Americans who “defined our national character” from the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Frederick Douglass, Harriet Tubman and Jackie Robinson. He celebrated our inventors and explorers — from Lewis and Clark to Thomas Edison, Alexander Graham Bell, the Wright brothers, Amelia Earhart and the Apollo 11 astronauts.
One would think that Trump’s critics might have made sure they had advance copies before making such assertions. But apparently not. So why did they make them, and risk looking like fools themselves?
I submit the following modest speculations, which are neither mutually exclusive nor completely exhaustive:
(1) In their hubris, they think they actually know exactly what he will do, despite having been surprised by him many times.
(2) They need to fill up air time with something to feed their readers/viewers, and trashing Trump is always good for ratings or traffic.
(3) They are used to making errors which are then forgotten and/or excused and/or rationalized, and it’s on to the next criticism.
(4) They know that most of their readers/viewers were not going to watch the actual festivities or hear or read the actual speech anyway, so they can say what they want about it in order to feed the “evil Trump” narrative and for the most part they can get away with it.
That WaPo article I linked in the first paragraph, and quoted in the third, is from Marc Thiessen. If you read the comments (I read only the first bunch) you’ll see evidence for the fact that those who made the Trump predictions have nothing to fear from their audience in terms of criticism. Here are just a few of the comments:
“Here’s Marc, again, trying to agitate and stir up foment with hyperbole and utter nonsense. I never read his crap, preferring just to come in here and rattle his cage.”
“I didn’t read that drivel either.”
This one, after conceding that other previous presidents made speeches on the Fourth: “Truman, Kennedy, Ford, Clinton, Ford, Bush and Reagan were not elected by the Soviet Union or Russia and whatever they did as president was intended to benefit the U.S.A. and not themselves personally or the leader of Russia.”
“Columnist is just a slavish lackey used as click bait.”
Propaganda works—and although you can’t fool all of the people all of the time, if you can fool enough of them enough of the time, you can win.
After the fact, I watched Trump’s speech. IMO, he did a fine job of portraying the beauty of America as founded. He touch upon the evil of slavery and the other unfortunate faults of America and how the country seeks to correct its mistakes.
If any more evidence were needed for the accuracy and truth of the accusation leveled against the MSM, that they “hate Trump more than they love America,” this would be a strong piece of evidence for the truth of that accusation.
Each one of the major networks had a chance to do the kind of a public service broadcast that was just pretty much routine before Trump–to broadcast a patriotic celebration of America, its History, and traditions on the 4th of July.
But, because of their white hot, their tremendous hatred and disdain for Trump and all who support him, out of spite, they declined to provide coverage.
America has too many dumb, uninformed, clueless people, and it actively hurts our future, and it’s getting worse year by year.
And, the irony that is the cherry on the sundae, they think *they* are the smart ones.
Pre-description, post-description, there will be no quarter given. None. Whatever it takes.
NewsBusters’ Curtis Houck reviews CNN’s post speech analysis panel: https://www.newsbusters.org/blogs/nb/curtis-houck/2019/07/04/morbid-heres-worst-parts-cnns-deranged-hatefest-after-trumps-fourth
America has too many dumb, uninformed, clueless people because, to quote a wise man:
“The media covers the new with a pillow, until it stops moving”
It is astonishing to me that Trump maintains the positive poll numbers he has despite the media being 95% against him, hand-in-hand with the SJW democrats. When the media don’t outright lie about Trump, they just refuse to report what is really going on.
The same thing is going on in our schools. The “woodstock generation” became teachers and professors and have filled the heads of the succeeding generations with hatred for America. Never the good, always the perceived evil. They do not teach history or civics. Heck, even law students at Harvard do not need to study the Constitution. All that stuff was written by dead white European males. And our Constitution is “a 100 year old living document:.
The Gramscian March through the institutions is nearly complete, and the Cloward-Piven strategy of breaking the nation is in full swing.
Point #2
If any more proof were needed that the Left also hates and despises our military, here it was.
I note the Lefty MSM talking head’s attempts to fool, and to make their dwindling number of viewers believe that such a display of a few armaments is extremely unusual, is, to use one of the favorite charges these days, “un-American,” and a sign that the Trump dictatorship is just a mad giggle or two away from happening; is just around the corner.
Another attempt to re-write and/or erase History, since over the course of our history as a country we’ve had a fair number of military parades, and several past Presidents have had similar military displays.
Hell, such parades–if smaller–were common in our early history, and Jefferson and Adams had them.
At the end of the Civil War President Andrew Johnson and Gen. Ulysses H. Grant put on a parade that featured 200,000 troops marching down the street in Washington, and, more recently, according to the article linked below, in both 1953 and 1957 Ike had military parades that featured not only tanks but atomic cannon as well, in 1961 JFK had loaded missile launchers parading in front of the reviewing stand and nuclear warheads, and in 1991 there was the Gulf War National Victory Celebration.
BTW–As for those awful, ominous tanks, all I saw were a couple of beat up–not even new and shiny–tanks parked, on static display, for people to get a glimpse of, and the flyover featured in total a few more than a dozen aircraft.
Hardly an ominous and intimidating display of weaponry.
(I remember back about, say, 15-20 years ago, when–for several days–the Washington Mall was covered with examples of various major weapon systems–aircraft, tanks, artillery, communications equipment, etc., this event put on, courtesy of various major defense contractors.)
See https://www.dailysignal.com/2018/02/07/americas-long-history-military-parades/
The WaPoop comments section is unfiltered, uninformed gibberish from dolts who put on black masks and cold-clock their critics at every opportunity.
Sad.
God bless America.
I watched the speech and got shivers with the fly-overs – it was great! During the 100th year celebration of Oklahoma statehood, the stealth bomber flew over the parade course and that was amazing.
I live just north of OKC, west of I35, so I look at the flight path of Tinker Air Force base. I’m used to the noise of the AWACS, but generally go out the front door to see what else is flying by. Please note that I am not running out the door to check – you can hear the planes coming and going. The planes are not always flying into Tinker, but with several training bases in OK, the pilots do fly up to central OK for touch and go landings at Tinker as well as Will Rogers Airport. Once the new KC- 46 refueling tanker gets delivered, the base is in KS, training will be in OK and the maintenance will be done at Tinker. So, I’ll be seeing those someday.
Airshows with military planes are always well attended since it is always amazing.
Too bad the 2018 parade for the end of WW 1 was nixed. It would have been great way to celebrate, but of course it was panned by the idjts.
They aren’t reporters, they are journalists. They don’t report what happened, they make up stuff. They don’t let the facts get in the way of a good narrative.
We turned on CNN that afternoon to learn about the California earthquake, and I was surprised at how much worse CNN is than it was the last time I watched it, maybe a year ago. The talking heads were dripping with disdain about the upcoming event. The essence of the report what the Democrat candidates were saying, they had a clip of Warren calling it a campaign event (“he’s giving tickets to his donors!”), a clip of Mayor Pete who frowned on it for reasons I don’t remember, and I think there was a third Dem as well. As if those are the only people whose views on this matter!
I was shocked to learn that most of the networks didn’t even cover it. It seems that the polarization is worsening even more quickly than I realized.
Sarah Rolph–The MSM has rather neatly sorted itself out, hasn’t it?
Trump is a Rorschach card, and when they look at it, they all see exactly the same thing.
Another “fine artist”?
https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7220335/Britains-man-says-Trump-inept-Cables-ambassador-say-dysfunctional.html
Sir Kim, Barry, taken at the apparent face value of his leaked (candid?) remarks — who is leaking them, I wonder, and why now? — is the sort of chap who might induce one to muse further whether the vaunted “special relationship” between the UK and US remains true to claim, or has, on the contrary, run off the road into a morass (a swamp, possibly even) fraught with all manner of danger to both parties.
Perhaps it’s time for us too trusting peons to reassess what the grandees are selling and to regard Great Britain with a sterner eye. These jokers may not be our friends at all, so far are they from being “special” friends. And if, for some temporary or practical purpose the former pretence remains, we may let it suffice us to know it for a sham.
“…who…and why now?…”
Well, yes. Who is trying their very best to discredit whom?….
This seems like pure “echo chamber” material, given greater credence—perhaps—coming from the mouths of “sirs”? So is it a last ditch, last gasp, effort BY the “Deep State” on BOTH sides of the Atlantic to stem the tide? Or/And(?) is it an effort by pro-Trump forces to undermine the Deep State? Is the leak somehow related to Brexit? (In any event, Britain is, ironically—or perhaps more accurately, unfortunately—in a relatively weak position, at the moment, when it comes to the question of “coherence”.)
(To be sure, one must pay attention to the chronological aspect of the leaks at play here.)
Or perhaps it is purely a personal matter? Does someone have it in for the ambassador? (Is there a Clinton Foundation connection, perhaps echoing the “curious” case of Alexander Downer—another “Sir”?) It need not be mentioned that the shenanigans of Christopher Steele (not a “Sir”) also come to mind….
As for “Great Britain”, one may well ask (as one could ask of the US), “Which Great Britain?”…
…Seeing that just several days ago, the Royal Navy seized an Iranian tanker, preventing it from reaching it purported destination, Syria—this while, according to Sir Kim, Trump’s current policy vis a vis Iran is “incoherent”. (But one might also ask, might such seeming “incoherence” be advantageous?…Since, no doubt, Obama’s policy vis a vis Iran was for all intents and purposes most definitely “coherent”.).
All of the above?
Some of the above?
None of the above?
More than the above?
Much, much more than the above?
ISTR one of the ‘intellectual’ NY mags publishing an article about the Republican convention nominating GWB for his second term.
The date the magazine had to go to print was *before* the convention.