Category Archives: Journalism

NEW COLUMN updated (12/2): Making Sense Of The Russia Monomania

Donald Trump, Iraq, Journalism, Russia, War

“Making Sense of The Russia Monomania” is the new column, now on WND.COM. An excerpt:

Periodically, America experiences episodes of mass, hysterical contagion.

What is “hysterical contagion”? A sociologist explains it as the spread of symptoms of an illness among a group, absent any physiological disease. It provides a way of coping with a situation that cannot be handled with the usual coping mechanism.

For example, in 1983, girls in the West Bank fell ill, one after the other. Soon, all the schools and finally the entire community was engulfed, affected with the same symptoms. Arab doctors implicated the Israelis. But of course. The Israeli Occupation had poisoned the girls by gas to reduce their fertility. When real doctors arrived on the scene to examine the neurotics; the girls were pronounced physically healthy.

The frenzied behavior known as mass hysteria or hysterical contagion is well documented. The Trump-Russia “collusion,” “obstruction of justice” probe qualifies, with an exception: This particular form of mass madness involves not physical symptoms such as those observed in the West Bank, but a meme, a story-line. Rumors for which no evidence can possibly be adduced are recounted as facts. Naturally licit behavior—such as diplomacy with Russia—is criminalized by a Federal Government that has enough laws on the books to indicts each one of us, if it so desired.

Indeed, the Establishment and opposition elites have poisoned the country’s collective consciousness. However, it’s the emotional pitch with which the Trump-Russia collusion group-think is delivered, day in and day out, that has gripped and inflamed irrational, febrile minds.

What sociology terms “a collective preoccupation” is fueled by organizational- and communication networks. Friendship networks and work organizations (think government departments infested with like-minded individuals) serve as nodes in a system that transmits faulty signals across the synapses of a collective, damaged brain.

The political storyline du jour is manufactured by America’s gilded elites. To this, DC operative Karl Rove confessed during the era of Bush II: “We’re an empire now, and when we act, we create our own reality.”

When you’re the most powerful entity in the world, as the US government certainly is—you get to manufacture your own parallel universe with its unique rules of evidence and standards of proof. What’s more, as the mightiest rule-maker, you can coerce other earthlings into “sharing” your alternate reality. Or else.

The manufacturing of Fake News by the Deep State, circa 2017, is of a piece with the anatomy of the ramp-up to war in Iraq, in 2003. (Chronicled in achingly painful detail in Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Culture.) Except that back then, Republicans, joined by diabolical Democrats like Hillary Clinton, played a lead role in dreaming up Homer Simpson’s Third Dimension.

Conscripted into America’s reality, Iraqis paid the price of this terrible American concoction. Hundreds of thousands of them were displaced and killed due to “Operation Iraqi Freedom.” …

… READ THE REST. The complete column is “Making Sense of The Russia Monomania.” It’s now on WND.COM.

UPDATE 12/2:

Fake News Fallacies And The Las Vegas Massacre

Ancient History, Crime, Ethics, GUNS, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media, Propaganda, Terrorism

Days following the Oct 1 massacre of country music concertgoers in Las Vegas, a CNN ego in an anchor’s chair, her name is Brooke Baldwin, continued to push her guests to reconsider guns already regulated. Is this journalism or activism?

Ms. Baldwin had previously (and shamefully) tried to extract an anti-gun “change of heart” message from a female country music DJ she interviewed. The young woman reacted with class, refusing to wade into the mire with Ms. Baldwin. I suspect Baldwin will continue her asinine lack of discipline. Come to think of it, there are no disciples any longer, are there? Baldwin and her pals on the late-night shows are activists, not journalists. There was a reason the ancients created the disciplines.

Ms. Baldwin further shed credibility by asserting that the shooter used automatic rifles in the slaughter. Not that it makes the man less monstrous, but the shooter (whose name will live on in infamy) used semi-automatic rifles. The bump-fire modification used is a LEGAL modification. As a member of the GabFamily said, let media morons think the Vegas shooter used automatic rifles. Let the dumb Left re-ban automatic weapons.

Some credible individuals, such as U.S. Army Reserve Lieutenant Colonel Anthony Shaffer, insisted the gunman deliberately targeted country music concertgoers so as to kill Trump Supporters. Was Stephen Paddock targeting Deplorables? As Jack Kerwick has argued, this is one perfectly plausible theory of the crime.

Another fallacy echoed by Fake News: Mass shootings are the purview of white males. Don’t listen. Look at this lineup of ghouls:

 

UPDATED (7/22/019): Is English Dead In England?

Celebrity, English, Journalism, The West, The Zeitgeist

Check out this paragraph in the Daily Mail. I did not read beyond it.

… it was noted that the star either went of his meds completely or starting taking less once the Keeping Up With The Kardashians star started experiencing anxiety after her robbery that left her bound and gagged.

From: “Kanye West’s breakdown …”

UPDATE:

Judge Andrew Napolitano’s juvenile style: “What if, what if, what if” times 12. WTF! A good editor would’ve demanded a rewrite.

UPDATE (7/22/019):

No, @JamesTrejo1945. But if you tweet, “LAYING on the bed, now,” instead of, “LYING on bed now, and LAYING tiles later on”—I’ll have a petite fit. ? Or, if you write, “I LAID on the ground,” instead of “I LAY on ground”: You’ll make me miserable.

CNN Journo Brian Stelter Declares It Dangerous To Question Integrity of System

Critique, Donald Trump, Elections, Government, Journalism, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Media

For a journalist to discourage an inquisitive stance, even distrust, toward government and the elections process is astounding. That’s CNN Journo Brian Stelter for you.

After a primary in which the delegate system, Republican and Democrat, was exposed for the truly iffy operation it is—the smarmy Mr. Stelter still inveighs against any skepticism at all about voting irregularities in America. To even suggest as much is “dangerous,” Stelter declared.

In his “Trump’s Biggest Lies” segment, Stelter offers non sequitur, assertion, as opposed to argument, and no facts for his position. This Stelter does not consider “a propaganda technique.”

One particular Stelter howler:

Journos “are not anti-Trump, they’re pro-democracy.”

In his assertion of no voter fraud, Stelter, a man bereft of an inquiring mind, fails to consider the redefining of what includes voter fraud. Indirect voter fraud. For example, the “Feds wrongly granting citizenship to hundreds facing deportation.” These, and many other recipients of “mistaken” grants of government privilege, might vote. Voting by illegals turned legal will result in a form of voter fraud, caused by government. This indirect voter fraud is not covered by law or considered by those researching voter fraud.

Brian Stelter is dangerous to journalism.