Meet the Press

I can’t stand to watch Justin Trudeau’s coronavirus briefings. There is something about the quality of his voice… feigned concern. He is too obviously an actor, and not a good actor. I feel my intelligence insulted every time.

Doug Ford is a little better, but still hard to take, for the same reason.

Trump was knocked for his apparent lack of compassion at his virus briefings. But I vastly preferred his approach, which was to give encouragement and hard information.

His new press secretary, Kayleigh McEnany, seems to have taken over the task. She is immensely entertaining to watch. But mostly for her takedowns of the press.

The media are behaving outrageously throughout this; they have become the last place to go for reliable news. Given the technological pressures they face from the new media, it looks like deliberate mass suicide on the level of Jonestown, Guyana. But then, it looks as though the Democratic Party is doing the same, with their nomination and resolute support of Biden and the House’s passivity and obstruction.

I wonder if this is all connected. Trudeau, and Ford, speak to the voters like children; and the left apparently likes this. The legacy media, and the Democratic Party establishment, are indeed acting like children, refusing to deal with unpleasant realities. They are instead throwing tantrums and making demands.

They are spoiled adult children: narcissists.

And one secret about narcissists is that they actually always want someone else to take charge. They do not want adult responsibility.

As a result, they are actually doing everything they can to re-elect Trump.

So Much for Canada's International Crredibility

Seems I'm not the only one who was shocked by recent CBC coverage of the Epoch Times.

I was delighted, by the w3ay, to find the Epoch Times's special edition in my mailbox.

I figure it's a collectable now.

CBC Drops Its Own Bomb on the US

The CBC coverage of the Iranian missile attacks on two bases in Iraq amounted to misinformation—“fake news.” The host referred to it as an “escalation,” indeed a “dangerous escalation.” She marveled at how accurate the strikes were and that they had gotten through American anti-missile protections. “What,” she asked her expert commentator, “gave the Iranians the confidence to do this?”

This amounts to an example of the principle that, when someone has committed themselves to lying, they tend to say the opposite of the truth. The Iranian response was more like the minimum needed to save face. There were no casualties; not a sign of accuracy. And that is all they had to go on at that point. As to getting through American defenses, these bases were hastily equipped to fight guerillas with IEDs. It seems improbable that there would have been some “iron dome” set up to shoot down incoming missiles.

And it is hard to see how the attack showed any growth in Iranian confidence. Everyone could see they were obliged to do something, or lose face.

Then I switched to RT—the Russian government propaganda channel. Just for comparison. Russia is supposedly an erstwhile ally of Iran; they have recently been conducting joint military exercises. And they have no free press.

Yet Russian Television told it straight.

That’s a pretty damning indictment of our mainstream media, and our taxpayer-funded network.

What can explain this?

There is an inevitable temptation in news to sensationalize. That could account for the talk of World War Three being imminent. But RT would have the same temptation. And that cannot explain the bit about the missiles being so accurate and getting through the US defenses.

It has to be anti-Americanism of an extreme, even unprincipled, sort.

Mobs

The left and the media are now objecting to the use of the term “mob” to describe left-wing demonstrators, as though this were somehow beyond the pale.

We must resist any and all such attempts to limit discussion. Suppressing words is suppressing truth.

Merriam-Webster: mob: “a large and disorderly crowd of people.”

Like a crowd banging on the doors of the Supreme Court Building. Like a crowd disrupting the Senate in session. Like a crowd chanting loudly to force a senator and his family out of a restaurant. Followed up by a warning online that right-wing legislators are no longer safe. By any standard, these are mobs and mob actions.

If large groups of people violating the law are not mobs, we are going to have to invent some new word. Storm troopers? Nazis? OK. And what shall we make “mob” mean now?

Trump on the Civil War

Old Hickory in old age.

The latest nonsense from the press is a criticism of Trump for saying Andrew Jackson might have prevented the US Civil War.

One can disagree with Trump on this. But it is a perfectly reasonable suggestion.

Yet all the coverage is along the lines of “Trump is ignorant of history”; “Trump does not understand the Civil War”; “Trump gets it wrong.” Please.

CNN: “Trump gets Andrew Jackson and Civil War totally wrong”

The Guardian: “Trump voices confusion over US history: ‘Why was there a Civil War?’”

New York Times: “With Civil War remark, a president who does not go by the (history) book.”

Washington Post: “Trump’s totally bizarre claim about avoiding the Civil War.”

Here, so far as I can tell, is exactly what Trump said:

"I mean, had Andrew Jackson been a little later you wouldn't have had the Civil War. He was a very tough person, but he had a big heart. He was really angry that he saw what was happening with regard to the Civil War, he said, 'There's no reason for this.' People don't realize, you know, the Civil War, if you think about it, why? People don't ask that question, but why was there the Civil War? Why could that one not have been worked out?"

The mainstream media’s objections:

1. Andrew Jackson died fourteen years before the Civil War.

Does anyone really believe Trump was saying Jackson was in charge during the war? It was a hypothetical.

Jackson was certainly aware of the tensions between north and south, since they had been around since before the War of Independence.

2. Andrew Jackson did not have a big heart. He was a slaveowner and made the Cherokee Indians move to Oklahoma.

While we may find these policies heartless, it is also true that Jackson had a reputation as a kind commander and a generous slaveholder. When one of his slaves was apparently beaten to death by an overseer, he pressed hard to have the man charged with murder. “Big heart” can also mean courageous, and Jackson certainly had a reputation for that.

It seems to me a bit unfair to condemn anyone running a plantation in the US South for owning slaves. The problem was systemic. If you owned a plantation and did not keep slaves, given that others would, you would soon go bankrupt. You could not compete, given your higher labour costs.

The Anaconda Plan. Basically the North's war strategy.

3. The reason for the Civil War is well known. It was to abolish slavery.

This presupposes that the only way to abolish slavery is through war. An odd claim. Yet the British Empire abolished slavery many years before the US, with no war. In fact, slavery is abolished everywhere, and it seemingly never required a war anywhere but the US. Why is it unreasonable then to think war could have been avoided?

As to slavery being the cause of the Civil War, even this is debatable. Abraham Lincoln, for one, denied it. He said that it was to preserve the union. He said that if he could have kept the union together by endorsing slavery, he would have done so. And the South abolished slavery themselves before the war ended. It seems more as though slavery was a symbol to the South of their right to self-rule.

4. The Civil War was inevitable, and no leader could have prevented it.

This seems at base a Marxist view of history: dialectical materialism produces historical inevitability, leading of course in the end to the dictatorship of the proletariat and the communist utopia at the end of time. The school of history that believes people actually have free will also has some intellectual credibility. Did Churchill not matter? Gandhi? Martin Luther King? Lincoln? Washington? Newton? Aristotle?

In fact, Jackson faced a southern attempt to leave the union during his presidency—the South Carolina nullification crisis—and managed to nip it in the bud. This seems reasonable grounds for presuming he could have handed it the next time around.

5. Andrew Jackson would not have prevented the Civil War, because he was a slaveholder.

This is a non sequitur. It makes no more sense than arguing that Lincoln could not have fought the Civil War because he owned no slaves. Being a slaveholder himself might have given Jackson the credibility to get the South to compromise.

What compromise? How about what the British did: financial compensation to slave owners for their loss of property.

Note that US Grant, top Union general during the Civil War, himself owned slaves, or at least one slave. Robert E. Lee, top general for the South, opposed slavery. This did not seem to make their tasks impossible.

It may not be that the world has gone crazy, but certainly the press has. What they print has no necessary relation to objective fact.

In the Annals of Really Lame Headlines

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/donald-trump-us-company-merkel-meeting-comments-president-accidentally-calls-america-corporation-a7636196.html

Fake News

Why is this a story?

The Republican Convention Through the Looking Glass

It’s weird how the reporting on the Republican convention and its speeches differs depending on which outlet you consult. If you go to any right-wing outlet, say, National Review, what were the best speeches of the convention? Probably the most excitement is about Paul Ryan (“fading Obama poster”), Clint Eastwood (“the empty chair presidency”), and Mia Love. If you go to any of the MSM guys, or the officially left-wing press, what were the great failures of the convention? Paul Ryan’s speech (“he lied”), and Clint Eastwood’s speech (“bizarre and embarrassing; a train wreck”). (See, for example, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/sean-carman/lies-and-the-lying-liars-_b_1848894.html) And Mia Love? Her speech was cut by NBC; never shown nor mentioned. A search on Google News shows few references to it anywhere in the left-wing or mainstream media.

Both perceptions cannot be true; someone must be either scamming their listeners/readers, or delusional.

That last factoid, the odd absence of Mia Love from NBC and others, makes me believe that it is the right that has it right. (Of course, I could be accused of partisanship. I am Catholic.)

Another factoid that makes me believe this: Slate Magazine, definitely leftist, ran a snap internet poll right after Mitt Romney’s acceptance speech, asking whether Romney’s speech made readers more or less likely to vote for him. The result showed a strong jump in Romney support. Yet the Slate readership is presumably predisposed towards Obama. This reaction, inevitably, also reflected the results of the Eastwood speech immediately before Romney’s. SurveyUSA ran a similar snap poll, and detected a 10% swing from Obama to Romney over the night. (http://hotair.com/archives/2012/09/01/new-florida-poll-shows-vindication-of-eastwood-strategy/). So Eastwood seems to have hit home.Rasmussen is also detecting movement Mittward.

So we have solid, objective evidence that Mia Love and Clint Eastwood really were good. What about Ryan? Did Ryan lie in his speech? It really ought to be possible to determine, objectively, whether what he said was in violation of the facts or not.

The main or marquee claim is that he lied about the closing of a plant in his home town. But a careful reading of what he actually said shows that it was precisely accurate, and his words seem to have been extremely well-chosen.

The second claim is that he lied in accusing Obama of “doing nothing” in the face of the Simpson-Bowles debt report. The critics point out that Ryan himself voted against that report. But he did not blame Obama for rejecting Simpson Bowles per se, but for “doing nothing”—in other words, presumably, it would have been okay if he had had any alternative plan to reduce the deficit, if not Simpson-Bowles. Did Ryan himself vote against it in favour of “doing nothing”? No—he had his own plan, as everybody knows well. Again, his words seem to have been truthful, and carefully chosen.

Of course, it is not literally true that Obama "did nothing" about the deficit. But it is true that the deficit has grown exponentially on his watch. Seems like fair comment, well within the realm of normal political discourse.

Was there an intent to mislead? Possibly, possibly not. I don’t see it. Everyone is free to judge that for themselves. You can’t prove intent.

And you cannot fairly accuse someone of lying when their words are true.

So, given that the mainstream and left-wing media are well off the beam here, what is going on? As noted before, they must either be deliberately conning their readers and listeners, or they must be delusional. Either reflects poorly on the prospects for the left this time around. If they have resorted to the con, they have lost the moral mandate of heaven, and must themselves be feeling desperate. If they are delusional, they are not going to be able to respond to events sensibly and intelligently. They are likely to do things that are not in their best interests, and fail to do things that are.