I made a big donation to Trump after the verdict. I was mostly civil to my liberal friends before the verdict. Today I tell any that justify the verdict to go F themselves that I will call them after the 2024 election to see if there are any shreds of friendship left to build upon.
What pisses me off more than anything is the smugness, righteousness and lack of demonstrated moral foundation of these liberal pricks… many who grew up protesting against the man. They have zero core principles backing them. They are massive hypocrites of the highest order. Any Democrat politician getting 1% of the treatment that Trump gets would result in them putting on black masks and pink vagina hats and burning down whole neighborhoods where poor people live.
I don’t hate easy and I have a rule that I don’t hate in politics… but American Democrats are pushing the limits of what I can tolerate as unworthy of hate.
It's almost like by NOT supporting a convicted felon like Trump that they are actually living their principles of law and order. Whatever, we'll put those dems out to pasture after we steal this election! Also, I didn't see any vagina hats after Hunter Biden was arrested and convicted of a crime, so that statement didn't age well.
One of the most satisfying introductory rants about the painfully obvious state of the union followed by an exceptional and well elucidated summary of the 39 Felonies case I've yet to read. Well done.
So clearly, logically and factually put Brad. Which makes it even more terrifying how delusional those captured with TDS truly are and what they are willing to blindly do because of it. And while they vote and use lawfare to destroy everything our country is built on they will believe that they are saving us from evil. We may never recover.
I love Trump so please excuse my blunt comment but I assume you're focused on the down ballot, cuz any vote for a Kennedy etc. is one less vote for the only candidate who has a chance to defeat the worst president in my life time (Im 200 years old) and has weakened America in so many ways, some of it planned (sorry, but it's true) some of it just the unintended consequences of batshit crazy people blinded by greed, all of it aided by the substantial fraction of voters who cannot grasp the obvious implosions that are apparent to anybody with open eyes... Biden won't be on the ticket and - if Trump still is - he'll need an absolute steamroll plurality to get past our "new normal" rampant varied election fraud, as well as the election interference Hunter's lap top exposed to anybody not asleep at the wheel.
Have to admit I voted for Biden in 20, ending a streak of libertarian votes (heck, convinced by wife and kids to vote Johnson in 16). I'm not wild about current leadership, but still hope it will increase it's relevance.
Small "l" libertarian here. Small "l" because I think some government is good to have. I was a registered libertarian for 3+ decades, but switched to R in 2022 to vote against Darth Cheney's spawn in their primary.
Anywhere, the official libertarian party is a circus, at best. Has been as long as I can remember.
Same. I'm no fan of Chase and I was really disappointed in how the Mises Caucus performed. The party feels so divided in what should have been a great moment of relevance for us with Trump and Vivek speaking at the convention.
I am simultaneously alarmed at the ever-increasing encroachments by Biden's minions and the Deep State on our constitutional rights, and then cautiously optimistic that more and more of the usually tuned out populace seems to be sitting up and taking notice. The underlying theme being that if they can put the screws of a perverted system of "justice" to someone with the juice of Trump, just imagine what they can do to you or I. Or to anyone who was within a quarter mile of the Capital building on 1/6.
Fear cuts both ways. This time it may cut in our favor. The manufactured bird flu wannabe-pandemic is being greeted with a collective yawn -- as Fauci/Mengele is finally being called to task for his crimes against humanity.
I think the only viable solution is to roll back the state instead of putting a different person in charge every once in a while. Government does too many things, most of them poorly at huge costs.
The problem though is how? Organizations -- governments especially so -- are like individuals in that once they attain power they are reluctant to let go of it. It must be wrestled away. And how do you wrestle power away from a massive (and massively armed) government short of full on revolution?
Short of that, the only way out is for enough of We The People to finally catch on what is happening to their county and their freedoms and vote accordingly.
Hence my trepidation. The key is in enough people tuning out the constant din of propaganda and gas lighting from the Dems, half the GOP, and all of the MSM and entertainment juggernauts.
WaPo seems to be imploding, and both CNN and MSNBC's ratings are in the toilet so there is some real shift here. But will it be enough to steer us away from the iceberg?
I'm not a fan of Trump. Why we are stuck with these choices I don't know. I've voted for Trump twice and both times I asked myself, "Why can't we have a statesman?" some common sense person who loves this country and isn't completely controlled by the, je ne sais quoi, deep state? military industrial complex? Group of 3 letter acronym cabal? or someone who isn't a douche like Trump. For me, Hillary was right out. She and Bill's dealings make Biden look like a rank amature. And Biden has always just been a bumbling fool and now he's OUR fool. And it's not a guarantee that Trump will win in the fall. The left has more tricks to play before this is over and they are good. Look how they corrupted the law to convict their opponent..
All the illegals will be voting for Obiden, plus all the fixed voting machines. There's no way the senile old codger can lose, IF he's actually on the ballot. If he's not, whatever they put in his place will win.
Be prepared to have everything taken away from you. Everything.
What sane person would want to run for office? Those who hate you will either find something in your past to make your live miserable or just make something up and they will go after your friends and family. You pretty much have to be on guard 24/7. People who have been in politics for very long or life-long celebrities like Trump have an advantage here because they have been out in the open for so long and they usually seem not to be able to feel shame. Politics selects for narcissists.
Of the people in the Republican primaries this time I liked Vivek Ramaswamy, he does seem to know how to play the media game, doesn't have the typical conservative squeamishness about going after women and he also sounds like he knows what he's talking about and has read a book or two in his life. And he doesn't have the baggage of millions of compromises like the other candidates.
I really wish more people read your posts. They are concise, thorough, backed up by evidence, and get to the heart of the matter in a way that many others can't communicate. I was voting for Trump the minute Biden decided to challenge the 1st Amendment, but I have been surprised by the reaction to the verdict. There are 2 people I know personally who I honestly never, ever thought would vote for Trump. Like, I don't even bring up politics around them so we can stay friends. They have both reached out to me to say they will be voting for him, not because they love him, but because they are afraid of how far the Dems have strayed from American principle. I was shocked.
Damn Straight. They have no fucking clue what they've unleashed. In the last week I've had 11 people I know tell me that they had zero plans of voting for Trump....until now.
They're trying to intimidate and cower us into silence.....and draw us offside. We're not falling for it. They have awoken a sleeping giant.
Two very striking paragraphs, which only cement our new lowly status as the world's largest Banana Republic:
The operations order, known as an FD-888, indicated the almost undercover nature of the raid. Agents were advised to wear “unmarked polo or collared shirts” and keep their badges, credentials, and equipment “concealed.”
“Should FPOTUS [Former President of the United States] arrive at MAL [Mar-a-Lago], FBI [agents] will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS and USSS [U.S. Secret Service] Security Team,” the order read.
(translation: The heavily armed FBI was given direct orders to take on and take down any Secret Service agents which may have attempted to perform their duty and protect FPOTUS. As Elon says, let that sink in.)
What I don't understand about the case: It's highly unlikely that Trump is the one who does the bookkeeping for 5 figure legal bills, so I don't know how they could even prove intent, one would had to show that he instructed his accounting firm to misclassify the expense. It's also a nice trap to have laws on the books that are quite easy to violate in the course of normal business without any criminal intent.
It also strikes me as unfortunate that you can work your way around a charge of extortion if you use a lawyer and an NDA. One lesson perhaps is that you should never pay off an Extortionists, if they are of low enough moral character to extort you they are also likely to not keep up their end of the bargain as was proven with Daniels.
As for the Hunter Biden trial, it also seems that after they could no longer suppress the laptop story they pivoted to putting the focus on Hunters drug and sex escapades to distract from the corruption. It's also odd to see some Republicans celebrate a conviction for a minor gun violation.
I'm also left wondering if some people at the DoJ wanted to provoke a gunfight between the FBI and Secret Service to later spin a story that Trump told his protection detail to fire on federal agents. Luckily nothing happened other than the FBI fucking up chain of custody by staging a picture for the media.
This is the key insight: "the Left, which essentially controls the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life, is able to impose interpretations of political events that all the dominant institutions in our society accept as authoritative."
And the question i have is this: How are those who disagree with these interpretations ever able to break through that interlocking system? A system that refuses to validate them, and instead sees them as "populist," "MAGA," "deplorable."
The whole system is set up to feed you back your viewpoints and values as if through a funhouse mirror -- distorted and invalid.
In this situation, there is no national conversation to be had, because the Left is utterly convinced that their side is the only one worth hearing. And to the extent that arguments like this one are given air, the dominant apparatuses of cultural exchange will ignore them. At most they'll get a 30-second putdown in a late-night monologue or pundit segment.
The Left is so broken -- I saw my Facebook feed filled with moronic memes about the 34 counts and not a shred of intellectual honesty that they were happy not because they thought he committed real crimes and deserved punishment, but because they hate him and were glad to "get him." That's the extent of it.
But the cultural system -- CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, the major network news orgs, the Left media all over YouTube -- all of it provides some veneer of intellectual cover. It justifies the unsavory motivations at the core by saying, "No, he really deserved it. Look, here's yet another associate professor-turned-political commentator to tell you what you want to hear."
How do you break through that so that our conversations aren't being relentlessly hijacked and filtered by people with little curiosity, with tribal allegiances and flexible principles?
Very well put. You're asking the questions that bother me a lot. As you put it, "the Left is utterly convinced that their side is the only one worth hearing." There's no dialogue. But the other problem is that the Left is utterly convinced the "other side" is evil - that Trump voters don't have valid, rational reasons for supporting him, but are instead motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, fascism, etc. etc. These people share the inability to talk about Trump and Republicans in anything but the language of civilizational catastrophe. Progressives in particular possess no theory of mind that might allow them to place themselves in the shoes of the 74.2 million Americans who voted for the "Orange Hitler." And they have no desire to understand.
And the way the left/liberal/progressive media talks about issues doesn't leave room for discussion. It's just a series of brief descriptors that signal the correct way to think about an issue.
For example: NPR news stories will name-check some disfavored movement/government as "the far right," as if that's the end of the debate. In a recent news story on the G7 summit, a news segment during NPR's "Here and Now" program (I think that was it) mentioned the disagreement between Biden and Meloni on abortion. The NPR reporter made clear who was correct by calling Meloni, "a hardliner and conservative." Since that's who she is, the views that flow from her are therefore invalid.
There are reference to "right-wing," "far-right' (twice), and "hard-right." None of these descriptors are particularly helpful. They aren't defined or explained. Instead, these are signals to the reader that the AP knows the correct position to have on abortion, and now the reader know as well.
What passes for the media today is an exercise in doctrinal enforcement, with outlets sharing only information deemed healthy for public consumption. Journalism has been completely subverted in service of ideological surveillance and regimentation of the public. The media class wants to be an unimpeachable intellectual vanguard with priest-like authority, anointed prophets of what we all should think and believe. NPR in particular no longer exists to inform the public, but to ensure that a specific, religious, unfalsifiable worldview is proselytized.
NPR exists to remind its listeners that they are the best, the brightest, the most caring, the most open-minded, the most deserving of their status for their luxury beliefs. It sells back to them theif smug superiority and packages it as virtue. If they don't report on it -- Twitter Files, CJR's epic review of the media during the Trump years -- it didn't happen.
I liked the concept of objet Trouvé. I’ve also thought of Trump in terms of triage. He’s not exactly the person I would choose to fight the leftist Nazis, but he is what we have. And there is nothing more important than fighting back. Anyone now claiming lofty principles to refuse to vote for Trump is virtue signaling worse than the leftists. Get over yourself and do what needs to be done.
Thanks for laying out all the problems with this case. If even a third of your points are legitimate—conservatively speaking—hopefully it bodes well for an appeal.
Nice summary of the bullshit. Hoping I can pass this on to low info dems that believe Trump committed 34 felonies.
I made a big donation to Trump after the verdict. I was mostly civil to my liberal friends before the verdict. Today I tell any that justify the verdict to go F themselves that I will call them after the 2024 election to see if there are any shreds of friendship left to build upon.
What pisses me off more than anything is the smugness, righteousness and lack of demonstrated moral foundation of these liberal pricks… many who grew up protesting against the man. They have zero core principles backing them. They are massive hypocrites of the highest order. Any Democrat politician getting 1% of the treatment that Trump gets would result in them putting on black masks and pink vagina hats and burning down whole neighborhoods where poor people live.
I don’t hate easy and I have a rule that I don’t hate in politics… but American Democrats are pushing the limits of what I can tolerate as unworthy of hate.
So well said. Nail on head.
Exactly, and "pushing the limits" may be an understatement.
It's almost like by NOT supporting a convicted felon like Trump that they are actually living their principles of law and order. Whatever, we'll put those dems out to pasture after we steal this election! Also, I didn't see any vagina hats after Hunter Biden was arrested and convicted of a crime, so that statement didn't age well.
One of the most satisfying introductory rants about the painfully obvious state of the union followed by an exceptional and well elucidated summary of the 39 Felonies case I've yet to read. Well done.
So clearly, logically and factually put Brad. Which makes it even more terrifying how delusional those captured with TDS truly are and what they are willing to blindly do because of it. And while they vote and use lawfare to destroy everything our country is built on they will believe that they are saving us from evil. We may never recover.
This country is in grave peril. I shudder to think of what happens if these commies maintain power
We ain't seen nothing yet....is all I can say. Ride deep and dig your spurs in....cuz they're coming for us.
Anyone see a different ending in that scenario?
They are not commies even if they think they are. They are wannabe totalitarians.
As a never-Trump voter, I found the Bragg prosecution indefensible. That the (theoretically unbiased) judge pushed the jury's result was even worse.
I will vote for Trump in November, but only because I hope US citizens will start to think for themselves.
Of course they're totalitarians. I was alive during c19. Plus I can read!
Commies sorta a joke for a genX'er....ya know Red Dawn, etc.,etc., etc.etc.
But thanks for my early morning dose of pedantry
Agree with you, but I remain a never-Trump voter nevertheless. May vote for Kennedy, but probably stick with the Libertarian candidate.
I love Trump so please excuse my blunt comment but I assume you're focused on the down ballot, cuz any vote for a Kennedy etc. is one less vote for the only candidate who has a chance to defeat the worst president in my life time (Im 200 years old) and has weakened America in so many ways, some of it planned (sorry, but it's true) some of it just the unintended consequences of batshit crazy people blinded by greed, all of it aided by the substantial fraction of voters who cannot grasp the obvious implosions that are apparent to anybody with open eyes... Biden won't be on the ticket and - if Trump still is - he'll need an absolute steamroll plurality to get past our "new normal" rampant varied election fraud, as well as the election interference Hunter's lap top exposed to anybody not asleep at the wheel.
Well thank you. Did you vote libertarian in 20'?
I'm a libertarian but really struggling with their direction and leadership.
What do you think?
Have to admit I voted for Biden in 20, ending a streak of libertarian votes (heck, convinced by wife and kids to vote Johnson in 16). I'm not wild about current leadership, but still hope it will increase it's relevance.
I'm surprised you voted for Biden given you have children and the dems were already being totalitarians.
We couldn't take it because our twins were 9 when c19 began. We left CA for Florida in May of 20'. Best decision of our lives.
Doesn't matter now, we just have to get these commies out of office.
What's driving me crazy about libertarians is they'll spend half their time talking about stupid shit like ending child labor laws.
Small "l" libertarian here. Small "l" because I think some government is good to have. I was a registered libertarian for 3+ decades, but switched to R in 2022 to vote against Darth Cheney's spawn in their primary.
Anywhere, the official libertarian party is a circus, at best. Has been as long as I can remember.
Well I guess your children are older
Same. I'm no fan of Chase and I was really disappointed in how the Mises Caucus performed. The party feels so divided in what should have been a great moment of relevance for us with Trump and Vivek speaking at the convention.
I am simultaneously alarmed at the ever-increasing encroachments by Biden's minions and the Deep State on our constitutional rights, and then cautiously optimistic that more and more of the usually tuned out populace seems to be sitting up and taking notice. The underlying theme being that if they can put the screws of a perverted system of "justice" to someone with the juice of Trump, just imagine what they can do to you or I. Or to anyone who was within a quarter mile of the Capital building on 1/6.
Fear cuts both ways. This time it may cut in our favor. The manufactured bird flu wannabe-pandemic is being greeted with a collective yawn -- as Fauci/Mengele is finally being called to task for his crimes against humanity.
I think the only viable solution is to roll back the state instead of putting a different person in charge every once in a while. Government does too many things, most of them poorly at huge costs.
The problem though is how? Organizations -- governments especially so -- are like individuals in that once they attain power they are reluctant to let go of it. It must be wrestled away. And how do you wrestle power away from a massive (and massively armed) government short of full on revolution?
Short of that, the only way out is for enough of We The People to finally catch on what is happening to their county and their freedoms and vote accordingly.
I'm not sure, it could work through voting but so far I haven't seen any evidence for that.
Fauci/Mengele, yeah, I had the same image of him. Let's do some experiments on an entire population..
that is a good point. I am seeing sanity return in alot of areas. But I am not sure that will just be the signal for most people to forget it all
Hence my trepidation. The key is in enough people tuning out the constant din of propaganda and gas lighting from the Dems, half the GOP, and all of the MSM and entertainment juggernauts.
WaPo seems to be imploding, and both CNN and MSNBC's ratings are in the toilet so there is some real shift here. But will it be enough to steer us away from the iceberg?
Wapo, cnn and msnbc desperately need Trump. Without him, they have no audience or anything new to yammer about
They aren't so much news outlets as they are simply safe spaces for the TDS crowd. They come for the reinforcement.
I'm not a fan of Trump. Why we are stuck with these choices I don't know. I've voted for Trump twice and both times I asked myself, "Why can't we have a statesman?" some common sense person who loves this country and isn't completely controlled by the, je ne sais quoi, deep state? military industrial complex? Group of 3 letter acronym cabal? or someone who isn't a douche like Trump. For me, Hillary was right out. She and Bill's dealings make Biden look like a rank amature. And Biden has always just been a bumbling fool and now he's OUR fool. And it's not a guarantee that Trump will win in the fall. The left has more tricks to play before this is over and they are good. Look how they corrupted the law to convict their opponent..
All the illegals will be voting for Obiden, plus all the fixed voting machines. There's no way the senile old codger can lose, IF he's actually on the ballot. If he's not, whatever they put in his place will win.
Be prepared to have everything taken away from you. Everything.
“Be prepared to have everything taken away from you. Everything.” I couldn’t agree with you more! Keeps me up at night……
Yeah, I know what you mean. Me, too.
What sane person would want to run for office? Those who hate you will either find something in your past to make your live miserable or just make something up and they will go after your friends and family. You pretty much have to be on guard 24/7. People who have been in politics for very long or life-long celebrities like Trump have an advantage here because they have been out in the open for so long and they usually seem not to be able to feel shame. Politics selects for narcissists.
Of the people in the Republican primaries this time I liked Vivek Ramaswamy, he does seem to know how to play the media game, doesn't have the typical conservative squeamishness about going after women and he also sounds like he knows what he's talking about and has read a book or two in his life. And he doesn't have the baggage of millions of compromises like the other candidates.
I really wish more people read your posts. They are concise, thorough, backed up by evidence, and get to the heart of the matter in a way that many others can't communicate. I was voting for Trump the minute Biden decided to challenge the 1st Amendment, but I have been surprised by the reaction to the verdict. There are 2 people I know personally who I honestly never, ever thought would vote for Trump. Like, I don't even bring up politics around them so we can stay friends. They have both reached out to me to say they will be voting for him, not because they love him, but because they are afraid of how far the Dems have strayed from American principle. I was shocked.
Damn Straight. They have no fucking clue what they've unleashed. In the last week I've had 11 people I know tell me that they had zero plans of voting for Trump....until now.
They're trying to intimidate and cower us into silence.....and draw us offside. We're not falling for it. They have awoken a sleeping giant.
"...will go down in history as a textbook instance of selective prosecution."
Unfortunately, if the Dems win, this truth will be eliminated from history.
Doesn’t matter who wins with The Left pretty much controlling Wikipedia which all normies use.
Real Clear Investigations has a great piece today on the Mar-a-Lago Gestapo raid.
https://www.realclearinvestigations.com/articles/2024/06/13/searching_for_the_truth_about_the_raid_at_mar-a-lago_1037663.html
Two very striking paragraphs, which only cement our new lowly status as the world's largest Banana Republic:
The operations order, known as an FD-888, indicated the almost undercover nature of the raid. Agents were advised to wear “unmarked polo or collared shirts” and keep their badges, credentials, and equipment “concealed.”
“Should FPOTUS [Former President of the United States] arrive at MAL [Mar-a-Lago], FBI [agents] will be prepared to engage with FPOTUS and USSS [U.S. Secret Service] Security Team,” the order read.
(translation: The heavily armed FBI was given direct orders to take on and take down any Secret Service agents which may have attempted to perform their duty and protect FPOTUS. As Elon says, let that sink in.)
What I don't understand about the case: It's highly unlikely that Trump is the one who does the bookkeeping for 5 figure legal bills, so I don't know how they could even prove intent, one would had to show that he instructed his accounting firm to misclassify the expense. It's also a nice trap to have laws on the books that are quite easy to violate in the course of normal business without any criminal intent.
It also strikes me as unfortunate that you can work your way around a charge of extortion if you use a lawyer and an NDA. One lesson perhaps is that you should never pay off an Extortionists, if they are of low enough moral character to extort you they are also likely to not keep up their end of the bargain as was proven with Daniels.
As for the Hunter Biden trial, it also seems that after they could no longer suppress the laptop story they pivoted to putting the focus on Hunters drug and sex escapades to distract from the corruption. It's also odd to see some Republicans celebrate a conviction for a minor gun violation.
I'm also left wondering if some people at the DoJ wanted to provoke a gunfight between the FBI and Secret Service to later spin a story that Trump told his protection detail to fire on federal agents. Luckily nothing happened other than the FBI fucking up chain of custody by staging a picture for the media.
What gets me is the Biden DOJ prosecutor who quit his job and took a pay cut to join Alvin brags team!! Shocking.
I'm sure he has something good lined up for afterwards.
Course he does.
This is the key insight: "the Left, which essentially controls the entire interlocking infrastructure of American cultural and intellectual life, is able to impose interpretations of political events that all the dominant institutions in our society accept as authoritative."
And the question i have is this: How are those who disagree with these interpretations ever able to break through that interlocking system? A system that refuses to validate them, and instead sees them as "populist," "MAGA," "deplorable."
The whole system is set up to feed you back your viewpoints and values as if through a funhouse mirror -- distorted and invalid.
In this situation, there is no national conversation to be had, because the Left is utterly convinced that their side is the only one worth hearing. And to the extent that arguments like this one are given air, the dominant apparatuses of cultural exchange will ignore them. At most they'll get a 30-second putdown in a late-night monologue or pundit segment.
The Left is so broken -- I saw my Facebook feed filled with moronic memes about the 34 counts and not a shred of intellectual honesty that they were happy not because they thought he committed real crimes and deserved punishment, but because they hate him and were glad to "get him." That's the extent of it.
But the cultural system -- CNN, MSNBC, NYT, WaPo, the major network news orgs, the Left media all over YouTube -- all of it provides some veneer of intellectual cover. It justifies the unsavory motivations at the core by saying, "No, he really deserved it. Look, here's yet another associate professor-turned-political commentator to tell you what you want to hear."
How do you break through that so that our conversations aren't being relentlessly hijacked and filtered by people with little curiosity, with tribal allegiances and flexible principles?
Very well put. You're asking the questions that bother me a lot. As you put it, "the Left is utterly convinced that their side is the only one worth hearing." There's no dialogue. But the other problem is that the Left is utterly convinced the "other side" is evil - that Trump voters don't have valid, rational reasons for supporting him, but are instead motivated by racism, sexism, homophobia, fascism, etc. etc. These people share the inability to talk about Trump and Republicans in anything but the language of civilizational catastrophe. Progressives in particular possess no theory of mind that might allow them to place themselves in the shoes of the 74.2 million Americans who voted for the "Orange Hitler." And they have no desire to understand.
And the way the left/liberal/progressive media talks about issues doesn't leave room for discussion. It's just a series of brief descriptors that signal the correct way to think about an issue.
For example: NPR news stories will name-check some disfavored movement/government as "the far right," as if that's the end of the debate. In a recent news story on the G7 summit, a news segment during NPR's "Here and Now" program (I think that was it) mentioned the disagreement between Biden and Meloni on abortion. The NPR reporter made clear who was correct by calling Meloni, "a hardliner and conservative." Since that's who she is, the views that flow from her are therefore invalid.
Look at this AP story on the summit: https://apnews.com/article/abortion-2024-biden-meloni-italy-g7-ukraine-e36094c259482bc2a58c21035bf58fb4
There are reference to "right-wing," "far-right' (twice), and "hard-right." None of these descriptors are particularly helpful. They aren't defined or explained. Instead, these are signals to the reader that the AP knows the correct position to have on abortion, and now the reader know as well.
What passes for the media today is an exercise in doctrinal enforcement, with outlets sharing only information deemed healthy for public consumption. Journalism has been completely subverted in service of ideological surveillance and regimentation of the public. The media class wants to be an unimpeachable intellectual vanguard with priest-like authority, anointed prophets of what we all should think and believe. NPR in particular no longer exists to inform the public, but to ensure that a specific, religious, unfalsifiable worldview is proselytized.
NPR exists to remind its listeners that they are the best, the brightest, the most caring, the most open-minded, the most deserving of their status for their luxury beliefs. It sells back to them theif smug superiority and packages it as virtue. If they don't report on it -- Twitter Files, CJR's epic review of the media during the Trump years -- it didn't happen.
“Thus does the public evil come home to each of us:
Straining, the courtyard gates no longer hold fast,
The evil leaps o'er the high walls; it finds everyone,
Even him fleeing to the inmost chamber.”
- “The Constitutional Order”, Solon of Athens, ca. 580 BC.
I liked the concept of objet Trouvé. I’ve also thought of Trump in terms of triage. He’s not exactly the person I would choose to fight the leftist Nazis, but he is what we have. And there is nothing more important than fighting back. Anyone now claiming lofty principles to refuse to vote for Trump is virtue signaling worse than the leftists. Get over yourself and do what needs to be done.
Outstanding article Brad.
of all the poeple though, it had to be him?
Thanks for laying out all the problems with this case. If even a third of your points are legitimate—conservatively speaking—hopefully it bodes well for an appeal.