Now, it occurs to me that the election in many respects served as a referendum on the complicit media, since they told us–in as many ways as they could find and fabricate–all the reasons not to vote for Trump, and did so continually, blatantly, and for a good year before the election. It was a rare week in the six months before the election that was not “Trump’s worst week EVER!!!!”
They did not fail to get their message out, including the message that 1) they had a message, as opposed to a principled desire merely to report facts they had made some effort to verify; and 2) their message was intended to defeat Trump, which is to say to be open advocates in the political arena.
NOBODY failed to get this. Nobody anywhere, not just in America, but on the entire planet. It’s possible some !KUNG tribesmen somewhere failed to grasp that MSNBC and CNN wanted Hillary to win, or maybe some nomads in Uzbekistan, but for the rest of us, it was more impossible to ignore than a trainwreck in our front yard.
Here is the thing: every vote cast for Trump was a vote cast AGAINST the media as it exists. Given this, it is hard to see how the continuation of their propaganda after the election can in any way have served to win back Trump voters.
As I have said from time to time, anyone who studies propaganda becomes aware that it mainly works only in bubbles. It only works when it is everywhere, and continually reinforced. And it only works in the face of COMPLACENCY on the part of the public–or, as in North Korea, or the sort of nation Hillary still presumably wants to build–when you only have one source of media.
The capture of our media was incomplete in 2016. There were and remain many alternatives, which is why they have been screaming so hysterically about Drudge, Breitbart, InfoWars and others.
But once somebody emerges from a bubble, they realize it. They realize they were being duped. They realize that the most handsome and prettiest faces on TV are quite capable of looking calmly and confidently into the camera and telling bald faced lies or, more commonly, creating controversy where there is none, or even more commonly, ignoring very intentionally all relevant news which does not advance their cause, or show them in a positive light.
This creates greater alertness among everyone this has happened to. Lying to them becomes harder, and trust becomes harder to win.
The net of all this is that not only can I not see the media so many Americans rejected last November winning anybody back with the antics of the past six months, I cannot see anything but downside. Their BEST CASE scenario is keeping the already indoctrinated in their bubble. But how is this possible, with an openly defiant President who has on his own opened up alternative media pathways they can’t control?
If they can’t win anybody back it would seem the only possible direction is on-going defections in the path of alternative media. They have set up this system which is absolutely inflexible, which cannot respond effectively, and which has already failed massively on a national scale. They cannot lie more, and at this point lying less is unlikely to do any good. There seems no path forward which does not lead to their on-going decline and irrelevance.
Perhaps this realization, more than anything, is what is driving the on-going hysterical need to feed the Russian story, which is already hurting them in my opinion, and will hurt them the more the longer it goes on.
It is possible we might see a sea-change over the next couple years. We might see not a reversal to the Left, but a massive shift to the Right, particularly in light of the on-going failure of the Republicans to act like honest conservatives. Fuck that: to act like honest human beings with integrity and balls.
I see all these people shouting the same things, striking the same condescending and arrogant tone, still trying to shout and shame people into silence, still acting as if the world is not changing around them.
As a famous Yogi put it, it’s hard to make predictions, especially about the future, but I have to say that–at this moment, on this day–I feel things are trending in the direction of human freedom, and human dignity.