Nurse the Hate: Hate The War On Media

I had a roommate years ago whose mother would often call him with dire warnings of various unlikely dangers.  We were once told to avoid a certain city as she believed it was commonplace to be drugged and have your kidneys cut out of you and sold to an underground organ market.  We were advised against driving late at night outside of the Greater Columbus area as there had been a number of well documented abductions by UFOs.  When pressed for the source of these wild stories, she would calmly reply “the paper”.  After further digging we found out that she meant the “Weekly World News”, the tabloid farce available at grocery store checkout lines.  To her the Weekly World News and Wall Street Journal were exactly the same.  They were newspapers.

I don’t know why his mother didn’t think it was odd that the only news source that reported “Werewolf Sues Airline Over Flight Delay” was the Weekly World News.  That’s a story that really has something for everyone, no?  If I’m the editor at the Washington Post, I’m sending a reporter out on that one for full coverage.  American Airlines is going to have a lot to answer for when some guy turns into a werewolf and attacks everyone back in coach because he was airborne after nightfall.  Why did my roommate’s mother believe this crazy shit?  I suppose that she liked the idea of being on the inside of all of these alleged conspiracies.  She had a pretty gray life out there in the Ohio hinterlands.  It’s much more exciting to live in a place where Werewolves are bitching about missing their connection to Houston while nursing drinks at a Chili’s by Gate B18 at O’Hare.

It used to be easy to differentiate between real news and “fake news”.  Now it’s a little tricky.  The rise of Fox News and their agenda filled reporting made a lightbulb flick on for people like that toad Steve Bannon.  Bannon and his much more extreme hate agenda now slide into the Fox News crowd’s consciousness in the guise of “news”.  It looks like news.  It must be news.  There are so many items “placed” by people with agendas.  Take this anti-muslim immigration move from the Trump Show.  It’s designed to “keep us safe” as a trade off in losing our liberties.  Unfortunately the idea of bloodthirsty terrorists that have streamed across our borders is as real as Werewolves at the Airport.  Since 9/11, there have been 123 Americans killed by Muslim terrorists in our country.  123 people in 16 years.  There have been approximately 230,000 people killed in the United States by other lethal violence.  According to life insurance actuary tables, you have a 1 in 20 million chance of being killed in a terrorist attack.  Meanwhile Gallup Polls show that the American population hover between 30-50% of being “worried” or “very worried” about being involved in an act of terrorism.   It’s all make believe designed to keep The People afraid. 

The strategy of the Trump Show is to keep the population off balance by having the facts in question all the time.  It is impossible to debate policy when the facts themselves are in debate.  Bannon, a modern day cross of Joseph Goebbels and Comic Book Guy from The Simpsons, knows how to play this game.  It is the same propaganda playbook used in every fascist government on the planet.  I tried not to look at the news all weekend, but foolishly watched a few minutes of “Meet The Press”.   When anyone from the Trump Administration is on camera it is more like a pro wrestling skit than democracy.  It goes like this:

Host:  Yesterday you said 2+2=5 at a press conference.

Trump staffer:  No I didn’t.

Host:  We have the footage of you doing it.  We just watched it.

Trump staffer:  No you don’t.  And even if you did, the American People know the facts.

Host:  (unable to process this) …. So you are saying 2+2=5?

Trump staffer:  Even if you think that is what I said, which I didn’t, I can tell you that we are right now launching a major investigation into the lies you have been telling regarding this 2+2=4.  We know that 2+2=5 and are not going to allow the elite media to fool the American People.     

Host:  OK, we are out of time.  When we get back, 2+2=5 or does it equal 4?  Our panel weighs in…  

I have worked in advertising for 20+ years.  It works.  How advertising works is by repeating something over and over again until it becomes fact.  If you are told 2+2=5 long enough, you will not only think 2+2=5, you will be positive about it.  People are looking for leadership.  They want someone to tell them what is going on.  The population is too engaged in their own lives to really do the research and look into which paper towel is actually the best much less the NAFTA trade agreement.  Bounty is the quicker picker upper?  Huh.  Sounds good to me.  OK, toss that in the shopping cart.  It is exactly the same with news.  The facts can become whatever voice gets attention.  While places like the New York Times and Washington Post are playing it by the old rule book digging into the facts of a situation, Bannon is placing news items to discredit anyone that notices literally everything coming out of Trump’s mouth is a lie.  There used to be a social contract that everyone in the game told the basic truth and then administered "spin".  These guys have tossed truth completely out the window.  The game plan is to make you think that independent press has an agenda beyond just reporting fact whereas The Trump Show is looking out for YOU.  This flies in the face of logic as the press just reports on whoever happens to be in office whereas The Trump Show are a bunch of billionaires with business interests that cut across these policy decisions. It's a scam.

Remember that when The Trump Show rails about how they are “at war with the media” what they mean is they are at war with The Truth.  The New York Times last week decided to start calling Trump’s “alternative facts” what they are, lies.  It’s unprecedented.  This is a crossroads for the nation.  Don’t believe a word that comes out of the executive branch.  It’s all lies and misdirection.  I don’t want to look back on this and sheepishly admit I just went along.  I feel heartened by how many people I talk to that feel the same way I do.  Just like Nixon and Joe McCarthy got shoved out, Trump will too.  Then we can get back to what we really need to focus on, making sure Werewolves don’t get flight delays.