“A lie which is half a truth is ever the blackest of
lies” (Tennyson)[1]
If you identify yourself as a liberal, I am loath to inform you that you are being deceived about a highly consequential matter concerning our choice for our next U.S. President. If, for example, you are buying into the Democrat Party line that President Trump is at fault for the nightly ravaging of both property and lives across certain U.S. cities ever since Memorial Day, then you are almost certainly seeking your news from any news source except Fox News. On the basis of a principle “embraced” by Facebook and Google sources in particular,[2] video footage of gratuitous violence (including the wanton destruction of property and the terrorizing of defenseless people) will not be broadcast either over public “air-waves” or on public internet postings. Now it would be one thing if such content had no bearing on deliberations over public policy; but is an altogether different matter when the exclusion of information utterly distorts public debate or goes so far as to throw an election by means of outright deception. This very ploy in fact amounts to such. Yet this is indeed the logical fallout of excluding the live witness testimony that only videos can provide. Thus, CNN analyst Brian Stelter states derisively:
“In
the ‘Fox & Friends’ and ‘Hannity’ alternative universe, the rioting is
still a present-tense threat and could restart at any time. This is
contradicted by every news report from every other outlet. The [authentic]
story now is about peaceful, powerful, sustained protest all across the
country. But ‘riot porn’
video is irresistible to Fox's producers and hosts, even though the video is
out of date now.”[3]
Notice here that Stelter is implying of the daily
(without fail) videos presented on Fox News that they amount to a distortion of
what he considers trustworthy reporting by the rest of the news media.
What
is instead being conveyed by the “alphabet” news broadcasters is that Donald
Trump, by either his presence or the subliminal message he conveys by his phraseology
and demeanor, is the root cause of the “violence” conservatives imagine they
are witnessing.[4] Ironically his critics at the same time diminish
the degree of this “violence” by naming its “source” as merely a tiny outlier to
what is otherwise a peaceful band of honorably-motivated “protesters.” They thirdly seek to project a brutish image
of Trump as if he wishes to dethrone Democrat mayors whom liberals judge to be “obviously”
working toward a calm and peaceful climate on their own. So, they claim, it is Trump who is determined
to pour gas onto a fire that, they insist, is cooling down toward a lasting
peaceful utopia if just left alone.
The problem is videos can only lie if they are tampered
with or shown out of context. Yet the contexts
and details these show cannot possibly have been staged. At the very least they expose the reality
that the extremely excessive looting of stores indicates they cannot have been committed
by desperately-impoverished families.
Furthermore, the ruining of both housing and family businesses, the traumatizing
of innocent people to the point of murder, and the degrading taunting of police
whose “hands are tied” by civic administrators; it is these realities that put
the lie to Stelter’s words.
[1] Clarence
Barnhardt, ed. World Book Encyclopedia Dictionary. (Field Enterprises,
1965).
[2] https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2802008?hl=en
[3] https://www.cnn.com/2020/06/10/media/conservative-media-reliable-sources/index.html
[4]
Notice how incoherent is such a “train” of thought.
No comments:
Post a Comment