Ken, powerful pens will ultimately prove mightier than the indoctrination academies in the USA:
Why We Fight
by Andrew Klavan
This is by way of a friendly response to the estimable Jay Nordlinger, Senior Editor at the likewise estimable National Review. Jay wrote a strong column yesterday openly saying what I’ve been hearing many conservatives express tacitly ever since the election. Reflecting on the media’s disgraceful distortion of the characters of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin, he wrote:
“It seems to me that the Left has won: utterly and decisively. What I mean is, the Saturday Night Live, Jon Stewart, Bill Maher mentality has prevailed. They decide what a person’s image is, and those images stick. They are the ones who say that Cheney’s a monster, W.’s stupid, and Palin’s a bimbo. And the country, apparently, follows.”
I’ve been hearing and reading prominent conservatives and Republicans say nearly as much on television, in print and in private conversation ever since the election. They say Sarah Palin can never make a comeback. They say the fight for small government has been lost. They say we can’t have immigration reform that protects our borders. They say we have to distance ourselves from “embarrassing” commentators like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter.
No, no, no, no. What the right is experiencing at the moment is a phenomenon called “cultural para-stimuli.” You can read all about it in Tom Wolfe’s wonderful novel I Am Charlotte Simmons. It’s sort of like peer pressure on steroids. It was discovered by Nobel Laureate Victor Ransome Starling, who found that when he surrounded normal cats with cats whose behavior had been bizarrely altered by brain surgery, the normal cats began acting like the crazy cats all around them.
That’s us–surrounded by the mainstream media. So steeped are we now in their lies about our representatives, their ridicule of our commentators, their demonizing dismissal of the causes we know are just, that we’ve begun to adopt their attitudes toward ourselves! And perhaps chief among the lies they’ve sold us is the lie that they’ve won, that the media are theirs for good and all, and that Americans are going to be hoodwinked and brainwashed by their constant barrage of misinformation forever.
Well, only if we let them. And only if we in the media surrender first.
Look, the American media are in a bad way, a disastrous way. Movies, TV, literature–instead of illuminating vehicles for art and entertainment, they’ve become like the Matrix, replacing reality with a plausible leftist imitation. Journalists especially have so shamed themselves in their coverage of the last election–hounding Sarah Palin’s daughter and Joe the Plumber while all but ignoring Barack Obama’s ties to Illinois corruption, and his long and deep association with the racist anti-American Jeremiah Wright–that it’s going to take them years to recover. When people shame themselves that badly, they don’t admit it in a hurry. They savage their critics instead and continue their own shameful practices as a kind of defiant denial–anything rather than look in the mirror and confront what they’ve turned themselves into.
So yeah, we’re on our own for now. But we’re not unarmed and we’re in no way defeated. We have great politicians like Sarah Palin–who could well be president in not eight years but four–honest newsmen like Bret Baer and genius commentators like Rush–and Ann Coulter, who’s only about ten times smarter, funnier and more talented as a satirist than Jon Stewart or Bill Maher will ever be. The left can’t out-argue these mind-warriors so they try to ridicule, disdain and isolate them, to make us feel ashamed that we admire and respect them. And they tell us they’re finished, washed-up. Why, just look, it must be true: it’s right there in the newspapers and on TV.
They’re lying. The left has to lie for the simple reason that they’re wrong and we’re right, their policies don’t work and ours do. Look at the cities that liberal politicians and programs have devoured like locusts. Look at the liberal states that can’t rein in their spending even as they go broke. Look at how environmentalists have made us energy-slaves to monsters overseas. And look at how leftist, anti-patriotic and anti-religious policies in Europe have turned a once-great culture into a corpse that is being consumed by Islamo-fascist bacteria as we watch.
Hey, listen, our soldiers have to get shot at in the cause of liberty. All we in the media have to do is keep telling people the truth. Lies and insults are all the left has got to sling against us. They only win if we start to believe them.
Posted Jan 14th 2009 at 6:40 pm in Featured Story, Media Criticism, Politics | 106 Comments
106 Comments
Harley - January 14th, 2009 at 6:52 pm
“Great politicians like Sarah Palin?” Really? Honestly? I don’t know *that* many conservatives, but there isn’t a single one who shares that schoolgirl crush. I read a number of conservative columnists, and none of them share it either (Daniel Larison comes to mind, among others).
I guess it’s an Eye of the Beholder thing. Or maybe you’re so used to playing defense that you find it necessary to defend, you know, the indefensible too. And hey, maybe you actually believe Joe the Plumber is a great foreign correspondent.
It’s possible, I guess. But it’s worth reminding you that the people who find Palin somewhat, I dunno, insubstantial — including all of those conservatives — aren’t *lying* merely because they hold a different opinion than you do. This is in fact what they believe. (And no, they’re not engaged in falsehood in order to sink a threat to their hegemony. I can’t imagine anyone I’d rather see run against Obama in 2012 than Pain; and that opinion is shared by almost every Dem strategist out there, if only because it offers up the possibility of permanent minority status for the GOP — at least until Jeb Bush runs.)
But I’m guessing you know that.
Christopher - January 14th, 2009 at 6:58 pm
It just pains me to hear friends and coworkers — sometimes very intelligent people — mindlessly parrotting the latest media spin on Iraq/Palin/Whatever. Liberals believe the media because it tells the lies they want to hear. So many others seem to go along because they can’t conceive that the media would lie to them.
Tom Noonan - January 14th, 2009 at 7:05 pm
Until our alleged education system starts again teaching youngsters to analyze objectively and think critically for themselves, and to learn actual useful information instead of feel good liberal garbage intended to elevate self-esteem, this massive brainwashing campaign conducted by the MSM will continue to succeed.
George Carlin (RIP) had some wicked comments on this subject.
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