Saturday, November 24, 2018

Andrew McCarthy: "The Enemy Of The People"

I'm not sure what to think about this aspect of our on-going pan-cultural dust-up.
Here's the best I've been able to do so far as articulating my inchoate view goes:
Trump is largely right. The press is pretty awful. It's bad and even dangerous in that its left lean is nearly pervasive, and in some cases jaw-dropping. I'm wary of such comparisons, but I, personally, am now (but wasn't two years ago...and possibly won't be two years from now) rather more concerned about the destructive potential of the press than I am about that of the Unindicted-Co-Conspirator-In-Chief. If Trump doesn't flip his shit and wreck us, he probably won't do more harm than the press is doing. One reason for this: he'll likely be gone in 787 days, whereas we've got the press we've got for...maybe ever. Another reason: everything Trump does is subjected to the full force of the disapproval of the cultural superstructure; virtually nothing the press does is. (Unless it happens to stray rightward on some incidental issue here or there...like rushing to war or somesuch...) Trump's basically right about "fake news." That's just a bumper sticker...but it basically means: much of the news we get is crap. It is. And it's mostly crap in the same crappy direction all the crappy time. Furthermore, given the above, there's a grain of truth in "enemy of the people." However...the president doesn't get to talk like that. This one is basically incapable of talking any other way, of course. But he doesn't get to. If he wants to say more-or-less what I've said here--and what McCarthy says in the link--then, by all means, say it. But the president has no business saying shit like "enemy of the people." This is the kind of thing we just do not do--and do not do for very excellent reasons. Including that it is ambiguous, on its face, as between something sane and something insane. Which is the problem with much of what Trump says. He blurts out a tangle of words that could mean anything along a spectrum covering a range of meanings. Some of those meanings are actually things that need to be said; others are things that should never be said. This is a really, really bad--an unacceptably bad--thing for a president to do. Even given the irresponsible, falsehood-promoting, dangerous, politically biased crapitude of the news media.
Well...that's basically my $0.02, FWIW...

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