A Wildfire of Straw Men
Democrats can't exist without the protection of the media.
I watched Pelosi on 60 Minutes tonight and Leslie Stahl addressed Pelosi's assertion that Trump " is engaged in an 'unconstitutional assault on the Constitution.'"
Pelosi's response: "That's right. He has."
Follow up question on Pelosi's response?
You probably guessed it.
None. Nada. Zilch. Zero.
There wasn't one.
There wasn't one for two reasons - 1) the media will never hurt a Democrat they favor and 2) they share the same perspective as Democrats.
But it is almost comical how easy it is to defeat any argument or position put forth by a Democrat.
Democrats have used a single form of argument for so long, that's really the only argument they know how to make. It's called a strawman argument. A strawman argument is a fallacious argument that distorts an opposing stance (or creates a stance, policy, event, belief or a caricature of a person that doesn't exist) in order to make it easier to attack.
Obviously, if you are able to define the argument and get your opponent to agree to those boundaries, you can't lose because you control both sides of the argument - but if your definition is proven to be a lie, everything flowing from it is also a lie.
The common argument Democrats make about Trump is that he is "destroying democracy in America" or "he's destroying the Constitution" but they rarely say how - and when they do, they can never support what they claim he is doing is unconstitutional or how it differs from what the last president did.
Defeating a strawman is easy. All that is required is to call out your opponent on their use of the strawman, by explaining why their argument is fallacious, and how it distorts reality. You can put them on the defensive by asking them to justify why they believe that the distorted stance that they present is real; and since the two are different, your opponent will either be forced to admit that their argument was invalid, or they will try to justify it by using even more fallacious reasoning, which you can then attack.
The 60 Minutes interview was embarrassing for Pelosi because she came off as a power drunk, senile old lady, for the female members of the Democrat House because they radiated a fearful, servile attitude rather than Gurl Power, and especially for Lesile Stahl for looking like Pelosi's toy poodle.
If Stahl - or any member of the sycophantic media for that matter - was doing actual journalism, they would ask the hard followup questions like:
What has Trump done that destroys democracy or the Constitution?
Why do you consider them damaging and what is your basis for your concerns
How has he done them and how are the different from what other presidents did?
When has he done these things?
Where are these things being done?
But you won't hear anything like this because the media knows how to kill strawman arguments, too. They will never do this to an ally because if they did, this current iteration of the Democrat party would be ended.
I've only heard the progressive media ask Republicans some of these questions, only to reject the answers because the media defines issues using the same strawmen as Democrats use. Fox News comes closer than any other network and that is why Democrats avoid it like the plague - and exactly why the DNC won't allow them to host a primary debate. It isn't so much that Fox is "right wing", it is more that they know they will get asked questions they don't want to answer.
Folks, you think there were wildfires in California last year?
If journalists started to do their jobs, the fire raging through the Democrat strawman army would make those look like a July 4th backyard wiener roast.
The media isn't going to ask those questions - but we can - and they can be done without malice or anger. As Saul Alinsky said, make 'em live up to their own rules - in this case, make them support their arguments with facts. In either case, they can't.