In Space, No One Can Hear You Scream
That’s the iconic tag line from the 1979 sci-fi classic, Alien, but this isn't a movie and we aren't in space.
For all the benefit gained from most of our discourse, especially about anything social or political, it might as well be conducted in the silence of space because nobody seems to hear the screams.
Every single outlet and venue cater to their known audience, not necessarily promoting propaganda (although some certainly do) but giving their audiences what they crave.
In the movie Idiocracy, the government was irrigating the crops with the sports drink Brawndo, because Brawndo has electrolytes and that’s what plants crave. It didn’t matter that none of that was true, and the crops were dying, but they really BELIEVED that Brawndo was the answer. What people are being fed now is the intellectual equivalent of Brawndo, just two different flavors – one for the right and another for the left.
Borrowing from Kamala’s Venn diagrams, the intersection between the left and right wings of the political landscape and the socially liberal and conservative spheres is tiny. There are very few outlets that really report both sides and that number approaches zero when it comes to both sides being debated until a conclusion is reached. Today, messaging is so tailored and delivered, the messages from the right whizz right past those on the left and vice versa.
This is a relatively recent issue as history rolls on - before Rush Limbaugh went national in 1988 and then Fox News launched in 1996, there was no “other side”, at least at the national level. There was William F. Buckley and Milton Friedman occasionally, believe it or not, on NPR, but as for a national conversation, there was none. Most of the time, when there was debate, it was not two opposing sides but debate over slightly divergent views based on the same ideology. Without another voice, there was no chance they would be caught parroting certain viewpoints as the unquestioned truth.
I’m of the opinion that print newspapers were a bit more conservative until Rush and Fox began to get real traction, not because they wanted to share a more complete picture of the news, more likely because a little access to another viewpoint was easily overcome by the trust in these institutions to tell the truth.
The end of the era of a single news voice, the time when alpha male anchors with stern, serious faces, delivered the news with the gravitas of a Midwestern baritone at six and ten (depending upon your time zone), was the beginning of the end of the institution of “The News”. That end caused the people behind the news, those who decided what you heard and when you heard it, to consider how important institutions were and began efforts to strengthen friendly institutions, to take over the most vulnerable ones, and to destroy the institutions that would not comply.
Destruction of the institutions goes beyond tearing them down and ending them because they are useful in other ways. One of those ways is related to guilt by association, something that often works with a high degree of effectiveness. It works.
Take the case of Moms for Liberty.
A few weeks ago, a flyer was produced with a quote from Adolph Hitler at a 1935 rally. The quote was:
“He alone, who OWNS the youth, GAINS the future.”
Anyone with any minute amount of honesty and integrity knew what Mom’s for Liberty supports and opposes and knew that this quote was directed at the leftists who are trying to take control of the minds of children across this nation. Nothing Moms of Liberty has said or done is aligned in any way with the Nazi Party or Hitler, and yet the eager to please Democrat media, egged on by the mindless idiots on lefty Twitter, began to claim that Moms for Liberty were Nazi white supremacists. The ever-vigilant watchdogs for fascism and Nazism at USA Today wrote:
“It is not clear whether the newsletter writer decided to put two of the words in all-caps to jazz up the text originally written by a man responsible for almost incalculable evil, or if that’s how the words appeared in the original Nazi speech. Hitler could not be reached for comment because he is in hell for all eternity.”
And it wasn’t just USAT, or the usual leftist outlets like Media Matters, it was spread across cable news, the broadcast networks, and every major newspaper in America as proof of the creeping Nazism in conservative organizations.
So, Moms for Liberty used a Hitler quote to illustrate the problem and now they are Nazi White Supremacists.
Remember when Rush Limbaugh was run off ESPN and denied a lifetime dream of being an NFL owner? The media went after ESPN and the St. Louis Rams because Rush was a “racist”, something they still claim.
They do it because it works.
But Moms for Liberty is fighting back, the same way Rush did.
We are not in space, let them hear the screams.
Yep. Do not let them cancel you, ever
Michael - it appears that USA Today has just admitted that there is a God and a Devil by indicating that Hitler is in hell for all eternity! I think that smart people would now be leading with that in the news media and bringing to light perhaps that the almighty does indeed exist. After all the news media would not ever lie about things... (I say that only because we know the almighty exists, but the media is very scared to even approach the subject).
We know that Moms for Liberty, like any 'liberty seeking, constitutional obeying people' are trounced in the media, and this is yet one further example. But I think it's time we start using their own words and playing it back for them.