How the Press Hurts Democrats

As the political season crescendos, discourse seems to be devolving down to the lowest common denominator. Talking point after talking point, bouncing back and forth across news studio conference tables like ping pong balls, and no meaningful debate at all. The extent to which they listen to one another is only to figure out which talking point to hit them with next. It’s become an ongoing nationwide episode of Crossfire.

We’re used to this now, and too many of us play the game. I disagree strongly with what nearly all Democratic politicians espouse. But I can’t remember the last time I even heard of a meaningful debate about the main issues of the day. In the past, we were all at least working from the same set of facts. Now, truth is relative, and facts are pizza dough – malleable and able to be spun so thin they can cover nearly anything. I blame the press.

They weaken us internally and internationally, generally to further their own goals rather than to deliberately weaken us, although the end results are the same. I truly believe that most Democrats are good, well-meaning people. My brother is as far left as I am far right, and I know his character and his heart. He’s a good man. I don’t think the left as a group is deliberately propagating lies. So when they say that the economy is terrible, when it is better than it was during Bill Clinton’s presidency when judged by the same indicators, where does that come from? They believe it to be true because it’s been hammered into their heads repeatedly that it’s true, with pizza dough “facts” to back it up. I expect Democratic leadership to take that kind of position because they want their team to win. If they were ever called on it in a serious way, they’d have to move on to a more substantial argument, because there are plenty of things that Democrats can fairly criticize Republicans for. The economy is not one of them. But they are not required by a critical press to hone and sharpen their arguments.

This dumbing-down of the national debate harms us all, but especially Democrats who are rarely required to examine their positions and explain them in detail. The news business is no longer “free market” because the Democratic product is subsidized. When a product is subsidized there’s not a lot of motivation to improve it, and quality suffers. This is how we get a demand to “change course” where the new course is not defined in detail. Back in 1994, the reason the Republicans swept the field was because they’d spent their time out of power defining a real plan. Given the opportunity to explain it, they did. The Democrats have not been required to do that because the media doesn’t make them. This might get Democrats elected, but it weakens them as a party.

If most Democrats heard that many terrorists have openly endorsed the Democratic party because they believe that is the fastest route to their victory, would that change their perspective on how the war should be fought? It’s true – it’s just that the media chooses to not report it, just like they don’t report a lot of facts about the war that harm the supremacy of their world view. All is not sweetness and light in a kite-flying utopia, but neither is it a defeat. In fact, we’re so careful not to offend people’s sensibilities that we’ve barely fought the war at all. Victory is well within our reach, if we can just find the will to take it. But the press has decreed that it’s Vietnam all over again, and they are correct, in the most important factor of our loss.

The Tet Offensive was a huge American victory and should have been celebrated by everyone. For whatever reason, the press fought on behalf of the enemy, and the military victory was turned to a propaganda loss which is widely credited with losing us the war. North Vietnamese general Tran Do later agreed that they were on the edge of giving up, and Tet gave them an unexpected propaganda success that propelled them to victory. This article shows it’s happening again and with a total lack of irony, it includes comparisons to Tet. Thanks to the quisling press who have already helped us lose one war, nearly half the country thinks that our biggest foe is Republicanism, not radical Islam, our largest enemy.

In the last thirty or so years, the press which used to police everyone stopped patrolling the Democratic side of town and has been on the Republican beat the majority of the time. I’m not saying that where corruption is concerned, Republicans are less corrupt than Democrats – I think they’re about equally corrupt. But the Democrats get away with it more because the press refuses to do their jobs impartially. They won’t report extensively on John Murtha and William Jefferson’s bribery issues or Harry Reid’s real estate shenanigans – although they had all the ink in the world to discuss Abramoff, Ney and Foley. It doesn’t benefit the Democratic party to permit unchecked corruption. It weakens it, and the rest of the country by disillusioning the electorate. The press is trying to sweep the left to power in the short term, and it may succeed. But it is making the Democratic party flabby, fighting its battles for it, and ultimately harming it.

The enemy believes we are all infidels and will kill us, Democrat and Republican alike. If anything they despise and fear the seculars more – at least Christians, while dhimmi, are still considered people of the book. We look at Germany in the 1930s and wonder why people didn’t step up and stop things before they went so far. Generations from now historians may well wonder that about us, as this fictional article illustrates. The press, by controlling the narrative in favor of the terrorists, releasing classified information that aids the terrorists, publishing editorials by terrorists and airing terrorist propaganda, is harming us all. No one expects al Jazeerah to report impartially. But it should not be too much to expect from CNN, MSNBC, and the broadcast networks. Words matter. If you still don’t take the danger seriously, watch Obsession.

No matter how this election turns out – and I think Wednesday is going to be a very happy day for Republicans – it bears keeping in mind that our advocacy press is harming us all – Democrat and Republican alike.

Update: Someone far smarter than I am wrote about something similar – a WSJ article by James Q. Wilson:
The Press At War
Whatever happened to patriotic reporters?

The mainstream media’s adversarial stance, both here and abroad, means that whenever a foreign enemy challenges us, he will know that his objective will be to win the battle not on some faraway bit of land but among the people who determine what we read and watch. We won the Second World War in Europe and Japan, but we lost in Vietnam and are in danger of losing in Iraq and Lebanon in the newspapers, magazines and television programs we enjoy.

It’s excellent, go read it.

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