Political blood sport – Page 6

Leakers threaten freedom

By Walter B. Bull Jr.

Leaking confidential governmental information by an unidentified person to a sympathetic member of the news media is an increasingly useful technique to help influence public opinion.

This pathway, however, is a dangerous gamble.

And while short-term results are appealing, both leakers and the enabling free press could set the stage for an overreaction, with the result of a loss of freedom for all.

Sooner or later, an eager beaver driven by personal motives will overreach.

The information could originate within a governmental agency, embellished by a member of the press who allows his preference to impact the translation and enhanced by other reporters who “want” the information to be correct.

The variables are endless, and the impacts are unpredictable.

A journalist who has carefully cultivated his “sources” balances many options in going about his job. Sometimes public interest is low on the totem pole during the process, topped by political goals that have earned the loyalty of the writer.

Often, the work environment has general sympathy with the reporter, his editor and the management of each publication.

robert mueller.v3 Without a sympathetic press, the “leak” would not make it into the public domain. (As in the case of the recent leak of a list of questions Special Counsel Robert Mueller desires to ask President Trump).

The simple fact that news stories based on leaks represent an illegal series of events means that potential overreaction includes internal regulation, criminal prosecution and a serious loss of public confidence in all public media.

Gossip is a human trait, and the public has a willing ear for the stories.

That said, freedom of the press must survive as the founders intended — a public safeguard against corruption, power aggregation, self-dealing and political ambition.

Over time, the leak culture will self-correct in the bright sunlight.

Trump indignation syndrome

By Norman Zanetti

Democrats and their media cheerleaders are doubling down on stupid. They continue to marginalize everything President Trump and Republicans have engineered.

This should prompt another major belly-smacker for Democrats in this year’s midterm elections.

Following years of dreary regulatory and anti-business agendas, we now have a template for sustainable growth. The art of the possible has moved the needle from red to green.

Change comes with a price in this hyper-partisan environment. The positive intermediate and long-term effect is worthy of tolerating some short-term risk and pain.

Lots of criticism is being heard from hosts of politically shallow intellectuals as they now fear the signature issues that elected Trump and a majority in Congress will prevail over the left’s psychosis over Trump’s fitness for office.

Particularly daunting is the growing credence of the media suppressing evidence that a host of illegalities were perpetrated by members of the Obama administration to undermine then-candidate Trump. Among them was the obtaining of a FISA warrant under false pretense for broad surveillance.

Then there were leaks from the FBI to the press. Then revelations that James Comey and Susan Rice exonerated Hillary Clinton of email abuses before she even testified in Congress. Then we learned that large Russian contributions were made to the Clinton Foundation prior to the uranium sale to the Russians. Lots of powder keg revelations still to come.

The perpetual state of indignation toward President Trump by the media, along with Robert Mueller’s attempts to criminalize civil matters, will not dampen enough votes to win back a Democratic majority.

What will raise eyebrows with the voting public is border reform, tax reform, addressing long-standing trade imbalances, and job and wage growth, all which benefit a large swath of Americans going forward.

Washed away

“For centuries,” writes our frequent RESOLVE contributor Walter B. Bull Jr., “rapid radical change has been designated as a sea-change.” In fact, William Shakespeare used the phrase as long ago as 1610 when penning a lyric.

American society is witnessing a dramatic sea-change that has been intensified by the election of President Donald Trump and the mainstream media’s intent to derail, if not end, his presidency. But the change, writes Bull, began toward the end of the previous century.

“Various electronic devices were developed to record, categorize, store and analyze large amounts of data at light speed. … At the same time, information delivery systems, mainly televisions, became available to most households for use as an entertainment gathering focal point.”

Radio and television changed the way we experienced historic, including tragic, events, such as the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy, the Vietnam War, the space shuttle Challenger’s mid-air explosion and, most chillingly, Sept. 11, 2001.

Now, in the era of Trump, news and analysis delivery, extending to laptops, tablets and smartphones, is being de-emphasized, replaced, Bull points out, by “brash claims or subtle messaging (Trump is mentally unstable) with an intent that goes beyond delivery of basic facts.”

The sea change playing out before us as 2018 begins is driven by two forces working in lockstep. The Democrat Party, now completely devoid of moderates, is lurching further and further into a state of frothing-at-the-mouth, radical progressivism. And the mainstream media, of similar mindset, questions nothing and gleefully advances the agenda.

These two camps, so obsessed with diminishing Trump, seem no longer to care they are diminishing themselves. The FBI and Justice Department, as evidenced by the existence of the phony “Steele dossier”, apparently are not afraid of being diminished, as well.

No single news story demonstrates the impact of the media-fueled Democrat agenda to obstruct Trump and the Republican Congressional majority more than the passage of tax cuts at year’s end.

The media’s forecast on corporate and household tax cuts looked like this: Tax-Reform Bill is Unpopular Because Media Mislead Americans (National Review, Dec. 20, 2017).

It’s very clear that the tax bill passed by both the House and Senate (Dec. 19) is indisputably unpopular among Americans. But the reasons for that unpopularity are much less clear. Left-wing bias in the media likely has a lot to do with it.

National Review further pointed out that formerly reliable wire service Associated Press reported passage of the bill via Twitter as providing “steep tax cuts for businesses, the wealthy”. Talking points, not journalism.

As we move into mid-January, about a month after the bill’s passage, most media outlets are straining to avoid almost daily evidence that tax cuts for businesses are having the effect Republicans forecast all along (even as polls reflected a skeptical public). Thankfully, the Washington Examiner shared what its reporters learned when they reviewed a meticulous bit of tallying by Americans for Tax Reform.

A list of 40 firms offering millions of employees bonuses and customers fee cuts has surged to 164 in just 10 days as the likely financial benefit of President Trump’s tax reform has started to settle in.

Perhaps, retorts the media’s mainstreamers, adrift in their turbulent sea. On to other narratives they turn even as Americans rejoice in economic liberation. Trump is a racist, an insane one at that.

And, of course, Russia, Russia, Russia.

Still a blood sport

In 44 B.C., when Marcus Junius Brutus plunged his dagger into Julius Caesar and the dying leader of the world’s major civilization muttered “Et tu, Brute?” politics was clearly identified as a blood sport. Public assassinations, quiet coup d’état take-overs, declared civil wars, street riots and many sinister activities to gain political power were and are characteristics of a blood sport with profound consequences.

While daggers, poison and various lethal devices are used in other nations to create political change, the 21^st century has brought us a new weapon — modern communication networks. The weapons are words and the methods are profound. Today’s Brutus may be your nightly TV news anchor, a college professor, or a skillful writer presenting opinion via print media.

Yes, “the pen is mightier than the sword”, according to novelist and playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. These words were written in 1839 for his historical play, Cardinal Richelieu. With modern TV screens, plus streaming images and photos generated by the citizenry at large on laptops and mobile devices, the pen is joined by unrelenting audio and images created to mold people’s thinking.

Most public opinion regarding public policy can be segregated between the extremes of an ideological spectrum, either right (conservative) or left (liberal), and the middle has a tendency toward one or the other. Give and take cracker barrel discussion has been smothered by passion. Opponents today are unyielding with the certainty that there is no merit whatsoever to opposing viewpoints.

Wikipedia notes that the Media Research Center (MRC) is a politically conservative content analysis organization based in Reston, Virginia, and founded in 1987 by L. Brent Bozell III. Its stated mission is to “prove — through sound scientific research — that liberal bias in the media does exist and undermines traditional American values.”

Not so fast, retorts the left. In response its supporters have organized The Center for American Progress (CAP) in 2003 as a left-leaning think tank. CAP sponsored the organization of Media Matters for America in May 2004 to combat the conservative journalism sector. The force behind the information is David Brock and his group has been funded by notorious billionaire George Soros, a dedicated globalist.

Fabrication, distortion and outright lying make up much of the progressive message. Brock put a couple of notches on his belt with a takedown of notable personalities, beginning with New York radio icon Don Imus, who was off the air for months after insensitive comments about black female athletes from Rutgers University. Heavy hitters such as the late Roger Ailes, creator of Fox News Channel, and former FNC show host Bill O’Reilly, eventually run off the air by a New York Times report followed by advertiser boycotts, are among those who have endured the effects of the Brock smear machine. Media Matters frequently targets FNC host Sean Hannity, who has endured multiple advertiser boycotts.

Just like the gladiators in a Roman arena who are trying to kill each other for the entertainment value, today’s combatants have few rules and no ethics. Ask Bernie Sanders, a naïve socialist with gobs of popular support, if he ever had a realistic chance to win the recent Democrat party nomination. In today’s political world his answer will continue to be politician-speak double talk. But it was Bernie’s blood on the floor when all was said and done after the 2016 nomination season.

Political blood sport has a new chapter in the conflict as the laws of our nation are used against opponents by an investigator (“Special Council”) commissioned at the highest level of the Federal justice system. To the public, that individual has a stated objective of finding truth. The designee is granted extraordinary powers as well as unlimited funding and the media seems to delight in the process. Special Council Robert Mueller’s investigation into so-called Russian collusion was launched following a recommendation by the Department of Justice that followed months of speculation about Russian hacking of Democrat party data and possible foreign influence on the 2016 Presidential campaign.

Caught in the “investigation” can be many second- and third-level individuals, who can be charged with inconsequential process crimes that carry long prison terms. These folks are encouraged to “cooperate”, which means they will testify under oath about a higher up in return for a slap on the wrist by the Court. Blackmail, for sure. The nonspecific statute is a mighty tool in the prosecution toolbox.

The public quickly forgets pop culture star Martha Stewart’s and Bush 43-era White House official Scooter Libby’s jail time. The FBI can lie to an interviewee during a meeting, but the subject goes to jail for a false statement to the agent. And to prove a point the government can bankrupt an individual through defensive legal fees, ruin careers and with a shrug walk away when the process is finished.

Now that politics is defined even more so as a blood sport, predicting the future is uncertain. Reason and rationality are cast aside (thus, we see current Democrat members of the House presenting baseless articles of impeachment against President Donald Trump). Wisdom in the collective opinion of the people might be the only way to counter the destructive nature of political blood sport.

If not, well, Et Tu, Brute.

– Walter B. Bull Jr.