The crazy stories from the establishment media just keep piling up.  Whenever the media is reporting on something politically related, it tends to be more lies than truth.  Sometimes the core part of a story is true with slight lies and propaganda around it.  Sometimes the core part of a story is just plain false, such as the whole thing about Russia and Trump colluding to hack the election.  In that case, it is actually almost the opposite of what happened.

For lack of a better two words, we are dealing with fake news a lot of the time.

The media also largely controls the narrative.  That is one interesting thing that Trump has been able to pull off with his Twitter account.  He can bring up subjects – for better or for worse – on topics that the media might otherwise have ignored.

There is no question though that the media will focus on certain stories to promote their agenda, while ignoring other stories that are often more important.

All I can say is, thank goodness for the internet.  At least we have some options that weren’t available in previous generations.

I often wonder whether people in political power are evil or stupid.  When a politician is proposing something, it is hard to know. This can range from an economic issue such as the minimum wage, to a foreign policy issue such as starting another war.

Now I am wondering the same about the media, most of whom are quite similar to those in political power.  Are they evil or stupid?

I don’t think there is a clear-cut answer.  I think it is a combination of the two things.  Sometimes they purposely ignore things that go against their own narrative.  Whether it is conscious or not, they are putting blinders on.

I’m sure there are false narratives that I believe right now, and I am a lot more skeptical than the average person, to say the least.  Whenever the media makes some claims, particularly dealing with foreign policy, I think “weapons of mass destruction in Iraq”.

There is a misconception that the media is liberal.  Aside from the improper use of the term, it isn’t the best description. The media of television and newspapers is largely just establishment.  They promote a line of big government, but it doesn’t necessarily have to always be on the side of Democrats.  The establishment largely backed Bush’s war in Iraq, or at least they didn’t overtly question the “intelligence” agencies.

The few times the media has cheered on Trump have been in cases where he promotes war and intervention.  They cheered him on when he dropped some bombs on Syria, and the media promoted the story that Assad used chemical weapons on his own people, despite a lack of evidence. If anything, it was again probably the opposite of what they were saying.

MAGA in Chicago

The media has been particularly horrible lately.  The media personalities suffer from Trump Derangement Syndrome, and they just can’t help themselves.  It has made them into shills for the deep state, or perhaps more accurately, it has made it apparent that they are shills for the deep state.

The media jumped on the story about the Covington high school kids.  Why it was even a major story should be questioned, but of course we know it was because they hate Trump and want to make any Trump supporters look bad.  If a group of people with Obama shirts actually did the things that the Covington boys were accused of doing, you probably wouldn’t hear about it.

Of course, the media didn’t do any research on it before reporting the “story”.  They just want to put out the anti Trump propaganda as soon as possible.  And in the end, the story ended up being the opposite of what was originally told.

But the establishment media doesn’t learn.  They are too obsessed with taking down Trump.  So when a semi celebrity (he is more of a celebrity now) – Jussie Smollett – made claims of being attacked in Chicago by Trump supporters, the media jumped on that story.  There are many different examples from different media outlets with people saying how horrible this event was.  I expect some good YouTube videos in the future of compilations of media outrage when the original story was first reported.

As soon as I heard about this story, I figured it was fake.  I just can’t believe how gullible so many people are.  Just listening to the guy, you can pretty much tell he is lying.  He is a leftist political hack, and he claims to have been attacked in downtown Chicago by some guys yelling racial slurs and saying, “this is MAGA country”.

This is just so obviously ridiculous.  I mean, do these media personalities have the IQ of a first grader? When I think of Chicago – the home of Obama – I can just imagine walking the downtown streets at 2:00 AM and seeing a bunch of guys who are hardcore Trump supporters.  There must be MAGA hats all over the place in Chicago.

Even if the establishment media is evil, they must be stupid too.  This isn’t the kind of story they could just brush aside after the truth started to come out.  Now they are having to report that this leftist gay black celebrity played a hoax on them.  (I wouldn’t care about his race or sexual orientation except that the media obsesses over these things, and Smollett was their perfect caricature of both a hero and victim.)

My conclusion is that the establishment media is both evil and stupid.  You shouldn’t trust them about anything politically related, or even with any political implications.  I’m not saying that everything they say is completely wrong, but you should not listen to them.

Let’s also remember all of this when Trump leaves office.  The establishment media may no longer be as blatantly bad, but it will be the same evil and stupid people running the show.