Bacon's Rebellion

Democracy Thrives in Sunlight

Democracy Dies in Darkness — and We’re the Ones Turning Out the Lights

—

by

James A. Bacon
in

Washington Post newsroom: Reality is what we say it is.

by James A. Bacon

The New York Times has published a piece today describing the revolution in the nation’s newsrooms. In what the author appears to regard as a positive development, the news and editorial departments of prominent newspapers are jettisoning the old idea of “objective” journalism in favor of social justice journalism. Citing the recent defenestration of several high-ranking editors for sins against the prevailing ethos, the Times writes:

As America is wrestling with the surging of a moment that began in August 2014, its biggest newsrooms are trying to find common ground between a tradition that aims to persuade the widest possible audience that its reporting is neutral and journalists who believe that fairness on issues from race to Donald Trump requires clear moral calls.

The conflict exploded in recent days into public protests at The New York Times, ending in the resignation of its top Opinion editor on Sunday; The Philadelphia Inquirer, whose executive editor over the headline “Buildings Matter, Too” and the ensuing anger from his staff; and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. And it has been the subject of quiet agony at The Washington Post, which Mr. [Wesley] Lowery left earlier this year, months after the executive editor, Martin Baron, threatened to fire him for expressing his views on Twitter about race, journalism and other subjects.

Mr. Lowery’s view that news organizations’ “core value needs to be the truth, not the perception of objectivity,” as he told me, has been winning in a series of battles, many around how to cover race.

The slow-motion purge of insufficiently correct-thinking writers and editors is not limited to the nation’s largest, most prestigious newspapers. It is taking place across the country, including here in Virginia, most visibly at the Richmond Times-Dispatch and the Virginian-Pilot. Ironically, the loss of different views and perspectives is even more visible on the news side of the operation than in the editorial departments, which, though watered-down and vapid, still entertain a modicum of diversity in opinions.

I’ll repeat what I observed a day or two ago. Newspapers may not be “enemies of the people” as President Trump has described them, but they are enemies of conservatives and libertarians. With each passing day, they increasingly become organs of political indoctrination, not forums that reflect different views and perspectives.

That may suit liberals and progressives just fine. But every dollar conservative readers pay in subscriptions to these newspapers is a dollar they pay for the suppression not only of conservative voices but the very idea of a marketplace of ideas. China’s Communist dictator Mao Zedong once said, “Let a thousand flowers bloom. Let a thousand schools of thought contend.” Even Mao would be shocked by what American newspapers have become.

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55 responses to “Democracy Dies in Darkness — and We’re the Ones Turning Out the Lights”

  1. Steve Haner Avatar
    Steve Haner

    Ironically, because I do not subscribe to the NYT I have not been able to actually read Senator Cotton’s “fascist” column that set off the newsroom apparatchiks. I guess the idea of inviting people to write to argue against the paper’s prevailing editorial position is no longer to be allowed. Just “pro-eds” from now on.

    Even 40 years ago we were saying of the NYT: “All the news that fits, we print.”

    1. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
      Reed Fawell 3rd

      Honest liberal mainstream news in America is dead, period, save for isolated outposts. It doesn’t care, does the full Monty now, in plain unapologetic view.

  2. hemcomm Avatar
    hemcomm

    I left the journalism profession because of what it has become. But newspapers are not “enemies” of libertarians and conservatives. They are for-profit business ventures that serve their readers’ interests. Most major papers are based in major cities, and most major cities trend left. That’s because of the nature of living in a city, where stronger centralized government makes more sense because of the sheer volume of diverse and competing interests. If you go into the rural areas where audiences are more homogeneous, papers tend to be more conservative. That’s no conspiracy or political movement; it’s business. The real problem in journalism is not the politics; it’s that journalists now see themselves as agents of change rather than agents of record. Social media and Hollywood have amplified that by turning bylines into brands — highly profitable brands. Furthermore, op-ed pages have always been a vehicle for flame wars. But giving Cotton a soapbox to say “Send in the troops” at a time like this was just stupid. Cotton was not trying to advance dialogue or present a thoughtful counterpoint. He was throwing gasoline onto the fire, and we just don’t need that.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      re: ” ; it’s that journalists now see themselves as agents of change rather than agents of record. ”

      That’s a point and I’m sure Bacon won’t miss it.

      re: But giving Cotton a soapbox to say “Send in the troops” at a time like this was just stupid. Cotton was not trying to advance dialogue or present a thoughtful counterpoint. He was throwing gasoline onto the fire, and we just don’t need that.

      that was opinion though – not news… and I thought the issue was that he misrepresented facts in his editorial – and there was an argument about whether opinion writers can say false things… in their editorials…

      no?

    2. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      Again, HC, I can’t seem to find the piece to make my own judgment. “Send in the Troops” may not have been in the copy, but only the headline, and he may not have seen or approved it. Sometimes editors ask me for headline suggestions, and sometimes they don’t.

      1. sherlockj Avatar
        sherlockj

        You can see in the apology in my reprint of the NYT op-ed below that the headline did indeed come from the editor, not the author.

      2. Nancy_Naive Avatar
        Nancy_Naive

        Okay, I’m going to divulge a secret. Many “subscribers only” overlays can be easily defeated using the “text only” mode on your browser, or the “reader version”, e.g., Safari. These are usually a set of lines, or a little book icon, in the URL window at the top of the browser.

        As the page is loading, and before the nasty little “pay us” overlay pops up. Click that icon. You may lose pictures along with ads and other links, but the article’s text with minimal formatting can be read.,

        1. idiocracy Avatar
          idiocracy

          You can also turn off Javascript. That usually defeats the overlays.

    3. Matt Hurt Avatar
      Matt Hurt

      Maybe those we used to call “journalists” should now refer to themselves as “commentators”. I think any news outlet that considers themselves arbiters of the truth are severely deranged, dishonest, or both.

  3. sherlockj Avatar
    sherlockj

    Here is the entire piece and the NYT apology two days later
    Opinion
    Tom Cotton: Send In the Troops
    The nation must restore order. The military stands ready.
    By Tom Cotton
    Mr. Cotton, a Republican, is a United States senator from Arkansas.
    New York Times June 3, 2020

    Editors’ Note, June 5, 2020:
    After publication, this essay met strong criticism from many readers (and many Times colleagues), prompting editors to review the piece and the editing process. Based on that review, we have concluded that the essay fell short of our standards and should not have been published.

    The basic arguments advanced by Senator Cotton — however objectionable people may find them — represent a newsworthy part of the current debate. But given the life-and-death importance of the topic, the senator’s influential position and the gravity of the steps he advocates, the essay should have undergone the highest level of scrutiny. Instead, the editing process was rushed and flawed, and senior editors were not sufficiently involved. While Senator Cotton and his staff cooperated fully in our editing process, the Op-Ed should have been subject to further substantial revisions — as is frequently the case with such essays — or rejected.

    For example, the published piece presents as facts assertions about the role of “cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa”; in fact, those allegations have not been substantiated and have been widely questioned. Editors should have sought further corroboration of those assertions, or removed them from the piece. The assertion that police officers “bore the brunt” of the violence is an overstatement that should have been challenged. The essay also includes a reference to a “constitutional duty” that was intended as a paraphrase; it should not have been rendered as a quotation.

    Beyond those factual questions, the tone of the essay in places is needlessly harsh and falls short of the thoughtful approach that advances useful debate. Editors should have offered suggestions to address those problems. The headline — which was written by The Times, not Senator Cotton — was incendiary and should not have been used.

    Finally, we failed to offer appropriate additional context — either in the text or the presentation — that could have helped readers place Senator Cotton’s views within a larger framework of debate.

    This week, rioters have plunged many American cities into anarchy, recalling the widespread violence of the 1960s.

    New York City suffered the worst of the riots Monday night, as Mayor Bill de Blasio stood by while Midtown Manhattan descended into lawlessness. Bands of looters roved the streets, smashing and emptying hundreds of businesses. Some even drove exotic cars; the riots were carnivals for the thrill-seeking rich as well as other criminal elements.

    Outnumbered police officers, encumbered by feckless politicians, bore the brunt of the violence. In New York State, rioters ran over officers with cars on at least three occasions. In Las Vegas, an officer is in “grave” condition after being shot in the head by a rioter. In St. Louis, four police officers were shot as they attempted to disperse a mob throwing bricks and dumping gasoline; in a separate incident, a 77-year-old retired police captain was shot to death as he tried to stop looters from ransacking a pawnshop. This is “somebody’s granddaddy,” a bystander screamed at the scene.

    Some elites have excused this orgy of violence in the spirit of radical chic, calling it an understandable response to the wrongful death of George Floyd. Those excuses are built on a revolting moral equivalence of rioters and looters to peaceful, law-abiding protesters. A majority who seek to protest peacefully shouldn’t be confused with bands of miscreants.

    But the rioting has nothing to do with George Floyd, whose bereaved relatives have condemned violence. On the contrary, nihilist criminals are simply out for loot and the thrill of destruction, with cadres of left-wing radicals like antifa infiltrating protest marches to exploit Floyd’s death for their own anarchic purposes.

    These rioters, if not subdued, not only will destroy the livelihoods of law-abiding citizens but will also take more innocent lives. Many poor communities that still bear scars from past upheavals will be set back still further.

    One thing above all else will restore order to our streets: an overwhelming show of force to disperse, detain and ultimately deter lawbreakers. But local law enforcement in some cities desperately needs backup, while delusional politicians in other cities refuse to do what’s necessary to uphold the rule of law.

    The pace of looting and disorder may fluctuate from night to night, but it’s past time to support local law enforcement with federal authority. Some governors have mobilized the National Guard, yet others refuse, and in some cases the rioters still outnumber the police and Guard combined. In these circumstances, the Insurrection Act authorizes the president to employ the military “or any other means” in “cases of insurrection, or obstruction to the laws.”

    This venerable law, nearly as old as our republic itself, doesn’t amount to “martial law” or the end of democracy, as some excitable critics, ignorant of both the law and our history, have comically suggested. In fact, the federal government has a constitutional duty to the states to “protect each of them from domestic violence.” Throughout our history, presidents have exercised this authority on dozens of occasions to protect law-abiding citizens from disorder. Nor does it violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which constrains the military’s role in law enforcement but expressly excepts statutes such as the Insurrection Act.

    For instance, during the 1950s and 1960s, Presidents Dwight Eisenhower, John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson called out the military to disperse mobs that prevented school desegregation or threatened innocent lives and property. This happened in my own state. Gov. Orval Faubus, a racist Democrat, mobilized our National Guard in 1957 to obstruct desegregation at Little Rock Central High School. President Eisenhower federalized the Guard and called in the 101st Airborne in response. The failure to do so, he said, “would be tantamount to acquiescence in anarchy.”

    More recently, President George H.W. Bush ordered the Army’s Seventh Infantry and 1,500 Marines to protect Los Angeles during race riots in 1992. He acknowledged his disgust at Rodney King’s treatment — “what I saw made me sick” — but he knew deadly rioting would only multiply the victims, of all races and from all walks of life.
    Not surprisingly, public opinion is on the side of law enforcement and law and order, not insurrectionists. According to a recent poll, 58 percent of registered voters, including nearly half of Democrats and 37 percent of African-Americans, would support cities’ calling in the military to “address protests and demonstrations” that are in “response to the death of George Floyd.” That opinion may not appear often in chic salons, but widespread support for it is fact nonetheless.

    The American people aren’t blind to injustices in our society, but they know that the most basic responsibility of government is to maintain public order and safety. In normal times, local law enforcement can uphold public order. But in rare moments, like ours today, more is needed, even if many politicians prefer to wring their hands while the country burns.
    Tom Cotton (@sentomcotton) is a Republican senator from Arkansas

    1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
      Nancy_Naive

      Uh, copyright? Well, I just told everyone how to steal content, so I’m in good company.

      1. idiocracy Avatar
        idiocracy

        Is it really being “stolen” when it was sent to your computer anyway?

        1. LarrytheG Avatar
          LarrytheG

          some of the paywalls actually work by putting cookies on your computer but now days, they may not be “findable” so they can be removed.

          I won’t pay for RTD.. I just pay for too many already and I don’t read VPAP news because they post articles that are behind paywalls…

          1. idiocracy Avatar
            idiocracy

            Well, a cookie HAS to be findable so that the browser can send it back to the website that put it there in the first place. Otherwise it does no good.

        2. Nancy_Naive Avatar
          Nancy_Naive

          If it’s labeled “do not open until Xmas”…

          1. idiocracy Avatar
            idiocracy

            That’s not legally binding.

          2. Nancy_Naive Avatar
            Nancy_Naive

            How unchristian!

      2. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        yeah.. I did not see the URL icon you were referring to. Are you using Chrome?

        1. idiocracy Avatar
          idiocracy

          Try turning off Javascript. Then try loading the page that is behind a paywall. I’ve only ever done it once or twice, but that worked–the paywall code is usually in Javascript. You will need to turn Javascript back on when you are done. Most websites don’t work right at all without it.

        2. Nancy_Naive Avatar
          Nancy_Naive

          Safari or Firefox depending which machine. For your specific, Google “text only browsing chrome”

  4. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    What’s going on with American journalism is a mix of budget cuts, new writing styles and lots more Net-based diversity.
    Jim Bacon imagines a wonderful yesteryear, in which newspapers were monopolies and Walter Cronkite and John Chancellor high-lighted the evening news. Not so. We were taught the inverted pyramid style of writing which resulted in a lot of “other-sidism,” false equivalencies and stenography. That is what many conservatives long for –stenography. “Officials” can say whatever they want and the role of the journalist is that of a secretary in the office pool. Just take it down and regurgitate.
    I worked for both the Pilot and the RTD in the 1970s and 1980s. The Pilot actually did fund and encourage investigative reporting. I was hired by the RTD to help start an investigative unit. The problem was that the genteel editors had very clear views on what the subjects were. They were really fascinated that with the rise of videocassettes, one could rent hard core porn and watch it at home. I wanted to write about to tobacco and Philip Morris but that was a non-starter. We ended up doing a big and embarrassing series on porn tapes. It was so dorky.
    Later, I ended up at a New York-based magazine that encouraged enterprise and analysis. They wanted stories to have a point of view as long as you noted the views of other sides. It was called a “story line.” Frankly, this worked for more sophisticated journalists and more sophisticated readers. The magazine had very strict ethics guidelines to keep correspondents and editors to abuse insider info and boost a stock price. The magazine’s on-site radio commentator did that and he ended up in prison.
    When I went overseas, I noted that many excellent reporters for European or Asian papers did indeed have points of view. They were also allowed to take perks that we Americans would never consider. It is just a different way of doing things.
    Then came the Net, blogs and social media. Outlets greatly multiple. This encouraged a “commentary” as opposed to a “straight news” style of reporting and writing. Some of the people associated with the BR blog believe the posts have to me old-style, top-down, inverted pyramid forms (except when they want opinions that reflect their views. That is bullshit. What we have now is reporting more like in the Civil War. The beauty of the system is that you don’t have to go through a phalanx of thought police editors but you don’t get a steady paycheck and no fact checking.
    What Jim Bacon overlooks is that the NYT DID try to get more diversity of views on its editorial page. Bennett, the deposed editor, did try to do that. I strongly disliked the Cotton piece and would have really edited it,. But I would have run it.
    Another think that pisses me off is that the same conservatives and libertarians who are so offended are the very same ones who advocated the short-term, mind on the next financial quarter business model. So, you end up with extreme budget cuts that got rid of thousands of copy editors who are essential for a good outlet. Unfortunately, Bennett did not read the Cotton piece before publication. That’s a very big sin. This Bacon post misses the point and the Mao allusion is way off the mark.

    1. sherlockj Avatar
      sherlockj

      “Another thing that pisses me off is that the same conservatives and libertarians who are so offended are the very same ones who advocated the short-term, mind on the next financial quarter business model.”
      Peter, where did you come up with that?
      First you assign a single, universal view to “conservatives and libertarians” with no evidence whatever. I honestly think that many investors favor long term performance over climbing quarterly hills of the company’s own making.
      Second, there are only a few newspapers that make enough money to fully staff and you know it. The business model of the daily newspaper, dependent as it was for advertising and large readership that will pay for it, is broken. Online pay-walls are not making up the losses. That is not a quarter-to-quarter issue. That broken model is not about points of view.

    2. Nancy_Naive Avatar
      Nancy_Naive

      The Iraqi War was written on the grounds of the Naval Observatory and published without fact-checking by EVERY news organization.

      There was a wonderful video on YouTube that showed every anchor in 1998 relating the truth of Richard Butler’s decision to withdraw from Iraq followed by the same anchor in 2002 telling of how Saddam “kicked out Butler”.

      Geez, those “journalists” couldn’t remember the details of a story from 4 years earlier.

  5. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    One of the most dishonest things in America is holding out oneself to be objective and neutral when one has an axe to grind or position to sell. It’s not unique to any political view. It takes strong self-discipline to stay neutral/objective, especially when outsiders want to coopt the organization. But when an organization purports to be neutral and objective and doesn’t, it’s just evil.

    From history, I understand that each town of any size had a Democratic and a Republican newspaper. And they were open about it. Shouldn’t all Media outlets consider telling the truth and stating its perspective upfront? The idea that there’s true objectivity is simply wrong.

  6. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    JimS. I came up with that because I have personally lived through it since the late 1990s in many places. So have many colleagues.

  7. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    Would anyone want a member of the WaPo’s editorial board to live in their neighborhood? I wouldn’t. They stand with Jacob Frey, a major reason why George Floyd was murdered.

  8. Nancy_Naive Avatar
    Nancy_Naive

    The editor who elected to run the Cotton piece on the online edition only was fired.

    1. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      No, reassigned. Still with the paper is what I read.

      1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
        Nancy_Naive

        Uh yeah, resigned.

        1. Steve Haner Avatar
          Steve Haner

          Unions, you know….just like with cops.

  9. Nancy_Naive Avatar
    Nancy_Naive

    The lights went out at Kent State 50 years ago.

    In case no one here noticed. There was a nationwide, except for Seattle, day of peaceful protests. No looting, no rioting, no cops. Causality

  10. Nancy_Naive Avatar
    Nancy_Naive

    If this is a direct quote, I assure you it is an accident. As it is, it is a perfectly valid paraphrase. “Events occur at the wrong time, in the wrong place, and for the wrong reasons. It is the job of the journalist to correct these errors.” — Mark Twain (or words to that effect)

    1. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      “Reporter: A writer who guesses his way to the truth and dispels it with a tempest of words.” A. Bierce. (Still keep the Devil’s Dictionary by my desk…)

  11. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Steve H. The news guild is not exactly a powerhouse. Don’t make me mad. Was a proud union member in Norfolk.

    1. Steve Haner Avatar
      Steve Haner

      I’m willing to bet the contracts are a wee bit more muscular in NYC. But I don’t know if this guy was covered, having reached management…..

  12. Jim Loving Avatar
    Jim Loving

    In 2016, the Webster word of the year was “Post-Truth.” You can look that up and do your own search on the many articles and think pieces on what that is, what it means, and how we got here.

    It includes a long simmering and devolving of loss of trust in all major institutions, including the government and media, science and the scientific method, then eventually in “the other side.”

    Then take a look at this work from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, discussing a term introduced just 5 years ago by Captain Phillip Kapusta of the US Strategic Operations Command – “Gray Zone”, then ask yourself how you, and Bacons Rebellion may be swimming in the Gray Zone. For what it is worth, since I had never heard the term at all before today, I suggested a re-branding to “New Cold War” or “Cold War 2.0.” Americans all understand Cold War. They even understand Civil War.

    I certainly do not have any easy answers on the way forward, but I do know that I do not see them on this blog post or many other places and certainly not from our leadership. cheers everyone, keep reading and writing and expressing your 1st Amendment rights.

    https://www.csis.org/features/competing-gray-zone

  13. djrippert Avatar
    djrippert

    Tom Cotton is everything the presstitutes of the New York Times hate. A white man raised in the rural south in a middle class home. Cotton graduated magna cum laude from Harvard after three years of study. A conservative member of the Harvard Crimson editorial board Cotton often swam against the current opposing such liberal sacred cows as affirmative action. He subsequently attended Harvard Law School graduating in 2002. In 2005 he joined the Army refusing an offer to work in the Judge Advocate General group selecting infantry instead. He was deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan where he earned a Combat Infantry Badge and a Bronze Star as a US Army Ranger.

    While stationed in Iraq Cotton submitted a letter to the editor of the New York Times charging The Time with espionage for reporting on a classified program being used to track terrorists’ finances. The Times refused to print the letter but other news and opinion outlets did publish it.

    Cotton was elected to the US House of Representatives at 36 and became a US Senator at 38. Today he’s 43.

    The “uproar” over the Cotton Op-Ed has nothing to do with its content or any inaccuracies the Times staff may have seen in their red eyed rage of hallucination. It is entirely about giving voice to a (relatively) young, conservative, well educated rising star in the Republican Party.

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      He’s your basic Trumpster… though.. just younger.. and won’t be popular with the protestors and blacks and most urban dwellers – that will make for a rough run at POTUS.

      I would not be surprised to see Trump dump Esper and replace him with Cotton!

      He’d fit run in with the rest of them.. and yep.. he would have done without question what Esper refused to do.

      😉

  14. TooManyTaxes Avatar
    TooManyTaxes

    And has Joe Biden spoken out against Jacob Frey, whose failure to do what he said when he ran for mayor of Minneapolis was a major cause of George Floyd’s death? Has the MSD pushed Biden for answers?

    Most of the media have the moral standards of Joseph Goebbels.

    1. djrippert Avatar
      djrippert

      Joe Biden has age-related diminished mental capacity. He’s already explained that cops should shoot people in the leg rather than killing them with head or chest shots. What more do you want from the guy? No malarkey.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        the choice is almost as bad as with Hillary, I agree. we’re screwed.

        1. Matt Hurt Avatar
          Matt Hurt

          Maybe Trump paid off the DNC. That’s one of the only viable reasons I can think of that they trotted out this guy for him to square off with.

        2. TooManyTaxes Avatar
          TooManyTaxes

          Larry, are up to a national write-in campaign for president? I often disagree with you on issues but at least you are a man of integrity. That’s more than 98% of the Swamp.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            Write-ins are losers… If Biden picks a decent VP – (who could be POTUS if necessary) then that might be enough. I think organgeman has tipped his cards on how he’d use power and authority if he got his way and even the GOP is worried what he’d do in a second term.

        3. djrippert Avatar
          djrippert

          If I had to vote today I don’t know who I’d vote for. Biden will be 82 at the end of his first term if he is elected. Given how fast being president seems to age even fit young men like Obama I can’t imagine Biden making it through the full term. We’ll see who he names as his Vice Presidential nominee. I hear Sarah Palin is still available.

          1. LarrytheG Avatar
            LarrytheG

            He and Trump are similar age, no? But I agree – and that’s why his pick of VP is fairly important… We would expect that person to become POTUS… at some point. Palen as POTUS ? Right….

  15. sherlockj Avatar
    sherlockj

    The following is a quotation from the Claremont Institute. It captures a view that the New York Times and the Washington Post would not print because it doesn’t fit their “narrative”. (God I hate that word because of what it represents in modern journalism). Does anyone think this is not a supportable view if you actually read the words?

    “The pretext for this entire nationwide riot is that America is a racist country. That is not true. America is not a racist country. America is a country that has strived, imperfectly but passionately, to live up to its founding promise that all men are created equal. There is not—and will never be—a greater barrier to racism, or to tyranny in any form, than this American idea.

    The reckless charge that American law enforcement is “systemically racist” is also not true. As with any large organization of men wielding power, some will abuse that power. But police do not systematically target innocents—either by race or any other criteria. Any fair-minded review of the available data demonstrates that.

    Why is it that so many of our citizens believe that America is racist to its core? Because this lie has been preached by our universities and media like the Gospel for a generation. From there it has traveled throughout society, particularly among the elite. Even most leaders on the Right are unwilling to refute this destructive untruth. In failing to do so, they promote the falsehood, the riots that it has engendered, and ultimately America’s destruction. This is to say, the riots are the handiwork of the elite. A country that has been taught it is ignoble will not defend itself against its enemies, domestic or foreign.

    As we see written in flames in these riots and hear in all the commentary on them, the great divide in America is between those who believe that America is evil and needs to be destroyed, and those who believe that America is good and needs to be preserved. A version of that question is what the 2016 elections were about, and what the elections in 2020 will be about. The nation has a party devoted to transforming the American way of life; it needs a party devoted to preserving the American way of life.

    America must have a full accounting of how the riots happened, who made them happen, and who let them happen. Those in power must be held to account. Most fundamentally, the lies that have been the core curriculum of American education must be replaced with the truth. The only way America can survive is as a united country dedicated to living out the true meaning of its creed. The elite want to rob us of that future. The rest of us should pledge our lives, fortunes, and sacred honor to stopping them.

    Thomas D. Klingenstein
    Chairman

    Ryan P. Williams
    President The Claremont Institute”

    1. Nancy_Naive Avatar
      Nancy_Naive

      Can I commission this guy to write my eulogy?

  16. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Well that’s the opinion of a right wing think tank. No data supporting their views, however

    1. LarrytheG Avatar
      LarrytheG

      so we have alternate realities ….

      “In a Monmouth University poll released this week, 76 percent of Americans — including 71 percent of white people — called racism and discrimination “a big problem” in the United States. That’s a 26-percentage-point spike since 2015. In the poll, 57 percent of Americans said demonstrators’ anger was fully justified, and another 21 percent called it somewhat justified.” June 5

      https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/politics/polling-george-floyd-protests-racism.html

  17. Reed Fawell 3rd Avatar
    Reed Fawell 3rd

    This is a replay of Charlottesville 2017, a flood of left wing misinformation, for example, this:

    “Key details on violent riots near the White House were removed from the broadcast of an interview of Attorney General William Barr on CBS News’ “Face The Nation” Sunday. Anchor Margaret Brennan repeatedly described protests as “peaceful” and the clearing of protesters to set up a stronger perimeter as unnecessarily rushed, contentions Barr strongly denied.

    Left out of the interview that aired on CBS on Sunday morning was Barr’s detailed accounting of much of the violent context of that perimeter expansion, including that “bricks and inflammable liquid” were being thrown at police in Lafayette Square near the White House as rioters “were trying to get entry” over the fences, the five dozen officers guarding Lafayette Square who were “lost” the night prior in the violence, and the individuals who at the time of their forced dispersal “wrestled with the police officers trying to tear their shields from them, in one case, struggling to get one of the police officer’s guns.” …

    “They were not peaceful protesters. And that’s one of the big lies that the- the media is- seems to be perpetuating at this point,” Barr said.

    Off To A Rough Start

    The interview began with Brennan asking Barr about CBS’ claim that President Donald Trump ordered 10,000 active-duty military troops into the streets, based on a single, anonymous source.

    “No, that’s completely false. That’s completely false,” Barr noted, repeatedly and explicitly. White House Director of Strategic Communications Alyssa Farah took to Twitter to further deny the report. “This is FALSE. I was in the mtg. @realDonaldTrump very clearly directed DOD to surge the National Guard – not active duty- after nights of vandalism & arson in DC,” she wrote. …

    For more, see:
    https://thefederalist.com/2020/06/08/cbs deceptively-edits-barr-interview-leaving-out-key-details-on-violent-riots-police-oversight/

    Here are reports on more disinformation from MSM. “The Media Are Lying To You About Everything, Including The Riots by John Daniel Davidson.

    “Over the weekend we were told, for example, that the looting and violence was being instigated not by left-wing anarchists and antifa groups but by the media’s favorite villains: white supremacists. CNN, whose Atlanta offices were vandalized Friday, went on and on—without a shred of evidence to back it up—about how white supremacists might be infiltrating the protests and stirring up trouble. The New York Times, in a report that even quoted a senior police official in New York City saying outside anarchist groups were coordinating mayhem before the protests began, nevertheless veered into a long aside about how far-right “accelerationists” were hoping the unrest would bring about a long-sought second civil war.

    By Monday, no one was talking about the white supremacist agitators anymore. The media had moved on to better, more plausible lies.

    Here’s Matthew Yglesias of Vox, disingenuously comparing the rioters and looters to pro-democracy protesters in Hong Kong. …

    Again, it should go without saying that the Michigan protests last month went off without any looting, rioting, or violence. No one was arrested because no one broke the law. There’s no valid comparison between those Michigan protests and the mass riots over the weekend. …

    Had she opened her eyes, Alcindor might have seen the same evidence Trump and everyone else saw: news footage and cell phone videos circulating on social media of black-clad rioters burning and looting shops, attacking shop owners and motorists, and in some cases spray-painting actual anarchist symbols on public property. …

    You see the media’s obsession with this narrative everywhere, no matter what the actual facts of a story might be. In Columbia, South Carolina, a man trying to protect his business was attacked and beaten senseless by an angry mob because he dared to call the cops. Yet Maggie Haberman of the New York Times thinks the big takeaway is that the man was described as “white” in a video of the attack that Trump posted about. …

    After Trump’s Monday night walk through Lafayette Park to St. John’s Episcopal Church, the media breathlessly reported stories about violent Park Police clearing peaceful protestors with tear gas. After nearly 24 hours of endless tweets, articles, and cable news stories claiming protestors were tear-gassed for Trump’s “photo op,” the Park Police information officer disproved all prior reports confirming, “No tear gas was used by USPP officers or other assisting law enforcement partners.”

    1. James A. Bacon Avatar
      James A. Bacon

      The establishment media has completed its metamorphosis from mere bias and selection of facts that fit their narrative to a disseminator of outright misinformation. The cable TV networks are the worst. I believe absolutely nothing out of CNN or MSNBC without confirming it from another source.

      1. LarrytheG Avatar
        LarrytheG

        Who do you trust most for accurate news? Is that where you go first?

  18. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Reed: you quote the Federalist which leans right. Did you contact CBS, The New York Times , Vox or other outlets you cite?

  19. Peter Galuszka Avatar
    Peter Galuszka

    Btw, the Times always has had melodrama. Read Gay Talese’s “the Kingdom and the Power.” Ir Howell Raines’ demise about 20’years who. Arthur Sulzberger Jr., the retired publisher, was a college classmate of mine. I do, however, see a weaker Times with the new breed. Click on their App and you get “most Popular” not “Top stories.”
    Recent most popular items included how to give hugs during the pandemic and how to grill terrific salmon, you know. Important stuff.

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