Sunday, June 28, 2020

The Media Are Lying To You About Everything

From earlier this month, but still holds true. From The Federalist:
In recent days we’ve heard a steady drumbeat of lies, distortions, and disingenuousness from the mainstream media about almost every aspect of the unrest now gripping American cities. The deceit is almost too pervasive and amorphous to describe, but I’m going to try anyway. 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. His snarky tweet is meant to suggest Arkansas Sen. Tom Cotton is a hypocrite for supporting the Hong Kong protesters but calling for the restoration of order at home.
(Read more.)

Race is NOT what is dividing us. From The Stream:
To repeat. This does not mean that we do not have problems to address. And, as I have stated before, to the chagrin of some of my conservative friends, I have no problem asking if there is still systemic racism in America. (If not systemic racism, then system inequity.) My point in this article is to stress that our biggest issues in America are not race-based. They are ideologically based. And right now, those pushing a radical leftist agenda are the most divisive among us, by far.
Of course, if the radical right (which includes the “alt-right”) had a bigger platform today, they would be just as divisive. But they do not. They have been largely marginalized, and for that I am glad. Instead, it is the radical left (which includes the BLM movement and its Marxist-fueled agenda) which has become dominant, championed by a complicit (or foolishly naïve) media. They are the ones dividing us.
On a personal level, I will continue to listen to people of color as they share their perspectives with me (like a caller on Monday who told me he started picking cotton at the age of 5 and that I had no idea what his life experience was like; he is correct). And I will continue to ask God to show me my blind spots. (Read more.)

From Charles Coulombe at Crisis:
When the attacks—legal and otherwise—on Confederate monuments and heritage began to ramp up, I warned in various venues that it would not stop there. And, of course, such disparate characters as Kate Smith and Columbus followed in that train. But ever since the eruption of riots across the nation and the rest of the Western world over the past few weeks following the murder of the gentleman in Minneapolis (I will not use his name in this context, as it’s bad enough being brutally murdered without having your memory forever associated with stupidity and mayhem), it has literally spilled over into everything. Statues of figures from Abraham Lincoln to Saint Junipero Serra to Winston Churchill to Lord Baden-Powell, the founder of Boy Scouting, have been attacked.
Accompanying this orgy of iconoclasm has been millions upon millions of dollars worth of damage to businesses across the United States, caused by the mob’s gleeful looting. The demonstrations sparking the mayhem have been well organized by such groups as Black Lives Matter and Antifa—with folk on the left accusing such groups as the Boogaloo Boys of masquerading as Antifa, and vice versa. (Read more.)

Will the National Anthem be banned? From Todd Starnes:
Make no mistake. We are at war against an army of fascists, secularists, socialists and Marxists. They want to destroy our nation. Click here to read my book.  In recent days the domestic terrorists have toppled statues and desecrated monuments. Now, they are targeting the national anthem. Lyndsey Parker, the editor of Yahoo Music, wrote a column titled, “Why it might be time to finally replace ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ with a new national anthem.” She interviewed activist Kevin Powell who suggested that Francis Scott Key was a racist and the song he wrote is riddled with violence.
“So, if “The Star-Spangled Banner” goes the way of the Confederate flag and Gone With the Wind, what should America’s new national anthem be? Whatever it is, Walker says there should be a formal “vetting process” to make sure the next anthem doesn’t have a terrible past; Powell, for his part, suggests John Lennon’s “Imagine,” which he says is ‘the most beautiful, unifying, all-people, all-backgrounds-together kind of song you could have,'” she wrote. (Read more.)

From Intellectual Takeout:
A memorial to the more than 100 million people killed by communism was vandalized in the midst of the protests resulting from George Floyd’s violent death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers. Marion Smith, the executive director of the Victims of Communism Memorial Foundation tweeted images of the vandalism Tuesday. Photos show “BLM” and what looks to be part of another word spray painted on the statue.

In interesting, if perhaps coincidental timing, this vandalism of a tribute to the dead occurs the same week as the anniversary of the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) brutal suppression of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests, resulting in an estimated death toll of thousands of protesters as the full weight of China’s military descended upon its citizenry.

The Victims of Communism memorial statue is a duplicate of the “Goddess of Democracy” statue which was a 10-meter tall construct assembled during the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests in China. Work began on May 27 in the Central Academy of Fine Arts, before students there surreptitiously moved the statue in pieces, avoiding state security, and assembled it in Tiananmen Square on May 30. She stood for only five days before a People’s Liberation Army tank toppled her on live television on the CCP’s orders. (Read more.)
 
More conservatives need to take a stand. Also from The Federalist:
 For decades, the conservative movement has profited off the invocation of the American Founding. Multiple political analysts have said over the years that the biggest mistake Democrats made was letting Republicans have The Bible and the Flag, and the right has certainly profited from it. Wrapping themselves in the language of the Founding Fathers, filling their buildings with quotes, books, busts, statues, and artist’s renderings, conservatives have thrived by making themselves the defenders of American history against a verbally iconoclastic left. But in practice, they spent more time advocating for lower taxes, feel-good donor interests, and pro-business regulatory reforms than the cultural defense they used to make the money roll in.

Meanwhile, the left has marched through our institutions of power: the schools and the academy, the media, the creative arts, and the central authorities of our greatest cities, amassing near-total control and influence over our culture. They have tried to grasp permanent hold of the narrative, audit conservative activists, and subdue religious defiers. Now they intend to subjugate the nation’s children to a woke ahistorical conspiracy about our founding and inculcate them with the idea they are permanently stained by irredeemable acts of racism that happened long before they were born, and for which they are not guilty.

This is power, amassed intentionally over half a century, and they are wielding it now in destructive ways. Now that the left has become not just verbally iconoclastic, not just changing the names of streets or buildings but physically assaulting the past, why have conservatives gone quiet? Why are they standing back instead of standing up to defend our history? Why is it that a bunch of South Philly Italian bros have more gumption about a statue of Columbus than the people who have spent decades invoking Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and more to raise money for their causes and win elections? (Read more.)

Also from The Federalist:
Their target is not the Confederacy. It is the United States. They mean to destroy symbols of American history writ large, because to them all of American history is racist and genocidal. Their goal is not to cleanse a nation they love of monuments to Confederate traitors who tried to secede, but to cleanse their consciences of ever having loved such an evil and irredeemably racist country in the first place. (Read more.)

From Spiked:
It is as if these people are deeply proud of their historical illiteracy and want everyone to know it. The Emancipation Memorial was funded entirely by free slaves (an amazing story), and its unveiling in 1876 was commemorated by the famous former slave and abolitionist, Frederick Douglass. But to these idiots, tearing down a statue of Lincoln funded by slaves is somehow a blow for racial equality. Similarly, protesters in Madison, Wisconsin, pulled down a statue of Hans Christian Heg, an abolitionist immigrant who died fighting for the union. For good measure, they also toppled a statue commemorating women’s suffrage and beat up a 60-year-old Democratic state senator. It seems that, in the battle against white supremacy, attacking any white person will do. (Read more.)

Trump signed an executive order to protect statues and monuments. From Fox News:
The new order enforces laws prohibiting the desecration of public monuments, the vandalism of government property, and recent acts of violence, withholds federal support tied to public spaces from state and local governments that have failed to protect public monuments, and withdraws federal grants for jurisdictions and law enforcement agencies that fail to stop their desecration. It also provides assistance for protecting the federal statues. Meanwhile on Friday evening, Attorney General Bill Barr directed the creation of a task force to counter anti-government extremists, specifically naming those who support the far-right “boogaloo” movement and those who identify as Antifa. (Read more.)

Meanwhile, Left identity politics has re-racialised society. A reaction was inevitable. From Spiked:
In response to the racialised climate created by both left and right, many decent people have felt forced to take sides, as a defensive mechanism, as they have seen government and the police failing to deal with freedom of speech, social cohesion and law-and-order issues that have arisen from protests regarding racial politics. Slogans like ‘It’s okay to be white’ and ‘White Lives Matter’, as well as an increase in the expressed grievance that white people are being treated unfairly because of the colour of their skin, have now sprung to greater prominence. (Read more.)
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5 comments:

julygirl said...

I would suggest to insurance companies that they employ some sort of militia to protect their insured since they are the ones who will be stuck with the bill from business owners who need to repair and replace merchandise, physical damage, etc. etc...Just saying.

elena maria vidal said...

Good idea. Money seems to be the bottom line for so many.

May said...

It's horrifying to see the level of hatred being directed at innocent people and at the country itself.

Sansa said...

It is unfortunate that the innocent have to suffer because of the rioters. Destroying people's property is just wrong. I don't get why the media isn't critical of the protestors riots damaging and looting of property.

May said...

Whatever happened to common decency...