Into the Bray

No I'll stand my ground

Won't be turned around

And I'll keep this world from draggin' me down

Gonna stand my ground

--I Won't Back Down,

Tom Petty

He goes out at night with his big boots on

None of his friends know right from wrong

--Rehumanize Yourself,

The Police

You can't be twenty on Sugar Mountain

Though you're thinking that you're leaving there too soon

--Sugar Mountain,

Neil Young 

_____________________

Subtitle: What We Have Lost.


An unsung casualty of the 2016 election season is humor, that great American salve. R.I.P.

In its place, we have gained a robust factory system of bilge and bile production, delivered by rough performers who dance like marionette puppets to a Democratic laugh track.

When did the take-down of American humor happen? Probably, it was not a discrete event, but a slow and inexorable disappearance. One might look to humorist Jon Stewart, for a start.

In a 2009 Time poll, 44% of Americans said Stewart was their most trusted "newsman". Then Stewart admitted his piker status after his chummy interview and later socializing with Paula Broadwell failed to suggest to him her improper relationship with later disgraced General David Petraeus.

In his blind arrogance, Stewart said of his oversight, "I am the worst journalist in the world." Actually, Mr. Stewart is no journalist at all. At his best, he was amusing, and he left the stage last year before things turned ugly for the fake newsters.

And so we now have entertainers-cum-newsmen like Stephen Colbert getting his props for offering dreck that even a site like "Stormfront" would not proffer. Can you imagine him aiming this grotesque twaddle at President Obama or Mrs. Clinton? (Didn't think so.)

Our airwaves are filled with carnival barkers. Like emcees at a Cafe Risque midnight show, they grow increasingly outrageous in an attempt to keep us awake, tuned in and Twitter-fed.

Humor, satire, civility, and even sanity have left the stage. Many of my associates go snow-blind when they simply hear the name "Trump". Fury, anger, disgust ... I am not sure what overtakes them. The voices rise and, predictably comes the response, "I am so TIRED of hearing about Trump!"

And so they are, for they have been blasted from every one of their media outlets with the unfitness of the man and the supposed unreality and illegality of the election results since last year. At the mention of his name they recoil, for they know the drill -- the inevitable onslaught to follow.

Pain is anticipated, so woe be it to the person who attempts any dialog about the new President outside of a Ft. Bragg bunker playing Lili Marlene, for you are now persona non grata amongst your Democratic fellows. Perhaps they think such a person a troublemaker, callow, or naive?

Ire aimed at this President has become a self-licking ice cream cone.This is operant conditioning, and we have been brainwashed, en masse.

Someone who might buy simplistic slogans like "HOPE" and "CHANGE", or "Make America Great Again?" Pshaw! Perish the thought that anyone could be such a rube, eh? That's the domain of folks like, um, factory workers (do they still exist here?)

Yet the Democrats howl on command as the cant grow ever more tragedic, in the face of little or no facts. Meanwhile, in this fetid environment, the insinuations grow ever larger.

When the pattern of media lies was emerging, Lisa thought to take notes. However, it quickly reached pandemic proportions, and keeping track would have been a fool's errand. Bowing out is the only sane move.

However, before leaving, here are three idiosyncratic examples of why:


1.) When a member of peaceful group of Trump supporters was pepper-sprayed in Huntington Beach (CA) late March, the head was, "Riot Breaks Out at Trump Rally". Now, an ingenue might envision a David Duke sort of fervor, and some gentle liberals -- the sort who used to put daisies in National Guard rifle barrels --being bullied for their non-violent witness.

But it was the other way 'round, and the press identified the attacker of the woman at the peaceful gathering as a "counter-protester". But one must have a "protest" in order to have it's opposite, and the celebrants were NOT protesters.

So the press lied, in order to sow confusion in the reader's mind.

How would the press have covered a pepper spray attack upon a jubilant celebration of President Obama's election? Would the press call them, "racist"? Perhaps, "jack-booted Aryan thugs?" Certainly, they would be "protesters", and not "anti-protesters".

In a final filip, as if to justify their slanted coverage, the article's coda mentions that the protester's numbers are legion nationwide, compared to those who support the President. How is this conjecture relevant to the news piece?


2.) In a recent NYT Magazine piece about Facebook's effect upon the election, even Farhood Manjoo has been forced to sacrifice his reporter's impartiality in service of The Story.

In the piece, Facebook is indicted for the rise of right-wing fanaticism, which is blamed for electing Trump. The election of Trump was the main offense: how Zuck's "news feed" algorithm might have aided conservatives ... that's all.

The story brushed aside the angry democrats who remain so because they are trapped in the bubble of the vanity "news feed".


3.) Michael Moore, erstwhile spokesman for the Little Guy, asks "What Would Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Say About Trump?" He posits that he might cry -- which is laughable, were it not so blind. Moore gives us the horsehair shirt his followers want.

But I suggest Rev. King would say, "Let's reach out to our next President. He is our brother."

He would probably form a wonderful relationship with the new President, and appeal to the nation to cease its hatred and riven-ness; to stop the tomfoolery of an "Us vs. Him" mentality. (Mr. Trump has never shown any racial animus.)

He would forefront the plight of the American black which became inadvertently highlighted by violence in President Obama's term. In his own words, he would say let us stop pretending that it was all skittles and beer under Mr. Obama, or that it would have been so under Mrs. Clinton.

She lost the election. Now get on with it. We have work to do.

THAT'S what he'd say.


Democrats --- historical protectors of those who have been trammeled -- have now become the jackals and hyenas doing the trammeling. They are turning us on each other, so we do not ask, "What is really going on here?"

We are allowed neither solidarity nor peace. We have become Sunnis and Shiites (with the occasional Kurd), because that is all the news will allow for us.

Ironically, the Democratic base which has been animated to expulse the daily rot regarding their President is predominately the low- to center middle class, the very people who have been sold down the river by the glutted and disingenuous Democratic Party, a party which has not spoken for them for many years now.

They feel that mutant freaks like Charles Pierce speak for them as they crank up the band of their not very merry pranksters day by day, running their hamster wheel as fast as they can.

Welcome to the Post-Truth Era

--Schott (De Volkskrant, Netherlands)

 A half truth is a whole lie
--Yiddish proverb

Welcome to Costco,
I love you
--Idiocracy (2006)

It's a beautiful mornin', ah
I think I'll go outside a while
And just smile
Just take in some clean fresh air, boy!
--A Beautiful Morning,
The Rascals

Play that funky music white boy
Lay down that boogie and
play that funky music 'til you die
--Play That Funky Music,
Wild Cherry  
____________________
  

A caveat, and a wish:

Ranger and I considered this week which loss will hurt the most: the death of Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher) or former boy band singer George Michael. The news cycle has tended assiduously to both. But the answer is, “neither”.

The greatest loss is the integrity of the portal through we are fed such stuff. 2016 marks the death of the news media as a trusted partner in our vaunted democratic experiment. Requiescat in pace.

Yes, yes, we all know the news has always come with a bias, and even the fact of what we see is determined for us. But this year, the rust fully breached the veneer. 

It has been a long, inexorable regression. 

Newspapers have been precipitously cutting staff and shuttering operations for over a decade. Cheap, often unvetted and inaccurate content has filled the void (thank you Huffington Post for leading the way, exploiting desperate and often unpaid writers.)

Gone are most college journalism departments and their lessons of boring but stolid integrity. In their place, media studies programs where one learns the art of the package and the spectacle, how to be “newsy” and “newsish”, have bling, and get hired.


Fakirs and Magis:

In 2016, it became o.k. for "legitimate" newscasters to present a lie, provided it propped up the approved liberal agenda.

Couric edited her "Under the Gun" documentary to further the program's anti-gun agenda. Jill Stein was censored in her appearance on the PBS Newshour to make the candidate appear clueless. The reporting offenses are legion, and occurred daily through 2016 in every erstwhile legitimate news outlet. 

This year, I learned disgust for my previous go-to sites, places like The New York Times, The New Yorker and National Public Radio. Each liberal media source partook this election season in a robust and frenzied dance of “Kill the Other Candidate,” and they did so by any means necessary.

It turns out much of their “news” was fake -- misinformed or outright created to foment madness and fury. And in their mad bubble, they were wrong. (It didn't take a Carnac the Magnificent to see this.)

We head into 2017 dampened by a sour anger and a bitter fear born of their imposed and continually reinforced ideation. It is a poor way to welcome a new presidency and a New Year. 

For those who were blinkered, snookered and tribed-up, our wish and hope is that you will wake up, and not too hungover.


In the face of this loss, some tonic ideas from elsewhere:

A Swedish friend recently celebrated with me the Finnish concept of  “Sisu” (in honor of my heritage). Sisu is a national ethos, and has no English translation. Roughly, it means “grit”. Getting it done despite all resistance; seizing success from the jaws of defeat. 

Sisu is a good and noble sort of hardheadness.

We then spoke of “lagom”, the Swedish concept of “just enough” – neither too much, nor too little. Again, a concept absent from the average U.S. lexicon. 

Lagom is a sort of life art, the knowing and understanding of what is necessary for an elegantly simple life. It is a hard concept to acquire for one raised in our “more for me” society.

For good measure, we threw in the Danish idea of “hygge”. Hygge is both the having and the enjoying of simple comforts, the sort that makes a “hard rain’s gonna fall” sort of day bearable. It is neither ostentatious nor in excess. It may be private, or shared.  It is a self-comfort.

So for our readers may you know sisu, lagom and hygge as the holiday season draws nigh. May we all find a candle to light our way.

May we be grateful for the things not lost, and for the ability to apprehend and to appreciate them.