Originally written May 27, 2017

The past week was remarkable in how it reflects the truths of our current political and journalistic landscapes in America. I’ll highlight a few things, just to illustrate.

The President’s trip to Saudi Arabia, Israel, and Europe was a very significant undertaking. It went off very well, I think. President Trump sent a strong and clear message to the 50 Muslim heads of state who assembled to hear him in Riyadh. He assured Israel of our continued support of their nation and its role as our closest and best ally in the region. Then he went on to send another message to Europeans, especially to those heads of NATO countries who assembled for a relatively rare summit in Brussels. His message to our European friends was a tad less cheery and also a tad less well received. His message can be summed up thusly, “Live up to your obligations. America is tired of carrying those who aren’t.” Yes, this was a trip that needed to happen, but it wouldn’t have with any other President. No one else who ran for President in the last election would have the moxie to be so blunt, straightforward, honest, and clear in representing the interests of our nation.

The media at home did its best to ignore the President’s trip. Most of their coverage, Fox News excepted, dwelled on phony assertions of many faux pas committed by Trump and his entourage. There was the hand slapping that wasn’t; the “disrespectful uncovering” of the First Lady and First Daughter, which the Saudis seemed to be completely okay with; the “obvious” double standard as those two women did cover up to meet Pope Francis, despite everyone knowing there’s a strict dress code for anyone who has a Papal audience; the dismissive tone of the President when addressing long-standing allies, which was just straight talk; and the “shoving incident” where President Trump was accused of rudely shoving Prime Minister Marcovek of Montenegro aside to ensure he had a front-row spot for the group photo; something even Marcovek says was about nothing at all.

Most of the news of the trip was of that ilk; gossipy negatives; mostly made up. That which wasn’t made up was mostly distortion of truth.

Meanwhile the dominant coverage of the week was the suicide attack in Manchester, England. Not that it shouldn’t have been, but that coverage tended toward distortion as well. Until ISIS claimed the bomber as one of its own, and until the police arrested the bomber’s brother – also a member of ISIS, and his father – a member of al Qaeda, there seemed to be a consistent lack of will to call the attack the work of Islamic radicals. Who else would have done such a thing though, a cabal of discontented old Beatles fans? What was amazing, though not totally unexpected, were press assertions that the attack was in some way retribution for the unkind things President Trump had to say about Islamist radicals while in Riyadh. Yes, it’s true, according to some “news” outlets the attack on Manchester was Donald Trump’s fault. He provoked it. He’s the guilty one.

We also had that odd scene in Montana, where the Republican candidate for a vacated House seat, Greg Gianforte, got tired of being harassed by a Guardian reporter named Ben Jacobs and evidently “body slammed” him. The news all but had Gianforte strangling the guy and throwing him violently to the floor. There was only audio of the incident, where Jacobs can be clearly heard accusing Gianforte with the words, “You body slammed me!” But some dumb reporting blew it up to be a case of attempted murder. Gianforte was subsequently arrested and charged with misdemeanor assault. He then offered an apology to Jacobs. It turned out to be just another attempt by the press to sway an election, if you want to know the truth. Desperate times call for desperate measures. This time, though, it didn’t work, and Gianforte won the election. But, what else did the press have to say about it all? It’s Trump’s fault; he sets the standard of national behavior for Republicans. Odd, I don’t recall Trump body slamming anyone.

The Gianforte dust-up was played all across the nation as “big news.” Microphones were shoved into the faces of incumbents in Washington for comment. Some, notably Paul Ryan, responded with their dismay. If Republicans ever learn when and how to keep their mouths shut, maybe they’d actually learn how to make our government work. Ryan should spend time in the penalty box for that one. It was a rookie move.

While all the things mentioned above were going on, what was the biggest US news story of the week? There’s a story out that the President’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, attempted to set up a back-channel communication link with the Russian government sometime back in December. This is what passes for scandal fodder these days. If he’d been a Democrat Congressman and was found passed out drunk in an airport in Uzbekistan with an opened-up laptop computer filled with Top Secret defense secrets you’d almost certainly never hear of it. But, when a member of the incoming White House staff tries to establish communication links with an important nation prior to inauguration day – that’s huge news! Only, it isn’t huge news. It’s actually not news at all. It’s nothing more than an attempt to make Kushner the next Mike Flynn. It won’t work. It’s dumb. But, it was still The Big News.

There was a very long article in the New York Times this week that went on for column after column, detailing how egregious everything about the Kushner-Russian scandal is. If you made it to the end of the article you’d have your reward. The end of the article was something of a disclaimer of all that preceded. After wading through paragraph after paragraph of “truly disturbing facts” and quotations of unnamed, but highly respected sources, at the end the article was an actual admission that “so far” there’s absolutely zero actual evidence anything wrong happened, or that anything happened at all. That article should be studied by all. It revealed the entire matter is made up of second and third-hand innuendo and speculation, and nothing more. That is now what passes for journalism in America.

The question that should always be on your minds, each and every day is, “What’s really going on here?” There’s one thing that’s a safe bet. This is about diverting attention from things going on with the Democrats, the Democratic Party, and the impending investigation of the so-called Russian Hacking. There’s a mountain of dirt that is sitting in front of the media, and their hope is to divert you from paying any attention to it at all. They want you to ignore the mountain and spend all your waking hours tending to mole hills and phantom mole hills.

A couple of days ago I was in conversation with a FaceBook friend. Yeah, I know what you’re thinking; he and I must be really close! We’re obvious cyberspace buddies of the first order. Except, this particular friend is also a Navy Shipmate of mine from my first submarine. We actually try to pay attention to what the other says and the points being made. We were having a lively debate about the Fourth Estate and how degenerate they’ve become when I made a remark that evidently ended the discussion. I reminded him of a few years back when the networks slashed their news bureau budgets and laid off real journalists. My thought was what we have now is a pack of parasites who generally don’t have the ability or the budget to do better than to follow the crowd. If your main source of news is overseas “stringers” and other news outlets, how hard is it to become a herd animal. Nowadays, if you want to follow a “big story” to its roots, you often find all the major media outlets are parroting something stupid dreamed up by some hack on-line outlet most know for fake news and conspiratorial sensationalism. There’s little in the way of actual journalism anymore. There’s parasitic parroting and opinionating. Not much more. The New York Times, Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times have all degenerated to the point that the only thing differenting them from supermarket tabloids is their advertising. Otherwise, you can find just as much credible news by picking up The National Enquirer next time you’re in the check-out line. At least, if you do that, you won’t be kidding yourself or anyone else.

Our Constitution guarantees the freedom of the press to do what they do. Anyone who knows the history of newspapers knows they have a very long, tawdry history. Muckrakers and yellow journalists have always dominated the scene in our country. We tend to kid ourselves about that. When you look at the history you find the field of journalism took a turn during WWII and then turned even more when TV became mainstreamed in America. WWII saw the rise of real, honest-to-goodness field reporters, who strived to present truths, limited by government censorship, of course. But, the rise of TV gave journalism a new focus. Because it was “real” people in our living rooms every day the on-screen guys vied for credibility. It was all about the “news you can trust” and the “news man you can trust.” We had Walter Cronkite, Huntley & Brinkley, and Howard K. Smith. We had news we believed in, and people who guarded their reputations for objectivity with enormous zeal. That all ended with Dan Rather and his dumb attempts to subvert the presidency of George W. Bush. Since then, journalism has been in steep decline, and is now more reflective of the ‘80s daytime TV heyday of Jerry Springer, Geraldo Rivera, and the others who pandered to the basest instincts and predilections of our populace. What we are actually witnessing is the revival of the American journalism of old. Get used to it. It’s not going away.

The media war against Trump continues unabated. It’s all day, every day. It won’t stop until the people of the country demand it to stop. When people wise up and stop buying newspapers and watching the networks that promote progressive causes, and when we prevail upon advertisers to go elsewhere, then maybe they’ll see the need to change. But, when big newspapers and networks are being bankrolled by billionaires, even that is a complicated calculus.

Does it strike you as odd that billionaires support progressivism and progressive causes? You’d think they would all be conservatives and libertarians; all free market capitalists, but they aren’t. Think about that!

Meanwhile, enjoy Memorial Day. Remember the day is supposed to be one where we honor those who have died in the service of our nation. They died to support our freedom. We should all redouble our efforts to ensure none of them died in vain.

MAGA, my friends, MAGA! It’s up to us.