Looking Back: Mass Delusion Driven by Award Winning Emptiness

 

In what may very well get lost in the fog of early war history in the making, earlier this week Powerline directed us to an interesting…and, I think, important…retrospective of the sorry state of award-winning modern media in a post titled LOOK BACK IN ANGER. The target article below should serve as a primer of the coming of age of the Anti-Intellectual Era in America that was birthed under the Obama Administration. (Nurtured for years through the Uni-Party Failure Theater charades of the early twenty-teens, the creature first really flexed its muscle with the national bathroom free-for-all of May 2016. We can all now hope that the two years of COVID hysteria have led to peak unseriousness with a quick recovery to follow. That is still far from clear. But I digress.) Again, while not in-depth enough to really convey the near-orgasmic daily mania from the left and their enablers within our perimeter, here the New York Post is sufficiently dismissive of the entire fake narrative and equally unimpressed by once-respected mechanisms of recognition insisting on the unseriousness of “participation trophy” status:

The absurd ‘Russiagate’ Pulitzer of the NY Times and Washington Post

“For deeply sourced, relentlessly reported coverage in the public interest,” the citation from the Pulitzer Prize board begins, “that dramatically furthered the nation’s understanding of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election and its connections to the Trump campaign, the president-elect’s transition team and his eventual administration.”

Except the journalism that the Pulitzers honored — a 2018 National Reporting prize shared by the Washington Post and the New York Times for reporting on Russiagate — did no such thing. …

As a lesson in mass delusion, it’s worth going through the 20 stories that make up the Post and the Times’ award-winning series to show just how damaging they were: to the truth, to the newspapers’ reputations — and to America itself.

Mass delusion…check. Damaging to America itself…check. And note that those “20 stories” that largely fed the news pipeline throughout the land (i.e., the megaphones of cable news and the repetition of local papers) represent an intentional and persistent offensive to plant and sustain a false narrative in the minds of We the People. Early on the players sensed blood in the water and thought Trump would be forced from office without ever unpacking his bags. Later the mission shifted to a stall game…they needed to suck the oxygen out of the news cycle every day. (That is why the first impeachment hoax was improvised so soon after the Mueller report. But I digress.)

I’ll let you go read through the meat of the story – “Russia, Russia, Russia” … “the tower meeting” … “the dossier” … “the thumbsuckers” … “the ‘coverup'” … “a whole lot of nothing”. So much of it was just eaten up by the willfully ignorant among us. Yet it was all about nothing…and worse:

Of course, the Mueller report, released in 2019, blew it all away. After a full investigation, there was no “collusion.” All the smoke and mirrors used by the Times and Post and their anonymous briefers to turn ambassador meetings into Kremlin plots add up to nothing.

Yet the damage had been done. The liberal media had “destabilized US democracy” more than Russia ever could, by feeding left-leaning Americans a constant, false narrative that their president was a sleeper agent. Whatever your feelings about Donald Trump, it should disturb you that political opponents and bureaucrats who hated him could so easily weaponize the press to undermine the government from within.

No doubt many media types and their stoolies across the land were true believers (in the cause, at least) and all-in on whatever it took but, it must be realized that much of this, at some level, was all just a very cynical part of the game of politics in our ruling beltway. A very dangerous game of cynical politics. And most of the players are still there enjoying the aftermath of the successful mission.

Into the abyss…

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  1. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    philo: [New York Post:] “Of course, the Mueller report, released in 2019, blew it all away. After a full investigation, there was no “collusion.” All the smoke and mirrors used by the Times and Post and their anonymous briefers to turn ambassador meetings into Kremlin plots add up to nothing.”

    [Emphasis Added]

    Here are some helpful links for a more localized “look back” at the pushing of false narratives:

    November 3, 2017: There is compelling evidence that Trump colluded with the Russians – “Former Republican Congressman Joe Scarborough did an excellent chronology of the issue of Trump and the Russians….there is one heck of a lot of smoke, and increasing evidence of fire…”

    April 20,2019: The Mueller Report in Four Summaries – “The bottom line is devastating to Trump

    [Emphasis Added]

    • #1
  2. BDB Inactive
    BDB
    @BDB

    Once you see it, you cannot un-see it.

    Which is why so many refuse to even look.

    • #2
  3. EDISONPARKS Member
    EDISONPARKS
    @user_54742

    The Mueller Report did not blow it all away.

    The Weissmann Report created the false narrative that Trump obstructed their investigation of Russian collusion they never found.

    The elephant in the room which goes un-asked and therefore never answered, is how did the Weismann Special Counsel (D) activists miss everything being uncovered by Durham and by conservative journalists through FOIA requests and other investigative reporting.

    The HRC campaign/(D) Party/(D) operative/DOJ/FBI/SecState/(D) Congressional and Senate/MSM malfeasance, corruption, and criminal acts were all there for the corrupt Weissmann plants to uncover and report upon, yet the Mueller Special Counsel uncovered and reported upon exactly none of it …. Huh?

    How does that happen?

    This occurred because the Mueller Special Counsel was itself an integral part in perpetrating the corrupt (D) RussiaGate scandal, and I hope to God the Durham Special Counsel exposes the obvious.

    • #3
  4. Fake John/Jane Galt Coolidge
    Fake John/Jane Galt
    @FakeJohnJaneGalt

    As I understand it the whole Ukraine war is a Putin/Trump setup.  That is how the history books will see it.

    • #4
  5. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    NOTICE: This Member post has been promoted to the Main Feed. Content may have been edited / corrected from the original without attribution by Ricochet.

    (Somewhere along the line it seems we – or I – stopped getting notifications about promotions. For what it’s worth, that is/was an important feature to at least one of us.)

    • #5
  6. David Foster Member
    David Foster
    @DavidFoster

    “the coming of age of the Anti-Intellectual Era in America”

    Yet many of the people driving this stuff consider themselves to be *the* intellectuals in our society.

     

     

     

    • #6
  7. I Walton Member
    I Walton
    @IWalton

    Absolutely, good article.  The folks running things  sort of understand what they’re doing.  Their supporters don’t, and will ultimately be among the most harmed, disappointed and will embrace something else they’re fed by other interests.  What do we do as a nation of fifty unmanageable states to correct the center that can’t be managed for a nation so big and diverse.  The folks running and influencing Washington may have some understanding of their own short term interests but they don’t know what they’re doing either.   Most of the world had an elite that over time figured out how to serve their own interests, but our folks will flounder for decades if we can’t figure out how to return to a modernized bottom up system.  The kind of system that built the modern world and cannot sustain it from the top.   Probably can’t as 50 states.

    • #7
  8. Quietpi Member
    Quietpi
    @Quietpi

    I can’t comprehend that the Mueller commission didn’t know a lot about the HRC/D/DNC, etc. cabal’s “collaboration” with the Russians, very possibly before they even began looking for that which didn’t exist.  But their orders were to look for evidence of the Trump campaign, specifically, colluding with the Russians, which, of course, they didn’t find.  Therefore, Mueller’s report to the Congress wasn’t exactly a lie.  It was just very carefully cultured version of “truth.” But the same media were all too happy to not notice such a gap, given what was already known, mostly by a few, more responsible journalists and others, who, of course, were to be ignored as spreading “misinformation.”

    I don’t for one second suggest that Mueller is therefore to be excused.  If he had any ethics, he would have taken action of some sort from the very beginning.  He is absolutely a member of that cabal.

    • #8
  9. genferei Member
    genferei
    @genferei

    I think we’re very lucky that the same media figures that were experts in electoral subversion were also public health experts and virologists, and now are experts in Eastern European history and modern warfare. 

    • #9
  10. EDISONPARKS Member
    EDISONPARKS
    @user_54742

    Quietpi (View Comment):

    I can’t comprehend that the Mueller commission didn’t know a lot about the HRC/D/DNC, etc. cabal’s “collaboration” with the Russians, very possibly before they even began looking for that which didn’t exist. But their orders were to look for evidence of the Trump campaign, specifically, colluding with the Russians, which, of course, they didn’t find. Therefore, Mueller’s report to the Congress wasn’t exactly a lie. It was just very carefully cultured version of “truth.” But the same media were all too happy to not notice such a gap, given what was already known, mostly by a few, more responsible journalists and others, who, of course, were to be ignored as spreading “misinformation.”

    I don’t for one second suggest that Mueller is therefore to be excused. If he had any ethics, he would have taken action of some sort from the very beginning. He is absolutely a member of that cabal.

    I’ve used the same example before but I’ll use it again.

    If a burglary detective was sent to a home to investigate a break in and some reported missing items and in the process of the burglary investigation discovers 12 dead bodies buried in the crawlspace, does he complete his burglary investigation and finding no missing items stolen, close his burglary investigation and complete his report on the matter that they found no burglary …. nothing to see here folks ….. don’t mind the odor …. nothing was stolen from this house?

    Of course not.

    • #10
  11. philo Member
    philo
    @philo

    EDISONPARKS (View Comment):

    Quietpi (View Comment):

    I can’t comprehend that the Mueller commission didn’t know a lot about the HRC/D/DNC, etc. cabal’s “collaboration” with the Russians, very possibly before they even began looking for that which didn’t exist. But their orders were to look for evidence of the Trump campaign, specifically, colluding with the Russians, which, of course, they didn’t find. Therefore, Mueller’s report to the Congress wasn’t exactly a lie. It was just very carefully cultured version of “truth.” But the same media were all too happy to not notice such a gap, given what was already known, mostly by a few, more responsible journalists and others, who, of course, were to be ignored as spreading “misinformation.”

    I don’t for one second suggest that Mueller is therefore to be excused. If he had any ethics, he would have taken action of some sort from the very beginning. He is absolutely a member of that cabal.

    I’ve used the same example before but I’ll use it again.

    If a burglary detective was sent to a home to investigate a break in and some reported missing items and in the process of the burglary investigation discovers 12 dead bodies buried in the crawlspace, does he complete his burglary investigation and finding no missing items stolen, close his burglary investigation and complete his report on the matter that they found no burglary …. nothing to see here folks ….. don’t mind the odor …. nothing was stolen from this house?

    Of course not.

    If memory serves, Ken Starr reported the “dead bodies” unrelated to his authorized investigation to his superiors so that they could initiate a proper investigation if warranted. Those authorities chose to expand the scope of his work to included investigating the “dead bodies.” Absent any similar “paper trail”, I suspect it is right to question Mueller’s ethics. (In his case, I question way more than that.)

    • #11
  12. James Salerno Inactive
    James Salerno
    @JamesSalerno

    Fake John/Jane Galt (View Comment):

    As I understand it the whole Ukraine war is a Putin/Trump setup. That is how the history books will see it.

    Scary. But probably true.

    • #12
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