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Poof! They’re Gone!
Does the name Ahmad Al Aliwi Alissa ring a bell? What about Noah Green? Only the true news junkies, with a gift for remembering trivia, will recall their names at this point. Which is remarkable, because Mr. Alissa killed ten people in a Boulder grocery store two weeks ago, and Mr. Green killed a police officer at the U.S. Capitol one week ago. Both crimes led to ubiquitous headlines, across all media platforms, as soon as they happened, as you might expect. But then, the strangest thing happened. They disappeared. Poof! They just vanished.
Both killers were Muslim, which prevents the stories from being covered. Leftist news sources like CNN ignored the stories, because they are unhelpful to our mass media’s stated goals of promoting the Democrat party. Right-wing news sources like Fox News ignored the stories, to avoid the appearance of discriminating against Muslims or other minorities. So guess what that means? That means that nobody can cover stories like this. So poof! They’re gone!
Imagine if the killers had been overweight southern Christian white male Trump supporters wearing red baseball caps? Those two killers would have been the most famous men on the planet, and would be front page stories for months. Possibly years. But no. The killers were inconsiderate enough to not fit the media’s preferred stereotype. So, poof! They’re gone. No more headlines. No discussion of their possible motivations (like, perhaps, their religion) – only the occasional brief mention of their emotional problems, difficult childhoods, struggles surviving American racism, etc. How sad it is that American culture breeds such hostility. What an awful society we live in. Really, it’s just awful. And then, * Poof! *
The media is rightly criticized for what they cover. Four years of endless stories about Donald Trump’s non-existent racism, until some people actually start to believe it. And yes, they control what people see, and they use it like a weapon against their political opponents.
But they also control what people don’t see. So we watch the shadows on the wall of the cave, and we think we are seeing reality. When there’s actually a whole world out there that we don’t see. Because those who inform us choose not to show it to us.
In the days of Walter Cronkite, there really was nothing that could be done about this. But the internet has made it more difficult to completely control access to information. For example, one of the things that put Powerline Blog on the map was their exposure of the Rathergate lies.
But the internet also allows us to choose our news sources. So a leftist can hear only what he wants to hear. This is more difficult for conservatives – they are immersed in leftism most of the time, but they can go search out other information if they like. But leftists are understandably content to sit in their cave, protected from ideas which challenge their thinking, as they confirm their biases with the shadows on the wall, which are pleasantly consistent.
And when one of the shadows goes * Poof! * and disappears, then it’s gone. Like it never happened. Which must be comforting, in a way, to the cave dwellers.
Americans are not united by a common religion, or a common race, or anything else. We are united only in that we are all Americans. Which once involved accepting a certain set of ideals, like individual liberty, restrained government, and so on. We were united by our ideas and policies.
It will be difficult to unite our country if we can’t even discuss ideas and policies. In this environment, that is nearly impossible. You can understand how difficult it would be to convince a cave dweller that everything he’d ever seen on the CNN cave wall might not be completely true. I’d probably dismiss such absurd challenges, too, if I were him. Such challenges would sound like the deranged ravings of a deplorable lunatic, who doesn’t understand reality. Such Neanderthals should be ignored, or perhaps expelled from polite society. Of course.
The media’s power of inclusion and exclusion, used only to their advantage, and without consideration for America or her citizens – this power is surprisingly destructive. You wouldn’t think it would matter this much. But in a country united only by ideas, this is incredibly destructive. Today, we can barely speak to one another. Our house is divided against itself. Which is the whole idea of those who seek to destroy America.
So here we are. Living together in the greatest country on earth.
Until * Poof! * – it’s gone!
Perhaps not physically gone, but fundamentally transformed, as Obama said. Into a shadow of its former self.
Just a shadow on a wall.
Published in General
Personal responsibility rather than collective guilt is beyond the discernment of some politicians, media, and an un-churched secular society.
I find it rather odd, and interesting, that when a criminal shoots someone the gun is to blame. When a police officer shoots someone the officer, and all officer’s are responsible, to include responsible gun owners, rather than the gun.
Excellent!
I think Jon Gabriel had a chart that covers these stories.
I do believe that is the point. That is the plan. Successful so far.
Distraction. Deceit. Disruption. Disunity. Disorder. Destruction.
Only G-d can fix this. I have long prayed, since the Fall season, for a Mordechai-Haman type intervention. Where actions of goodness and truth turn the tables on the evil deceivers, even to the point of the precise evil plans boomerang straight back in the liars’ face.
🙏
There might yet be a chance that the recent election shenanigans will do exactly that.
Those shenanigans are exceedingly unlikely to appear on CNN’s cave wall.
JoBamaLa is scribbling everywhere. It’s like that cartoon book with the kid and the purple crayon.
The liars don’t have to acknowledge/admit it, for people to see what they did, and react accordingly.
Nah. Iron men with strong right arms and implacable wills can fix it. They’re out there. Don’t rile them boys up.
Poof! Our media sucks.
I know people who were sure he was a white incel and likely still thinks that because it’s not talked about anymore.
Story selection is the most important bias
This is why most of America never heard of Daniel Shaver as a horrible police shooting
most of media didn’t cover Kermit Gosnell
“Hands Up Don’t shoot” was pushed as the truth even when a Obama DOJ said otherwise
I think citizen journalism can be used as a counter weight against corporate narratives but only of the oligarchs of the internet
allows it
But today those two ( even though one used a machete) will be key agents of change in Xi Bidens EO to disarm the American citizen.
But were they white Muslims or POC Muslims? Or do we follow the usual dance of classify them as POC if they are victims but white if the are perpetrators? Kind of like “white hispanics”, or like Asians who are hyperwhite for college admissions but get moved into the minority category when convenient for manipulating stats?
They’re as predictable as sunrise.
It’s no longer news but narrative, and an endless stream of it is now available, ubiquitous, simultaneous, in all places of our lives. It’s on our phones which we have with us 24/7.
We rarely engage with folks on the other side, to talk about this. Why? Because then we catch the label, the negative one, of one kind or another. You’re a racist, anti-science, a deplorable – by asking the questions and simply stating fact.
George Floyd? Whacked out on drugs, enough that would have killed him had the police never shown up. Chauvin’s actions might still be wrong, or might not, given what he knew about people whacked out on drugs who refuse to comply, but that part of the narrative will never enter the mainstream.
Just a microcosm of us, talking past each other, as we walk towards the cliff, together.
Faux conservatives voted (Xibiden anyone?) for this to accelerate. It’s on them. We were starting to fight back the past four years. Who was it again who voted for this administration?
If the next Federal elections are fixed, which is most likely, the Chinese win. Were it not for the Chinese we’d eventually sort it out and they know it so we won’t be granted much time. States still have the power to assert constitutional rights and if illegal federal power is used to stop that exercise, they will have to become independent under the existing constitution. That option doesn’t exist unless it becomes a viable threat prior to the next election, beginning with election laws, procedures, norms and the willingness to ignore constitutional abuses by the Federal government.
Ashli Babbitt. POOF!
It wouldn’t surprise me if the left found a couple of bigoted white idiots, and paid them to kill black people while wearing MAGA hats just to get their narrative . . .
I suspect that had these two been white that the stories would have rivaled the Chauvin headlines for weeks to come.
Is it me, or has the media simply gone off the edge on this stuff. I never remember their being so blatantly dishonest. Sure, they were dishonest in the past, but it seems as though Trump pushed them completely into a different realm. They have more in common with Pravda than their previous incarnation. Worse still, they seem to get less credible by the day. They are on a downward trajectory that will end up in oblivion. It is insane.
That’s it. The mask was already of the MSM, but Trump made them call attention to it. They could have ignored his tweets, but as Rush said, “Trump’s tweeting to the MSM is like a laser pointer to a cat.”
More like POW!
Great post.
I have a question about the following part.
What is the “and so on”? I think that this is the important question, and the source of most of our current division.
You’re right. There’s a lot of “and so on.”
But I think that the source of most of our current division is individual liberty and restrained government. After that, the rest is just details.
I do believe G-d will use men like you @bossmongo. I thank you in advance, and G-dspeed. 🙏
If I were to view and describe the Noah Green attack on the US Capitol the same way much of the media still views January 6th, it might sound like this:
Noah Green, motivated by the violent, anti-Semitic, and hateful rhetoric of Louis Farrakhan, attacked the US Capitol building and Capitol police officers, killing one officer, injuring another, and rushing toward other officers with a machete before being shot and killed. By attacking the Capitol’s North Barricade, where congressional members and their aides enter and leave the building, it’s clear Green intended to take Representatives and Senators as hostages to demand they recognize “the Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan as Jesus, the Messiah, the final divine reminder in our midst”*. Farrakhan has been bombarded with tweets, press releases and public statements from prominent political, cultural, and sports figures, and stories from the media demanding that he step down from his leadership role in the Nation of Islam. The United States Attorney for the District of Colombia is looking into charging the Reverend Farrakhan with incitement to violence, aiding and abetting domestic terrorism, and sedition. Prominent supporters of Farrakhan such as former President Barack Obama, Representative Ilhan Omar, and Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison are facing tremendous pressure to distance themselves from Farrakhan, in what is being viewed as a battle for the soul of the Democrat Party. Facebook and Twitter have shut down Farrakhan and the Nation of Islam’s accounts, and after Farrakhan attempted to restart his social media presence on Parler, Amazon, Apple, and Google shut down Parler…again. The FBI and several US intelligence agencies have warned of the rising tide of black supremacism and anti-Semitism in the United States, and are demanding additional powers to investigate groups such as the Nation of Islam, BLM, the Black Hebrew Israelites, and others for their domestic terrorism connections. The public is encouraged through a national billboard campaign to call in tips to the FBI for any information on those who may have assisted Green in his failed insurrection attempt.
* a direct quote from Noah Green’s March 17, 2021 Facebook post
Fortunately I was able to copy and save that before it got “redacted.”
Are you referring to my comment?
Yes. I didn’t quote it because that would get “redacted” too.
I kept finding things to tweak to make it better, but analogies never match up completely or perfectly. It’s weird how Green worshipped an actual racist (as the messiah!), but isn’t called a black supremacist or anti-Semitic. While Donald Trump, who doesn’t have a racist bone in his body, is the shadow leader of rising white supremacism in America. I eagerly await the member feed post wrestling with what to call Green’s attack.