Without a Free and Fair Media, The People Will Not Remember

I was reading this NY Post article about Chinese Population Control, and, near the end, found reference to the Tiananmen atrocities.  While writing a book about it, Louisa Lim went to 4 different Chinese universities, and showed them the picture of the "Tank Man".  Only 15 out of 100 students recognized it.

Without a Free and Fair Press, the people will not remember.

Self-Education on Election Issues/Candidates

I'm starting a series that focuses on what each candidate is FOR - something the media seems loath to let be known.

I plan to post about 1-2 times a week on this topic, as my schedule allows.  ALL candidates will be included, even the marginal, of ALL parties.

You see, I really do believe in the value of a Free Press.

Here's the first.

The New Segregationists Yet Again: The McKinney Foofaurauw

     The media have made race the single most important factor in law enforcement. Media coverage of the Michael Brown upheaval, the death of Eric Garner, the Freddie Gray riots, and many similar cases has produced a state of affairs in which law-abiding Americans are unprotected, de facto, against mobs of unruly and violent Negroes who choose to invade their lives and properties.

     This should come as no surprise to any Gentle Reader. Incentives matter, and the media have changed the incentives with their coverage. In covering a disturbance or a riot, seemingly the only thing that matters to the media is race. In the cases enumerated above, a Negro was dead at the hands of the police. The media framed the event as a case of racial bigotry – whites’ bigotry toward blacks, of course – and the professional racialists leaped on the opportunity to foment disorder with their customary alacrity.

     Thus today, the police are increasingly fearful for their careers should they have to intervene in a situation heavily populated by Negroes. The media-fueled race-war Narrative trumps all other considerations even when no lives have been lost and no violence has occurred The uproar over McKinney, Texas merely adds a data point to the graph.

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     Conservative Treehouse provides the full McKinney story:

     The woman who organized the event in McKinney, Texas is named Tatiana Rhodes (or Tatyana Rhodes). She is approximately 19-years-old; however, she retains a fake id and has began scrubbing most of her social media accounts, so her exact age is undetermined. Update: confirmed profile DOB 04/02/1995, so Tatiana Rhodes is 20.

     Tatiana had been promoting a party via twitter under the hashtag name “Dime Piece Cookout” for approximately a month. She planned the event at a sub-division called “Craig Ranch” in McKinney Texas.

     Tatiana (pictured below left) lives in the sub-division with her mother Lashana Burkes (pictured right). Both appear to be natives of Chicago....

     The Craig Ranch subdivision has a neighborhood park and a gated pool and clubhouse for residents. The pool and clubhouse is gated and a scan card is needed to gain access. (You an explore via google earth here)

     The subdivision has a Homeowners Association (HOA) which regulates and controls the activities in/around the HOA swimming pool and clubhouse and has strict rules for use thereof.

     ....Neither Tatiana Rhodes nor her mother sought permission to use the pool or clubhouse area as part of the event. However, Tatiana hired a DJ and promoted the event to include a pool party...

     The following was posted to Facebook by Michael Cory Quattrin, a resident of “Craig Ranch,” in the aftermath of the media’s predictably tendentious, race-centered coverage:

     A DJ setup in a public space next to the private pool in our neighborhood on Friday and played loud explicit (F-bomb) music for multiple hours....The teenagers (both black and white) were being brought into our neighborhood by the carload....The teens began fighting with each other and pushing their way into our private pool. Some were jumping our fence. The security guard was accosted when he tried to stop the beginnings of this mob scene. Some residesnts who live around the park/pool area tried to come out and settle things down. The teens started yelling racial slurs at our neighbors and started assaulting people and property (throwing bottles at cars and attacking a mother at the pool with 3 young children). The first officer on the scene was by himself, At that time the party had grown to a large, aggressive crowd. As the officer arrived, many teens started running through our neighborhood. Many of the teens were being very aggressive and yelling at the officers as more arrived....

     Now ask yourself what other outcome the “Dime Piece Cookout,” which was swarmed under by a huge group of unruly black teens and young adults, could possibly have produced. But Mr. Quattrin has a bit more to say:

     The news media has refused to hear the neighborhood’s side of this story. The video being distributed is only a very small segment of what happened. This information being distributed by the media and others is extremely distorted and in some cases outright lies.

     PLEASE HELP US STOP THE BROADCASTING OF THIS IGNORANCE. The media is trying to make it look like our neighborhood is a white’s only, racist area....The unfortunate result is that our neighbors are now being threatened. We have also had cars and property in and around the park vandalized this weekend. Unfortunately, the press and social media are trying to enflame the situation.

     Surprised?

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     The media face incentives of their own, of course. Their editorial staffs continue to be dominated by Leftist ideology, but ideology doesn’t free them of the need for “eyeballs:” readership or viewership, the quintessential asset that sells advertising space. Therefore, they continually seek effective means to induce readership and viewership...and a tactic that will do that while conforming to their ideologically required Narrative is favored above all others.

     So they perpetuate the myth of white racism against blacks: the great, unending narrative of Caucasians oppressing “people of color.” It refuses to be quenched because the media, which find it exceedingly useful both commercially and ideologically, are determined to keep it going.

     When I wrote the initial “New Segregationist” pieces, the dynamic of the situation struck me as perfectly clear. Yet it remains unclear to a huge majority of well-meaning whites. Worse, there appears to be no way to induce the media to stop fanning the flames. They want a racial bonfire, as widespread and as hot as possible. They expect it to sell papers and air time. And it will...for a while.

     Remus’s wildly popular “Frankly My Dear” piece strikes a chord with so many Gentle Readers because it verbalizes the impulse behind gated communities, the steady blackening of coastal cities, and all the other phenomena grouped under “white flight:”

If you insist on acting like thugs,
We’ll simply distance ourselves from you.

     But thugs need victims. It’s a matter of “self-esteem.” And so, like the homing missile in Yar’s Revenge, the thugs will pursue the peaceable wherever the latter might seek refuge. And the media, desperate for as many “eyeballs” as it can collect as their hegemony over news dissemination decays, will pursue us along with them.

De-Mystifying the ISIS Successes

According to this site, it's not rocket science, but known principles of war and politics. 

Here's a link to some free pdfs detailing Boyd's thinking.

Want to know more about the Future of War?

[MORE]

The Decline Of The Emissionaries

     The “Battle of the Bulge” effect has been prominent in the entertainment media of late, specifically with regard to the promotion of promiscuous, loveless, and dangerous sex. It’s a good sign, for very few such “bulges” result in the victory of the “bulging” side.

     Significant symptoms are detectable by anyone who pays attention to media developments. The deterioration of Hugh Hefner’s “Playboy empire,” the swift ejection of “Sex Box” and “Neighbors with Benefits” from the TV schedules, and the steady demise of “soft-core” magazines such as Cosmopolitan all point to the increasing marginalization of the “sexual emissionaries” and their outlets. In their frantic haste to shore up their positions, many of those who back such productions have been “doubling down.” This gives them the appearance of renewed strength where declining circulation and viewership figures proclaim that there is none.

     Demographics play a part, of course. Ours is an aging society. As we age, our interests turn away from “the things of youth.” The delights of sex are among those things. As little as we like to dwell on anything that compels us to reflect on our physical deterioration, as we age we grow less competent sexually...and less interested in demonstrations thereof.

     There are other factors as well. The one that I find most important is the prevalence of guilt over wasted years and opportunities.

     As I wrote long ago:

     Time is the ultimate gift.

     Time is the medium within which we temporally bound creatures must work. Time is the dimension within which we plan, and execute our plans, and reap the rewards or the lessons they generate. But time is not ours to command....

     This is the forward edge on the sword of time, the somber face of the ticking clock, that two-handed engine which will one day strike, and strike no more. We cannot bottle time. We are forbidden by the laws of the universe to know how much time we'll have. Though memory suggests otherwise, the only instant we can be sure of is now -- and it slips from our grasp before we can even finish pronouncing its name.

     The three most recent generations of Americans have spent more of their youth and vitality pursuing sexual gratification and variety than any previous ones. As we’ve aged and acquired a modicum of perspective – I hesitate to say wisdom – it’s become ever clearer to us that a moment, like a dollar, can be spent only once, and only on one thing. The youth and energy we put to sowing our sexual oats cannot be reclaimed for pursuits we later come to regard as better investments.

     Yes, yes, it’s just a higher-browed way of saying “Ve get too soon old und too late schmart.” That doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

     The emissionaries, however, have founded their business model on a never-ending obsession with sex – and if present trends are a reliable indication, it’s costing them heavily.

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     I was drawn to this topic this morning because of this article about Cosmopolitan magazine. It warns frankly about the hazards attendant to promiscuity and sexual deviancy. It’s worth a read, as much for its forthright, unapologetic tone as for its factual assertions. The increase in the frequency of such articles correlates strongly with the current in the attitudes and conduct of young Americans. Yes, some of that current can be attributed to the increasing legal hazards that pertain to casual sex, but perhaps not the greater part. Young people, whatever their diction or educational attainments, are hardly stupid...and they learn from watching their parents and grandparents, an unprecedented percentage of whom are lonely and bitter.

     Few persons can be happy alone. Even fewer hope to spend the second halves of their adult lives that way. But a totally casual “love ain’t nothing but sex misspelled” attitude toward sex and love will get you there more reliably than any other.

     This is not to condemn all premarital sex. (I know, I know; I’m at odds with the Church on this. Don’t tell them, please.) It’s just an observation of the consequences of the all-stops-out / sexual gratification uber alles attitude the past fifty years have inculcated in so many...and which the emissionaries are straining to the limit to reinforce and perpetuate.

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     The approach to sex most likely to lead to a lifelong, loving partnership with a member of the opposite sex is more reserved than Cosmopolitan and similar organs would have us believe. (Not totally reserved; as Star said to Scar Gordon in Glory Road, it’s best to sample the wine before you buy the barrel.) Fortunately – and I find myself mildly surprised to be saying this – the increased caution about contact with young women that’s arisen among young men in the wake of recent events on college campuses militates in this direction. But it’s no fault of the emissionaries, who are pushing their “bulge” as hard as they can, for the sake of their business ventures.

     The appropriate countermeasure to that “bulge” can only be applied by parents willing to talk candidly about their own pasts. God knows, most of us from the Boomer and GenX cohorts have plenty to talk about. Just as with drugs, being open about the missteps of one’s own youth can be a great aid to guiding one’s children toward more constructive, less destructive practices.

     It’s not about screeching that “I won’t have that trash in my house!” It’s not about immediately changing the channel when a starlet in a low-cut gown appears on-screen. It’s about honesty and humility among parents. Granted that one can’t be certain to have steered one’s progeny away from foolish behavior; the assumption of invulnerability has been a characteristic of young Americans since our earliest generations. It’s about contrasting the consequences of one’s own youthful decisions with the insouciance of emissionary outlets, highlighting the business model that propels the emissionaries, and suggesting that Junior think about that just a little before he goes out hunting pudenda scalps.

     Of course, if you’re a 26-year-old mother of a 13-year-old daughter, you might need a little help with this, perhaps from a more prudent friend or neighbor.

Why is the FCC Grab for the Internet a Bad Thing?

A VERY, VERY, VERY Bad Thing.

Black Out The Blackers-Out

Ostrich tactics only work if your enemy is an ostrich – and an ostrich afraid of you, at that. Just now, the major networks, wholly dedicated to the protection of His August Majesty Barack Hussein Obama, first Emperor of these United States, are employing ostrich tactics: they’ve completely embargoed the most devastating revelations of the political cycle: Sharyl Attkisson’s Fast and Furious discoveries, and Jonathan Gruber’s megascandalous admissions that ObamaCare’s passage was made possible only by a systematic campaign of deceit.

To be perfectly fair to the satraps of the networks’ news divisions, the tactic has served them well in the past. Republicans and conservatives have almost never confronted them on it in a significant way. Indeed, we’ve tended to act like ostriches ourselves. We’ve disdained the Big Three as unreliably biased, turned to the alternative media for our news, and let it rest there. We’ve allowed the farce to continue unchallenged.

But that doesn’t loosen the Big Three’s grip on the national consciousness, which remains terrifyingly strong...and malevolent.

Here’s Ricochet’s Stephen Miller recommendation to the Republican National Committee:

ABC and NBC have instituted a three-week blackout — on network broadcasts, websites and social media pages — of the devastating admissions of MIT economist Jonathan Gruber. The ACA architect repeatedly boasted of deceiving the American public about legislation that cost six million people their family doctor. This should be the final straw in any relationship the GOP and RNC leadership has with these networks, period. No more debates, no more appearances on “Meet The Press,” “Morning Joe,” or “This Week” on ABC.

Boycott both NBC and ABC over failing to report on Gruber’s revelations and put CBS on final notice over the revelations that they coordinated with the Obama administration to tank Sharyl Attkisson’s Benghazi reporting. Network news is a dying religion becoming more ideologically rigid, forgoing any attempt to stay relevant in a media landscape that no longer needs them. Leave them behind. We’ve already shown that it works. Marginalize them and label them progressive news outlets and make them live by it. MSNBC came out of the progressive closet fully earlier this year and their ratings and web traffic got worse. Air America is no more and Current TV is now an unloved stepchild Al Gore gave away for oil money.

Indeed. Broadcast news departments are middlemen. They don’t produce the news; they package and resell it. Should one of the two major parties deny them access, appearances by its national figures, and the privilege of covering its conventions and other events, they’d lose a hefty fraction of their wares. Now that that party holds 31 of the 50 governorships, the majority in both houses of Congress and in 67 out of 99 state legislatures, the loss might be enough to send the networks’ news divisions into irremediable collapse.

Alternately, it might evoke a long-needed purge of network news department mandarins whose faces have been wedged so long and so deeply in the Democrats’ posteriors that they’ve become inured to the taste and aroma.

On a tangentially related matter: have you followed the broadcast networks’ coverage of developments in Ferguson, Missouri? Have you felt adequately informed by it? Were you aware that private citizens and businessmen in that city have been buying guns and ammunition faster than local retail stores can stock them? That Barack Obama, Eric Holder, and Al Sharpton have been egging the black mobs on? That the mouthpieces of those mobs have threatened “demonstrations” – mass violence – in 90 cities nationwide unless Officer Darren Wilson, not even the subject of an indictment yet, is convicted of murder?

Feeling safe in your home, Gentle Reader? I did, once long ago. I check my own armory a lot more often these days than I did back then.

(Cross-posted at Liberty's Torch.)