Vincent J. Curtis
24 Nov 2016
Among blessings America celebrates this Thanksgiving Day,
one of them has to be their release from the political thrall of the House of
Clinton. The media remains full of hysteria over the
remarkable and unexpected victory of Donald Trump at the election.
Something yet to be noticed is that no one seems to be
lamenting the defeat of Hillary Clinton.
For the media and the progressive movement in the United States, Hillary
was a mere totem, a fill-in-the-blank candidate representing progressivism, and
it is the rejection of progressivism that all the hysteria is about.
For reasons I cannot fathom, Bill Clinton became a hero of
the Democrat party. His ego and his wife’s
greed conspired to turn the Democrat party into a vehicle for the satisfaction
of both their needs. Hillary’s evident
track to become president one day enabled Bill to remain politically relevant,
and both of them to make tons of money shaking down those seeking to buy favors
or merely to be seen in close proximity to power. The Democrat party turned itself into the
machinery for the triumph of progressivism and – what seemed the same thing –
triumph for the House of Clinton.
The American electorate sickened of progressivism during the
malign presidency of Barack Obama, and change from the era of hope and change
was in the air in 2016. Hillary
represented boilerplate progressivism, but she also carried with her “more
baggage than Delta Airlines,” as one wag put it. Her utter corruption, her mendacity, her trio
of email scandals: of her private server, of the hacking of the DNC, and then of
John Podesta; and the legal problems she was having eventually brought her
low. Now, the House of Clinton lies at
the mercy of President Donald J. Trump.
Among the other casualties of the defeat of the House of Clinton
was progressivism and its bastard offspring, political correctness. The credibility of the media was destroyed by
the election result, as practically all the MSM deemed Trump unworthy and
unacceptable. The big media ran pieces every day deploring Trump in some way,
and they were cheerleaders for Hillary Clinton.
The American people told the media they were all wrong.
One of the slogans of the Democrat/Progressive/Hillary
campaign was “Love trumps hate.” This
was supposed to be a clever riff on Trump’s name, but this shallow piece of
thought exposed how empty-headed its chanters were. In the first place, the slogan was employed
with a malice and hate entirely at odds with the idea of love. In the second, the slogan shows that, while
it thinks of itself as secular Christianity, progressivism does not understand
what Christian love truly is. The chanters
of the slogan proved to be the real haters themselves. And this is becoming all the more manifest as
President-Elect Trump tries to reconcile the nation. Trump is reaching out to political opponents
both inside and outside the Republican Party, and while the Republicans have
been receptive, those outside the party are absolute rejectionists of his
overtures. Their hate closes their minds
to the potential for conciliation.
The media are having a hard time reconciling themselves to
Trump’s victory. At a closed-door
meeting with the leading lights of the media - senior executives of news
divisions and news readers themselves - Trump reputedly laid into them. He purportedly said to Jeff Zucker, head of
the Clinton News Network (with Wolf Blitzer in attendance), that his network
was full of liars and that he ought to be ashamed of himself. Trump also met with the New York Times for a discussion partly on the record and partly off. If the media is going to regain
credibility with the American electorate, as they must if they expect to
fulfill their traditional role (that they abandoned for the eight years of the
Obama presidency), then there are going to have to be firings at the major
networks and major newspapers.
That message has yet to sink in. We are still getting stories slanted against
Trump. We get Wolf Blitzer and others in
the MSM fretting worrisomely about the alleged endorsement of Trump by the KKK,
and the insufficient number of times that Trump has rejected it and denounced the
Klan. For the media, Trump is supposed
to be a dog who barks upon command. We
get stories fretting about the human things he does, like meet with his family,
and meet with business acquaintances who want their picture taken with their
recently elected friend. We get stories
fretting about Trump’s business empire and all the conflicts of interest that
could be created, forgetting that they didn’t report on how the Clinton
Foundation worked.
This morning on the CNBC website, we get a story headlined, “Trump
releases video at odds with his combative post-election tone.” The use of “at-odds” conveys hypocrisy; if it
had been written “Trump releases conciliatory video” it would have portrayed
accurately the Trump was trying to be nice, not that he was acting
hypocritically.
Over at CNN, we get headlines like these, “Clinton’s popular
vote lead grows to 2 million,” and “Trump aide mocks vote challenge” The media
hate continues. The story on the popular
vote lead seeks to de-legitimize Trump’s victory, and the word ‘mocks’ is used incorrectly;
but it conveys indignity in the people around Trump.
I’ve seen stories on Fox that fret over Trump’s alleged
preference for aged white males over women and minorities in cabinet
selections. This sort of identity
politics is characteristic of the progressivism that was rejected at the polls. I don’t think of Dr. Ben Carson as the “black”
representative in Trump’s cabinet, or Mitt Romney as the Mormon representative,
or Betsy DeVos as the female representative.
It takes time to gain experience, and the outstanding characteristic of
these and other people Trump has talked to is their personal attainments gained
over a lifetime of experience. Youth and
inexperience gets you a Ben Rhodes or a Van Jones. Trump is surrounding himself with a team of
winners, not rivals or radicals as the left tries to portray.
Barack Obama dismissed General James Mattis with disgrace
from the military, and it is entirely fitting that Trump bring Mattis back as
Secretary of Defense. Mattis’ experience
did not comport with what Obama thought should be reality, and having been
through the fire Mattis will cure the Defense Department of Obamaism.
There will be no honeymoon period between the media and
Donald Trump. We can expect stories in
the MSM to be slanted against Trump.
Everything he says and does will be turned to undermine his presidency. The hate will continue. Trump has already shown that he will bypass
the media using social media to get his real message and intent out.
Trump’s victory was one over hate. The basket of deplorables rose up against
those who held them in contempt. Trump
owes his victory entirely to the people because everyone but the people were
against him during the campaign. Trump
trumped the campaign of hate against him and the people who support him.
Progressivism has not learned its lesson, for to learn it is
for progressivism to die. We can expect
the progressive campaign of hatred for Trump to continue. But so long as Trump fulfills his promises
and maintains his contact with the people, the campaign of hate will only separate the
media from the people, and hopefully then the media from paid advertising.
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