Fyodor explains that fake news is nothing new.

Actually, it is the norm and always has been.

First, find below my thoughts on "objective journalism".

Second, some links to articles about the history of American journalism that no one alive today knows anything about because it happened before they were born. 

Last, I offer the most horrific fake news ever, the story of Walter Duranty's cover-up of Stalin's Ukrainian genocide, which won the bastard the Pulitzer Prize.

The conceit of modern journalists and scholars is that in the olden days newspeople were partisan and biased, skewing their writing to advance their political agenda or that of their employers. Then, the 20th century arrived, and magically, so did "objective journalism" which was the rule until Rash Dimbulb and Fox News appeared and started spewing right-wing "propaganda" while calling it news. And that made the lumpenproletariat vote for Orange Clump.

What miracle occurred in the early 20th century to change partisan yellow journalism into a crusading force for truth, justice, light, and niceness?

Nothing.

Not a single, solitary thing.

There was no change whatsoever. "Objective journalism" was invented to protect journalists from anyone who dared question their fairness and objectivity. Anyone who did so was shouted down as a crank or an un-American fascist. "How dare you question the integrity if the Press, sir? We are the defenders of freedom. We are the First Amendment incarnate!"

Today, the progeny and heirs of this 20th century fairy tale fear they have lost control of the "narrative" and with it, the lumpenproletariat. (Defined as anyone too stupid and/or evil to agree with them.) These citizens don't like where the fairy tale peddlers are leading them and therefore choose to listen to sources they like. Same as it ever was. In other words, there is now an "anti-Establishment press" press.

Make no mistake, kiddies, the media is an Establishment in and of itself. It has a philosophy, an ideology, and interests it promotes and defends at all costs. These can be summed up in one word - power. Grasping it, consolidating it, getting more of it, and destroying any person or institution that threatens it's power are the priorities of any Establishment or elite.

If you believe the fairy tale (or lie, or, dare I type it, fake news) of the creation of "objective journalism" out of the morass that was 18th and 19th century partisan journalism, you are most likely someone who supports the Establishment media and it's political and social agenda. Of course, such a person would also vehemently deny their biases and constantly repeat the fairy tale verbatim.

I am posting this in the (probably) vain hope that some folks may ask themselves if it is possible they too suffer from "confirmation bias".

The Fall and Rise of Partisan Journalism – Center for Journalism Ethics

History of American newspapers - Wikipedia

Partisan politics? Take a look at the 19th century - The Boston Globe

Media bias is nothing new. - The Washington Post

A Brief History of Media Bias | RealClearPolitics

The roots of media bias go back to the nineteenth century, and complaints about bias

in part reflect a questionable idea about the media's role and purpose: that newspapers

and other dispensers of public information exist to transmit objective, factual information

gleaned and communicated by credentialed ...

Searches related to partisan journalism in 18th century

partisan press era

what is partisan journalism

partisan press examples

history of journalism in america

history of american newspapers

penny press definition

yellow journalism

newspapers in the 1800s

Pulitzer-Winning Lies | The Weekly Standard

AT LONG LAST a Pulitzer Prize committee is looking into the possibility that the Pulitzer

awarded to Walter Duranty, the New York Times Moscow correspondent whose dispatches

covered up Stalin's infamies, might be revoked.

In order to assist in their researches, I am downloading here some of the lies contained in those dispatches, lies which the New York Times has never repudiated with the same splash as it accorded Jayson Blair's comparatively trivial lies:

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be."
--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1

"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda."
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

"Enemies and foreign critics can say what they please.

Weaklings and despondents at home may groan under the burden, but the youth

and strength of the Russian people is essentially at one with the Kremlin's program,

believes it worthwhile and supports it, however hard be the sledding."
--New York Times, December 9, 1932, page 6

"You can't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
--New York Times, May 14, 1933, page 18

"There is no actual starvation or deaths from starvation but there is widespread

mortality from diseases due to malnutrition."
--New York Times, March 31, 1933, page 13

I would like to add another Duranty quote, not in his dispatches, which is reported

in a memoir by Zara Witkin, a Los Angeles architect, who lived in the Soviet Union

during the 1930s. ("An American Engineer in Stalin's Russia: The Memoirs of Zara Witkin,

1932-1934," University of California Press ). The memoirist describes an evening

during which the Moscow correspondents were discussing how to get out the story about

the Stalin-made Russian famine. To get around the censorship, the UP's Eugene Lyons was

telephoning the dire news of the famine to his New York office but the was ordered to stop

because it was antagonizing the Kremlin. Ralph Barnes, the New York Herald Tribune reporter,

turned to Duranty and asked him what he was going to write. Duranty replied:
Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant.

This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.
And this was at a time when peasants in Ukraine were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day.

In his masterwork about Stalin's imposed famine on Ukraine, "Harvest of Sorrow," Robert Conquest

has written:
As one of the best known correspondents in the world for one of the best known newspapers in

the world, Mr. Duranty's denial that there was a famine was accepted as gospel. Thus Mr. Duranty

gulled not only the readers of the New York Times but because of the newspaper's prestige,

he influenced the thinking of countless thousands of other readers about the character of Josef Stalin

and the Soviet regime. And he certainly influenced the newly-elected President Roosevelt to

recognize the Soviet Union.

What is so awful about Duranty is that Times top brass suspected that Duranty was writing Stalinist

propaganda, but did nothing. In her exposé "Stalin's Apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York

Times's man in Moscow," S.J. Taylor makes it clear that Carr Van Anda, the managing editor,

Frederick T. Birchall, an assistant managing editor, and Edwin L. James, the later managing editor,

were troubled with Duranty's Moscow reporting but did nothing about it. Birchall recommended

that Duranty be replaced but, says Taylor, "the recommendation fell by the wayside."

When Duranty of his own volition decided to become a special correspondent on a retainer basis

for the New York Times, the newspaper published an editorial reassuring its readers that his reputation

as "the most outstanding correspondent of an American newspaper during all the years of his faithful

and brilliant work at Moscow will remain unimpaired in the slightest degree by the change now made."

This about a man whom Malcolm Muggeridge, the Manchester Guardian correspondent and Duranty's

contemporary, described as "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of journalism."

Duranty was one of a gaggle of Stalin's intellectual admirers. Muggeridge, whose centennial we

celebrate this summer, wrote about them in these lapidary words:

Wise old [Bernard]Shaw, high-minded old [Henri]Barbusse, the venerable [Sidney and Beatrice] Webbs,

[Andre] Gide the pure in heart and [Pablo] Picasso the impure, down to poor little teachers, crazed clergymen

and millionaires, driveling dons and very special correspondents like Duranty, all resolved, come what might,

to believe anything, however preposterous, to overlook nothing, however villainous, to approve anything,

however obscurantist and brutally authoritarian, in order to be able to preserve intact the confident

expectation that one of the most thorough-going, ruthless and bloody tyrannies ever to exist on earth could

be relied on to champion human freedom, the brotherhood of man, and all the other good liberal causes to

which they had dedicated their lives. ("Chronicles of Wasted Time," pages 275- 276.)

(Emphasis mine. - F.G.)

Let's all give a great encouraging cheer to the Pulitzer committee for undertaking a task 70 years late.

And perhaps the Times will now a look back at the Herbert L. Matthews coverage of Cuba and

the man he so admired, Fidel Castro.

Arnold Beichman, a Hoover Institution research fellow, is a columnist for the Washington Times.

More on Duranty's lies in the name of commie douchebaggery....

New York Times Statement About 1932 Pulitzer Prize

Walter Duranty - Spartacus Educational

How Stalin Hid Ukraine's Famine From the World - The Atlantic

Times Should Lose Pulitzer From 30's, Consultant Says - The Old Gray Whore...

Pulitzer Board Won't Void '32 Award to Times Writer - The Old Gray Whore ...

Ukrainian Genocide: NY Times Still Covering Up - The New American

Ukrainians want pro-Stalin writer stripped of Pulitzer | The Guardian ...

Russians Hungry Not Starving (New York Times March 31 1933) by ...

The denigration of Gareth Jones by Walter Duranty in The New York Times, Friday March 31st 1933.

RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING. Deaths From Diseases Due to Malnutrition High,

Yet the Soviet is Entrenched. LARGER CITIES HAVE FOOD. Ukraine, North Caucasus and

Lower Volga Regions Suffer From ...

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Yet more campaign lies you SUCKERS swallowed like $2 whores.

Legalizing foreign invaders? CHECK!

Putting Repansycan Party politics above the national interest? CHECK!

Feeding shit to the sheep and calling it caviar? CHECK!

Trump Calls For Immigration Overhaul, Including DACA : NPR

Trump also said that he was open to a larger measure overhauling immigration laws, but that it made the most sense to first settle the Obama-era Deferred Action On Childhood Arrivals, also known as DACA, issue. Authority allowing for the so-called DREAMers covered by the measure to remain in the country expires ...

Trump Administration Drops Florida From Offshore Drilling Plan - The Old Gray Whore ...

Suckers!

Yeah, It's a Nationalist, all right. In a nation of One.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

The Norwegians must be so proud.

President Shit-For-Brains opens his shit-hole and shits out another steaming pile of stable genius.


From The West Australian:

Donald Trump complains about immigrants from 's***hole countries ...

President Donald Trump asked participants in an Oval Office meeting Thursday why the United States should accept immigrants from “s***hole countries”in Africa, Central America and the Caribbean, according to two people briefed on the meeting.

“What do we want Haitians here for?”the president asked, according to the people briefed. “Why do we want all these people from Africa here? Why do we want all these people from s***hole countries”.

The president added: “We should have people from places like Norway”.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Yet another promise the Orange Suck-Hole won't keep.

President Empty Threat (and empty pants) said he would cut off aid to every country that voted to condemn it's phantom move of our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem at the UN General Assembly. 

128 Jew-hating (or goat rapist-fearing) countries said the feckless fuck in the White (Racist.) House is nothing but blather.

I'm betting the Group Of 128
will get all of our tax money they were expecting.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Cal Thomas and Abe Lincoln aren't my favorites, but they'll do.

Personally, I think it is a waste of breath trying to get protestants to live real Christianity instead of the shit they make up every day to justify whatever sin they happen to be enjoying at the time, but I am not permitted to believe in invincible ignorance, so...

I'd like to think the following thinking did some good yesterday in Alabama and helped 22,000 Alabamians write in a name other than that of one of the two major-party fascist perverts.




The Choice In Alabama for Christians

No king but Caesar

By Cal Thomas



In September 1862, a group of Chicago ministers sent a “memorial” (or long letter) to President Abraham Lincoln in which they made a theological argument for the elimination of slavery.
Lincoln had also heard from Southern clergy who used the same scriptures to justify slavery’s preservation.

In response, Lincoln wrote the Chicago group with words that today’s Christians might consider when it comes to matters involving sexual harassment and the setting aside of moral and biblical principles to achieve temporary political goals.

“I am approached with the most opposite opinions and advice, and that by religious men, who are equally certain that they represent the Divine will. I am sure that either the one or the other class is mistaken in the belief, and perhaps in some respects both. I hope it will not be irreverent for me to say that if it is probable that God would reveal his will to others, on a point so connected with my duty, it might be supposed he would reveal it directly to me; for, unless I am more deceived in myself than I often am, it is my earnest desire to know the will of Providence in this matter. And if I can learn what it is I will do it! These are not, however, the days of miracles, and I suppose it will be granted that I am not to expect a direct revelation. I must study the plain physical facts of the case, ascertain what is possible and learn what appears to be wise and right. The subject is difficult, and good men do not agree.”

Lincoln eventually made the right decision that culminated in The Emancipation Proclamation. The divided nation shed much blood over slavery, and the fallout from that war continues today in racial conflict.

I have listened to arguments on both sides of the sexual harassment issue by “good men” (and women). There are those who believe allegations of sexual harassment of teens and young women by Alabama Republican Senate candidate Roy Moore are sufficient to deny him a seat in the Senate. Others say that maintaining a 52-seat Republican majority is critical to advancing President Trump’s agenda, which includes seating more conservative judges on federal benches. This, they say, supersedes what Moore may or may not have done 40 years ago.

By cleaning house (and the Senate) of their own bad boys, many Democrats think they will gain a previously hidden moral authority to win back the House and impeach President Trump for his alleged past (and they believe more recent) misdeeds.

The Democrats’ agenda might be true, but for evangelical Christians should either argument matter more than the King and Kingdom they are supposed to serve?

Some biblical wisdom might be instructive. In the Old Testament, Esau sold his birthright to his brother Jacob for a bowl of soup. He later regretted his decision, but at the time he was hungry and said his birthright meant little to him.

In the ultimate church-state moment where the crowd was forced to choose between demanding that Pilate give the order to crucify Jesus of Nazareth, or let Him go, there was this sobering exchange:
Pilate: “Shall I crucify your king?”

The chief priests: “We have no king but Caesar.” (John 19:15)

As then, today’s “chief priests” and church members are being asked to make a choice. One choice might give short-term satisfaction, as Esau experienced with his temporarily filled stomach, but it leads to a loss of credibility in the eyes of the world. It demonstrates that for Christians attaining earthly and temporal power is paramount.

Another verse that might help evangelicals: “Choose this day whom you will serve.” (Joshua 24:15).

Bob Dylan contemporized it this way: “Well, it may be the devil or it may be the Lord, but you’re gonna have to serve somebody.”

It’s time to choose.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

How Orange Clump & The Establishfucks lost Alabama...

...when they could have run a criminally insane liar and thief with an "R" behind his name (Hey, wait just a minute...that sounds eerily familiar...) and won handily.


Clump: 'I Said Roy Moore Will Not Be Able to Win' in Alabama - The Old Gray Whore...

From Washington's other other newspaper:

Roy Moore tested white evangelical allegiance to the Repansycan Party...


From The Daily Bust:

'I Think Bannon Made an Ass of Himself': Republicans Rejoice...


Kiddies, let me cut through all the crap from both groups of fascists, left and right.

1) The Orange Genius made Senator (hint, hint) Sessions AG while playing politics. (payback for Sessions being the first big-name pol to endorse it.) Hubris, as always with this clown, was also a factor(believing it is a political genius and nobody it backs could lose in a state it won by landslide)

2) Mo Brooks was the Real Conservative in the primary. Clump, the Clumpskyites, McConnell, and The Establishfucks whacked him in favor of the Repansycan Establishfuck Luther Stranglove (though his love is not as strange as ol' Roy Moore's) and Alabamians said NO and picked Moore, a vile heretic who has been wrapping himself in The Ten Commandments for decades while ignoring most of them.

3) Then there is the NAPZI Party's favorite trans gal, @GermaineGreerInDrag. This dumb cow charged all over Alabama, spreading methane and her faux-populism, which is nothing more than a power-mad ego trip from an ignorant nobody trapped in a donated armadillo penis.

P.S. God bless the 22,000 Alabamians who wrote in "NONE OF THE ABOVE MOTHERFUCKERS", giving a giant Bronx (Birmingham?) cheer to the Repansycan right-fascist sex pervert and the Democrass left-fascist baby-eater.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Does the nightingale sing in Russian?

From CNN:

Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to FBI, is cooperating with Mueller ...


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Another campaign promise* bites the dust.

I believe it was supposed to be kept on its first day in office.

Trump likely to delay move of U.S. Embassy in Israel to Jerusalem ..

 President Donald Trump is likely to waive a requirement that the United States move its embassy in Israel to Jerusalem, but is weighing other options to make clear his intent to do so eventually, a senior administration official said on Thursday.

* It's not a lie if you believe it, you suckers.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Senators Corker and Flake are pansies, but they're not wrong.

If these two pussies and their Repansycan sisters had any principles or balls they would stand and fight for their beliefs. BUT THEY HAVE NEITHER!

Fuck them all. They are power-mad cretins first and last and always. The words "man" and "American" mean nothing to them or their alleged enemies. We The People are the true enemies of all the totalitarian perverts who afflict us - left, right, center, whatever.

Noli illegitimi carborundum!

From the Concord Monitor:

GOP senators blister Trump, reveal party at war with itself

By ERICA WERNER
Associated Press 

FAKE NEWS! The Orange Pustule isn't blistered. That's syphilis.

A pair of senators from President Donald Trump’s own Republican Party blistered him with criticism Tuesday in a dramatic day of denunciation that laid bare a GOP at war with itself. Jeff Flake of Arizona declared he would not be “complicit” with Trump and announced his surprise retirement, while Bob Corker of Tennessee declared the president “debases our nation” with constant untruths and name-calling.

Corker, too, is retiring at the end of his term, and the White House shed no tears at the prospect of the two GOP senators’ departures. A former adviser to Steve Bannon, Trump’s ex-strategic adviser, called it all “a monumental victory for the Trump movement,” and Trump himself boasted to staff members that he’d played a role in forcing the senators out.

It was a stunning rebuke of a sitting president from prominent members of his own party – and added to a chorus of criticism of Trump that has been growing louder and more public. Flake challenged his fellow senators to follow his lead, but there were few immediate signs they would.

At midafternoon, as fellow lawmakers sat in attentive silence, Flake stood at his Senate desk and delivered an emotional speech in which he dissected what he considered his party’s accommodations with Trump and said he could no longer play a role in them.

“We were not made great as a country by indulging in or even exalting our worst impulses, turning against ourselves, glorifying in the things that divide us and calling fake things true and true things fake,” he said.

Hours earlier, Corker leveled his own searing criticism of Trump in a series of interviews.

“I think the debasement of our nation will be what he’ll be remembered most for, and that’s regretful,” Corker said.
A furious Trump didn’t let that pass unremarked. On Twitter, he called Corker “incompetent,” said he “doesn’t have a clue” and claimed the two-term lawmaker “couldn’t get elected dog catcher in Tennessee.”

An overstatement to be sure, but White House spokeswoman Sarah Huckabee Sanders said in regard to the impending retirements, “The people both in Tennessee and Arizona supported this president, and I don’t think that the numbers are in the favor of either of those two senators in their states and so I think this was probably the right decision.”

Away from the cameras, Trump took credit for helping force the two departures, according to a White House official and an outside adviser, who insisted on anonymity to discuss private conversations.

Until Tuesday, Flake had insisted he had no plans to retire. He was raising money at a good rate and casting his re-election campaign as a test case of conservatism against Trumpism. But he made clear Tuesday he’d concluded that, for now at least, Trumpism had prevailed.

“It is clear at this moment that a traditional conservative who believes in limited government and free markets, who is devoted to free trade, who is pro-immigration, has a narrower and narrower path to nomination in the Republican Party,” he said.

Corker’s retirement plans also underscore the question of what the Republican Party will look like in years to come. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky has warned that some candidates running with the backing of Trump allies could not win general elections. And even if they make it to the Senate, certain conservatives could make McConnell’s job even harder as he tries to maneuver legislation through a narrow majority that now stands at 52-48.

Steven Law, head of a McConnell-allied super PAC that supports GOP incumbents and establishment-aligned candidates, wasted no time issuing a statement declaring that Republican former state senator Kelli Ward, who was running against Flake with the encouragement of former Trump adviser Steve Bannon, “will not be the Republican nominee for this Senate seat in 2018.” Many fellow Republicans had expected Flake to lose the primary and hope they will now be able to recruit a stronger candidate.

There was celebration in the Bannon anti-establishment camp. Andy Surabian, former Bannon adviser and now senior adviser to the Great America Alliance, said, “Today’s announcement from Sen. Flake that he would not run for re-election is a monumental win for the entire Trump movement and should serve as another warning shot to the failed Republican establishment that backed Flake and others like them that their time is up.”

Talking principle rather than politics, Flake said on the Senate floor, “We must be unafraid to stand up and speak out as if our country depends on it, because it does. I plan to spend the remaining 14 months of my Senate term doing just that.”

Earlier Corker had said of Trump, “His governing model is to divide and to attempt to bully and to use untruths.”

He said that he and others in the party had attempted to intervene with Trump over his months in office, sometimes at the behest of White House officials, but “he’s obviously not going to rise to the occasion as president.”

“Unfortunately I think world leaders are very aware that much of what he says is untrue,” Corker said.

In between the broadsides from Corker and Flake, Trump himself made a rare visit to the Capitol to join GOP senators for their weekly policy lunch. Senators said he did not joust with Corker or anyone else – or spend much time talking about a tax overhaul, the expected topic for the lunch.

Tax overhaul is an urgent task for Republicans who’ve failed to notch a single significant legislative achievement this year despite controlling the White House and both chambers of Congress. Trump did discuss it, yet it was hardly his focus.

Instead, senators said, he mixed in a review of accomplishments so far on the regulatory front and others. At one point, he essentially polled senators on whom he should nominate as the next Federal Reserve chairman, asking for a show of hands on various candidates. He tweeted later that he had received “Multiple standing ovations!”

McConnell sidestepped reporters’ questions about Corker’s characterization of Trump.

“We’re going to concentrate on what our agenda is, and not any of these other distractions that you all may be interested in,” he said.
However, even for Republicans who had no intention of seconding Flake’s comments, the import of the day’s developments was not lost.

“It’s counterproductive when Republicans are battling amongst themselves,” said Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

And now, in order to give equal time to the totalitarian gun-grabbers and the hysterical ninnies...

OH MY GOD!

SOMEBODY HAS TO DO SOMETHING NOW!

BAN GUNS!

BAN TALL THINGS!

BAN GATHERINGS OF THREE OR MORE PEOPLE!

BAN BAD PEOPLE!

SAVE US, O WISE AND POWERFUL LEVIATHAN!

SAVE US FROM THE OTHERS!

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Jonah Goldberg gets it.

Politics is Power. Power is Evil. We must limit the power others have over us to the bare minimum. Slavery and death are our only alternatives.


Not even Trump can control the GOP base - LA Times


The conservative movement is caught in a Catch-22 of its own making. In the war against “the establishment” we have made being an outsider the most important qualification for a politician. The problem? Once elected, outsiders by definition become insiders. This isn’t just a semantic point. The Constitution requires politicians to work through the system if they’re going to get anything done.

Look at all the senators who rode the tea party wave into power: Ted Cruz, Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Ron Johnson, Pat Toomey, Mike Lee. To one extent or another, they are now swamp-things, not swamp-drainers.

For example, Rubio was hailed as “The First Senator from the Tea Party” by the New York Times. But once he became a senator he became … a senator. And there’s just something about being a senator that makes the lock-and-load crowd want to flip the safeties on their muskets.

Obviously, policy choices matter. Rubio embraced immigration reform and it killed him with the talk-radio crowd. But there’s a larger dynamic at work. Merely talking like a half-way responsible politician — “we don’t have the votes,” “we have to pay for it” — isn’t what the angriest populists want to hear.

MAGA populism is less of an agenda, and more of a mood.

Cruz’s case is also instructive. Over the last decade, no politician more deftly hitched his political wagon to populist passions. He wore the animosity of his colleagues, including the GOP leadership, like a badge of honor. He was the leader of the insurrectionists. He had only one problem: He talked like a creature of the establishment — largely because the Princeton and Harvard trained former Supreme Court clerk and career politician was one. He knew the lyrics to every populist fight song, but he couldn’t carry the tune.

Until recently there was an “outsider” glass ceiling. The most strident populists — Ron Paul, Herman Cain, Michele Bachmann — could not get through the presidential primaries, because the math wasn’t on their side. At least half of the GOP doesn’t want fire-breathers, so the winning candidate had to get a large slice of the traditional Republican vote and combine it with other constituencies. That’s how Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, the Bushes, John McCain and Mitt Romney did it.

But Donald Trump not only jumped into the fray at the height of populist fervor, the field was also divided 17 ways. No one spoke less like a politician. No one who understood how governing works would have promised the things Trump promised — health coverage for all, for less money, eliminate the debt, bring all those jobs back, etc. — because they’d either know or care that such things are literally impossible. (Emphasis mine. - F.G.)


President Trump has learned this simple fact the hard way. Yet for the first eight months of his presidency his core supporters have stuck with him. The establishment remains the villain and Trump the hero for his willingness to say or tweet things that make all the right people angry. For his most ardent supporters, the fault for his legislative failures lies entirely with the swamp, the establishment or the “Deep State.”

But Judge Roy Moore’s victory last week in a run-off against Alabama Sen. Luther Strange may signal that the base is not Trump’s army to command. Trump endorsed Strange and — contrary to the president’s tweets otherwise — that endorsement didn’t help at all. The most important factor was Moore’s demonization of the establishment, particularly Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. The voters valued sticking their thumbs in the establishment’s eye more than giving Trump a win.

What’s both funny and sad is that there is remarkably little intellectual or ideological substance to the current populist fever. The “Make American Great Again” crowd’s initial preferred candidate was Rep. Mo Brooks — endorsed by radio hosts Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham and others. He got crushed. Meanwhile, Moore opposed Obamacare repeal and, until recently, couldn’t say what DACA was. In other words, MAGA populism is less of an agenda, and more of a mood.

A lot of people are simply mad as hell and don’t want to take it anymore. Republican politicians can’t ignore the anger. Ideally they’d channel it toward productive ends, as they did in the past. But further stoking the anger for political gain is not just ill-advised, it’s pointless, because eventually politicians have to govern.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

The Orange Pansy, Rash Dimbulb, and the NFL live in the Fantasy Land of Poiwer.

Power is real, kiddies. Sort of. Like anything else here and now, it is fleeting. You can force people to do want you want, but you can't force them to believe your lies and you can't make them love you. (I would apologize to George Orwell here, but I know 1984 was all allegory.)

Ultimately, the only thing the powerful can do is murder people by the train-load. That gets them millions of rotting corpses and millions more surly slackers who will only do enough for Leviathan to stay alive. Of course. for the true totalitarian dumbass, this is paradise.

Stalin and Mao, the two greatest mass-murderers so far, died peacefully in their sleep (maybe) at ripe old ages. I figure they thought they had been quite successful and would be remembered as great men. They now know the Truth, as we all will eventually.

The NFL only cares about money and money is power. The dumb jocks "protesting" don't give a damn even if cops were hunting blacks for sport. They are rich spoiled clowns who live in gated communities and only visit the old neighborhood for photo ops with plenty of bodyguards just out of camera range.

And what about little Rashie Dimbulb, the Fake Conservatives' favorite fat, deaf, and drug-addicted star? He whined about how for the first time in 45 years he deliberately didn't watch the NFL on Sunday. I would congratulate him on becoming a man, but he's like 80.  Real men have responsibilities and only get to watch an occasional game. Dimbulb doesn't get this because he disposes of his "wives" the same way he gets rid of the sandpaper he jerks off into (He's a tough guy, don't you know...) and he is a nulliparous ninny, so he isn't responsible for any kids. Even if he has a good excuse, like he can't get it up without sandpaper, he could adopt a few kiddies. But that would take love...and principles.

Let us face the sad facts, kiddies. Orange Clump is perfect for us. It is exactly what we deserve. It is profoundly ignorant, childish, petty, and unjustifiably arrogant with the attention span of a gnat.

It is exactly the same as its friends AND its enemies.

It might start shooting and it might not. Maybe the next personification of Truth, Justice, and the Amerikan Way will. Or the one after that...but there will be blood. (Also the name of a really dumbass movie, BTW.)

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

End Stage Amerika: The Rise of Orange Bonapartism.

Enter the American Bonaparte, President Tweet-For-Brains. The 140 pump chump that can't climax even after all that self-abuse. (No wonder it's afraid of NFL guys with 17 kids out of 11 women.)

No, I don't think it actually believes it is Napoleon. That would be kind of quaint and endearing, actually. Madmen thinking they were Jesus or Napoleon was a thing once upon a time. It has never read a book so I doubt it has heard of either man. 

No, Bonapartism is a political concept. (However, this does not mean it is sane.) Here are a few Wikipedia quotes from M. Bonaparte to illustrate our current predicament:

“The Revolution is over... I am the Revolution.

"I closed the gulf of anarchy and brought order out of chaos. I rewarded merit regardless of birth or wealth, wherever I found it. I abolished feudalism and restored equality to all regardless of religion and before the law. I fought the decrepit monarchies of the Old Regime because the alternative was the destruction of all this. I purified the Revolution.“ 

What is a throne? — a bit of wood gilded and covered in velvet. I am the state— I alone am here the representative of the people. Even if I had done wrong you should not have reproached me in public — people wash their dirty linen at home. France has more need of me than I of France.

    Statement to the Senate (1814) He echoes here the remark attributed to Louis XIV L'état c'est moi ( "The State is I" or more commonly: "I am the State.")

Napoleon thought he was France, just as A Cockjerk Orange thinks it is the USA. Of course, Napoleon had a lot of military victories that made him a bit full of himself. The Orange Menace is just a dick that thinks it something more than a dick. The Orange Suck-Hole has the same ignorant megalomania albeit without the impressive accomplishments of Napoleon. (Both however, are famous for having  tiny genitals and hands.)

Orange Clump cannot accept the fact it is not the Statue of Liberty, Uncle Sam, or even the hot new Columbia chick

that appears on the screen before the movie starts.

That's no surprise, because it has been pretending to be a man for decades, only getting away with it because many folks are stupid enough to believe it is a billionaire. It's amazing what people will believe if you lie often and loudly enough.

I'm predicting that two weeks into its second term, it will bust out the Juan Peron look. 

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Yes, Pope Francis, human trafficking is a mortal sin...

...but what about the billions of souls enslaved at this very moment by evil men hiding behind the word "government"?

Maybe the Good News is nullified by a royal scepter... or a lot of guns...or a lot of votes...

From The Old Gray Whore:

Pope Ends Colombia Visit With Plea for Those 'Still Being Sold as Slaves...


TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.

Even Badcock Insane Okhrana called them fascists.

What? "Terrorist", not "fascist"? That clown thinks all white people are terrorists.


From the Denton Record-Chronicle:

Jonah Goldberg: Americans must stop appeasing antifa forces

Who am I to argue with the fine men and women of former President Obama's DHS?

In fact, as someone who has been fighting with antifa defenders for a good while, I feel a bit like the defense lawyer in Miracle on 34th Street when the U.S. Post Office confirms that his client is actually Santa Claus: Hey, don't take my word for it; "terrorist violence" is the term chosen by professionals working for a Democratic White House.

With this moral victory secured, let me now break with some of my friends on the right and say that I think it's a bad, or at least premature, idea to go all the way and label antifa an actual terrorist organization.

Before I explain why, we should spend a moment considering how we got here in the first place.
Many defenders of the antifa cause insist these loosely organized activists are simply anti-fascist, and that fighting fascism is some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card for lawlessness, violence and intimidation. That's nonsense. The state has a monopoly on all violence save for self-defense. In a nation of laws, people cannot exempt themselves from the rules because they don't like someone's ideas.

Even if fighting fascists were a get-out-of-jail-free card, giving a bunch of adrenalized anarchists unilateral authority to designate fascists strikes me as an incandescently stupid idea. Antifa's understanding of what qualifies as fascist includes conservative campus speakers, defenders of free speech and even plain old Republicans.

And yet, college administrators, local politicians and police departments, particularly in places like Berkeley, have given antifa protesters a kind of benefit of the doubt.

And so have some in the media who think there's something romantically heroic about direct action and, in the Trump era, resistance.

This isn't to say that there have been no arrests. But university officials and local politicians have been intimidated on numerous occasions. In Portland, a parade was canceled because an email threatened violence if Republicans were allowed to march in it. In Berkeley, Mayor Jesse Arreguin urged UC Berkeley to cancel "Free Speech Week" for fear of violence, giving antifa a heckler's veto. So much for the home of the free speech movement.

Predictably, such responses have only emboldened the goon squads.

Still, the local authorities that are contributing to the problem are also the best solution for it. In fact, Arreguin has the right idea when he says antifa should be labeled a gang.

Like many gangs, antifa is less of a sophisticated criminal enterprise and more of an excuse for hooligans to make trouble. Maybe local police departments aren't up to the task of combating them, but we won't know until they stop appeasing them.

Meanwhile, officially designating antifa a terrorist organization would most likely be opening a Pandora's box (for reasons my National Review colleague Andrew McCarthy recently laid out in detail). There is a huge difference between countering foreign terrorists, who have no constitutional rights, and domestic ones.

The federal government is constitutionally empowered to fight foreign threats. The states are supposed to fight crime, even domestic-terrorist violence.

The groundswell behind the label "terrorist" for antifa is a call to blur that distinction. Although treating American radicals and vigilantes the way we treat foreign members of the Islamic State or al-Qaida might play well in certain corners of the populist right these days, serious conservatives should be very skeptical about granting the federal government new police powers, which could be used to other ends in future administrations.

Elevating antifa to the category of terrorist organization would fuel the worst trends in our politics.
It would entice President Trump to indulge his strongman shtick, and it would give antifa the stature it clearly craves. It would also likely accelerate vigilante violence among the white nationalists.

Launching a federal crusade against domestic enemies would only fuel the fallacy that anyone antifa attacks is a fascist. We should fight crime, whatever guise it takes, on the local level -- as the founders intended.

TheChurchMilitant: Sometimes anti-social, but always anti-fascist since 2005.