Tyranny comes in many forms, including a tyranny of lies. As we soak in the damning findings of the Durham report one thing becomes crystal clear, the American news media, whether wittingly or not, has been misleading us since the moment Donald Trump became a political figure.
Beginning in 2016 the mainstream news media has swallowed every sugary dollop of supposed scandal that their deep state sources tempted them with, from pee tapes, to non-existent Trump ties to Russia, to Hunter’s laptop being disinformation, and on and on and on.
Every outlet on the left, which is most of them, amplified outright lies, like Rep. Adam Schiff baselessly claimed he had seen direct evidence of Russian collusion, or when James Comey laughably said he didn’t know if the Steele Dossier was accurate, long after he had been told of its dubious origins.
Let’s not forget Hillary Clinton, who in 2018 claimed that Donald Trump "knows he’s not a legitimate president," that kind of talk about the 2020 election is immediately called out as a dire threat to democracy, but when Clinton said it was, you know, just like, her opinion, man.
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It's bad enough that these stories were heralded every night as the truth only to fall apart like a wet napkin, but even more amazing is that these reporters, at both the New York Times and Washington Post won Pulitzer Prizes for their litany of lies.
It’s honestly hard to even conceive of, the news industry spent years undermining a president, misleading voters, ignoring any semblance of journalistic ethics, and then they gave each other awards for it.
Is it any wonder then that journalism is the least trusted institution in American society, falling roughly somewhere between used car salesmen and convicted mobsters?
Americans can see that any story that hurts Trump, no matter if the source is "some guy on D train," is headline news, and that often by the time the truth catches up large swathes of people believe the lie anyway.
They also plainly see that stories damaging to Joe Biden, be it Hunter Biden’s corrupt dealings, the illegal handling of classified documents, a granddaughter he refuses to recognize, his general incoherence, or laughable 10 am to 4 pm schedule are routinely buried at the back of the newspaper if mentioned at all.
Consider the fact that CNN is taking heat from the left, including some of its own employees, for simply hosting a town hall with Donald Trump, a former president and current GOP frontrunner, in other words, one of the newsworthiest folks on the planet.
People who call themselves journalists actually believe that the man chosen by tens of millions of Americans to lead them should be silenced, we are far through the looking glass.
Even CNN didn’t exactly bathe itself in glory, moderator Kaitlan Collins tried to fact-check Trump so many times it almost became an Abbott and Costello bit, one has to ask: why is the media so afraid to let this man talk?
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And here is the greatest irony in all of this. They say Trump shouldn't be platformed because they claim he is a proven liar, the cheerleaders of the Russia hoax and laptop libel have the temerity to lecture us about silencing those who do not tell the truth.
If the mainstream news media cared about its audience or about the country we would be seeing a parade of apologies, we would hear them promise to learn from their mistakes, we would see a shred of self awareness, but alas no.
And really, why should they come to terms with this? Nobody has to give back their Pulitzer, or their hefty bonuses, or their starring turns on cable news. It's not that there are no consequences for misleading Americans, it's that somehow there are positive consequences.
In many ways a tyranny of lies is harder to fight against than a tyranny of brute power, this is why George Orwell focused so much on language and words in warning us how fascism creeps into our lives, Newspeak, not guns, is the real threat.
So for now there is a stalemate, the news media lies, the public doesn’t believe them, and little to no actual discourse can occur. It's not sustainable, but how it ends, nobody knows.
