Can Liberal Media Find A Way To Keep Trump Around?

So, after yesterday’s rally protesting the treatment of all those January 6th political prisoners which drew 100 people, maybe (thanks Paula) a few more, maybe a few less, I watched a bit of an interview with one of the rally attendees on CNN. This kid was in his early 20’s, and to quote Grandpa, he looked and talked like a real ‘zhlub’ (read: good-for-nothing dope.)

He told the CNN guy that he had come to D.C. because he didn’t believe that anyone who was arrested on January 6th had committed any kind of serious crime. Maybe some of the protestors were guilty of trespass or some other minor offense like that. To which the CNN reporter then said, “You mean those assaults on police officers that are on video didn’t take place?”

This was the response: “I don’t know about assaults. I haven’t watched any videos so I can’t say that any cop was assaulted or threatened in any way.”

The reporter then showed him some video footage with several cops being attacked. The kid shrugged and the interview shut down without the CNN guy saying another word.

Here’s a kid who has to spend at least 18 hours every day on Facebook, Instagram, and all those other internet sites and he was telling a CNN reporter that he hadn’t seen one video covering the events of January 6th?

Does that red-blooded patriot who agreed to be interviewed by CNN have any idea how totally stupid or crazy he came across? Does he really believe that anyone watching this interview would believe a word he says?

I don’t think this kid actually gives one rat’s damn about what he says or whether anyone believes him or not. I also don’t think whatever he says is worth a hill of beans. But the real question in my mind is this: Why did CNN even bother to broadcast this video clip? After all, it’s not as if the reporter even tried to dispute what the kid said. He hasn’t seen one minute of video showing what happened on January 6th? Fine. He hasn’t. And that’s the end of that.

It’s going to be both interesting and entertaining to see how the fake news media tries to maintain the fiction about how this tremendous surge in right-wing populism under the direction of Donald Trump not only has transformed the Republicans into a political party that bears no resemblance to how the GOP behaved in the past, but also continues to represent a threat to America’s most cherished political institutions and Constitutional ideals.

Because that’s been the narrative we hear most frequently from CNN, MS-NBC, The Washington Post and The (failing) New York Times. And it’s a narrative which appears in one form or another every time that Trump opens his mouth and no matter what he says, his verbal sputterings are treated as if they represent news.

Of course, the fake news media continues to prop up Trump and his mighty band of followers because they know that this is what their audience wants to hear. If I had a nickel for every reader of my Medium columns who has sent me an email warning me that I’m making a mistake by under-stating the possibility that America could become another Fascist regime, I could be sitting in my lovely apartment in King’s Point instead of shlepping around New England certifying that the cops who work for various federal, state, and local law-enforcement agencies could hit the broad side of the barn with their guns.

And in case you didn’t know it, King’s Point is a condo development in South Florida which can best be described as being one of the ugliest and most disgusting physical environments ever built for human habitation, second in that respect only to the public housing projects managed by the Housing Authority of the City of New York.

For all of my readers who like to start off every morning by hoping and praying that America’s democratic institutions can somehow survive this endless and ever-growing assault, let me break it to you gently, okay?

You think this population of semi-literate malcontents who still have a Trump — 2024 bumper sticker on their trucks all of a sudden came into existence in 2016? You think their forebears haven’t been around since the days when Barry Goldwater sounded the alarm against ‘big government’ back in 1964? How about the reactionaries who said that Social Security was a Communist plot when the Social Security Administration was established in 1935?

Exactly where were all these patriots hiding when George Bush was elected twice and then John McCain and Mitt Romney tried to win their electoral contests but failed? How come all the shitheads who climbed the Capital steps on January 6th to demand a do-over of the election didn’t climb up those same steps when a guy from Kenya was elected President in 2008 and then re-elected in 2012?

I’ll tell you why. Because they were sitting under their rocks waiting for the fake news media to anoint them as representing a new direction for American politics which was going to be led and become even more powerful because it was being led by President Donald Trump.

Despite all the so-called violence that occurred in various cities after the murder of George Floyd, despite all the so-called ‘insurrectionist’ rhetoric coming from both the Left and the Right, even despite the attempt to violently overthrow the American government on January 6th, this country happens to be a remarkably civil, law-abiding, and peaceful place. We have never had the kind of general strike that almost brought down the 5th French Republic in 1968. We have never had anything remotely like what happened in Germany before and certainly after 1933. I have been all over the world and I’m still impressed by the fact that Americans seem to be the only nation-state culture that understands the concept of forming a line.

Think I’m being overly dramatic to prove my point about how little we have to fear from the MAGA remnants who showed up yesterday in D.C? Try driving into a traffic circle in Rome or Madrid and see what happens if you slow down to let another car get ahead.

Yesterday’s ‘rebellion’ in front of the Capitol made me realize that my frequent demand that Trump should shut the f*ck up and go away, or that the fake news media should stop repeating and magnifying every word he says, is wrong. It’s completely wrong.

The last thing we need is to go back to status quo ante when the GOP picked regular, mainstream guys like Bush, McCain or Romney to represent the party every four years. What brought 81 million people out to vote for Joe and Kammie last year wasn’t that everyone thought they were so great. It was because we needed to push what Grandpa would call those ‘vilde chayas’ (read: crazy dopes) back under their rocks.

Think I’m wrong? Let’s see what happens to those 81 million votes if the GOP picks someone like Mitt Romney or George Bush to head their ticket in 2024.