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Do Corporate Media Shed Rays of Light- or Shoot Death Rays? [1]

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Date: 2023-10-03  

For 9/26/23, the Washington Post’s left side/front page/above-the-fold headline reads “Trump, Biden on missions to Michigan.”

“Hmm,” methinks. “Funny how that ‘paper of record’ gives Big Blonder top billing. Maybe he won that race three years ago, after all.”

Wow. In hard copy, WAPO’s Trump-hailing gaffe raises its jowly head smack near the paper’s preening motto “Democracy Dies in Darkness.” That stark paradox should serve to remind concerned citizens of “Gaslit Nation” podcaster/author Sarah Kendzior’s unstinting take on the J6 juggernaut, “Memory-Holing A Coup” (in her 2022 book They Knew). So, let it be stressed. Not in “Darkness” but in broad daylight, Trump exhorted such militants as Zach “Civil War Started” Rehl “to the Capitol….to fight like hell….to take back [i.e. take over] our country”- via, as Trump had said earlier, “get[ting] rid of the ballots.”

Look closer. Watch the J6 video. That’s not just a “smoking gun;” it’s a melting Howitzer.

Granted, it’s ‘too bad to be true.’ Safe to say, it ‘does not compute.’ But still. It’s on the record. It’s in-your-face. It’s there. It happened. To grasp its import, you need not be Bob Woodward. Carl Bernstein. Former Post standout David Fahrenthold. Rachel Maddow. Albert Einstein. War correspondent/J6 recorder-reporter Luke Mogelson (see below). Or, Sherlock Holmes, Karnak the Magnificent, or Nostradamus.

You simply need to (pardon my zeal) DEFEAT THE DARKNESS THAT FALLS WHEN YOU CLOSE YOUR EYES. The 80-ton Godzilla in the Rotunda is that we’re down to one non-despotic major party. (The GOP’s official, Orwellian dictate that J6 was/is “legitimate political discourse” proves that point beyond all doubt. To claim or suggest otherwise makes about as much sense as driving the wrong way on a one-way street.)

Hello. “Civil War Started.” Trouble is, they ain’t just whistlin’ “Dixie.” Replete with the Confederate battle flag (inside) and a starkly KKKish noose (outside), Rehl and his fellow raiders pretty much strolled right in; the FBI still expects us to believe that dismissing the Trump troop’s threats as “aspirational chatter” was a fine-and-vigilant way to go.

So. What are we to do? Yodel the theme from the Confederate flag-foisting, smash hit Reagan era TV series “The Dukes of Hazzard?” (“Just a good ol’ boy/Never meanin’ no harm.” Yeah. Right.)

Look long and hard. This cannot be just about ratings. Or even (for all the woes and pressures that beset hardcopy publishing) about print sales. Inside the Senate chamber, Mogelson finds (and captures on video) seditionists crowing “set up a government.” As if the ‘old’ one were kaput. As if that demise should be something to cheer. (And, given the profusion of Christian banners and the raising of a rough-hewn Cross, to revere.)

In stark contrast to the Trump cult’s theocratic, neo-Confederate, pseudo-patriotic, nation-smiting death-dealing, President Biden (aka the second banana in the above headline) favors bipartisan bonhomie. Fine. Trouble is, it’s not playing well in Peoria. And it’s getting awfully short shrift in the Post.

On a slow news day, WAPO’s 9/29 edition buries (on Page 3) an all-too-true, screamingly needed warning from Mr. Biden against the self-styled “Chosen One’s” not-so-much-creeping-as-sprinting tyranny. The hard copy headline calls the President’s speech “unusual.” But wait. The text tells us Mr. Biden has orated such caveats at least a few other times of late. (See “In Ariz. speech, Biden delivers unusual rebuke of Trump.”)

Logically, that leaves us no real choice but to look past the primary meaning of “unusual” (i.e. “uncommon”), to such baldly pejorative synonyms as “deviant.” “Peculiar.” “Alien.” “Freakish.” And (who could forget?) “queer.” (If it seems weird that a “responsible” outlet such as the Post would not-so-subtly undermine the Chief who’s striving to save our vote-legitimized governance from the Trump train wreck, trust me, I hear you.)

But still. Such active and/or tacit pro-Trumpism as the Post’s bespeaks a dimming bulb in our halls of power. And perhaps a fizzling torch in Upper New York Bay. Sigh. Don’t look now, but that’s precisely the kind of “Strongman” scenario that NYU scholar/author/pundit/world expert Ruth Ben-Ghiat has effectively been warning us about FOR EIGHT YEARS AND COUNTING.

Not that she, Mogelson, Kendzior, Mr. Biden, or this writer could stand a ghost of a chance of being right. And so, as on J6, we all should cover our eyes. Ignore the blood-red caps that encrust the proverbial wall. And pray that ignorance somehow will turn out to be strength.

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