Don't Let Big Media Pull Your Strings

Nine years ago, I concluded that the American populace was being herded in a second civil war by the various entities that make up what I call the Organized Left: mainstream media organizations and politicians – mostly, but not exclusively, Democrats -- and, as we’ve discovered of late, online media corporations. I tend to be resistant to repeating myself, but, every day – sometimes even more often – I get confirmation of my old conclusion.

I won’t bother going back over the distortions created by Big Media in the years between 2010 and this year. Two examples from the last two weeks will suffice.

First, we had the Covington/Nathan Phillips/Black Hebrew Israelites racial troika, wherein a teenage boy was savaged by Big Media and by even his own priest without any evidence that the boy had done anything wrong.

And two days ago, Arizona Central, a dogsbody of USA Today, published an opinion piece by someone named Rashaad Thomas -- an op-ed so poorly reasoned and written that some of my acquaintances thought it was satire.

A few weeks ago, I attended a holiday party at a downtown Phoenix restaurant. I walked around to view the photographs on the wall. 

Then a photograph caught my attention. 

Friends said, “It’s coal miners at a pub after work.” It was a photograph of coal miners with blackened faces. I asked a Latinx and white woman for their opinion. They said it looked like coal miners at a pub after work. Then they stepped back, frowned and said it’s men in blackface. 

I asked the waitress to speak with a manager. Instead, I spoke with a white restaurant owner. I explained to him why the photograph was offensive. Evidently, someone else had made a similar comment about the photograph before. 

Yet, the photograph remained on the wall. He said he would talk to the other owners and get back to me. While leaving, I asked him had he spoke with the other owners. He had not spoken with them, but mentioned Google said it's coal miners after work. (…) 

The context of the photograph is not the issue.

That last line is how you know that the author of this piece will refuse to see any point of view other than his own. And everything after that line has nothing to do with context or reason. It’s merely the bleating of a child in an adult body who has yet to learn that his feelings are not at the pinnacle of what matters.

But back to my own point. The most important thing about this opinion piece is that USA Today chose to publish it with all of its flaws for the same reasons that I discerned in 2010.

If the Left has been successful at keeping racial grievance in the forefront of black American agenda—in indoctrinating black Americans into believing that retaining racial anger at whites is inherent in being black and essential for black survival--it has also been successful in later years of producing a certain mindset in white Americans. Actually this seems to be two mindsets, but it is really a singular one—a two-headed beast. The first is guilt-fear and the second is unproductive anger. (…) 

The phenomenon of white guilt doesn’t merely mean that many white Americans feel guilty for the actions of pre-[Civil Rights Act] America. It also means that all white Americans must pay for the sins of their fathers and pay for a system from which they are perceived to still be the beneficiaries and to still have advantages over all other Americans simply due to being white. Stemming from that premise, all whites are guilty until proven innocent. (...) 

Individual guilt can be a positive thing: a motivator to get clean and make restitution to the wronged party. (And this Christian asserts that the identity of the wronged party is always the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.) However, when group guilt is the matter at hand, there exists no actual defendant or plaintiff in reality. Under such a fantasy, the "plaintiff" can never be made whole and, obviously, the "defendant" can never be made to pay enough.

At the risk of re-posting my whole series on the topic, I’ll stop there, but, to repeat the point: anger is being ginned up between us, my fellow Americans. Anger and violence.

I saw the anger in the responses to the op-ed – totally justifiable. But, just as the op-ed writer needs to let go of his pointless anger, so do those who are angry at the insult offered to their hard-working coal-miner ancestors. Why? Because it feeds into what the elites – like those who own the USA Today Network – want for this country.

They want this country tearing itself apart in ferocious anger about things that both groups have probably forgotten. I mean, who in 2019 gives a rat’s about “blackface” except for Social Media race warriors, anyway? [UPDATE: Just in time, another blackface controversy.]

Here's the thing about the racial provocations that Big Media has repeatedly offered for our consumptions: if you leave the anger they may provoke unchecked and unexamined, at some point it will burst into rage. That's what the Organized Left is hoping for.

Don't be fooled. Examine yourself and talk with your family,and friends about any emotions produced by what we consume as news. Examine those who intentionally inflame tension between Americans of different colors. and, most importantly, trust in God. He will reveal things to you when you do that.

Don't let the "elites" who run USA Today and its foot soldiers like Rashaad Woods manipulate you.

Don't give them what they want.

Every Tuesday and Saturday, I blog at the award-winning DaTechGuyBlog. Latest post: Why Stacey Abrams Will Give the Democrats’ Response to the SOTU

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