Journalism 101: The Narative

In journalism school, we learned that the narrative sets itself, and the journalist reports about it. However, that was back in 1988. It was hard to do. In today's journalism classes, they must teach that the narrative is set by the journalist, and then they search for material to support their narrative. It's not hard to do.

A perfect example here is a story in the New York Times, May 14, 2016, "How Donald Trump Behaved With Women in Private."  It began on the front page and covered, I think, 11 pages in total. So they decided that Trump is setting the narrative, and they can't handle that. That's not selling papers. So Michael Barbaro and Megan Twohey, the authors of the hit piece, decided to set the narrative that Trump, in his younger years, was a womanizer who treated women poorly.

Rather than letting the news happen, they created the news. Rather than gather the evidence and report the news from the narrative as it was happening, they created the narrative  and searched for evidence to support it. They talked to as many women as they could, women who had contact in one way or another with Trump, and twisted their words. Their story made page one.

Then Trump woke up the next morning and saw the hit piece. He said, "You know what, I didn't say that. They lied about what I said."

About 20 years ago, before social media, the media would have won. The people would have no way to know who was telling the truth, so they would have just assumed the media was telling the truth. Today, however, social media has a way of finding the truth. You cannot hide behind a lie. You cannot hide behind a false narrative. And so the New York Times was busted.

Then Times has now admitted that the story was false. They were lying. They were misleading.

When asked if he was going to sue, Trump said he is currently in talks with the Times.

Maureen Callahn, in the New York Post, "Everything Today is a Lie," also from May 14, 2016, wrote how everything in the news today is a lie. This is because the media is setting the narrative. She said nothing we see in the news is real because the narrative is being set. The piece is very long because she gives many examples.

For instance, she talks about Sharron Osborne crated the narrative that her husband had an affair and had gone missing. This was all over the news, and people actually had sympathy for Sharron. Yet then the two were seen together later in the week and the whole thing was learned to be a scam. Sharon couldn't rely on her own talent, or her husband's fame, to get headlines: she had to create her own fake narrative.

She basically gave examples of how narrative has become a substitute for substance; how the narrative is set; how the narrative is spun. Substance does not sell newspapers, so the narrative has to be set to make the narrative more interesting. And a busy public doesn't have time to do fact checking.

And this type of narrative setting happens in politics too. Obamacare was passed not because the bill was a good bill full of substance, but because it was spun as a good bill. The narrative was set by the Obama administration, and this narrative was picked up by the media and reported as news. And a busy populace didn't have time to fact check.

Now, the media reported the narrative set by the Obama Administration as opposed to doing their own fact checking. They didn't want to report on the substance, because they didn't like the substance, or so we are lead to believe. They did not look into the substance of Obamacare and report on that. They did not want to report on that narrative. So they just wrote about the narrative that was set and went with it, as thought they were satellites for the White House rather than watchdogs for the people.

As noted by Rush Limbaugh:

"The only thing that was important to the media was: "Would Obama get it? Would Obama be the first ever to get national health care in America? Would Obama succeed? Will Obama get what he wants?" Not, "Is what Obama wants good? Is what Obama wants helpful? Is Obama being truthful about the details of what he wants?" None of that. The press didn't cover one syllable of that. Not one page of Obamacare. The media covered the villains: The Republicans and people like me on radio and in blogs trying to stop Obama from getting what he wants.

But they didn't report on us by telling people we were covering the substance of Obamacare. They just portrayed us as what have you: Racist, bigots, homophobes, who wanted to deny the first African-American president a signature legislative proposal. So the media -- which most people instinctively rely on to learn what things are -- doesn't tell anybody what things are anymore. All the media does, because they're all Democrats... They're all part of the Democrat agenda. All the media does is try to make sure that Obama or Clinton or whoever, get what they want."

So, you have a media claiming to be unbiased, and yet they are biased. The New York Times is a good example of that. Then you have outlets like "National Review" that only report on substance, and they struggle to stay afloat because they do not create interesting narratives, they just report on the substance of the real narratives. They ask the questions. They get to the bottom of things. They report on what people might not want to hear, "That Obamacare has no substance. That it will fail."

And they are honest and call themselves conservative. The only difference between the New York Times and National Review is the Times lies that it is bias and National Review is honest about being unbiased. Of course, if the New York Times revealed it's true liberal bias, no one would read it. So they lie. They spin the narrative. They create it. They only get to substance when republicans are trying to get their agenda passed.

You see, I was taught in journalism 101 to hunt for the real narrative and report on that. It was hard, because you had to dig. You had to go out of your way. You had to talk to people. You had to gather information and report on what you learn. And, what you learn, may not be what you expected, and it may not even be what you want. You may not agree with it. But, regardless, it was the narrative, it was the substance, and therefore it was the news.

Today, however, journalists must be taught that they are to create the narrative. Now they are taught to advance their own version of the story, spin it just the way they want. They can make bad news good, or good news bad. They can do whatever they want. And it's easy, because all they have to do is interview one or two women in Trump's lives and spin what they say as news.

Further reading:

• New York Times: How Donald Trump Behaved with Women in Private
• New York Post: Everything Today is a Lie
• Rush Limbaugh: How to Deal with the Narrative as News

Hitler was a socialist

I'm not a big fan of memes
But this one is right on. 

One of my liberal friends tried to explain to me how Trump is like Hitler. He said that the people of Germany wanted change, and Hitler offered change. Right now the people of Washington are corrupt and dishonest, and Trump, like Hitler, is a political outsider who offers the type of change the people want. "It's scary," he said.

I said, "Actually, trump is like Bernie Sanders. He mesmerized the people by telling them he would solve all their problems. He guaranteed them a job, a living wage, free healthcare, free school, free college, etc. And, aside from that, NAZI stands for "National Socialist German Workers Party."

Now, we can go a step further. Many claim that he is a right winger because he killed the Jews. Sure, killing Jews is right wing, if you look at the political spectrum as a straight line. You have Hitler on the far right as a Jew killer, but you also have him on the far left as a radical socialist.

If we look at the political spectrum as a circle, with the radical side of the party at the top of the circle, you see that Hitler is right at the top of the circle.

New World Order: What would it mean for us?

So, there are talks that the goal of progressives is to downsize America, and get rid of it's borders and sovereignty, with the ultimate goal of creating a New World Order. If they got their way, what would this mean for those who currently consider themselves America -- or us? 

If a NWO were created, it would mean that a Super Government would probably be created somewhere in Europe, such as Brussels or Prague. Or, I suppose, it could be head quartered by the United Nations in New York.

The people running this Super Government would be considered the smartest people in the world. Whatever they believed would be forced on the rest of us. Considering they are the experts, they know what's best for us. So, it wouldn't matter what we thought, we would be forced to accept the edicts, the regulations, the laws they set forth. 

It wouldn't matter if you didn't believe that the theory that man is the cause of global warming was a hoax. You wouldn't even be able to state your opinion, because you would probably be put in prison if you insisted on stating it. Or, at the vary least, your opinion would be minimized. There would only be three or four TV stations, and all of them would be run by the state. The government would be able to promote what it wants, and put down whatever it wants. 

This Super Government would set up a World Court, and this court would supersede anything written in the U.S. Constitution. This would mean that you are not necessarily proven innocent until proven guilty. It would mean whatever the justice experts decided it meant. And you can imagine that these experts would all be progressives and not conservatives. Conservatives would all be silenced or killed. They would be the majority who sit in prisons. Or they would just be killed if they continued to act out. This would be similar to how it was prior the the United States. 

A Security Council would be created by the defense experts. They would decide who went to war and with whom and when. They would decide the rules of war. They would decide who won the war. They would decide who had what weapons. They probably would decide to take all the weapons from the people to make sure there was not public revolution against the desires of the state. A state militia would control the people and keep the peace. It would also take care of anyone who spoke out against the Super Government. 

But this would be their Euphoria. This would be the world where everyone has a job, a home, a car, an iphone, the Internet, cable television (or whatever was made available), food, and healthcare. And you can easily see what we would be giving up in order to enjoy life in this so called euphoria -- our liberties. 

In the past, both George W. Bush and Bill Clinton were willing to wage war against the United Nations when they decided to create a World Court, on the grounds that they were not willing to have rights currently protected under the U.S. Constitution absconded by government. However, Obama doesn't seem to have such qualms. 

The New World Order: The Progressive Dream

If we pay attention to what our leaders say we can figure out their true intentions. For instance, John Kerry recently implied that we should get ready for a borderless world. If this comes to fruition, and we have no borders, then we have no states, and we have no United States. There has to be some form of government in this new borderless world, and this preludes to the New World Order.

During a commencement speech in at Northeastern University, Kerry said:

“I think that everything that we’ve lived and learned tells us that we will never come out on top if we accept advice from soundbite salesmen and carnival barkers who pretend the most powerful country on Earth can remain great by looking inward and hiding behind walls at a time that technology has made that impossible to do and unwise to even attempt. The future demands from us something more than a nostalgia for some rose-tinted version of a past that did not really exist in any case... You’re about to graduate into a complex and borderless world.”

This goes back to the liberal belief that individuals are flawed, and tend to making decisions that benefit the individual at the expense of the whole. This refers to individual people and individual states. So liberals believes experts on the national stage should make decisions for them. At the very least, make regulations to nudge individuals and individual states in the right direction. Hence the need for a large governmental body of progressive experts in Washington, and a Super Government somewhere in Europe that many refer to as the New World Order.

So, they do not see America as the leader of the free world. They do not see that 99.9% of individuals lived under totalitarian governments that absconded freedom and liberty prior to the existence of the United States. They do not believe in American Exceptionalism. They believe that America exemplifies everything that is wrong with the world. They see the American Constitution as creating an environment that encourages individuals to make selfish decisions, and so their aim is to "change it" and move it "forward" so that they can "fundamentally transform America."

They believe that an American Superpower creates unbalance in the world. They believe if America has nuclear weapons, that someone else (i.e. the Soviet Union) must have nuclear weapons to balance the power in the world. They believe if America is the wealthiest nation in the world, that it has accumulated its wealth at the expense of the rest of the world, i.e. third world nations. They believe America steals the world's resources. So they believe America makes people poor and enslaved. They do not believe in American Exceptionalism.

They believe America is arrogant and selfish, and this works to the disadvantage of the rest of the world. They believe the American system is flawed from the beginning, and therefore it must be taken away.

This explains why Obama has depleted our military and ended the NASA programs. This explains why Obama keeps our borders porous, because he believes we are responsible for the poverty of those coming in. This explains why Obama supported the KYOTO protocol, which allows the United Nations to create regulations requiring industries to cut green house gases, even though this would supersede Constitutional protections.

This explains why liberals create programs allowing illegal aliens access to social security, welfare, and medicine. It's only fair that we give them the same opportunity that we give our own people, because we absconded that opportunity from them in the first place.

So, borderless, by John Kerry's definition, by Obama's definition, by the liberal definition, means that we hve to cut America down to size. This explains the open border policy that does not require those those entering be assimilated into the American way of life. It explains economic policies that do not make the American economy better. It explains a healthcare system designed to wreck the American economic system from the inside out.

Lacking borders, we will need a Super Government. This was the purpose of the United Nations. It was supposed to be this super power government. This is a place where experts, preferably liberal experts (all the experts of the world), take the most popular theories and force everyone else to believe them.

They will be seated in Brussels or Hague. They create regulations that require all world factories to reduce carbon dioxide emissions or else. Of course the smaller industries won't be able to afford to comply with the regulations, so this will force them to go out of business or merge with larger conglomerate industries, trusts, or monopolies. This will make it easier to form a universal, socialistic world economy.

They do not want borders. They do not want states. They do not want sovereignty. They want a world ruled by progressive experts who, so it may be assumed, know what's best for all of us. This, they believe, will result in a euphoric world where everyone has a job, a house, food, healthcare, free education, a retirement, etc. And, of course, there will be no bad guys. They are naive enough to think this world is possible outside of Heaven. This is all possible by destroying America first, eliminating borders, and creating a New World Order.

The one thing that all of us will be forced to sacrifice for this euphoria is our freedom and our liberty.  You will still get to choose, but it will be a choice between two options that the smartest progressives in the world want you to choose from. That will be the end of your liberty. They will promote what they want to promote, and shut down what they want to shut down. And, before they get there, they have to change the constitution, fundamentally transform America, shut down its sovereignty, and eliminate its borders.