Since my last blog post, I tweeted some (probably more than was good for me), but I didn’t settle down and write a blog post. For many years, our “war on terror” moved off the front pages of our news media, returning only for brief moments, when some domestic political event or international event forced news media to cover it. During President Trump’s four years, it’s probably a safe bet that Michael Avenatti received more airtime on cable news than foreign events and the “war on terror” combined and that speaks to where Americans interests truly lie – in tabloid/reality TV type garbage. I’ve referred to Trump running the US presidency like a reality TV show and truthfully he was running the most successful reality TV show in history.
Most Americans had lost interest and trust in the mission in the “war on terror” long before President Biden executed this chaotic debacle of a withdrawal in Afghanistan over the past few weeks and I suspect most Americans couldn’t even point out the general location of Afghanistan on a map, but most probably now can express a strong opinion, based on their partisan politics and where they consume their news.
The people in America who didn’t forget are those who have loved ones serving in Afghanistan.
The other day when our fallen servicemembers were returning at Dover AFB I was so engrossed in “fighting” against the crazy repetitive messaging that’s integral in the Dem/media spin war, that I started retweeting “dignified” transfer to point out a Dem spin effort and while I knew the return of our fallen is called a dignified transfer, it was the way the liberal media kept repeating “dignified transfer” whereas with Trump attending the return of fallen soldiers, the focus was on how Trump was unfit and finding fault with whoever else went, when Trump didn’t attend. I don’t recall all the liberal media saying “dignified transfer” over and over and over. I deleted those tweets and decided to slow down on watching the spin war on Twitter.
The more I thought about my retweets, the more disappointed in myself I became. I don’t want to become an angry political shrew. I felt this way after writing so many anti-Trump takes in 2016 and early in Trump’s presidency, before Trump Derangement Syndrome came into our lexicon, I suspect. I still cringe when Trump speaks or does one of his rally sideshows, but I realized that while Trump lacked character and treated his presidency like a reality TV show, he was also the target of an unprecedented Dem/liberal media smear campaign, with liberal media and Dem political operatives working every day to allow Trump no positive media coverage throughout his presidency. I recall a New York Times headline that appeared to give Trump credit for something and within hours, after a liberal Twitter meltdown about the headline, the NYT changed the headline. Trump was not allowed even a single headline that was positive news coverage.
The spin war, a Dem/liberal media information war effort to drive their culture war, has infected the right in America too during the Trump era. Surprisingly, President Biden got a strong dose of the same treatment Trump received with fallen heroes returning. Some of the parents of the fallen servicemembers took to social media and cable news to attack Biden, accusing him of rudeness, callous indifference, checking his watch repeatedly and of spending more time talking about his own son’s death than showing interest in their fallen loved ones.
Yes, every grieving family member has the right to feel however they do about the situation and to speak out. Although a part of me feels that with everything now being politicized, the attention right-wing media has given to these angry parents is all about politics. This is the same exact thing BLM and so many anti-police activists on the left do, with using and exploiting families of black Americans killed by police, trying to turn them into media celebs – flying them all over the country to do the news and talk show rounds. It’s political activists and media exploiting grieving families.
At this point, all the dire prognostications about the fall-out for America around the world, with leaving Afghanistan in such a chaotic and disturbing manner, will take some time to see if they come true. Same goes for the Biden team’s happy, pie-in-the-sky predictions, with grotesque lies propping them up. Where I’m most concerned the fall-out will be most severe is here at home. I’m most concerned about America being able to hold together, as our country’s divides continue to deepen more rapidly than I ever dreamed possible.
The most disturbing part of these escalating divides in America is it’s not hostile foreign information war efforts fueling the divides, it’s our own political class and news media working to turn Americans against each other… every single day.
Watching the withdrawal from Afghanistan unfold in the past two weeks and the slew of lies coming from Biden administration and out of the Pentagon both disgusted and saddened me, but I’m not going to list them or vent about them in this post. I’ve also been disgusted and saddened by a lot of the incitement on the right, churned up by a lot of pundits and some Republican politicians. The most pressing issues in America won’t be fixed by more Americans becoming raging partisans, going ballistic over every new spun up hot button political issue. A lot of people within the political punditry media industry traffic in aggressive incitement efforts and they’re very good at it. Our only hope is for more and more Americans to work to pull back from the extreme partisanship. Electing all Trumpian Republicans or all Woke Democrats will only push America closer to the breaking point.
Certainly it’s understandable that many people have strong political views. I do too. What’s happening though is way too many people seem to becoming very invested in performative political activism and condoning the use of mob tactics to force their political will on other Americans. The willingness to tolerate opposing views seems to be an old-fashioned and quaint nicety you’d read about in a good manners primer. Shutting down, by shouting down the other side, preferably with a mob of like-minded citizens, seems to be the preferred political norm these days.
Political punditry in America is filled with people who churn out piles of historical analogies to fit our current political situations. Ben Domenech, the publisher of The Federalist, a right-leaning publication, joined FOX News this year and he’s very good at public speaking and articulating Trumpian populist messaging. While I agree with many of Domenech’s critique’s of the far-left Woke politics, I don’t agree with mob mentality political action. Trump hit a nerve in the American right, latching onto a discontent and alienation many Americans feel, a belief that the elites in Washington and corporate America are corrupt and no longer represent them. Trump, a wealthy NY liberal, who hobnobbed with and was a part of the elite class, managed to con enough Americans into believing he was the champion of working class America, by articulating many of the same themes Domenech put forth.
Domenech early in August gave a five minute opening, Are You Awake?, on FOX Primetime, which articulated a call to political action on the right, to counter the Left’s Woke culture war on America. Domenech’s entire opening can be found at the link provided with the title. His message has found a receptive audience among the same political pundits and politicians who embraced Michael Anton’s “The Flight 93 Election” essay, defining the Trump doctrine. Here’s just a short clip:
The Woke vs. Awake phrasing is very slick and trying to link the present American right-wing populist movement with Abraham Lincoln is brilliant messaging, but it’s very much like the Tea Party movement, except with a call for more muscle and taking to the streets. The far-left Woke relies on taking to the streets too, as last year’s BLM protests and rioting mayhem demonstrate.
The last thing America needs is more angry mobs, civil unrest, civil disobedience or God-forbid another civil war. The American Civil War came with a death toll of 750,000.
I bring up the Domenech Awake messaging, because between the BLM mayhem last year, the Dem’s Covid “rules” effort to target and alienate Trump supporters, and Trump “stolen election”/Jan. 6th attack on the Capitol, America has been turning into a basket case. One of the major off-shoots has been a huge push on the political left to target and alienate white Trump supporters, labeling them as “white nationalists” and potential “domestic terrorists.” Nowhere has that effort been more egregious as in the US military with Sec. of Defense, Austin and the Chairman of the JCS, General Milley, being completely on board with the Dem push to hunt down “white nationalists” and rid the ranks of them. The problem with all these leftist purges, lies in how they define “white nationalist” and it seems obvious they consider anyone who supported Trump a “white nationalist.”
That brings me back to Biden’s Afghanistan withdrawal debacle. I feel totally heartsick seeing Austin and Milley going along with the Biden White House spin effort to proclaim the withdrawal a stunning success. The entire world sees America’s retreat as a stunning defeat, but Austin and Milley are willing to talk about the Taliban like they’re a new trusted partner. That is a slap in the face to all those Americans who suffered, bled and died in Afghanistan. The new Taliban is exactly the same terrorist group as the old Taliban.
The shockwaves from this Afghanistan debacle and the massive Biden WH spin lies, carried by top leaders at the Pentagon, bodes very poorly for morale in the US military. Add in the millions of US veterans across America, who feel betrayed by, not only President Biden, but by top leaders in the Pentagon, and our American divides just deepened a whole lot in the past few weeks, I fear.
The last thing America needs is Awake mobs taking to the street or more Woke mobs taking to the streets. We need some calmer leaders to step to the front and guide our country back to safer ground, while standing firm against the wholesale public corruption that keeps crashing through all of our most vital institutions.
Update: Somehow I deleted a paragraph from this post and I can’t remember it verbatim. For years now I’ve called the left’s Spin Information War, our war of words, because redefining America has been an integral part of that spin war. That spin war is how the American left wages their culture war – a high-tech media operation to drive and control public opinion. The most bizarre example of their culture war redefining now is with their transgender politics and “pregnant women” have been redefined as “birthing persons.”
With redefining, the terrorist group, the Taliban, which is now being cast by the Biden WH as a potential partner in our war on terror. While everyone from Biden on down was careful to say they don’t “trust” the Taliban, they “entrusted” the outer perimeter security of the Kabul airport to the Taliban, with the result a suicide bomber got through and killed 13 American servicemembers. Top leaders at the Pentagon went out of their way to praise the Taliban cooperation though.
Words matter and how we define words matters even more. Just this morning politics Twitter is awash with liberal mouthpieces labeling Texas Republicans the “TX Taliban,” because of a new TX abortion law. Their definition of the Taliban here assuredly is the “old” Taliban definition, as a brutal terrorist group, not the Biden WH “new” Taliban definition… a potential trusted security partner in our war against terror. Democrats in the House of Representatives will be diverting attention away from Afghanistan and back to their 1/6 investigation (or as they call it “The Insurrection”). And The Pentagon, awash with liberal activists, will be defining “white nationalists” and “potential domestic terrorists,” as the Pentagon doubles down on this effort, which should cause some concern.
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