Category Archives: Culture Wars

July 10, 2019 · 3:11 pm

America is about individuals

I am not a feminist.

I am a woman, yet I have never once in my life believed I am entitled to special rules due to this.

This week’s feminist hissy fit centers on the U.S. women’s soccer team.  The media Furies rail that the U.S. women’s soccer team deserves pay equal to the U.S. men’s soccer team.  The truth is the U.S. women’s soccer team, while the best women’s soccer team can’t hold a candle to men’s soccer teams.  This is the reality in most sports.

The glaring truth is men and women are physically different and have different physical capabilities.  Pretending otherwise, to appease feminists or advance political agendas, hurts everyone who is willingly brainwashed into buying into policies based on false premises and slippery, deceptive language, or coerced through political and social media pressure to buy into these feminist false arguments and their always-evolving demands.

I do not believe in dogmatic modern feminism, which appears to me to be  a thinly veiled, radical leftist, socialist political movement, with a mission of “destroying the patriarchy” (code word for Western civilization).  Modern feminists state they want to stamp out sexism and remake, not just our political structure, but our culture and even our daily lifestyle choices to fit their ever-evolving notions of what a feminist utopia should be.

Most of all it’s alarming how many women (and many men too) just jump on board each new media-fueled feminist demand or outrage antic.

The radicals leading the modern feminist movement often contradict each other and advocate conflicting policies, but they agree on their demand for political change, all encapsulated under the banner of “Equality and Fairness”, which the mainstream media invariably champions, without question.  The feminist movement’s major mouthpieces issue their demands, which dictate how everyone, especially men, must act and think about… women’s rights and women’s roles in the workplace, “gender roles”, male and female personal interactions, what words must be used when speaking about women and “gender” issues, and what everyone must think about an ever-growing list of issues and grievances their movement decides are “unfair”.  Most of all feminists want to tell men what they can and can not do, even down to their private sexual behavior.

The modern feminist movement is all about controlling men.

It’s exhausting listening to so many grown women living their lives in a perpetual state of raging that men need to change, all to conform to their latest charge of inequality or about how “unfair” some issue is to women.  Oddly, many liberal men have completely bought into modern feminism and are willing to embrace every new angry charge radical feminists level at men and the “patriarchy” writ large.

America is about individuals pursuing their dreams. It’s not about political parties, mass political action or social media mob actions.

Here’s a home truth about people – you can’t dictate what other people must believe.  Freedom of belief is a right in America and should not be dictated or constrained by government, political or social pressure.  Every American should feel free to disagree with or embrace religious, political or even personal beliefs without fear of social, political or even economic retaliation from modern social media or media-generated mob smear campaigns.  We shouldn’t accept dictates on what words we must use to talk about any political or social issues.  Differing viewpoints deserve a hearing.

I believe there are amazingly competent women and there are amazingly incompetent women, smart women and dumber-than-a-rock women, women who work hard and women who are lazier than my old dog, Lucy, whose major daily effort is dragging herself to the food dish each day.  The same is true for men.  I’m all for job opportunities for everyone, based on clear standards, across the board.

My only exception is I do not believe in allowing women in a few grueling combat positions, because I believe the military mission and what best leads to mission success outweigh feminist politics, always.  I base this view based on my view that military mission success often asks soldiers to take on dangerous missions, even sacrificing their lives for some of them.  And due to the gravity of some of these combat missions, I don’t think feminist agendas outweigh, careful, deliberative military assessments, as to what physical requirements are needed to accomplish these missions successfully and feminist agendas certainly do not outweigh the risk to other team members, who might be put at risk by lowering standards or allowing women, who are not as competent as their male team members.  It’s not fair to put other team members at risk due to feminist political pressure.   Some of these tasks require a great deal of upper-body strength and endurance, which the overwhelming body of research shows women do not possess.  Biology is what it is, so in military mission decisions, I opt for what best leads to mission success.  PERIOD.

This latest U.S women’s soccer team win has become an anti-Trump rally and members of this women’s soccer team are just as much to blame for this political sideshow as Trump.  In fact, the team captain is wallowing in media deification for her “trash-Trump”, anti-American political antics.  As an added “feminist issue”, the feminist mantra is all about how these female soccer players dont’ get paid as much as the men’s team.  The truth is the men’s soccer team brings in a whole lot more revenue and although the U.S. women’s soccer team are amazing athletes, no women’s soccer team can compete with the counterpart top male soccer teams.

Male and female biology is what it is – that’s the truth.

What on earth is wrong with cheering on women’s sports and working to expand opportunities for girls sports too, without turning it into a feminist political cause?  Why do radical leftist politics turn everything into a major political and cultural war?

A good starting point for changing America for the better, way beyond political action, begins with treating people as individuals worthy of respect and entitled to their own beliefs, thoughts and opinions.

It seems like America’s 24/7 media spin drama feeds mass hysteria, mass outrage, mass demonization… mass GROUPTHINK.

My modest proposal is that we start listening to each other more and spending more time trying to get to know people as individuals first, rather than as part of some nefarious “other group”.

Just that one change of focus can broaden your view immensely and it can lead you to some amazing conversations with people, whom you thought you had nothing in common with or believed were bad people… based on hot button political issues, the political candidate they support, or group they belong to.  Each person deserves to be treated as more than a one-dimensional object to hate.

How hard is it to work on respecting people as individuals?

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Filed under Culture Wars, Gladius Maximus, Politics

March 21, 2019 · 2:08 pm

More proponents of a “Kill Them With Kindness” plan

I like cutesy pictures and saccharin sweet sayings, so here’s what I look at on the hutch above my PC.

An op-ed in the Washington Post a few days ago, The Dalai Lama and Arthur Brooks: All of us can break the cycle of hatred, caught my attention.  It was a short piece about the deluge of angry word flying across the internet.  The Dalai Lama and Brooks write:

“Human beings have a deep longing to live together in harmony. People only feel completely alive when experiencing loving bonds with one another. Everyone, of all faiths and no faith, knows this truth, and most profess it openly.

And yet people fight incessantly. Even though war is blessedly absent in most countries today, these are deeply polarized times. Words too often are delivered with contempt; philosophical differences are likened to warfare; those who simply disagree with another are deemed “enemies.” Often it is on the Internet — which was launched as a forum for unity — where people attack one another, under the cloak of anonymity.”

Their answer to defeating the growing “war of words”, especially online,  is very simple:

“Respond with kindness. Want to say something insulting about people who disagree with you? Take a breath and show generosity, instead.”

As I am typing this, Twitter is aflutter with another Trump-generated outrage spin cycle about Trump’s vicious attack yesterday on the late senator, John McCain, while standing in front of Army tanks and the American flag.  This spin cycle will agitate for a few days, but nothing will really change, despite a firestorm of words flying in the media, covering this latest Trump spin blitz.

Our politics very much reflects our culture and despite many anti-Trump politicians and pundits asserting, “This (meaning Trump) is not who we are,” sadly, Trump very much reflects who we are.

The truth is, in an America where good character and being truthful matters, neither of our two thoroughly corrupt 2016 presidential contenders would have been their party’s choice.  If either party had any ethical standards, they would have rejected such completely mendacious candidates, who were under so heavy a cloud of corruption, and who both have glaring character flaws.   We embrace a culture dominated by social media celebrity, Reality TV stardom and a news media entrenched in promoting political spin cycles.  Absent this media dominated culture, neither Trump nor Hillary would have risen to the top and diligent investigative reporting in the news media would have sunk both of them.

You don’t need a degree in psychology or fancy clinical terms to see that both Trump and Hillary lie outrageously and they both have the disturbing habit of doubling down on their lies, even when there’s video of them saying or doing the exact thing they are denying.  They launch media spin campaigns to bolster their lies rather than admit they lied.

In real life most people with even a bit of a moral compass, recognize thoroughly mendacious people like Trump and Hillary as people to be wary of and untrustworthy, but in American politics now, most Americans chose one of them to lead America…

That speaks to our American culture, where too many people prefer to jump on the latest popular spin train rather than standing up for any sort of moral principles.

Many conservatives and NeverTrumpers made their peace with Trump as POTUS, happily consoling themselves with “But Gorsuch” type rationalizations and trying to skim past the recurring Trump-instigated outrage spin cycles, like this bizarre spectacle of Trump’s attack on McCain yesterday.  Likewise, many Democrats chose to ignore the obvious Clinton corruption.

How many Americans will choose to start being kind and generous when facing hostile attacks?  Well, judging from a couple of decades of watching… and experiencing, social media behavior, even a few people beginning to lead this “kill them with kindness” approach, assuredly, is a welcome glimmer of hope.

The Dalai Lama and Brooks “Kill Them With Kindness” plan, naturally, resonated with me, because it’s the only way to defeat the massive SPIN information war that drives, not only American media, but also American culture.

Since 1998, I’ve wished a thousand times, and more, that I had never posted any comments online, but perhaps working toward writing less about politics and more about things that matter much more to me might be a good thing. Sometimes all it takes is a small gesture to change the tone, so I welcome the Dalai Lama and Brooks suggestion and will work to try to change the only person I can control… myself (and the tone of my blog  &  social media comments).

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Filed under Civility, Culture Wars, Food for Thought, General Interest, Inspirations

February 18, 2019 · 1:46 am

Aquamarine vs. turquoise ( a 2015 blog post)

Here’s my so simple 2015 plan, that even a 5 year-old would understand it:

Finally, here is a post on factions, that’s so simple even a 5 year-old can understand the problem.  Adults might get stuck in their rigid ideological beliefs. All beliefs are not morally equal – some when carried to extremes have horrific consequences for millions of innocent people, while others can do remarkable good for the entire world.  That is the TRUTH.

Let’s say you believe very strongly that a color is aquamarine and I believe equally as strongly that that color is turquoise.  Being that we both believe a different thing, many avenues are there for us to choose.  We could argue and get so angry that we end up hating each other and never speak to each other again.  I could feel so strongly about my belief that I kill you.  We might even  kill each other fighting over who is right. I could even decide that it’s not enough to just kill you, but because you’ve convinced your whole town that the color is aquamarine, it’s necessary to kill all of them too.

Of course, on the less extreme side we might agree to consult an outside expert on color to settle the matter, perhaps, we could call the Crayola Company, after all they’ve been naming colors since 1885 in Easton, PA, near where I grew up.

We might argue, passionately and often, clinging to our beliefs (as President Obama accused those rural people in PA), but in the American tradition, we could agree to disagree and at some point, shake hands and say, “Let’s go have pizza!”  Presented to most 5 year-olds, the vast majority will agree that it’s stupid to kill other people just because we disagree, on the other hand most adults refuse to even listen to differing opinions.  Maya Angleou, renowned poet, expressed it exactly right:

“Hate, it has caused a lot of problems in the world, but has not solved one yet.” –
http://www.goodreads.com/quotes/26244-hate-it-has-caused-a-lot-of-problems-in-the

So, in America, being a country forged together by a people committed to INDIVIDUAL FREEDOM, we have The Declaration of Independence to ensure our God-given, unalienable rights are not infringed upon:

“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”

Sadly, in America our political partisanship swirls dangerously to extremes – where hate has swelled to such a level  that many Americans choose to receive all of their news from sources that align with their political views.  The hate and extremism goes so far that even the President of the United States works to divide Americans into hostile camps.  Distrust turns Americans into furtive enemies, partisans avoiding those who hold an opposing view, with ideological walls being girded to lock out all who dare to disagree.  Even codes are enacted in our universities to silence opposition.

We must tear down these partisan walls!  We must work to find common ground, or we can not face the threats beyond our borders.  President George Washington warned about the dangers of extreme partisanship in his Farewell Address:

“I have already intimated to you the danger of parties in the State, with particular reference to the founding of them on geographical discriminations. Let me now take a more comprehensive view, and warn you in the most solemn manner against the baneful effects of the spirit of party generally.

This spirit, unfortunately, is inseparable from our nature, having its root in the strongest passions of the human mind. It exists under different shapes in all governments, more or less stifled, controlled, or repressed; but, in those of the popular form, it is seen in its greatest rankness, and is truly their worst enemy.

The alternate domination of one faction over another, sharpened by the spirit of revenge, natural to party dissension, which in different ages and countries has perpetrated the most horrid enormities, is itself a frightful despotism. But this leads at length to a more formal and permanent despotism. The disorders and miseries which result gradually incline the minds of men to seek security and repose in the absolute power of an individual; and sooner or later the chief of some prevailing faction, more able or more fortunate than his competitors, turns this disposition to the purposes of his own elevation, on the ruins of public liberty.

Without looking forward to an extremity of this kind (which nevertheless ought not to be entirely out of sight), the common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it.

So, beyond my stating it is a parental duty in a civil society to train your children to respect the rule of law.  George Washington tells you that it’s a duty to discourage extremist politics – the duties are required to be a good citizen.  I wrote a post in 2013 titled, “The duty of a wise people”. on this subject.

There was a time, not so long ago, when American school children were routinely taught about this speech and  American principles.  Sadly, today I suspect many school children don’t even know who George Washington was. And mentioning The Constitution, too often and too loudly, will get your name on a Homeland Security watch list as a right-wing extremist…

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics, Uncategorized

February 18, 2019 · 1:42 am

Yes, the Russian threat is serious

The day kind of got away from me, so it’s after midnight and I’m finally trying to write a blog post.  I ran to my local Wal-Mart Neighborhood Market for some groceries this afternoon, did some laundry, then made some homemade beef stew for supper.  After cleaning up the supper dishes, I intended to sit down and write, but then I got the idea that I needed to make PA Dutch Pickled Beet Eggs (you can find plenty of recipes on YouTube).  Of course, I have several types of vinegar, but I forgot to buy more plain old apple cider vinegar this afternoon, and which I used the last of about a week ago.   So that meant another trip to Wal-Mart.  I have a glass gallon jar with a lid, specifically for my pickled beet eggs, because I make them fairly often.  Since my husband doesn’t eat them, I only made a dozen eggs, which will last me a while.

I use hard-boiled eggs, 2 cans of sliced pickled beets, 1 small sliced onion (optional)  I add a couple of bay leaves, a cinnamon stick, and a few whole cloves, but many people don’t add these.

I put 1/2 c. to 2/3 c/ of sugar and 1 cup of apple cider vinegar into a medium saucepan, heat on medium.  Pour the juice from both cans of pickled beets into the pan.  Add the bay leaves, cinnamon, cloves.  Stir until the sugar is dissolved.  Remove from heat and let cool.

Place the shelled hard-boiled eggs, beets and sliced onion in a clean gallon glass jar.  Onions are completely optional – I like them pickled and use them on salads, along with the beets and sliced pickled eggs.   Pour the cooled liquid into the jar.  Place the lid on tightly and gently shake the jar a bit to make sure the eggs are completely covered with the pickling liquid.  Refrigerate.  Every day gently shake the jar.  The eggs will be well pickled in a couple of days.  After a week or so, you can remove the cinnamon stick, bay leaves and cloves, if the  flavor is getting too spicy.

It’s fine to add more hard-boiled eggs to this pickling juice a couple of times before making up a fresh batch.

Now, onto politics.  I wanted to clarify something, in case anyone doubts that I take the Russian information warfare threat seriously.  I take it very seriously. What I don’t take seriously is how the Dems and mainstream media are using the “Trump/Russian collusion” and the “Russian bots everywhere” hysteria to incite fear and to create another one of their pathetic, partisan narratives for their SPIN information war.

No one in the mainstream media, American politics, even our national security officials even view the “SPIN war” as a real domestic information war, dedicated to fueling partisan divides and spewing 24/7 agitation propaganda at the American people.  THAT is the larger problem with trying to deal with hostile foreign information warfare directed at America.  Our domestic SPIN war creates a wide-open media space for hostile foreign info war operators to flourish.  Heck, they just need to “amplify” domestic SPIN war messaging at respective domestic partisans and they blend right in here.

I think our national security people fully grasp the cyber/technology aspects of hostile foreign information warfare activities and work very hard to try to counter those threats.  Things like protecting networks, protecting our electrical grid, preventing cyber attacks, cyber theft, the endless hacking assuredly are easier to grasp than information operations geared toward manipulating the American people (mass media agitprop efforts, psychological operations, etc.).

After decades of the Left’s very real culture war in America and the advances of political correctness, replete with morally bankrupt terms and ideology, America no longer has a coherent sense of American values and principles and finding any firm common ground, for Americans to rally around anything presents a real challenge.  Americans unifying around anything usually lasts less than 24 hours before the partisan rancor shatters the calm.

For a few years now,  thought pieces occur fairly regularly at online political commentary sites, asserting American is already in a state of  “civil war” and I’m willing to concede the extreme partisan divides in America have deepened and definitely corrode hopes of national unity on almost anything, but I remain optimistic.  The challenge with dealing with aggressive hostile information warfare geared toward deepening partisan divides among partisans, who are likewise working to deepen partisan divides, is, well, obviously we are making it easy for our enemies to “divide and conquer” us.  This point, I’ve stated many times already – we are our own worst enemy and unless and until our rabid partisans stop our domestic SPIN information warfare, there’s no hope of countering hostile foreign messaging operations.

The best defense against hostile foreign information messaging operations is an informed citizenry, who are united by some common values and principles, so working toward that seems more important than all sorts of hysterical, knee-jerk censorship efforts.  Just trying to get Americans, who have different political views, to embrace my “let’s go have pizza” solution, which I wrote about back in 2015, might be a good start.   I’ll repost it.

 

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War, Politics

October 31, 2018 · 4:25 pm

A face worth respect and admiration

This year has been very difficult for me to get blog posts written, despite good intentions. My dearth of writing is a combination of my husband’s daily care takes up more of my time, leaving me emotionally drained many days.  Also, the constant media/Trump hysteria disgust me to the point of total burnout on following the news.  Added to all that, often lately my old problem of sitting down to write, then getting stuck on what to write about strikes, resulting in more time spent talking myself into defeat about my desire to write than I do actually writing.  I keep wondering if anything I write makes even a drop of difference in the vast raging seas of political punditry and commentary.

The question that swirls in my mind lately is does what I write just throw more fuel on our extreme partisanship or does it offer anything informative, positive, or hopeful?  It’s a challenge for me not to write Trump, Dem and media bashing invective

Ordinarily, I’d be totally on board  writing about serious and currently popular cultural topics like civility and rebuilding some common ground, but often I think my cynical son probably has it right when he insists we have the society we deserve and he sees 2016, with two thoroughly corrupt candidates, as the fitting candidates for our “almost too stupid to exist” culture.  Despite being a very Pollyanna-type person, lately I wonder if perhaps he’s right, then I dig in on my Libertybelle American cheerleader beliefs and refuse to surrender to the spreading cultural and political corruption, the disturbing escalating partisan hatred and the chaos resulting from leadership vacuums everywhere I turn.

Negativity aside, I’ve seen some good pieces written on civility and positive advice for our ailing spirit.  Here are the links to a four-part series Carly Fiorina recently wrote.  I had mentioned the first part in a previous blog post and all four are very positive and worth a read:

Carly Fiorina: Between Trump and the media, ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’

Carly Fiorina: It’s never as easy as the politicians think it is

Carly Fiorina: Stop waiting on Washington to fix our problems

Carly Fiorina: Who I’ll vote for this November

The thing I liked about Carly Fiorina as a presidential candidate, was something I consider a very important trait of a good leader – she invested a lot of time and energy into reading up on issues and policies.  She showed up to debates very prepared to debate real issues and policies.  When she gave interviews, she could speak articulately about serious matters and she had a lot of positive ideas.  I will always prefer leaders who display the good character trait of investing a lot of time into studying and preparing when tackling complex issues or taking seriously their duty to any office or position they hold.  During the GOP primary Trump attacked “that face”, but in my book, Carly Fiorina is a face worth respect and admiration.

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Filed under American Character, Civility, Culture Wars, General Interest, Making a Difference, Politics

October 11, 2018 · 10:45 am

A child of the TV age awakens.

thumbnail_Sue-1968

My first  grade picture from the mid 1960s.   Note the chunk I took out of my bangs trying to cut my own hair and the dorky pin, part of a collection of costume jewelry my grandmother showered on my sisters and me  (pssst, I still have some of those pins).  At least the dress was in my all-time favorite color – pink.  Yes, I have always loved PINK… Oh, as a historical note, back then girls had to wear skirts and dresses to public school in PA.

The past few weeks of the Kavanaugh drama got me thinking a lot about my feelings about the genesis of America TV and especially TV news in my lifetime (I’ll be 58 yrs old later this month).

My mother liked to tell this story about my internal clock as a very young child.  She told me that I would go outside to play, often happily swinging on our swing set.  Lacking anything remotely akin to a daring spirit, I do remember swinging for hours on end as a child.  Swinging made me feel free of fear,  almost like I could touch the sky.  My mother liked to repeat this story that before I could tell time, I would always come inside from playing exactly on time to watch the TV shows and cartoons I liked.  She said I would tell her that it was time for my show to start and she never figured out how I could be right on time, because I hadn’t even learned to tell time yet.  Sadly, my adult life has never been one where I am right on time, because all too often I’ve been running late, a point of frequent conflict with my husband, who always liked to be early.

In recent years, with too much else on my mind, too many other things to do and most of all a total disgust for most TV offerings, I rarely turn the TV on.  With the Kavanaugh drama, I did turn on cable TV a few times and then switched to C-Span coverage of the Senate happenings, which felt like old times for me.  I used to be a dedicated C-Span viewer and a dedicated History Channel viewer… back when the History Channel actually ran programming on history.

And that brings me to the point, what in the heck happened to American TV???

Growing up in the era where we had three major networks, ABC, CBS and NBC, the shows of my childhood reflected traditional American values.  Who could find fault with Lassie or Bonanza?  My father also had, what I think was called a UHF antenna, before cable TV, and we picked up some country music shows, the Grand Ol Opry and some cartoons.

The TV news was in small segments throughout the day, not 24/7 and yet we still felt adequately informed, because along with TV news, newspapers were still considered a prime source of news for most Americans.

In the 70s and 80s American TV completely changed.  The Phil Donahue type talk shows, with guests brought on to air their most intimate secrets or sensational topics,  began to replace the old entertainment-focused interview shows.  Donahue’s format was hailed as breaking new ground to get Americans to talk about controversial or uncomfortable personal topics.  Oprah Winfrey expanded the Donahue model of tabloid talk TV shows in the 80s.

Since the late 90s, I’ve been on a soapbox about the damage to our culture the Oprahization of America has wrought. I remember a soapbox comment I posted on the Excite message boards in ’98 on this very topic, sadly being new to the internet, I didn’t even know how to save my posts back then, but suffice it to say, my opinion on tabloid TV has not changed at all.  It’s a completely destructive force to encourage people to air their most personal problems, especially family problems on national TV.  The tabloid TV craze encouraged people to go on national TV and BETRAY those closest to them, discussing personal and family problems in public, thus lighting a match to any vestiges of TRUST in their relationship.  It is the most corrosive form of entertainment in America.  Millions of Americans bought into it, wallow in, believe in it though, so the craze continued and advanced.

Reality TV formats grew from the tabloid TV shows, further plummeting American culture into a cesspool of trash TV.  There has never been anything aspirational or positive about either tabloid TV or Reality TV.

With American news reporting,  I got married in 1980 and my husband and I were both serving in the Army in Germany at the time.  We didn’t even own a TV set in that first apartment in Germany.  I listened to music on the radio or my cassette tapes.  We came back to the States in 1981 and I became a homemaker, caring for our infant daughter, living in Fayetteville, NC, where my husband, served in the 82nd Airborne Division.

Times had changed in America and we had cable TV.  For an avid TV watcher like me, it was like my prayers had been answered – 24 hour TV news with CNN, HBO, plus MTV, a channel dedicated to music delivered via highly creative videos.  I could not praise Ted Turner enough for his ingenuity for CNN and 24 hour news.  The only downside to so much more news was when some crisis happened, I became a non-stop channel-flipper, hoping that I might find more “breaking news” somewhere.

Grenada proved the most difficult, heart-wrenching few news days when President Reagan blocked media from the invasion and my husband was  deployed there.  My parents were on St. Thomas at the time and my mother kept calling me with the news she was getting there.  Oddly enough, the only other truly anxious news void for me happened the day the OJ verdict came in and my sister was stationed in Turkey.  There had been a news report of a major earthquake in Turkey and then it was 24/7 OJ coverage.  Those were some long hours until my sister called and let us know she was safe.

Where TV is at now in 2018, after such promise in the 1980s, still shocks me.  Sure Hollywood still manages to churn out a few excellent TV shows here or there, but the overall quality of TV offerings has declined, as has tabloid and reality TV formats, which only coarsen and sensationalize the worst aspects of American culture.

Sadly, beyond aggressively advancing the leftist social justice agenda, American TV offers little in the way of educational or quality historical information.  It offers little in the way of promoting our literary and fine arts heritage. And it glaringly fails to offer even a glimmer of aspirational or unifying patriotic messages.

In recent years, I watch less and less TV, to the point that now I rarely even turn the TV on.  My husband watches FOX News in the sun room, all day long, so I see small bits here and there (mostly ones I wish I had avoided since it’s blatant Trumpathon garbage).

I’ve awakened to the reality that American media, almost exclusively, dedicatedly promotes and works to mainstream the Left’s social justice dogma and indoctrinate Americans into Leftist groupthink and use of the American Left’s newspeak lingo – SPIN messaging.

I’ve also awakened to the reality that having American cable news reporting starkly divided along partisan political lines means none of us are getting straight, unbiased news reporting anymore.

And that should alarm every American.

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, The Media

September 17, 2018 · 2:01 am

About diversity

20180917_102744-1.jpg

Happy Constitution Day, September 17, 2018

Words have always fascinated me, probably because speaking was such a long, hard struggle for me as a child.  Even now, in my late 50s, I still stutter sometimes when I am nervous or even more distressing, I begin to chatter on and on… kind of like how I write so many long rambling blog posts… only worse.

I wrote my Messages of mhere story in an annoying third person, with a snarky tone and pseudonyms, but it really is a true story, all of the characters are real people, but I have no way to prove what happened to me in 1998, so I live my life looking over my shoulder and trusting no one.  That’s the truth. I mentioned that story, not to rehash all that, but because I wrote a lot about my childhood fascination with words and how people use them there.

As a child I developed a lot of obsessive-compulsive behaviors.  One of them was a dedicated, pretty much daily habit of spending an hour or two reading the dictionary.  I loved to read books and I even developed a habit for reading from our set of World Book Encyclopedias too.  At first I used a paperback dictionary for my dictionary reading, but I guess I was around 11 or 12 years old when my parents bought a set of encyclopedias, which came with a large, lovely dictionary.

I’ve mentioned that dictionary in a previous blog post, I think.  When our parents died, I inherited that set of encyclopedias and this fantastic “encyclopedic”  dictionary, which is in need of repair:

From those childhood OCD habits, I still constantly google the definition of words and anguish over the words I choose when writing.  Words have meaning, some words have several meanings, but even the meaning of a word, with several meanings, can almost always be winnowed down to what that word means in a sentence, based on the other words and punctuation in the sentence.  We don’t need to meander to the Lynne Truss punctuation lamentations extreme to agree that how we use words matters.

The PC culture relies on Orwellian doublespeak tactics to impose their cultural dictates on all political discourse in the American public square and then throughout the other mass media avenues, like the entertainment industry.  It permeates our society from top to bottom.  The PC lingo isn’t slang or some sort of shorthand terminology, it’s specifically designed to corrupt and confuse American foundational principles, constitutional precepts and even common moral beliefs.

The other day on Twitter, several prominent journalists and political commentators, in their usual strident anti-Trump fashion, bashed Trump and waxed on that,  “diversity is what makes America great.”   Diversity isn’t what makes or made America great.  Diversity is just a bunch of people from different groups.

The fixation on “diversity” followed a progression of leftist efforts to divide Americans into seething groups, whom they could exploit with identity political efforts.  Americans embracing hyphenated identities became  a visible manifestation of this Leftist political effort, which advanced to our current PC fixation on “diversity”.

What made America great is our common belief in individual liberty, our foundational principles and The Constitution, which codified our individual rights.  The strength of America is that regardless of  your race, ethnicity, religion or sex, anyone can become an American.  It’s one nation united by these beliefs that makes America not only great, but also a unique country in the history of mankind.  Absent these common beliefs which unite us, America will devolve into a hot mess of factionaled fighting, of the type President George Washington warned about in his farewell address.

Among the right, there’s been a backlash to the PC diversity culture and President Trump plays to their xenophobic impulse, but even more disturbing to me is the belief gaining traction among some conservative intellectuals that America must dramatically decrease immigration to preserve traditional American culture.

Being a culture of people from diverse religious, racial, ethnic backgrouns isn’t the problem causing disunity or a fracturing in America society.  The disunity stems from an abandonment of our civic beliefs and a profound lack on commitment to any common values and a lack of American spirit.  It will take a concerted effort to quit the PC faux “diversity” identity politics fixated on factional alliances and work hard to rebuild a common American identity dedicated to uniting Americans to this common purpose:

We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America.

Preamble to the United States Constitution

American culture has always been a smorgasbord of ethnic communities springing up, who maintained many of their home country habits, cuisine and lifestyle, but even when the first generation struggled with assimilation, the second generation became completely Americanized.

The U.S.military can serve as a role model at rapid assimilation efforts.  Our military is a true diversity soup and very quickly, through basic training, followed by advanced individual training for a specific military job, service members swear an oath to defend The Constitution, embrace a clear, concise set of values, eat, sleep and work together 24/7 and learn to work as one team committed to a common purpose.

The “common purpose” training in civilian life in America has been deliberately ground down in our schools and civic institutions and replaced with diversity worship, which was a deliberate, leftist political effort to erode traditional American values, confuse people, and fuel factional divides.

What America really needs is a rededication to good citizenship training, especially in American schools.  Instead of investing so much time to PC issues, American children would be better served if more time was dedicated to teaching them about not only their rights as Americans citizens, but also about their responsibilities.  Freedom isn’t free and each citizen really does a have a civic duty to embrace upholding The Constitution.

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Filed under American Character, Culture Wars, General Interest, Politics

September 15, 2018 · 11:49 am

Carly Fiorina explains zoomin’

All week, I’ve been intending to get a blog post written, but so far all I’ve got are some drafts that didn’t go anywhere.  So, for now here’s a very worthwhile bit of advice from Carly Fiorina:

Carly Fiorina: Between Trump and the media, ‘Who’s Zoomin’ Who?’

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Filed under Culture Wars, General Interest, The Media

August 23, 2018 · 10:37 am

“Houston, we have a problem.”  

Yep, I’m still on the scorched earth SPIN information war consuming America. I like doing timelines and then stepping back and looking at them, looking for patterns and trends that get lost in the rapidly shifting spin cycles in America.

SPIN information warfare began in America in the 1990s with the Clinton war room.

During the 90s, the constant spin back and forth escalated and America was enmeshed in constant Clinton scandals.

On the Right numerous media operations began to “expose the Clinton corruption” (the scare quotes in no way mean the Clintons weren’t corrupt, they mean that was the  “mission” (ends, if you will) of the operations.  For instance, Judicial Watch began and to me that looks like an American Wikileaks operation ferreting out every bit of FOIA info they can get their hands on and spinning it to the max against the Clintons & Dems.  Many long-established conservative news media outlets joined the “expose Clinton corruption” efforts, but the thing is there was a constant effort to spin wild conspiracy theories to prod the Right further and further toward grassy knoll territory.

By the time Clinton Impeachment rolled around, the American Right was in full Clinton Derangement Syndrome mode.  A couple of names come to mind as becoming overnight star agitation propaganda players on the Right.  Matt Drudge and his Drudge Report broke the Lewinsky scandal and Ann Coulter became a firebrand pundit on cable TV and penned a book on High Crimes and Misdemeanors.  Kellyanne Conway, back then Fitzpatrick, Laura Ingraham and the late Barbara Olson became pundit stars spinning against the Clintons.  Kellyanne Conway worked for Frank Luntz  (more of that polling kabuki inc. in America).

The Bush/Gore campaign was the entire hanging chad hysteria, followed by 8 years of Soros group-funded SPIN agitation propaganda, stirring Bush Derangement Syndrome.  The name, David Brock comes to mind as a big right-wing agitprop player from the 90s working for conservative The American Spectator, who then switched to becoming Soros’ right-hand man running a vast network of agitprop groups on the Left.

America has been played back and forth since the 90s – imagine some movement like Black Lives Matter, which agitates racial distrust and pits black Americans against the police – to discredit law enforcement in America.

Through the 2000s we had more agitprop and a full-blown right-wing effort emerged with the Tea Party movement sucking in American conservatives. And there was Obama Derangement with Birtherism. We’ve had non-stop hysterical SPIN info war working to tear America apart.

Ann Coulter has President Trump’s ear, Kellyanne Conway is in the WH whispering in his ear, and Laura Ingraham is on FOX talking at him too.  The  Murdoch/Soros efforts look to be the two biggest players working to tear America apart and I wonder if there are hostile foreign hands involved too.

Just for historical reference, the Soviets & East German Stasi loved using women to manipulate men.

I find it very interesting that Don Jr. now has a FOX News babe surrounding him.  The POTUS has Kellyanne, Coulter and Ingraham prodding him.  With Melania, I think it would be prudent to gather intelligence on Trump’s foreign business efforts and how Melania came into his orbit.  Her subtle “cyber-bullying” cause and that “I Don’t Care” jacket smack of deliberate agitprop efforts to create more Trump Derangement on the Left.  I liked her though and she seems so nice, so I hesitate to believe that, however I think a clear-eyed, unemotional investigative effort by our intelligence experts is long overdue analyzing this entire SPIN information warfare operation blowing across American media 24/7.

The Tea Party effort spawned a whole new cadre of agitprop operators on the right.  The Glenn Beck operation was another massive con job, probably the test run for using the large crowd rally format to con conservatives, which Trump is using to great effect.

George Stepanoplouslos, a former Clinton War Room Spin Commando sits as ABC’s chief news anchor.  The SPIN FORCES on both sides in America wield total control over American news media.

In recent years, I noticed that The Drudge Report began mainstreaming Alex Jones, featuring stories that were linked to Jones’s site.  This took place over several years.

Some liberals were writing about the right-wing media empire being nothing but grifters and they are, but I believe it’s way worse than just the hawking merchandise and non-stop book mill efforts.  Many of the commercials are geared to fan doomsday (Flight 93, anyone) hysteria.

We are getting close to Trump moving near impeachment territory and even America’s mayor is now so lost in the scorched earth spin info war that he said, “Truth isn’t truth”.

The POTUS and Don Jr. are being manipulated by women and even the State Dept spokeswoman is a FOX babe, who moved to the top of the food chain quickly there.

President Trump recently brought another FOX media pro, Bill Shine, into the White House as the White House Deputy Chief of Staff for Communications, so I’ve been concerned all the pieces are in place to orchestrate a massive political and constitutional crisis in America.

Last night POTUS tweeted:

More

I have asked Secretary of State to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.”

Tucker Carlson’s show hyped this news and that tweet looks like someone other than the POTUS wrote it.   I suspect it was meant to jazz the white nationalist element of the President’s base, but even more than that it sent the Left and mainstream media into hysteria mode again.  In 2017 Trump retweeted an Ann Coulter tweet praising Jayda Fransen, a British far-right radical.  She worked to make sure Trump saw that.  This South Africa tweet, I believe someone else in the White House wrote that in coordination with FOX having Carlson hype that.  On the Left there’s the Steele dossier working to fuel endless hysteria on both sides, but most alarming is the effort to heighten racial tensions again.

Timelines, oh my, a retired COL is a gung- ho Trump Spin Force Twitter commando – insulting and name-calling non-stop, betraying his Army values -like RESPECT,  every step of the way.   He was recruited by Breitbart.  There’s a former military officer on the Left spewing non-stop Trump Derangement Syndrome too, much of it anti-military…

So many worrying signs all around in the America’s scorched earth SPIN information war and all our so called national security experts on TV do is join in the scorched earth SPIN hysteria.

Finding a way to peacefully and legally defeat America’s scorched earth SPIN information war is a grave national security imperative.   We are ripe for hostile foreign efforts to push us into a major political crisis or system breakdown and we have no means to unify America around anything.

Scorched earth SPIN information war blowing hot across America 24/7 is nothing less than a mutually-assured suicide pact.

“Houston, we have a problem.”

 

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War

July 25, 2018 · 10:33 pm

The enemy within

This long, rambling blog post is just my opinion about “spin” messaging.  Although, I am sick to death warning about the dangers of our endless 2016 spin information war, I wanted to write one more post about this and then I am taking a break from writing about politics for a while.

I became interested in spin messaging during the 1990s, when I first noticed this new form of political messaging taking hold in America.  Sure, politicians have always relied on a soapbox and sloganeering, but spin messaging went way beyond that.  I’ve written plenty on this blog about our spin information war.

Despite decades of complaints from Republicans and conservatives about “media bias” and the mainstream media favoring the political Left in America, I have never read anything about spin being mass media information warfare, despite those engaged in it, infusing their spin efforts in militaristic terminology from its first appearance in America.

Over the years, I’ve pondered if there were hostile foreign intelligence operatives behind the birth of our American spin war and while I’m open to that possibility, it is clear the original spin messaging efforts began among politicos on the American Left.  During the Clinton years, starting with the Clinton’s “war room” is when I first saw mass media “spin messaging” efforts emerge in American politics.

Among the American Left, communism, Marxism and socialism hold great sway, so it’s very possible that our spin information war is a completely homegrown political effort, but it’s wise to be open to the possibility of foreign hostile hands in the opening salvos in our mass media spin information war back in the 1990s.   It’s also obvious that even if there weren’t hostile foreign hands in the beginning, after decades of our constant spin information war, hostile foreign intelligence operators assuredly are working for ways to ruthlessly fuel, interfere in, and escalate our spin war.

The American media and politicians talk and write about “spin” in terms of it being just some benign form of political media operations.  Encyclopedia Britannica offers this explanation:

“Political spin, in politics, the attempt to control or influence communication in order to deliver one’s preferred message.

Spin is a pejorative term often used in the context of public relations practitioners and political communicators. It is used to refer to the sophisticated selling of a specific message that is heavily biased in favour of one’s own position and that employs maximum management of the media with the intention of maintaining or exerting control over the situation, often implying deception or manipulation.”

https://www.britannica.com/topic/political-spin

For another explanation, Wikipedia offers this:

 “In public relations and politics, spin is a form of propaganda, achieved through providing a biased interpretation of an event or campaigning to persuade public opinion in favor or against some organization or public figure. While traditional public relations and advertising may also rely on altering the presentation of the facts, “spin” often implies the use of disingenuous, deceptive, and highly manipulative tactics.”

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spin_(propaganda)

I don’t know exactly who developed American SPIN information warfare. I’ve never come across any literature that pinpoints in terms like, “Dizzy Spin developed mass media spin information warfare in 1990.”

Back in the 1990s, I became fascinated with watching the Clinton spin efforts, which then infected the entire Democratic Party and the Left’s political operatives. Their media efforts combined social psychology and aggressive repetitive mass media messaging to dominate the mass media battlefield.

Spin messaging weaponizes lies by packaging them in very deceptive language, but it also includes vicious, orchestrated mass media character assassination attacks, to bombard and bury political enemies under a mountain of dirt.  Vicious character assassinations are a feature of spin messaging information warfare, not just a bug.  However, spin information warfare is about more than partisan politics and winning elections.

The larger objective has always been to control public opinion in America. 

The Left wants to win a larger cultural war, by manipulating public opinion, waging spin messaging information warfare attacks against the American people.

Throughout the 90s, I kept trying to understand how spin messaging works and why it works.  Every strategy can be broken down into parts (the ways and means employed to achieve the ends).  As the political Right in America kept losing ground in the cultural battles, which were advanced through aggressive mass media spin messaging efforts, the political Right constantly railed about “unfair media bias” to explain why the Left’s spin efforts always succeeded.  This “unfair media bias” explanation is way too simplistic and benign to explain why the Left’s spin messaging always won.

Spin messaging in our free society can only work with constant, massive mass media collusion.

Spin often uses language that inverts the meaning of words and terms, to not only confuse people, but also to slowly erode people’s ability to communicate, think clearly and have the ability to counter the spin.  This is an old communist tactic to control people. The Left in America has relied on this tactic too and our culture is awash in PC-dictated terms, we are pressured to use.

Those actively engaged in SPIN information warfare efforts, both the combatants and their willing colluders in the media, always cast spin efforts in terms of benign, ho-hum, political media operations, never the sinister mass media brainwashing that it is, nor the fact that it is, in fact, information warfare.

Spin information warfare is waged against not only political opponents, it’s ruthlessly being waged against the American people.

The American people are the primary target of all spin information warfare.

It’s important to understand all of the components of this type of information warfare.

The most obvious component of spin messaging is the short, talking points messaging used.  This messaging must be relentlessly repeated by both the politicos and a large portion of the mainstream media.  This messaging builds messaging walls, which block out competing messaging and control the terms in which issues are framed.  A good example of the Left building a messaging wall was Hillary appearing before the Benghazi Committee in 2015.  For 11 hours the Dems on that committee resorted to shamelessly repeating two talking points messages to build a messaging wall:

“This hearing is a right-wing witch hunt” and

“This is costing the American taxpayers $4.7 million.”

The mainstream media carried and amplified those two spin messages and worked to present Hillary as a victim of a “right-wing witch hunt”.  The mainstream media then declared Hillary the winner and worked to discredit the Republicans on that committee.

Many media people and political people wrote about spin, but none of them ever explained that the secret sauce to spin messaging is not the ruthless repetition of spin messaging (lies) to build messaging walls, but the ruthless repetition of opinion polling to create the illusion that the spin messaging represents the majority public opinion. It’s a sinister mass media brainwashing operation to herd people to believe spin (lies) and quell dissenting opinion.

Spin messaging manufactures opinion cascades (often called information cascades).  Spin messaging from the Left, repeated by a wide swath of the mainstream media successfully monopolizes both the terms used in public policy discussions and constantly reinforces these manufactured public opinion cascades, by bombarding the public with polling data resulting from spin messaging campaigns.

Polling data has taken on an omnipotent power in American politics and all public debate.  Polling is used by politicos and the media to convince the American people that opinion polls reflect “the will of the people”.  Spin efforts manipulate public opinion and then that manufactured public opinion is used to convince the American people these polls represent the mainstream, majority opinion.  Opinion polls are just a sampling of opinions of a very small fraction of people.  They mean nothing in terms of the merits of any issue.

Americans love being “popular” and this drive to be “popular” above all else, feeds every social media platform, so it’s no surprise many Americans are very vulnerable to being manipulated by polling data.

A favorite media tactic to reinforce the spin-driven, manufactured public opinion is public shaming efforts, where manufactured opinion polling is used to marginalize dissenting opinions in the public square.  Through constant repetition of polling, the American people have been conditioned to being herded into falling into the spin-generated “mainstream public opinion”.  How many times have you seen a person on cable news being interviewed, expressing a view, then having the interviewer inform that person something along the lines of , “Polls X. Y, & Z show the American people don’t agree with you.” or  “Your view is way out of the mainstream according to all of the polls.”?  This tactic effectively marginalizes dissenting opinions, but it also works to create the illusion that the dissenting view is extreme, no matter how thoughtful the dissenting view is presented.

Trump and his media spinners, especially on Fox News, now effectively use this same herding public opinion by citing polls tactic against Democrats and non-Trump supporting guests.  For instance, yesterday, Harris Faulkner, a skilled polling data Trump-supporting spin herder, used this tactic against Jeanne Shaheen, a skilled Dem spinner.

Another good example of media spin herding was during the GOP primary when media spin herders constantly cornered Republicans with, “Trump is winning in all of the polls, so don’t you have to support the winner?”  Trump was winning in all the polls with the aid of billions of dollars in free media spinning him as the “GOP insurgent”, “great businessman”, and “the winner in all of the polls”.

Without this constant polling kabuki manipulation by politicos and the media, spin messaging would lose a great deal of its power.

Until Donald Trump, the American Right never made any inroads into successfully using spin messaging.  The Right successfully used talk radio, some online platforms and FOX News, but the mainstream media still is controlled by the political Left.  The 2016 election changed that dynamic, when Donald Trump began campaigning using the Left’s spin messaging tactics.

During the GOP primary, the mainstream media and FOX News gave Trump billions of dollars in free media to aid his “GOP Insurgency”.  The mainstream media was working to advance the Clinton Pied Piper strategy to promote the most extreme GOP candidate.  This effort was part of Bill Clinton’s old triangulation strategy, where Bernie served as the far-left kook, Trump was supposed to be the far-right kook and this cleared a path for Hillary to claim the middle ground, where American presidential elections are won.

Trump weaponized his personal Twitter account as a means to constantly lob spin attacks at the mainstream media, to influence his supporters and constantly bait both his political enemies and many of  the mainstream media (especially those who are dedicated colluders spreading the Left’s spin messaging).  He built a grassroots following using rally road shows around the country, to build on his reality TV fame.  He created a brilliant branding campaign around a few key slogans, with Make America Great Again, being the most popular one.  Most importantly, when the mainstream media pivoted to running the Clinton’s dump on Trump spin attacks in late 2015/early 2016, Trump still managed to hobble together a mass media platform using FOX News and some conservative venues to combat the mass media spin onslaught from the mainstream media and Left (the Trump the fascist smear campaign).

The Left’s spin experts love to brag about their spin efforts and months before the 2016 primary season was over, I recall hearing Simon Rosenberg on TV during an interview bragging about how they were compiling massive amounts of dirt to unload on Trump later.  It’s important to realize that their “they” included large numbers of mainstream media journalists and news outfits, who sat on their mountains of dirt, until the Clinton campaign and Dems gave them the signal to release their Trump dirt.

Trump proved to be a brilliant self-promoter, but he’s a genius at spin messaging.  The word salad, used car salesman, rapid-fire way Trump speaks, both repeating and emphasizing his buzz words, makes him a world-class spinmeister.  Added to that he revels in outrageously and shamelessly lying.  He was the first Republican to break through the Left’s lock on spin messaging information warfare.  He even borrowed most of his damage control “witch hunt” spin messaging verbatim from the Clintons.

While the American Left and mainstream media see Trump’s overt, often sloppy media collusion with FOX News, they still don’t acknowledge their own media collusion spreading the Left’s spin messaging.

The Left and mainstream media constantly work to foment Trump hysteria and hype Russian interference “to steal our democracy” (that is a lame Dem spin message btw).  The truth is the Russians don’t have the power to “steal our democracy”.  Another truth is the deliberate hysterical Russian spin from the Left and mainstream media is damaging our democracy more than the Russian info war efforts ever will.

Here’s another truth, President Trump’s relentless spin messaging attacks on “fake news”, his petty character assassinations, and his constant shameless lying also are damaging our democracy more than the Russian efforts to interfere in our elections ever will.

The biggest threat to our democracy is our own escalating domestic spin information war, that has been blowing hot since 2016. 

Our spin info war continues to destabilize America, deepen partisan divides, leaves us very vulnerable to hostile foreign information warfare efforts and is rapidly destroying America’s credibility around the world.

Mass media spin information warfare is antithetical to our American free speech principles and should be discouraged and shunned by all Americans, especially those running for high elected office and those claiming to be journalists.  Ending our domestic spin war should be a top national security priority and a top priority for both political parties.  The news media should work to quell spin messaging, stop colluding with political factions to spread spin and quit selling polls as reflections of anything other than the opinions of a small sampling of Americans.

Our endless scorched earth mass media spin information war is our most potent enemy within.

Finding our way back to some common ground on valuing honesty and civic virtue offers the real hope to restore our American spirit and defeat spin information warfare.  In our degraded political climate and culture, often I wonder if I am clinging to a pipedream, but I will continue to hope.

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Filed under Corrupt Media Collusion, Culture Wars, General Interest, Information War, Politics, The Media