Reality Trumps Propaganda

A stock market bubble occurs when the prices of stocks are driven up well beyond their rational value. We inflate the bubble by pushing too much money in. Eventually the extent of the overvaluation becomes absurd and a correction occurs. The bubble bursts.

When the MSM (the legacy news organizations that are no longer in the news business) decided they were in the narrative rather than the reporting business, facts became secondary (or totally irrelevant) to the message. They created a propaganda bubble. A bubble inflated by lies and fabrications.

The inflation of the bubble began slowly. The case of Dan Rather is an infamous example. In 2004 Rather did a 60 Minutes feature impugning President George W. Bush’s National Guard service. It was done just 2 months before the election and was clearly intended to influence the outcome of the election. It was that year’s “October surprise.” The program was based on 4 memos allegedly written between 1972 and 1973. There was just one problem: the memos were fabrications. They had been written by computer software that wasn’t available in the 70s, and internet sleuths were able to prove it. The whole 60 Minutes piece was a lie. When confronted with this inconvenient truth, Rather famously said that the story was “fake but accurate.”

“Fake but accurate” is actually a fairly good definition of the propaganda the MSM is in the business of peddling these days. The facts are all wrong, but the narrative is correct – that is the narrative is sending the intended message.

The incident made a laughing stock out of Dan Rather, but it didn’t even come close to causing a reexamination of the MSM. It was another lie added to the bubble, but the bubble was nowhere near capacity yet.

The dissemination of propaganda proliferated until it reached its peak during the Trump Presidency.

• The MSM said that they had seen the proof that Trump had colluded with the Russians to steal an election – except no such proof existed.
• The nightly news breathlessly reported that Trump had said there were good people among white supremacists – except he had never said any such thing.
• The MSM reported that Trump had disrespected our fallen soldiers while visiting Normandy beach – only that never happened either.
• We were told that Hunter Biden’s laptop was Russian disinformation – we now know the reporters knew they were lying when they said it.

With each lie, the bubble was further inflated. By the end of the Trump presidency, its material was nearing its tensile limit – the point at which the lies become so absurd that they can no longer be sustained.

And then Joe Biden took office. Did the MSM take care not to overinflate the propaganda bubble? Nope – they were drunk on their influence and kept pumping more lies into the bubble. The adults are back in charge. We’re returning to normalcy. We’re in the midst of a phenomenal economic recovery. Blah, blah, blah.

And then Afghanistan happened and the bubble burst. Biden triumphantly told us that he had ended America’s longest running war honorably – and that the Taliban was our trusted partner in the accomplishment. But we saw the panicked people falling from departing aircraft. We saw the flag draped coffins returning to America. We heard the heart wrenching stories of Americans left behind. We read that the British Parliament had held Biden in contempt for the way he had treated them during our surrender. Our eyes were opened. The “adults back in charge” narrative had always been a lie, and now it was obvious. The bubble could no longer contain such absurdities.

Now the administration and the MSM are desperately trying to reinflate the bubble. But it doesn’t work that way. Propaganda doesn’t work without some semblance of credibility. Once lost, credibility is gone forever. Now reality is driving us to examine everything we’re being told.

We’re told that genitals don’t define sex. But we see Lia Thomas with our own eyes. The narrative can’t hide that he’s a man wearing a woman’s Speedo (though God help me, I wish it could).

During the same week that a negative 1.5 percent GDP was reported, and the DOW dropped over 1000 points, Joe Biden told us that the economy is booming. But we see our retirement account evaporating before our very eyes. He is lying and we know it.

The MSM is telling us that we should celebrate because wages have increased at the fastest rate in years. But each week we have to choose between a tank of gas to commute to work, or new shoes for the kids. We know that inflation is outpacing wage growth. They are lying to us and we know it.

We are told that white supremacists are our greatest domestic security threat. But we’ve seen BLM burning our cities and Antifa beating our neighbors. We know they are lying to us.

We were assured that criminal charges against Donald Trump, for illegal business dealings, were imminent. Only now the grand jury in New York has been dismissed without any indictments. It was just another lie.

We were told that the FBI heroically thwarted a conspiracy by white supremacists to kidnap Governor Gretchen Whitmer. But we see that the FBI wasn’t able to get a single conviction from the jury. It was all a setup to drive a narrative.

We are being told that the January 6 riot was an insurrection – the biggest attack on our republic since the civil war. But we’ve seen the videos of people arrested for doing little more than taking selfies on Capital grounds – grounds which happen to belong to us. The insurrection is beginning to look like a narrative suspiciously similar to the Whitmer non-kidnapping. We don’t believe it anymore – and with all of our other problems, we don’t care either.

Propaganda only works when reality isn’t kicking us in the teeth. But lately, we’ve had a lot of teeth kicked out. President Cockwomble’s tumbling ratings are not just an assessment of his job performance, it is an indicator that the MSM has lost the ability to spin a narrative. Reality has trumped the propaganda.

The leftists have bollixed everything up, and lost the ability to spin the story. Just when they need it most, they face a credibility deficit. Reality has kicked Americans in the chops and a price must be paid – not just for the mess created, but also for the deception committed. In a few months, those leftists will face an electorate which is seething with anger – and the bill will come due.