The problem with journalism is journalists, Amanda Ripley observed in an interesting and somewhat ponderous story at the Solutions Journalism Network just over a year ago.Clearly journalism paid no attention.
“As politicians have become more polarized, we have increasingly allowed ourselves to be used by demagogues on both sides of the aisle, amplifying their insults instead of exposing their motivations,” Ripley wrote. “Again and again, we have escalated the conflict and snuffed the complexity out of the conversation. Long before the 2016 election, the mainstream news media lost the trust of the public, creating an opening for misinformation and propaganda.”
With a presidential election coming in 2020 and the Democrat competition for the party’s nomination heating up, what was true in 2018 is only truer now. The attack dogs have taken over the show with the big dog in the White House leading the way and the mainstream media encouraging him to lunge at the end of his chain.
We now live in a country where calling the President a racist is a key talking point for the party out of power and where a significant segment of the mainstream media has suggested the President committed treason by conspiring with foreign powers to throw the last election.
The problem is that it’s not that simple. There is surely some racism in Donald Trump, but there is some racism in almost all of us. It is hard to avoid. It is an extension of the tribalism that has existed in the human animal since primitive times.
Just ask the Africans or study up on “The Bow and Arrow War Days on the Yukon-Kuskokwim Delta of Alaska.”
We are a species that tends toward tribes the way wolves tend toward packs. It is unfortunate we spend so little time celebrating how far we’ve come in changing that part of our nature, and how much time we spend now trying to regroup into new tribes.
Trump, of course, has encouraged this. His path to power required him to do so. He was not the good soldier who rose through the ranks to represent a collective of interests. He was the lone wolf who seized control of the pack by displacing the existing alpha.
His rise to power is interesting in its complexity, and what it says about the complexities of class and status in the United States today. How can it be that Trump – a product of the ruling elite, a man raised with a silver spoon in his mouth, someone who has never gotten his hands dirty or broken a fingernail – has become the political favorite of the country’s embattled working class?
Is it as simple as the Make America Great Again slogan attacked by the intellectual elites on the country’s coasts as a racist dog whistle for White Americans while embraced in the Heartland as a call to bring back the manufacturing jobs which once provided working-class Americans solid incomes and significant benefits?
It’s complicated
Enter today’s journalism. Not all of it, but most of it.
Journalism today doesn’t do complicated well. Ripley last year was willing to make a confession in this regard. You are unlikely, unfortunately, to find many other journalists doing her soul searching.
“After spending more than 50 hours in training for various forms of dispute resolution,” she wrote, “I realized that I’ve overestimated my ability to quickly understand what drives people to do what they do. I have overvalued reasoning in myself and others and undervalued pride, fear and the need to belong.”
Or at least she overvalued her reasoning abilities because, as with most of us, pride, fear, the need to belong, ego, various prejudices and more regularly try to get in the way.
And never more than now in a country gone tribal and journalism along with it.
If there is a mainstream journalist in Alaska who can at this moment understand why an average Alaskan would or could support President Donald Trump, I’d be surprised. I’m certain there’s not a one who voted for or would vote for Trump, but that’s a different matter.
Personally, I don’t vote and don’t think journalists should. There are all sorts of psychological studies out there examining how behaviors change once people settle on a candidate, and journalists are people.
Once you pick “your” guy or gal, he or she starts to look better. There’s a bad tendency to shift from being an observer to being a fan. Fans of sports know all too well the flaws that can be overlooked in a favorite team. Fans might be able to look objectively at all the other teams, but they have a skewed view of their team.
The country witnessed the perfect political illustration of the consequences in the last presidential election with the media expectation that Democrat Hilary Clinton would be coronated as the nation’s first female president. Journalists were so sure their team would win they failed to thoroughly examine the strengths and weaknesses of the opposite team and devoted much of their coverage to fretting about Trump’s lack of political correctness and other “unpresidential” behaviors.
“Donald Trump’s Worst Offense? Mocking Disabled Reporter, Poll Finds.” “Trump appears to mock a person with disabilities. Again.” “Trump Fat-Shames a Supporter Mistaking Him for a Protestor.” “Trump Dismisses His ‘Grab Them By The Pussy’ Comments Once Again.”
The media ended up sucked into the very battle it was supposed to be trying to cover objectively.
“Once we get drawn in, the conflict takes control,” Ripley observed. “Complexity collapses, and the us-versus-them narrative sucks the oxygen from the room.”
By election day 2016, it was pretty much all us-versus-them. The prevailing media view on the Presidential race was simple: Good (Clinton) versus bad (Trump). Only two of the nation’s 100 largest newspapers endorsed Trump.
All of which, with the clarity of hindsight, clearly worked to Trump’s advantage. Elitist-blue Americans were so sure Trump was bad the majority of working-class-red Americans decided Trump must be good.
As a result, the media treated Trump as a circus act instead of a legitimate candidate and forget that despite animal-rights protests, a lot of people in this country still love the circus.
Who knows how things would have worked out if the media had complicated the narrative with a rounded view of Trump instead of simplifying it with a focus on his engagement in the sort of name-calling all too common in the media itself.
“…Complexity,” as Ripley discovered, “leads to a fuller, more accurate story….(and) when people encounter complexity, they become more curious and less closed off to new information. They listen, in other words.”
Nobody is listening
Possibly nowhere is complexity more ignored than in Alaska at this time. The state has a significant budget problem that can itself be defined in very simple terms: We annually spend more money than we take in.
The solutions to this problem are also simple:
- Reduce spending.
- Increase revenue with new taxes.
- Forge some combination of #1 and #2.
The red team led by Gov. Mike Dunleavy has chosen #1. The blue team led by state House Democrats timidly favors #2. Little real consideration has been given to #3 because it is the most complicated and difficult, and in these partisan times that makes it the least politically saleable for politicians hoping to be re-elected.
The state’s mainstream media has joined the blue team. Alaska Public Media staked out its position in an online solicitation:
Yes, there are people getting help from the government and government employees destined to struggle when budgets are cut in any way. Just as there are working people sure to suffer if taxes are raised.
The days of Alaskans – rich and poor – living fat on the hog of North Slope oil aren’t over, but they are clearly fading. Oil still provides the bulk of state revenue, but the percentage is shrinking.
The state could raise oil taxes, but then there is the probability companies would cut back on exploration and enhanced production – the most costly of operations – and that could undermine the future revenue stream.
Economic issues are complicated.
Ed King, the former chief economist for Dunleavy, and Mouhcine Guettabi, an economist at the University of Alaska Anchorage’s Institute of Social and Economic Research could have a lively debate about what cuts aimed at getting the state budget close to balanced due to the economy.
But the Alaska media hasn’t delved into the complexities of economics and economic forecasting. There is no well-rounded picture of the complexity to be found anywhere. It is so much easier to play to fear.
Ripley attributes this to journalists being “used,” but there is more to it than that. A lot more.
Economics play a huge part. An old slogan defining TV news was “if it bleeds, it leads.”
The idea then was that the best way to hook viewers was with something tragic and scary. As media has moved online and profits have fallen and competition for eyeballs has become even more intense, there is more incentive than ever to play to people’s fears.
The New York Times hasn’t made Trump into the devil conspiring with the Russians to subvert the election process just because of some sense of journalistic responsibility. The newspaper has seen its circulation increase with its pursuit of Trump. There is a financial incentive.
It is the same financial incentive that led to the creation of Fox News. Plenty of journalists who for years badmouthed Fox as one-sided and biased are now walking down the same path Fox followed and believing that fine.
They’ve joined the resistance, and by that act alone defined a whole other segment of America as the enemy.
Trump supporters
The polarization only serves to bond Trump supporters to Trump. This is what Elaina Plott, who covers the White House for The Atlantic, wrote after attending a Trump rally in Cincinnati at the start of the month:
There are likely a whole lot of Americans with calloused hands and dirt under their fingernailswho like Trump for that alone; that he says what he wants to say; that he hasn’t been co-opted by the “establishment;” that he doesn’t stop Tweeting just because his Tweets offend some people; that he is the nation’s Bad Boy in Chief.
Personally, I’ll admit I’m not a Trump fan. I’ve spent my life in the facts business and Trump has, at best, an arms-length relationship with facts. But I’m not so naive as to believe other politicians always tell the truth either.
I’ve honestly never met a politician (at least a successful one) that was truly unlikable. Personability at some level is the key to getting elected in this country.
And he cheated. Surprise, surprise.
Politicians are invariably more likable than trustworthy. They lie; they cheat; they misdirect; and – worst of all – they almost always do the politically expedient thing. Reilly again on Trump versus former President Bill Clinton:
“It’s like a guy who goes to the bank to steal a pen versus the guy who steals the money. [Trump] really needs to win and I’ve never seen anything quite like it.”
Right there is one reason some average Americans might like Trump.
Cheating just sort of goes along with winning: Bill Belichek’s “Spygate,” Lance Armstrong, Marion Jones, Barry Bonds…. The list of winning cheaters is long.
So Trump lies and cheats and postures in various ways. Think of him as “Slick Willie” without the “slick.”
If you try, you can probably come up with some reasons Trump isn’t all the bad. I like his get-tough policy with the Chinese, who never saw a good idea they wouldn’t steal and who see economics as a tool of global war, as have other oppressive regimes.
I’m sure, if I tried, I could come up with something else of which I approve that Trump has done while in office, or find more than a few actions the president has taken of which others might approve.
It might be a good idea for all journalists to do this. It broadens the perspective. It brings some complexity to the discussion. It helps open an avenue for Americans on either side of the partisan divide to have a discussion that isn’t limited to “you’re stupid.”
“No, you’re stupid.”
“I said it first….”
Yadda, yadda, yadda.
Then again, confrontation seems to be selling a lot better than discussion. Now, feel free to argue.
Categories: Commentary, Media, Uncategorized
Your beloved Bluto is on an upward path of increasing the deficit to around a trillion soon. Of course, for you who are in love, that is no matter! After all, he is ‘the chosen one’. But remember how vilified the last actual President we had what with all his spending, used, to pull us out of the most severe economic downturn since the great depression?
And here we have another of your loves:
“As a reminder, the Grand Old Party put on a big show of pretending to care about “fiscal responsibility” when Barack Obama was in office and mouth-watering tax cuts weren’t on the line. “Only one thing can save this country, and that’s to get a handle on this deficit-and-debt issue,” Majority Leader Mitch McConnell insisted after the 44th president won his second term. “The federal fiscal burden threatens the security, liberty, and independence of our nation,” the Republican Party platform warned in 2016. “You’re bankrupting our grandchildren!””
And now we have mum on mum, in mum by EVERY SINGLE REPUBLICAN in the legislature.
Explain that please, without stepping on your dick.
Monk, get your facts straight.. We got out of the Democrat economic crisis during the Obama years not because of Obama’s Marxist policies but in spite of them. Thank GOD Capitalism is stronger and our Founders are smarter than Bozo. Obama did everything to ensure our demise. Obama took the debt from $9.5 trillion to $20 trillion in 8yrs. A disgrace. Obama’s war on the economy (our best years are behind us), his war on the police, his war on the energy sector, his war on our values, etc.. Now Obama, that was a dirtball.
So please, you are an intelligent guy. Do some homework about your race hustler and “Great Divider in Chief”.
Hahahaha! “Why does Trump hate Polars Bears and kids”??? Good lord! The Wash. Compost. Sheesh! This from the Party of Planned Parenthood and 3rd trimester abortions.. I mean, come on Steve. Hahaha. After all, Trump should love Polar Bears because they are white right?
“The Trump administration took its final step Monday to weaken the Endangered Species Act, a bedrock law that brought the bald eagle, the American alligator, the California condor, the humpback whale and the grizzly bear back from the brink of extinction…
New rules will allow the administration to reduce the amount of habitat set aside for wildlife and remove tools that officials use to predict future harm to species as a result of climate change.”
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2019/08/13/why-does-trump-hate-polar-bears-kids/?noredirect=on
Isn’t it funny how Israel is naming towns after Trump while American Jews label him an anti-Semite, all the while supporting Omar who is now the face of the movement to Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) Israel. Talk about irony.
A good example of how the “media” will fall in-line with the Dem spin machines – “Crime-ridden San Francisco has introduced new sanitized language for criminals, getting rid of words such as “offender” and “addict” while changing “convicted felon” to “justice-involved person.”
I read a story on that this morning and had to check the calendar to make sure it wasn’t April 1st. Part and parcel with the Democratic stampede of campaign promises to release 50% of the current prison population and denigration of law enforcement around the country. I mean, if you really look at what’s being promoted by the left, Trump looks like a shining paragon of virtue.
The bottom line is that in a world where 90% of the media is openly and actively creating a narrative with no other purpose then to destroy Trump in 2020 (as opposed to reporting the news), the left offers less than nothing of value to any single person or family who believes in self reliance, hard work and personal responsibility.
In 2016 I looked at the top of the ticket on either side as a choice between drinking rat poison or laying my legs across a subway track, and wound up voting for some guy from Utah who’s name I can’t even remember now. As a person who’s world view point and experience has molded him into a pretty conservative pragmatist who doesn’t spend a lot (or any) of time feeling sorry for large groups of people who’s main claim to oxygen use is clutching their victim-hood cards and seeking special interest privilege, I reckoned that Trump would just be a taller, more obnoxious version of Hillary.
Completely changing my tune now, to be perfectly honest. Trump has many unsavory qualities and can be demonized when examined in a vacuum, but when you hold him up against everyone else, he ends up looking pretty damn good; I’ll take his vulgar, obnoxious straight talk any day of the week over Pelosi’s sly elitism, or “the squad’s” virulent anti-semitism and general hatred of America, much less any of the assorted crazy people running in the Democratic primary.
I’ll definitely be voting Trump in 2020, despite the media’s best attempts at creating the most scandalous lies about him and his administration in order to take him down, and I imagine there are plenty of people just like me in 2016 who didn’t trust him who will now throw in their support.
But maybe that’s just because I don’t have a college degree.
Well said Jason . I suspect the college degree stats are just another smoke screen nonsense. Stats also say folks over 50 favor trump . “ probably folks with age and wisdom ,who still remember how to think for themselves”
Jason, the problem is most people have never been to New York City. Trump’s edgy demeanor is typical of most street New Yorkers. Unlike that candy ass Deblaszero. Trump didn’t succeed in NYC being a nice guy. He had to fight the mob, unions, and a crooked city government. He is used to those Democrat twits in Congress who got where they are by offering freebies. Take the Cuomo “Freto” Crime Syndicate. Talk about thugs and one of them is on CNN. Figures! Trump works 16 hours a day. Guys a bulldog even at his age. I mean, is there really a comparison to Obama, whom never actually heald a job? What a joke. Mr. Golf himself.
Pass this on to your Democrat friends. Mayne, just mayne one will escape the plantation. (Repeat link, sorry Craig)
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trumps-list-289-accomplishments-in-just-20-months-relentless-promise-keeping
Trump was a birther, and stuck with it, while others dropped the lie.
In his first 2 years & 91 days in office, Trump has played golf, more than 2.6 times, than Obama did, during same time period. I remember Trump berating Barry, for all his golf outings. POTUS does it, almost every weekend.
Trump loves to hear himself speak. He is the chosen one.
BTW, how are the coal workers doing?
Not saying the Demos have it together. They cannot figure out a consensus nation agenda.
All politicians will do and say, whatever is needed to get re-elected. Sad commentary on our current state of affairs.
“Nobody has been tougher on Russia than Donald Trump.”
“Nobody has more respect for women than Donald Trump.”
“There’s never been a president like President Trump.”
“China has total respect for Donald Trump and for Donald Trump’s very, very large brain.”
All quotes from the dildo you want to support. Want more? Ya know, usually, talking about yourself in the third person is a sign…
Monk, and your choice is? Just curious. Could it be “Lunch Bucket” Joe, “Fauxcahontas” Warren or maybe “Bolshevik” Bernie? I mean, good Lord. Your examples of why Trump is bad are laughable.
Jame’s who knows about Obama. The moron paid milkions to hide his personal records, transcripts, college writings, etc.. we do know though his mom was an anti-American radical, his grandparents were Communists and his mentor was on the FBI Communist Watch List and his preacher was a radical racist. As for golf, well, Trump has 35 confirmed rounds per year in office. According to CBS News White House correspondent Mark Knoller, Obama played a total of 333 rounds of golf in his eight-year presidency. That averages out to about 41 rounds per year. The differencer is Trump is working for the people and proved Obama a liar when he said “the good times are behind us”. Sadly Democrats would be giddy to see a recession. Even pray for one.
I think your writing on journalism (other stuff, too) should be nationally syndicated, unless there’s a drawback to that that I don’t know. I also think the problems in journalism echo the same problems in education and writing in general, even, or especially, poetry. When was the last time you had someone talk about an IDEA in a poem. Or in prose? “Since feeling is first,” cummings said before his little poem ripened and grew huge and fell on top of us all, “whoever pays attention to the syntax of things will never wholly kiss you….” Those were the days when he was up against reasoning, analysis, details, research, all that jazz. Syntax. Syntax? Back before “Cain slew Abel” and “Abel slew Cain” meant pretty much the same thing, “Somebody’s hurtin’, dude!
That was by way of introducing you to a writer I found in Austin TX, an historian of ideas, really, Puerto Rican, multilingual, a tenured Professor of History. What’s been going on in the media during Trump’s irresistible tenure in the eye of American politics, namely, the misrepresentation of the man’s words whenever remotely possible. His THE MEDIA VERSUS THE APPRENTICE: THE DEVIL MR. TRUMP. Many of the chapters first appeared in his NEWSTANDARDPRESS. One appeared in SALON, Dec. 21, 2015, and got (hoe I’m right) 15,000 shares and 770 comments before it disappeared.
The side Alberto Martinez takes is the side of language. He shares his own political stance early on in the book, and he was not a Trump supporter during the last election cycle. The misrepresentations and deliberately malign interpretations of Trump’s speech finally drove him to a heavily researched, simple to read, very TEACHERLY book. Below I’ll post a “comment” I posted on Amazon, after I’d bought ten copies of his book and given them away. Bought one for you, Craig, but couldn’t find your snail mail address.
A Principled Defense of Language
The Media versus The Apprentice
By Alberto A. Martinez
This is a book about language. The splitting of the United States into two different cultures with two different sets of values and two different ways of looking at life in general. I watched this change in American English. The rise of the New Left, “the Left of Respect” and disappearance of the Old “Left of Resources,” as they’ve been described, has had the effect of extirpating the consciousness and identity of working class people. They are now The Deplorables. But then, they already knew that. The rise of the Multicultural Left, as it’s also called, was effected in education and mainstream media by a new lexicon that identified its apostles as “educated,” a college degree, at least, and therefore allegedly “middle class,” regardless of resources. In any case, “entitled.”
Yes, this is a reductive assessment of the changes I witnessed in my fifty or so years of teaching English, but Alberto Martinez’s scrupulous, broad, thorough research and analyses of twenty-one of candidate Donald Trump’s most infamous statements is just the opposite of reductive and the opposite of the subjective and relativistic language that has become the new normal.
A tenured Professor of History at the University of Texas Austin, widely published in a range of issues mainly related to science, Martinez identifies himself as, like me, a Bernie Sanders supporter in the last election, certainly not a Trump supporter. What drove him to write The Media Versus The Apprentice is the seriousness with which he takes the, THE, mission of higher education, the search for truth.
His understanding of these twenty-one “media memes,” as he heard them, opposes the meanings created by the media and used to flog public consciousness into consensus until the whips frayed and a new example of “backward thinking” could be thrown into the breach. The press never lacked for them.
“Part of a disorganized political majority,” Independents, who formed 45% of voters in a 2014 Gallup poll, Martinez sounds like an extremely principled, very intelligent, independent-minded, student and teacher of history.
Americans today barely have the capacity to grasp the motivation of a writer “on the Left” defending a principle allegedly shared across party lines and in so doing making himself vulnerable to his own profession’s opprobrium as a “Trump-lover,” rather than a truth-lover, or a language-lover. It seems identity politics has destroyed forever our ability to discern the difference between “principle and personality,” as AA puts it, or idea and identity as another person might.
Here’s an infamous media meme. Anderson Cooper’s deliberate (I think) lie as he opened the second presidential debate by condescendingly chiding Mr. Trump, “You bragged about sexually assaulting women. Do you understand that?” – has led others besides me to Martinez when we searched the statement that has so profoundly polarized the electorate.
“When you’re a star, they let you do it.” All my neighbors understand that “When you’re a star” is a dependent clause in the sentence that ends, “they let you do it.” That’s the independent clause. I understand that, too, as a professor of literature and writing. Further, my tire guy spoke for us all when he said quietly, head down over his appointment book, eyes scanning his waiting room for a possible offendee, “It’s true, and everyone knows it.”
If maybe Anderson Cooper didn’t understand the sentence himself, really, what would THAT mean? Perhaps that political pundits’ penchant to imagine dogwhistles and to read between the lines has corroded their ability to understand ordinary English?
But, being at the top of the other national institution devoted to the pursuit of truth, journalism, how could he not understand that? Really.
Linda McCarriston is a Professor Emeritus in the Master of Fine Arts program at the University of Alaska Anchorage. She has published three prize winning collections of poems, most notably Eva-Mary (Northwestern University), which was a finalist for the National Book Award, and her work, both poems and class-conscious prose, has won many prizes, fellowships, and readers.
Linda , you present hope that our nation is not lost by confirming media’s abuse of English. Your educated veiw is a breath of fresh air . May your message travel far and brighten many with your knowledge . I apologize for my piggish writing, it’s not my strongest ability.
Thank you, but please don’t apologize for your clear, thoughtful writing! Also, do go to NewstandardPress to find more of what Martinez is doing. To try to bring clear, thoughtful writing back to journalism as the norm.
“Not everybody is comfortable with the idea that politics is a guilty addiction. But it is. They are addicts, and they are guilty and they do lie and cheat and steal — like all junkies. And when they get in a frenzy, they will sacrifice anything and anybody to feed their cruel and stupid habit, and there is no cure for it. That is addictive thinking. That is politics — especially in presidential campaigns. That is when the addicts seize the high ground. They care about nothing else. They are salmon, and they must spawn. They are addicts.”
Hunter S. Thompson
Count Governor Dunleavy as one who has lost faith in how the media portrays him. https://mustreadalaska.com/dunleavy-bypasses-reporters-goes-straight-to-the-people/?unapproved=33718&moderation-hash=47765132315b514d3e45e5e8a8fd93cc#comment-33718
I agree with Craig’s inference that it is largely media’s fault for rise of trump . Journalists that associate with lying propaganda outlets have misled the American people. Straying away from fact and twisting peoples words to make traps for tools is the order of their day . Even today the new york times misqoated trumps statement to fit their narrative. Is sad such an honorable profession has become presstitutes .Dishonoring their nation and profession for a few dollars. Now only candidates who have dirty hands are able to thrive . It’s really gross and a sad state of affairs that so many Americans can’t see through the constant lies and brain programming inflicted on them by corporate media. Never believe a word corporate media says without getting the info first hand . We are being lied to by media on purpose every day just to divide us and keep their failed paradigm afloat. Exact facts are needed for a democracy to work. Not partial twisted propaganda for profit . Mistakes are one thing – blatant lies destroy the foundation of our nation.
Opinion, Amen!!! I get that your average Democrat voter has been brainwashed about Trump but, to not be smart enough to see the criminal intent with the whole Russian and Kavanaugh hoax speaks to the ignorance of the easily misled Democrat voter. They are a pathetic lot that is led around by their noses.
Notice how NONE here address the facts. All CNN or MSDNC talking points – “Trump’s a white supermacist (what is that?), Trump’s a Nazi, or the Dems and Repubs one night in the 1960’s switched parties under the cloak of darkness”. So stupid I dont even know where to begin.
Craig you fail to understand that the secret ess ballot counting program (unauditable) predetermines results. I caught sequoia pacific in 1992 when kertula larson and carney were removed so the r’s controlled the legislature. Sued. Judge reese did nothing for 1.5 years. The fix is still on. For more info pm me. Aloha. M
Trump is a creation of the media, he has used them like pawns. The tribalism and division we see has been pushed by the left for decades. In one article you will read that Trump is an antisemite and the next he is an islamaphobe. He is blamed by some Democratic Presidential candidates for a madman shooting people, like he told the madman what to do.
I didn’t vote for Trump and I can see him for all his faults, I can also see that the loonies on the left pushing their insanity are much much worse for America than Trump. If they keep pushing the nonsense they are right now there is no doubt they will get Trump reelected.
Well said Steve o . The parties and media strangely push out the respectable rational options for office. Trump is like a stock market correction to the far lefts lunacy . He is only candidate who can handle and redirect a delusional media that has lost its marbles. May Trump persevere against the lies and nasty tactics of the media and corrupt system!
You should have pointed out yesterday’s example, the ADN saying “Dunleavy Sets Dividend at $1600”. Complete Dirty Journalism. See @AKGovPress for Dunleavy’s video about it.
Brian, I am sure you know about the evolving of the two political parties. The consevatives started leaving the democratic party when the dems became more progressive.They hated social security and LBJ’s medicare program and still do. The southern democrats left the party en masse because of LBJ and his anti discrimination stands. Now days almost all the racists including white supremacists and the KKK are backers of the republican party and Trump. David Duke said that Trump is the best thing that happened to the KKK. Solders that fought and died in WW2 would be rolling over in their graves knowing that they stormed the beaches of France and airdropped into Europe to stop Hitler and the Nazis and fascists of Germany. We now have a president and republicans who are trying to make an anti fascist group a terrorist group and siding and courting fascists and Nazis .
Ottokar, that is a big bunch of hogwash . Listen friend, what about Joe Biden? What about Klansman and Hilkarynand Obama Sen. Byrd? That big lie about the parties switching affiliation in the middle of the night is crap. John Kerry’s father was a Democrat racist. Can you explain when he became a Republican and John Kerry went against his dad and became a Democrat? The South is littered with “old school” 80 and 90yr old Democrats who ALWAYS VOTED DEMOCRAT. Just liberal spin to wash their guilt by association with the racist past of the Democrat Party. Typical BS they feed to ignorant college students who do not know any better.
Again, you spew CNN talking points without providing examples on why Trump is a “racists” or “white supermacist”, (whatever that is), other than Trump wanting to secure our borders. Of course Democrats, the party of low expectations wants to flood America with uneducated, 3rd Worlders for votes and control. Just look to any Democrat controlled inner city. Disasters!!! But, they serve their purpose to their Democrat Masters dont they?
Look, we all know Affirmative Action lost its luster on the younger gen. So, Dems have to generate new race baiting words like “white priviledge, white supermacists, Nazis, white terrorists, etc..”.
Listen, I saw the Democrats ANTIFA fascists in Portland this past weekend, guess which flag they were flying? The Socialists Soviet Union or the USA flag? I’ll let you guess. Haha You are right, WW2 soldiers would be rolling in their grave knowing our Demkcrat Party is littered with admitted Marxists/Socialists/Communists, and even have Bernie Sanders who honeymooned in the Soviet Union while they murdered millions of their own people..Try educating yourself next time with actual history and not that Democrat spun garbage.
Ottokar , Bryan is right . You do America a disservice by not trying to understand what’s really occurring. Look deeper .
Ottokar, love these new Democrat terms and insanity:
“During an appearance on Tuesday’s broadcast of “CNN Tonight,” network contributor Wajahat Ali criticized President Donald Trump by saying he was more than just racist but an antisemitic white supremacist as well.
Ali warned that “white supremacists” were “coming for all us,” and added that Trump would not win.”
Antifa is not an anti fascist group, the reason they go by Antifa is because they cannot spell fascist let alone know what it means. Antifa is a terrorist group, just like the KKK is a terrorist group.
Good clarity Steve o .
I take it that Bryan loves Trump? Weird, who knew ; )!
Along the actual lines of the article… If you can’t look at your ‘guy’ and not smell the fact that their crap smells bad or look at the opposing ‘guy’ and see that there are some redeeming qualities in them, you might be a tad blinded by your biases.
I’m a known anti-Trump’r. I think that he is a horrible human who I wouldn’t want in the same room as my wife or daughter. He’s dishonest, untrustworthy, abrasive, and a liability to our country’s foreign policies around the world. He surrounds himself with yes men and fires anyone who disagrees with him or tries to bring nuance and expertise to the table (Mattis & Kelly). However, I will say that I have supported the tax cut, our more agressive China policy and…. I’m trying to find anything else that I like about our current President… Oh yeah, he occasionally wears nice ties!
Cheers folks!
Jack, maybe this will help educate you past CNN: Enjoy! KAG 2020!!! (I know, it is all spin right? 🙂
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/washington-secrets/trumps-list-289-accomplishments-in-just-20-months-relentless-promise-keeping
Hi Bryan,
CNN yuck! That’s as bad as watching FOX… or reading an opinion piece (so yeah, it’s spin by definition) from the WA Examiner in which the author tries to squeeze blood out of turnips – under the tax cut section, he listed 14 accomplishments – I list 1. The tax cut. So, basically, you’re trying to sell your guy without looking at the validity of his faults or the validity of his opponents arguments. You’re just bashing people (all them evil Dems) – perhaps you’re in line to be on Hanity’s show soon? Obviously kidding here, but seriously, you’re acting like Trump is the next best thing to god and I think that he’s the next best thing to my dog’s daily production. You post opinion pieces to show how great he is and I just don’t care enough to rebut 289 accomplishments of which 283 have the significance of ‘he walked across the room without tripping – and he didn’t hold his breath!’ I guess that we’re just going to have to agree to disagree… again.
Cheers friend!
Jack, don’t be silly. I can find plenty of faults in Trump. I hapoen to find more from Obama and the pathetic line of Demokrat contenders. Oh, you dispute that the Democrat Party has Communists/Socialists/Marxist among their highest offices? Let us just leave it as they do, because to say otherwise is just a lie.
Democrats are like a broken ankles and Trump is the sprain. I mean, which would you prefer?
I’m with Jack. I’ve been a third-party kind of gal for years. I don’t like Trump, nor do I like any of the 20ish current Dems running against him. Their proposals actually scare me.
I’m also a big fan of the tax cut and more aggressive of China policy. I will also add that I appreciated Trump persuading many Republicans to pass the FIRST Step Act and the Right to Try Act. I really warmed up to Justice Neil Gorsuch the last SCOTUS term.
Cont – “Unfortunately for the 2020 Democratic candidates, they don’t have this kind of record of success to run on. As mayor of Newark, Sen. Cory Booker oversaw a police department that was widely criticized for civil rights and discriminatory violations. Mayor Pete Buttigieg has been chastised for his poor relationships with African Americans in South Bend. Joe Biden was opposed to the integration of schools and introduced anti-busing legislation in the 1970s and 1980s. Recently, Biden even suggested that he missed the days when he served with racist, Democrat segregationist senators.”
Sadly, not only has today’s Democrat Party NOT lost its racist past but, has taking on the skin of Communism/Socialism/Marxism and every other “ism”.
So, to all our “Journalist” friends out there -SUCK ON THAT DOSE OF REALITY”.
Hi Bryan,
So I’m not a dem, however, I’ll bite. I’m summarizing your manfesto by saying that these Dems have all done awful things during their careers and have shown the true colors of the Democratic party and their members. Right?
I don’t have time to write a laundry list of the republicans wrong doings over the past 50, 75 or 100 years, however, how do you feel about David Duke? Does he represent your and all other Republicans viewpoints? Just curious so I can paint with that broad brush of yours. Have the Dems ever done anything that was positive for our country?
Off to work – Cheers!
Hmm, the racist Democrat Party of slavery, Jim Crow Laws, the KKK, lynchings, Segregation, anti-Women and Blacks Voting laws, and anti-Civil Rights legislation actually have to the nerve to label anybody a “racist”. Sheriff Bull Connor wasn’t a Republican. Blocking school house doors was all Democrat. Johnson’s “Great Society” and “I’ll have those ni@@@@s voting Democrat for 200yrs” was all Democrat. Yes, I know, college professors push the narrative – “todays Democrats are yesterdays GOP” lie onto unsuspecting, ignorant college students. But, they forgot to tell Hillary and Obama’s mentor KKK Grand Wizzard Sen. Robert Byrd who founded the KKK in WV. John Kerry, Obama’s Sec. Of State, own father was against tye Civil Rights movement.
Now, again, how is Trump a racist when both race hustlers, Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton gave Trump awards for his work in the black communities? For Trump upholding America’s laws and protecting the taxpayers. Trump’s policies habe created record low unemployment in the black and Hispanic communities and record female unemployment. Guess “Journalists” get their talking points from Spike Lee or Rachel Maddcow. Do these phony DemoKKKrat hacks really want to talk about who is a racist?
https://www.cincinnati.com/story/opinion/2019/08/01/opinion-president-trump-has-delivered-african-americans/1890968001/
“On top of keeping his promises for our economy, President Trump was successful in passing historic bipartisan criminal justice reform known as the First Step Act. This involved easing sentences for nonviolent crimes and allowing those sentenced under racially motivated mandatory minimums – something once supported by Joe Biden – to have their sentences re-evaluated and potentially overturned. Thanks to this reform, we have already seen people reunited with their families with the hope of starting a new life.
President Trump has also made fighting for Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) a major priority. His administration in one year alone appropriated more money to HBCUs than any other president, and he has taken steps to establish the Presidential Board of Advisors on HBCUs, as requested by community leaders.
The Trump administration has also worked to create Opportunity Zones that spur investment into disadvantaged communities, impacting as many as 1.4 million minority households. These zones help put a priority on rebuilding and bettering many African American communities that have long been forgotten under prior administrations.”
Brian, Good job adding some facts to the discussion.