Uninformed or Misinformed?
It was that wise old cynic Mark Twain who first observed that if you failed to read a newspaper, you risked being uninformed, whereas if you did read one, you’d surely be misinformed. The scary thing is that he made that observation well over a hundred years ago.
It was that wise old cynic Mark Twain who first observed that if you failed to read a newspaper, you risked being uninformed, whereas if you did read one, you’d surely be misinformed. The scary thing is that he made that observation well over a hundred years ago.
Imagine what he’d say today when newspapers, along with the media that didn’t even exist in Twain’s day, make no secret of their political bias. Instead, they flaunt it, taking genuine pride in their lies, insisting it’s their responsibility to protect us from ourselves.
I mean, how would we know that Trump was a tyrant on a par with Hitler, Stalin and Mao if they didn’t keep telling us? It certainly wouldn’t occur to most of us that a wealthy patriot who believes that a president’s primary responsibility is to American citizens, and not to interlopers from foreign nations, was a threat to our liberty. And inasmuch as I am totally unaware of his having overseen the torture and murder of tens of millions of people, I think we can be forgiven if we fail to see the slightest resemblance between Trump and three of the bloodiest despots who have ever existed.
But even their deep and abiding hostility to Donald Trump would be slightly more palatable if, at the same time, they didn’t insist on prostrating themselves to a pair of villains like Barack Hussein Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton.
Although we have examples of the media’s odious double standard every day, consider, if you will, how they covered the two presidents when it came to Boy Scout Jamborees. When President Obama snubbed the event because the Scouts hadn’t yet capitulated to the lunacy of allowing homosexuals to become troop leaders, the media carried on as if the Second Coming had occurred right on schedule.
But when President Trump spent a few minutes during his address to the Scouts excoriating the fake news media and referring to Congress as a cesspool, you would have thought he had appeared wearing nothing but a raincoat and had at some point flung open his coat and flashed the crowd.
The press reacted by denouncing Trump for turning the event into a “Nazi Hitler Youth Rally” and ruining the occasion by “Promoting His Agenda to Tens of Thousands Too Young to Vote.”
For one thing, a lot of these Scouts will be old enough to vote in 2020, some as soon as 2018, and it’s never too soon to be reminded why voting, even when it grows increasingly difficult to tell Republicans from Democrats, is still important. For another thing, the media never seemed to have a problem with five- and six-year-olds being compelled to chant “Mmmmm mmm mmm, Obama” as if he was as tasty a dish as a piping hot bowl of Campbell’s tomato soup. And most of those brainwashed tykes still aren’t old enough to cast votes. At least not legally.
The Senate Republicans have a lot of gall complaining that President Trump is getting too cozy with the Democrats. What the heck is he supposed to do when Mitch McConnell refuses to even consider changing the Senate rules so that the passage of legislation merely requires 51 votes, not an impossible 60?
On the other hand, the 52 Senate Republicans, being as incompetent as they are, couldn’t even repeal ObamaCare. So perhaps McConnell shouldn’t even bother trying to change the rules. By now, even he probably recognizes that he wouldn’t be able to get the pathetic 52 to agree the sun rises in the east and falls in the west.
At least Trump now recognizes that just because a majority of senators have an (R) after their names, the letter might as well stand for reluctant, resigned, ridiculous or retarded, and their nicknames might as well be Sleepy, Sneezy, Grumpy and Dopey.
But, clearly, party designations in the Senate are intended to confuse. After all, two of the twerps, Angus King of Maine and Bernie Sanders of Vermont, have an (I) standing for Independent after their names. But when have either of them ever cast a vote except as dictated by Harry Reid or Chuck Schumer? Russians serving sentences in Siberian gulags are more independent than these two schlemiels.
A while back, I suggested that the only reason I could imagine for Trump’s military advisors suggesting that sending an additional 4,000 troops into Afghanistan 17 years into the longest war in American history is because promotions are more forthcoming during wartime.
It just seemed logical that if we couldn’t defeat the Taliban when we had 120,000 soldiers involved and if the Afghanis still weren’t up to the task, it was time for Trump to announce victory and get us the hell out of that pig sty.
As you can imagine, I wasn’t too thrilled to hear from a 20-year veteran who has continued in his post-military life to work with senior military officers and senior government bureaucrats, and opened by letting me know: “I take personal offense at the inane comment about the military officers urging the President to send more troops into Afghanistan simply because they want to get promoted. It’s nonsensical.
"The Joint Chiefs, the senior military personnel advising the President on troop strength levels already have four stars and there is no opportunity for advancement beyond that.”
He went on at some length, but essentially, his advice was that Trump’s military advisors are motivated solely by a wish to see America achieve its military goals in Afghanistan.
In response, I wrote: “Not having a military background, I will limit myself to a few points. One, I have heard that, thanks to having Clinton and Obama as the commanders in chief for 16 of the past 24 years, the brass has more and more come to include butt-kissing politicians, rather than warriors; the sort of social engineering types who have fallen into PC line by pushing for more women, gays and now transgenders, to be inducted into the military.
"Two, if an overwhelming force is required to win in Afghanistan, as it was in Iraq, how is it we didn’t win when we had those 120,000 troops over there, and how is an additional 4,000 men going to change things after 17 years?”
He, in turn, replied: “To a certain extent, you have a point about the political leanings of the officers that Presidents choose to elevate to the most senior ranks as being amenable to the President’s philosophy. But, on the other hand, the social engineering that you and I detest has always been subject to the whims of civilian leadership, which, under our Constitution, has always had the authority to decide the policies that the military must obey.
"When we had 120,000 troops in Afghanistan, we had the Taliban on the run. It was Obama’s repeat of the foolish policies of the Johnson administration and Obama’s orders to dramatically reduce forces by arbitrary deadlines that took away our military superiority and resulted in Taliban resurgence.”
I concluded: “Thanks for getting back to me. I am not convinced that the officers who were promoted by Clinton and Obama and who now hold senior positions and are in a position to advise President Trump were the best officers available. It wouldn’t make any sense if it were otherwise. Considering the louts Clinton and Obama placed in their Cabinets, it wouldn’t make sense that when it came to promoting officers, they would suddenly change course and select the best, the brightest or the bravest.
"As for having the Taliban on the run, that’s meaningless; they simply run to Pakistan, the same way that Osama bin Laden did, and wait us out. It’s not as if we were going to leave 120,000 troops in Afghanistan indefinitely.
"Besides, why should we have any troops in Afghanistan? What could 4,000 additional soldiers accomplish that tens of thousands have failed to do in the past? As for handing matters off to the Afghanis, if we haven’t taught their army to fight and kill the Taliban after 17 years, I’d say it’s a lost cause.”
I admit it stung to have my comments dismissed by a military veteran as “inane” and “nonsensical,” but I was glad to discover that we felt the same way about Clinton and Obama. Still, I couldn’t help noticing that he never really made a case for sending the additional 4,000 troops into harm’s way, which was the basis for the debate.
I think it’s only fair to warn Oregon, Washington, Idaho, Wyoming, Montana, Texas, Arizona, New Mexico and Nevada that every election, California voters keep getting closer to getting rid of Proposition 13, the so-called Jarvis Amendment, which placed a cap on the rate of property taxes the state could collect. Before the legislation was passed back in 1978, property taxes were so high in California, they often dwarfed the original price of the home.
Because every year, the number of renters increases, it’s only a matter of time until they begin out-voting landlords and homeowners. On that day, the exodus from California will dwarf the one that occurred in Egypt a few thousand years ago, and if you happen to live in any of those nearby states, you’ll come to regard the devastation of Hurricanes Harvey and Irma as nothing more than a touch of bad weather.
The English poet and critic Dame Edith Sitwell once said, speaking, I believe, for most American conservatives: “I am patient with stupidity, but not with those who are proud of it.”
