Ramble On: "This Is All Totally Normal," Legacy Media Wants You to Know (video)
Morning thoughts on Democratic messaging and the failure of the New York Times, Washington Post, and other legacy media outlets to convey the direness of the threat
Good morning, and Happy Spring! Here is today’s ramble:
And here is the transcript, edited for clarity:
Good morning. I’m recording this on Thursday, March 20th. It’s 5:30 in the afternoon. Trump has just signed an executive order to dismantle the Department of Education. The fact that he put the wrestling lady at the top of that department should have been an indication that this was always his plan. That’s where we’re at.
I’ve been thinking a lot this week about messaging, because there’s a lot of blame going around. And for the Democrats—and rightly so, especially the Democratic leadership, which has just failed. Point-blank failed. Whether it’s Schumer now and the Democratic leadership in Congress now, or Biden and Merrick Garland before failing to take the threat seriously, or you can go back to Obama in 2016. Same thing. Failed to take the threat seriously, failed to act, assumed that everything was just going to be hunky-dory and the way that it’s always been, and this is just their turn and we’ll have our turn back—and all that kind of stuff, without really reading the room or understanding the situation that we’re in and how dire it is.
But people like to say, “The messaging is bad. The Democrats’ messaging is bad.” I want to push back on that a little bit, just as a thought experiment. Blaming is kind of a waste of time at this point, I realize that, but I want to talk a little bit about messaging. Kamala Harris had very good messaging in the campaign. That was a very, very well-run campaign, and it brought together a lot of people. A lot of people were very, very excited by her in a way that I haven’t seen in a long, long time. That doesn’t mean everybody was, obviously, but an awful lot of people were, and the message did resonate to some degree.
And I think the problem isn’t the message that’s being sent out. The problem is the messengers. The problem is the media, and how these messages get reported. And it’s not changing any. I think—I don’t know what the solution is. I just want to point it out. Okay.
Most people in this country, most of them are unaware of what’s happening right now. They do not know the direness of the threat that we’re under. They just don’t, people don’t understand what’s happening. Plenty of people do, for sure. And plenty of people are also for it; you know—they love Trump, they love MAGA, they think Elon Musk is a genius, they’re just fascists, whatever. And I would say probably the same percentage on our side looks around and says, “Oh my God, the country’s on fire. What are we doing? What are we doing? Why are we just sitting around like everything’s going to be normal? Cause it’s not!”
But there’s a vast group of Americans in the middle who are unaware. And part of the reason they’re unaware is their own fault. They should be aware. It’s a luxury to be unaware of what’s happening in the government. And they’re a victim of that luxury, you know? That’s one thing.
The other thing is that the legacy media isn’t telling them what the threat level is. And that’s the thing that I think I have the most problem with. People are often like, “The Washington Post sucks! Let’s ban the Washington Post!” and “Fuck the New York Times!” or whatever, whatever media outlet it is. And all of these media outlets have not done a good job. Okay. That’s for sure. The legacy ones.
But the ones like the Times and the Washington Post and CNN, these outlets that are supposed to be down the middle are not down the middle. And because they’re continuing to report on things as if everything is normal, that makes the people that aren’t paying attention think that the rest of us are exaggerating the threat level. And that’s the problem that I have right now. I could say, “My God, this is happening. Trump is doing this. Musk is doing that. They’re gonna take away Social Security. They’re gonna kill Medicaid. They’re gonna do all these terrible things!” Which is true. That’s what they’re doing.
But somebody might listen to me say that, and then turn on the TV, and CNN’s not talking about it. Fox News certainly isn’t talking about it. New York Times isn’t really talking about it in the way that it needs to be talked about. And so they just continue to say, “It’s not gonna happen, you’re just exaggerating, everything will be fine. Everything will be fine. It’s always been fine before. It’s gonna be fine now.”
I want to give some examples of what I mean. I went to the just the home pages of the Washington Post and the New York Times. And I want to read just some of the headlines of these articles. And just listen to the way, the tentative way, that they describe what’s happening right now:
That’s such a whitewashing of what’s going on. It’s remaking itself in Trump’s image because Trump is a Nazi. He’s a Nazi, he’s a Hitler-like figure. And for the Justice Department to fashion itself in Trump’s image, which is what it says in the headline, doesn’t mean anything other than, he is weaponizing it. And you can tell by anti-corruption efforts, you know, she’s gonna curtail the anti-corruption efforts. What does that mean? That means they want corruption. That’s what it means. So think about how that headline might be written, you know, to actually convey the threat level. It wouldn’t be like that.
Okay, here’s another one:
Hmm. First of all, Canadians are right to perceive it as a threat. It is a threat. And the origin of it is: he’s a Nazi. This is what Nazis do. You know, Hitler didn’t just hang out in Germany. He rolled into the neighboring country that was weaker. Remember?That’s what happened in World War II. That’s what Nazis do.
So right off the bat, these two headlines from the same paper—Washington Post—are Nazi stuff, but they’re not covering it that way. They’re not linking them together. It’s just, “Huh, why is Trump obsessed with Canada?” Gee, I wonder why.
Another headline:
Now, that’s a very, very, down the middle kind of headline, and it is accurate. But it doesn’t talk about what’s really happening, which is that Trump is not allowed to deploy troops on U.S. soil. That’s not allowed. It is forbidden in the Constitution. It’s just not something that he’s allowed to do. And he’s basically moving a military base right on the border as a way to kind of fudge it. He’s saying, “I’m not putting troops there. I’m putting a military base there. And of course the troops can be on the military base.” So it’s a loophole, but it is a way of mobilizing the armed forces of the United States on U.S. soil, which is not something he’s allowed to do.
So again, Nazi. Right, now we go over to the Times, the New York Times:
Let me make it perfectly clear. Yes, of course, Trump is going to do it that way. Duh. So maybe like act like that’s what’s gonna happen. Why else would this be a thing? Why else would he be doing this? This is just a way to open the door for him to, you know, let anybody enter the home without warrants. Immigration can come to my house, come to your house. What do they know? They’re already arresting people that are here legally. So it’s pretty ridiculous.
Could? Ya think? See, now, this has to be linked to the Department of Education stuff. It’s all of a piece, right? It’s all a piece to control the education system.
I remember sitting in middle school, in my middle school, junior high school, we called it, in Madison, New Jersey, and there was a quote from Benjamin Franklin on top of the stage and it said, “The foundation of every state is the education of its youth.” And I remember just staring at that and being like, “Whatever dude, who cares? Why is that relevant?” Well, suddenly, today, it is relevant, because what Trump wants to do and what his administration wants to do is completely derail the education system—because that’s where free thought occurs. They want to indoctrinate everybody, which is, again, what Nazis do.
So; getting rid of the Department of Education, plus taking over universities, which is what is gonna happen at Columbia—that’s bad. That’s like, again, it’s Nazi shit.
And then, finally:
This is a ridiculous joke. These two people are not—that’s not a real—this isn’t statesmanship. This isn’t like Bismarck sitting down with, you know, the Prime Minister of Britain. That’s not what’s happening here. These are two crooks. They’re two thugs. This is a sit-down, like on The Sopranos. That’s what it is.
And the fact that they’re taking it seriously, like they’re statesmen, like this is a sanctioned activity by a nation that isn’t completely corrupt and anti-democratic is frankly—it’s an insult to the readers.
And Vladimir V. Putin? Thank you. I thought it was Vladimir C. Putin. Thank you, New York Times, for clarifying. They do this dumb shit with their, you know, their style. Mr. This, Mrs. That, they have to, you know, hew to that.
They can’t change. And I don’t think they’re going to change. And that’s what what scares me. I don’t know where this is going. But I think one thing that people can do, you know, is to curate your own news. There’s plenty of outlets doing really great work right now. ProPublica, obviously, there are great reporters at the New York Times, The Washington Post doing great work right now. You know, the AP is doing great stuff. People at the Wall Street Journal are doing great stuff. And obviously, the magazines, you know, New Republic, Atlantic, Mother Jones, The Nation, on and on.
But the people that need to be reached, that are in the middle, that don’t know what’s going on, are not gonna read The New Republic. They’re just not. So it’s up to us to talk to people and tell them what’s going on and try to connect it with things that are happening in the world. And I think it’s gonna be easier and easier as things get bleaker and bleaker and worse and worse—which I guess is good news? I don’t know.
All right, too much prattle for today. I just wanted to get that off my chest and kind of, I don’t know, go through it a little bit because again, I think it’s incumbent upon our legacy media to kind of step up here. And if they’re not going to do it, it’s incumbent on us to cancel the legacy media and make people go elsewhere for news. And I think that’s just the way that it has to go. The magazines are doing great work. If that’s the way it has to be, fine. There’s other newspapers besides these, you know, the Philadelphia Inquirer, for one, doing great work. Support those papers and that’s it, you know, try to curate as best you can.
And if you’re watching this, you’re probably doing a good job with the curation, but there are plenty of people in your orbit—if you’re anything like me—who are not. So, that’s it. That’s something we can do.
I think it’s today, the first day of spring. I think it is. I think March 21st is the first day of spring. So I don’t know. Let’s go, spring?
Have a great weekend everybody. Until next time, we shall prevail!
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Thanks for this Greg. I’m pointing people to your writings and interviews to help elevate their awareness, and, hopefully, generate some outrage. Well done.