Tag: media

Grow a spine, cucky

When are conservatives going to stop clucking and cucking, wringing their hands, and lionizing noble surrender rather than wholeheartedly supporting the Right That Fights?

Over the weekend, the hashtag #CNNDirt popped up in my timeline. I clicked on it and found that a Trump operative named Jack Posobiec had come up with a very simple and cost-free method of digging up dirt on current CNN employees–punch CNN into the search function of Linked In, then sift through the personal Twitter accounts attached to CNN employees’ Linked In accounts.

It didn’t take him long to find a CNN editor who’d tweeted out rape jokes and comments about how watching the movie, Roots, made him hate white people. The editor quickly locked his account, but the tweets had, of course, been preserved with screen shots.

I’m not going to name the guy here. He’s not an on-air personality. But I would like to point out that this is a natural and predictable outcome of the war on privacy and free speech that CNN journalists began when they decided to hunt down a Reddit user and threaten to expose him simply for posting a tweet that poked fun at their organization.

Low level, behind-the-scenes CNN employees now find themselves in exactly the position in which their management and on-air people have put conservative America–one of fear, frustration and worry that anything said on social media that could be construed as offensive will be used mercilessly by partisans to damage their careers and livelihoods.

This is not the world I want to live in. When I first saw that they’d embarrassed this guy, I laughed. I thought he was an on-air personality and at least a minor political player. After I realized he was just an editor, I cringed a little. I can’t bring myself to endorse it, but neither can I condemn it. This is what they’ve done to time and time again us and they won’t stop. What alternative is there?

Reprisals are intrinsically fair and just. Reporters and editors deserve being investigated as deeply, and treated every bit as brutally, as they treat the members of the public they target. This is a cultural war, not a cultural tea party. For the record, the CNN employee mentioned was Rashard Elijah, rashard_elijah on Twitter, who demonstrated his racial sensitivity, commitment to social justice, and fine command of the English language in tweets such as these.

And, of course, we know why Jack Posobiec was targeted by the All Defamatory Lies hit list. Because he is among the most effective culture warriors in the Alt Lite.

Five questions about Russia

Charlie Martin has a few questions about the Trump-Russia “scandal”:

Question One. Does agreeing to meet with any Russian constitute collusion? Does lobbying by a Russian constitute collusion?

Question Two. What criminal statute covers meeting with Russian private citizens? For that matter, what criminal statute covers accepting opposition research about a candidate?

Question Three What is the massive ethical breach involved here? Was it more unethical than these?

Question Four. Does this photograph indicate collusion with the Russians? Is it only collusion when your name is “Trump”?

Question Five. What the hell is is wrong with these people?

I can only conclude that the media never heard the tale about the boy who cried wolf. Then again, it is Russian….

Bitchslapping the neocons

Tucker Carlson brings the pain to Ralph Peters and Max Boot. First, Peters, who has never gotten over the Cold War:

Peters leaps into overstatement, as is his wont: “We can’t have an alliance with terrorists, and the Russians are terrorists. They’re not Islamists, but they are terrorists.” He then alleges that the Russians aren’t really fighting ISIS, but instead are bombing hospitals, children, and “our allies” (i.e. the radical Islamist Syrian rebels trained and funded by the CIA and allied with al-Qaeda and al-Nusra). The Russians “hate the United States,” and “we have nothing in common with the Russians” –nothing!” The Russians, says Peters, are paving the way for the Iranians – the real evil in the region – to “build up an empire from Afghanistan to the Mediterranean.” Ah yes, the “Shia crescent” which the Israelis and their amen corner in the US have been warning against since before the Iraq war. Yet Tucker points out that over 3,000 Americans have been killed by terrorists in the US, and “none of them are Shi’ites: all of have been Sunni extremists who are supported by the Saudis, who are supposed to be our allies.” And while we’re on the subject: “Why,” asks Tucker, “if we’re so afraid of Iran did we kill Saddam Hussein, thereby empowering Iran?”

“Because we were stupid,” says Peters.

Oh boy! Peters was one of the most militant advocates of the Iraq war: we were “stupid,” I suppose, to listen to him. Yet Tucker lets this ride momentarily, saving his big guns for the moment when he takes out Peters completely. And Peters walks right into it when Tucker wonders why we can’t cooperate with Russia, since both countries are under assault from Sunni terrorists:

“PETERS: You sound like Charles Lindbergh in 1938 saying Hitler hasn’t attacked us.

“TUCKER: I beg your pardon? You cannot compare me to somebody who makes apologies for Hitler. And I don’t think Putin is comparable.

“PETERS: I think Putin is.

“TUCKER: I think it is a grotesque overstatement actually. I think it’s insane.

Wait, I thought Assad was Hitler today? Or is it Milo Yiannopoulos? It would be helpful if there was some sort of Hitler du jour mailing list to which we could all subscribe and thereby be assured of remaining up to date on the current Hitler. But Peters was merely the appetizer for the meal Tucker made of the hapless Max Boot:

Perhaps the neocons, having been trounced in round one, thought Boot could do better: they were mistaken. Tucker took him apart simply by letting him talk: Boot didn’t answer a single question put to him, and, in the course of it all, as Boot resorted to the typical ad hominems, Tucker made a cogent point:

“[T]o dismiss people who disagree with you as immoral – which is your habit – isn’t a useful form of debate, it’s a kind of moral preening, and it’s little odd coming from you, who really has been consistently wrong in the most flagrant and flamboyant way for over a decade. And so, you have to sort of wonder, like –

”BOOT: What have I been wrong about, Tucker? What have I been wrong about?

”CARLSON: Well, having watch you carefully and known you for a long time, I recall vividly when you said that if we were to topple the governments of Afghanistan and Iraq, the region will be much safer and the people who took their place would help us in the global war on terror. Of course it didn’t happen –“

Boot starts to completely melt down at this point

When evidence is not “evidence”

The media’s “fact-checkers” are no more reliable, or credible, than the very media whose reputation they are attempting to restore.

It’s important to remember that Band’s email was sent privately, with little expectation it would be aired publicly. On the one hand, that might indicate he would be more open about possible conflicts. But he was also feuding with Chelsea Clinton and so might have been inclined to exaggerate or embellish his concerns.

Even the email, at face value, does not justify the hyperbolic news coverage. There was no reference to foundation monies, just “resources.”

At the same time, the foundation, the family and the wedding planner deny the claim made in the email. This was a major social event with 450 guests, something that has to run on clockwork — at great cost. The wedding planner paid the bills and submitted one bill to the Clinton family.

We can’t really award Pinocchios here, since no specific person repeated this allegation. But we can fault the news reporting — and label this as a claim lacking any evidence. Readers (or their friends) who viewed this as the “last straw” about Clinton corruption need to be more careful consumers of the news.

No Evidence

In other words, documentary evidence is not evidence because “money” is a subset of “resources”. That’s an attempted bait-and-switch almost worthy of Richard Dawkins and midwit atheists who claim that documentary evidence and eyewitness evidence is not evidence because it is not scientific evidence.

Almost.

This demonstrates why the media’s rhetoric is so often ineffective. In this case, it is pseudo-dialectic based on a foundation of pedantry and deception.

Doesn’t anyone know how to play this game?

Steve Sailer busts the Other Vox:

From Vox, an article about factchecking that starts with an un-factchecked falsehood:

Trump supporters know Trump lies. They just don’t care.
A new study explains the psychological power — and hard limits — of fact-checking journalism.
   
During the campaign — and into his presidency — Donald Trump repeatedly exaggerated and distorted crime statistics. “Decades of progress made in bringing down crime are now being reversed,” he asserted in his dark speech at the Republican National Convention in July 2016. But the data here is unambiguous: FBI statistics show crime has been going down for decades. 

Uh, the liberal Brennan Center estimated back in April 2017 that the homicide rate (the most reliable crime rate) was nationally 19% higher in 2016 than in 2014 and up 29% in the 30 biggest cities.

Media “fact-checking” is a perfect example of pseudo-dialectic. It’s framed in the style of dialectic, and pretends to be an objective appeal to the truth, but it is actually nothing more than disguised rhetoric meant to manipulate the emotions of the reader. Which, of course, is why it is almost entirely ineffective. The “hard limits” are the result of their “facts” being incongruous with observable reality and the truth as the target perceives it.

The problem most people have in understanding the difference between rhetoric and dialectic, let alone grasping the concept of pseudo-dialectic, is that they are philosophically monolingual. Consider, for example, Jagi Lamplighter’s typically dialectic disdain for rhetoric.

The problem with Rhetoric is…it cannot stand up against reality. It is only useful for persuading sheep. Worse, when a person is persuaded by rhetoric, he will change his mind as soon as someone comes along with snazzier rhetoric.

The advantage of dialectic is when someone is persuaded by reason, they stay persuaded.

Vox is a bright and brave man with brilliant ideas. He is so smart that much of what he understands, most people cannot follow—and that is a harsh and lonely way to live.

But that doesn’t mean that he can’t use his brilliance to learn how to present real arguments in a simple and concise manner that the masses can grasp.

This rhetoric nonsense is beneath him.

But one might as reasonably claim that this Chinese nonsense is beneath the English speaker, even when speaking to a Chinese-speaking audience. Jagi’s faith in my ability to not only leap the IQ communications gap, but successfully reason with emotion-driven non-thinkers, is probably more flattering than she knows, but I can assure her, neither I nor anyone else in the course of human history has ever been sufficiently brilliant for that.

Remember, dialectic is a form of rhetoric. That sweet reason dialectic speakers value so highly is merely a subset of the art of persuasion, and moreover, it is not the only legitimate form. Rhetoric is not about truth and falsehood per se, but rather emotional content that can point towards the truth with falsehood as readily as it points towards falsehood with the truth. And, as I noted above, the more rhetoric points towards the recognized truth, the more effective it tends to be.

Here we go again

The pollsters are making a few “honest mistakes of their own. Again.

Most national pollsters are back churning out biased and misleading poll numbers after recovering from their shock over President Donald Trump’s 2016 election victory, according to The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group analysis.

“I do know inherently there is a Democratic bias in the polls. And most of them will deny it” says Raghavan Mayur, an independent pollster who is president of TechnoMetrica, which leads the polling operations at Investor’s Business Daily.

A national financial news organization, IBD was one of the few polling organizations to predict a Trump victory, and it has accurately called the last four presidential elections.

“Typically, the mainstream media and the major polling companies will never admit their bias to you,” Mayur said. “This is like an alcoholic not admitting to using alcohol. They are in denial.”

Democratic pollster Patrick Caddell agreed with Mayur, saying “there was a couple of days of shock. And then they moved on because what they could not do is to get to the bottom of their own polling bias.”

In other words, they’re undercounting likely Trump supporters by 6 to 9 percent. Keep this in mind when the 2018 election cycle begins.

An “honest mistake”

Strange, is it not, how these “honest mistakes” never seem to be made in favor of any Republican politician or right-wing public figure?

Sarah Palin’s defamation lawsuit against The New York Times should be tossed because the paper made “an honest mistake” when it said she incited a 2011 shooting that severely wounded Arizona Rep. Gabby Giffords and killed six people, a lawyer for the Gray Lady said on Friday.

“There was an honest mistake in posting the editorial,” lawyer David Schultz told Manhattan federal Judge Jed Rakoff.

Last week, Palin sued the Times over a June 14th editorial that stated there was a “direct” link between one of Palin’s PAC ads and the shooting by Jared Lee Loughner. But there’s no evidence he ever saw the ad, which placed Gifford’s district in stylized crosshairs. The Times issued a correction.

On Friday, Palin’s lawyers argued that the Times knew the story was false. “It was literally acknowledged the same day in another story in their paper,” said Kenneth Turkel.

I’m only surprised that lightning didn’t strike lawyer David Schultz dead on the spot. And when you’re chiefly known for #FakeNews and hit pieces, it probably doesn’t bode well for your chances of selling the innocent mistake narrative.

Daily Meme Wars

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UPDATE: 1,115 people have signed up for the #MemeWar. Join the party, we’re having fun!

After talking to a couple of people who follow me on Twitter and somehow didn’t realize I’d published a book, let alone 15, I’ve been thinking about how it might be possible to increase the general awareness of Castalia’s catalog while simultaneously expanding our collective meme war capabilities. Nearly 10,000 of you are on the New Release mailing list, but I’m not willing to use that for anything but announcing new ebook releases once or twice a month. We don’t even email announcements of new print or audiobook editions, although we probably should.

But I was thinking that by putting out a Meme of the Day, which everyone on the MemeWar email list could then put up on their blog, Gab, or Twitter that day, we might be able to effectively set things trending on a regular basis. The Meme of the Day would be “sponsored” by one of our books, which might or might not be related.

Today’s MOTD. Do feel free to spread the love.


We’re reaching levels of #FakeNews that were not previously believed to even be possible. #CNNMemeWar #CNNBlackmail

And yes, I know an address shows up when you subscribe. No worries.

Don’t get cocky, kid

A single engagement is not the war. And the campaign isn’t even over yet. That being said, James Delingpole explains why the Right is winning the #CNNBlackmail battle on Breitbart.

Why and how did we win? Partly by using the enemy’s tactics against them; partly by exploiting a few strengths of our own.

Here are some of them:


“Sorry. Not interested”

Being on the left is all about grievance, victimhood and — usually feigned — moral outrage. This was the card CNN tried playing in response to the original Trump wrestling gif. They invited us to believe that Trump’s tweet encouraged “violence against reporters.” We responded in the best way possible: by ignoring it. This may have been what infuriated CNN into making their massive tactical error of hunting down and trying to destroy the alleged creator of the gif. Had CNN shrugged its shoulders and ignored the wrestler gif, it would not be writhing in such abject humiliation now.

Jokes

The left has lots of comedians, but it can’t do jokes: look at John Oliver, who, despite his lucrative gift of being able to persuade liberal studio audiences to make laugh-type noises, has never said anything genuinely funny in his life. This is because progressives are ideologically incapable of humor. We discuss this in more detail on my Delingpole podcast next week on a Special Youth Edition featuring a clever 18-year-old kid who understands the internet and memes and stuff. The reason the right is winning the internet war, he explains, is because our memes are much wittier than their memes. And the reason for that is that the left can’t do humor because they’re afraid it might hurt someone’s feelings.

Point And Swarm; Isolate And Shriek

As Vox Day explains in his invaluable SJW Attack Survival Guide, these are classic techniques used by the regressive left. Now the tables have been turned, and we are learning to use their methods against them. CNN got so panicked after the backlash hit, it had to ban all its staff from using Twitter because whatever they did or said only seemed to make things worse. SJWs can dish it, but they really can’t take it.

Thar’s magic in them memes. But don’t rest on your laurels. Meme harder. Retweet more. CNN is only in retreat, it has not yet been finished off and dragged by its heels around the White House grounds by the God-Emperor.