MSNBC Discussing The Media’s “Job” Is Demonstrative Of The Failure Of Liberal Politics
A Zerohedge article posted this morning contained a clip from MSNBC, where co-anchor Mika Brzezinski said to control exactly what people think is the media’s job. I’m paraphrasing a bit, so below is the exact quote:
SCARBOROUGH: “Exactly. That is exactly what I hear. What Yamiche said is what I hear from all the Trump supporters that I talk to who were Trump voters and are still Trump supporters. They go, ‘Yeah you guys are going crazy. He’s doing — what are you so surprised about? He is doing exactly what he said he is going to do.'”
BRZEZINSKI: “Well, I think that the dangerous, you know, edges here are that he is trying to undermine the media and trying to make up his own facts. And it could be that while unemployment and the economy worsens, he could have undermined the messaging so much that he can actually control exactly what people think. And that, that is our job.”
I thought it might have been hyperbole… then I watched the clip for myself:
Recently it has become an exercise in futility to try to convince others, particularly on the left, that the media is lying. Trying to demonstrate the mainstream media’s ulterior motives to others can quickly turn into an argument about “fake news” or “alternative facts”. Though some on the left can and have acknowledged that the media feeds them lies and half-truths on a regular basis, they are often so blinded by politics that they refuse to believe the truth – for instance, MSNBC would probably find a way to say Trump was lying if he said the sky was blue.
Though anyone can be guilty of this, the recent fate bestowed on Milo Yiannopolous demonstrates that at least on the surface, the right appears willing to accept its media has erred, as well as demonstrating consistency in the world of alternative media. Though people make mistakes, activity such as child pedophilia should not be accepted by any platform.
MSNBC itself appears to be more of a symptom than the overall problem – an MSM and leftist ideology that has in effect turned into a (failing) religion of its own. Though I’ve often referred to liberalism as a form of religious zealotry amongst friends/family, it hasn’t been until now that I’ve seen it articulated clearly in writing. An article from The Dissenting Sociologist was recently shown to me – it is a long read, but well worth it, and it does a remarkable job in describing the leftist platform as a religion:
The SJWs claim a priestly authority to discriminate right from wrong and exhort others accordingly; but that is where the similarity between SJW and Brahmin ends. The average SJW wears no vestments, administers no rites or sacraments, has no congregation, and cannot discipline or excommunicate. Unlike real priests, these self-appointed impostors have no formal vocation or consecrated socio-legal status, are not socially entitled to any special personal deference, and their moral judgments have no public weight. (The State has a monopoly on that; the rest is so much private opinion).
The various holy harridans and sacred scolds, to be sure, excel at getting their way in public settings and in convincing decision-makers to bend to their will- but this is not because others are obliged to defer to them. They get their way the same way difficult people in general do: they hector, harass, complain, threaten, cajole, whine, and manipulate until the opposition is too exasperated to continue and gives them what they want in order to be rid of them. They may also resort to a strategy, found in many cultures and historical periods, whereby people, in order to get what they want, publicly and dramatically feign grievous injury in order to draw sympathetic attention to their plight and get redress for the putative wrongs done them. Either way, though, if the opposition stands firm and refuses to yield, and judicial bodies decline to intervene, then the SJW is completely impotent.
It is not as though the entirety of the left blindly follows the religion of political correctness and SJW self-righteousness. Emmett Rensin of Vox, one of the most liberal outlets of all, acknowledged the “smug style in American liberalism” that is driving many people, notably the working class, away from their politics:
The smug style arose to answer these questions. It provided an answer so simple and so emotionally satisfying that its success was perhaps inevitable: the theory that conservatism, and particularly the kind embraced by those out there in the country, was not a political ideology at all.
The smug style created a feedback loop. If the trouble with conservatives was ignorance, then the liberal impulse was to correct it. When such corrections failed, disdain followed after it.
Of course, there is a smug style in every political movement: elitism among every ideology believing itself in possession of the solutions to society’s ills. But few movements have let the smug tendency so corrupt them, or make so tenuous its case against its enemies.
It brings us back to MSNBC and the problem liberalism faces today – a platform that rivals religious zealotry, and is dominated by SJWs who espouse political correctness at every turn. Instead of acknowledging their mistakes and moving on to correct themselves, the media has become a part of the feedback loop, and feeds fire to the fuel, which manifests itself constantly in the form of (foolish) protests.
Rensin articulated this in his article, and demonstrated it by scrolling through liberal Facebook feeds. Most “arguments” are subsequently met with some combination of denial, accusation of stupidity, or outright rejection without argument, which can lead to deleting of comments and the end of actual friendships. For many, particularly on the left, Facebook has become an echo chamber, one they are prepared to maintain no matter the cost, whether they acknowledge its existence or not.
If the left ever hopes to have a shot at winning, they will need to accept where they have erred and work to correct it, without an extremely elitist attitude and excessive SJW influence. Given the current trends you see on MSNBC, expect more of the same.