Woke up troubled in my spirit. Between the media behavior during Kavanaugh and Collusion, and the instituional behavior with Epstein, I really have no idea how true is any of the information I analyze for my audience anymore. Maybe ever was. Thinking & praying on what this means.
Here's the thing: bias has been a constant in media as long as I've been aware. And the Right is more and more responding with a bias of its own. Casting a narrative to combat the narrative combating it.
Discernment can help you navigate that in a search for truth, if you're willing. You can play counter narratives off each other, for example, to find the soft spots in each to help you determine the truth.
However, if we're now in an era where we devolve from bending the truth to fit our narratives, to replacing the truth with our narratives altogether, then I'm not sure how the truth is attainable in such an arena.
When the system can decide that Trump and his base is such a threat to its status quo it can literally just conjure up a hoax and have it dominate two years of headlines, what else is it willing to do? What else has it already done?
When they expect us to believe two sleeping guards undid all the safeguards and protocols at a maximum security federal prison, conveniently allowing a tell-all-about-the- elites prisoner to commit "suicide," what else is it willing to do? What else has it already done?
And then when Trump calls out Fox News for not being pro-Trump enough, under the expectation Fox's job is not to report so we can decide but produce a favorable narrative counter to the one being used against Trump, accountability becomes a lost art/dead letter.
For the oft-victim of the #FakeNews has determined the antidote is injecting even more propaganda into the zeitgeist's bloodstream. So this becomes the cultural version of chemical warfare. No one wins, but there's a high body count with so much toxin in the air.
Historically, truth-seekers in such an environment will tend to respond one of two ways when confronted with this Lady or the Tiger:
1) get thee to a nunnery...or monastery...and vacate the premises. Find your own personal Petra and retreat from the public arena due to the absence of and desire for virtue. This, of course, creates a self-fulfilling policy. For if the virtuous vacate then virtue is truly lost.
2) make the moral calculation to join with one of the two narratives, because the cost of "the other" winning this narrative war is deemed too high a societal toll. However, this risks giving way to a Hegelian Dialectic. You become that which you started/pretended to oppose.
Is there a third way? I dunno.
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I looked into the cross tabs of this poll in 3 key battleground states -- Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. Because it is absolutely impossible for Trump to get the required 270 Electoral College votes without winning at least 1 of them. Darned near impossible for him to get there without winning at least 2 of them.
Here are some cross-tabs that just don't make sense:
Nevada
-Claims Trump is winning women by 9 there when he lost them by 10 in 2020 (if this is true, why all the caving on abortion then?).
-Claims Trump is winning men there by 18 when he won them by only 5 in 2020.
-Claims Trump is winning Hispanics there by 11 when he lost them by 26 in 2020.
Pennsylvania
-Claims Trump is only losing women there by 3 when he lost them by 11 in 2020 (if this is true, why all the caving on abortion then?).
-Claims Trump is ahead there despite doing 5 points worse with whites than he did in 2020.
-Claims Biden is only getting 44% of the Philadelphia vote when he received 81% of it in 2020.
-Claims Biden is only getting 50% of the black vote there when he received 92% in 2020.
Some takeaways from the #IACaucus results in this thread, the first official votes of the 2024 election.
Before the vote, I said I was confident in 4 things:
1) Turnout would be down. ✔️ 2) DeSantis would over-perform his polling. ✔️ 3) Haley wouldn't finish second. ✔️ 4) Haley would be closer to Vivek than DeSantis. ✖️
So I was right on 3/4. But there are details in there that must be further discussed, so we shall.
Turnout Would Be Down.
Make no mistake, this was a dominant performance by former President Trump. He more than doubled the record for largest caucus win ever (previously set by Dole 1988, who didn't win the nomination btw). Before we get into some other ominous signs within the turnout, though, that needs to be acknowledged from the jump. It is clear 'muh polls' were right about his support. Congratulations to him and his team. Tip of the cap. You blew the roof off the joint. Give them their flowers.
However, this election isn't about winning the Iowa Caucuses. It's really about winning 294 days from today. And to that end, there are concerns.
Yes, I expected turnout to be down. Until recently, this has been a low energy cycle in Iowa. Then we had the worst winter weather I can remember leading up to the in-person vote. However, I never expected a 41% drop in turnout from 2016. That is not good. When you factor in we have by far the most registered Republicans in the state's history, this is the worst turnout in the history of the Iowa Caucuses.
Can it all be chalked up to weather? Perhaps. But remember, GOP turnout was noticeably down across-the-board in the special and off-year elections in 2023 as well. So this is something to watch as we move forward, because I can't think of a time when a party had diminished turnout in a primary cycle and then went on to success in the general.
The biggest driver in depressed turnout? Shockingly it was white evangelicals -- long considered perhaps Trump's strongest base. They were 64% of caucus goers in 2016 but just 55% this year. No GOP nominee is winning a general election with depressed white evangelical turnout like that, no matter what percentage of them he gets.
My man is the first elected official to snap the spines of the demonic teachers' unions in a major urban population center. This is a generational accomplishment. All he does is win on policy, which is what matters most. Except when it doesn't...
The problem is it's very hard to build an uber-lucrative following in this business with a narrative of winning on policy, because much of the GOP base doesn't actually care about policy despite its claims to the contrary. We are not the people we claim to be.
Since we're not backed by gubmint and global corporations like Left Media, we often need to move where the food is. Which is more often found perpetuating a victim narrative more than a victor one, and exposing Leftist hypocrisy more than demanding GOP accountability.
With a night to sleep on it and reflect, thought I'd share some thoughts on the Colorado Supreme Court being the first to do the kinds of things I've been predicting for most of this year we were going to see. Let's try and look at this from several different angles.
Legal
People whose opinions I respect, including some that aren't even in the Trump Ride or Die camp, believe the opinion is basically junk. However, never forget this:
We are not a nation of laws, and never have been, but a nation of political will, and we will always will be.
For example, imagine Righty social media post-Roe v Wade. "This is complete bunk. There's no right to murder your kid in the Constitution, let alone an explicit right to privacy. This will get overturned." Instead, Roe was the "law of the land" for half a century.
With the release of the latest Iowa Poll, and the Caucuses now just 35 days away, I think it is time to have a blunt conversation about the state of things. Not just Iowa, but beyond. And I'm going to tell you what I really think, because that's what I do.
And therefore, I'm not sure anybody is going to like it, but that's just my way lol.
The main goal here is not Iowa but defeating the Demoncrats 329 days from today. I have never said that before, but this time I am convinced the country cannot survive another four years of this combined manifestation of corruption, evil, and idiocy.
This is in Politico Playbook this morning. Trump campaign meeting with corporate media who hates us all, but they’re conspiring together to destroy @RonDeSantis. The same media that tried to impeach Trump and is trying to put him in prison now, nevertheless toasting his campaign. All the same people the Trump campaign is schmoozing now will of course go all in to defeat him in the general.
From a Little Birdie who was there at the same restaurant and witnessed it firsthand:
“Not a single conservative media outlet was there. All corporate and left-wing media. On the one hand, it is noteworthy the Trump campaign felt the need to travel the length of the country for a debate their candidate supposedly doesn’t think is worth his time. But to actually see these two supposed mortal enemies yucking it up, to see the liberal media completely in bed with the Trump campaign like that, it was surreal.”
This just goes to show the Trump campaign/team thinks this is all just politics. And they can reel in these vipers for some silly "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" 1-dimensional chess. Meanwhile, enemy media speaks with forked tongue. Its father is the father of lies. They advocate for murder, human trafficking, gender mutilation, etc. out in the open. The true doctrines of demons.
The Trump campaign isn't using the enemy media. It is using them. They are the ones playing 4-D chess here. At the same time the Trump campaign is buying the high-end steak dinners and bottomless glasses of wine, these same people are coordinating with the deep state to destroy Trump and anyone adjacent to him -- even to the point of imprisonment.
Meanwhile, Trump and his team again acting as if this is all a game, except they're the ones being played (and us). This isn't pro wrestling with heroes and heels and Hulk Hogan goes from a real American to Hollywood. This is an outright Cold Civil War, and only one side will win. The other will be lost to history. We're playing a game. They're playing for keeps.
This is what I mean when I say our side just isn't serious. But the other side is as serious as a Covid jab-inducing heart attack.
They accused you of being traitor and Russian asset. They stole an election from you. They impeached you. They're trying to imprison you now. And your people are wining and dining them? Are you freaking kidding me? What will it take to take this all seriously?