“The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.” – Thomas Jefferson
Trump is a puppet who thinks he’s a real boy. He’s here to perform an agenda for the unseen puppet masters. Who they are and their agenda can be debated ad nauseam. The truth will be revealed in time — but no time soon.
The truth may not be fully realized until the conclusion of Trump’s presidency. This is due in part to the fact that our democracy’s watchdogs, the media, are being crudely manipulated by both the Democrats and the Trump administration.
Democrats lobby the media to focus on identity politics in order to rally their base. The media complies because it leans liberal, because identity politics are easy to report, and because subjects like gender, race, religion and sexual orientation draw higher ratings by emotionally engaging viewers. TV Land members can confidently form opinions and discuss baser topics; whereas subjects related to economics and global diplomacy are more complicated and tend to alienate viewers and discussion. Trump and his strategists understand this and use it as strategy.
The media and the low-information masses focus an obscene amount of time on meaningless Trumpisms, such as inflammatory tweets, provocative comments and easily verifiable disinformation. Though each Trumpism seems like spontaneous rants, the Actor in Chief carefully crafts and times each one to create maximum distraction. This strategy was evident during the election campaign and continues full bore.
In other words, Trump and his team have a pocket full of bacon and they know when and how to wave it in front of the media to distract the salivating “watch dogs” from noticing the criminals coming in the back door – and from noticing the strings of the puppet masters.
Similarly, during the Obama administration, legislation that could have been concise and clear was regularly expanded to thousands of pages of legal jargon to make it overly onerous for both journalists and legislators to digest. Within reams of word vomit hid riders placed by puppet masters.
In journalism school, a wise old editor told me that when all the media is running in one direction, run the other way because that’s where the news is happening. It seemed odd to me at the time, but over the years I’ve learned that he was absolutely right – especially when it comes to political theater. So – to the apparent disappointment of those who’ve heard me rant over the years – I won’t be joining your chorus of complaints about the Trumpism du jour. Rather, I will be looking for puppet strings.
Ultimately, it’s not about Trump. There’s a global movement toward populism occurring. Socialized losses for privatized gains experienced under both conservative and liberal leadership has ushered in a populist revolt. That revolt has only occurred at the ballot box thus far. When so-called “independent” politicians prove to be just as captured, corrupt and incompetent as their counterparts, we may witness a worldwide spring. In the end, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing.
Note from Russ Winter: Torchy still sees the glass a third full with her worldwide spring sentiment. I will give my theory of how the strings are being pulled on Friday. Although Torchy concisely describes American governance, Trump’s World Wide Wrestling Federation presidency will conclude soon enough, most likely in 2017 via a 25th Amendment removal. That’s when the ultimate puppet show begins.
As long as there is revolt at the ballot box, the elite have nothing to fear.
Kind of wrong about this one, 25th amendment removal, but that’s ok.