A New Villain

 

As recently as a couple of months ago the party line from Democrats and their public relations people in the traditional media was that Trump was a dangerous, out of control, megalomaniacal would be Duce who would try to lord it over us as a dictator.

That did not work out for them. Trump won, and according to polls is popular with the public. It became time to try something else. So the story this week is that Elon Musk is is the villain and real president calling all the shots and leading poor, hapless, helpless weenie boy Trump around by the nose. In its characterization of Trump, the whole thing is a fast one eighty suggesting 1984.

My guess is that the Rasputin story won’t work, and pretty soon we will be told that Musk is just another sycophant with no real authority, that the real danger is someone else (probably Trump again but maybe RFK), and that no one in the know ever thought otherwise. It is galling to be lied to so amateurishly and unconvincingly by people who think you are so stupid they do not have to keep their stories even semi-straight over short intervals. It can insult people’s intelligence and make them angry.

More War on Christmas

 

I wrote this last year, and I decided to post it again.

Conservatives often complain this time of year about a war on Christmas by the leftists – generally attributing it to leftist disdain for Christianity. Many leftists do have a problem with the Christmas season. It has become a point of political correctness not to say Merry Christmas. There are scolding warnings in various media that references to Christmas should be avoided to avoid offending or “marginalizing” people who do not celebrate the holiday. Ads for retail companies talk only about holiday shopping and holiday gifts, not Christmas shopping and gifts, as though the corporate weasels running those companies expect to make their numbers and get their bonuses based on purchases of Kwanzaa gifts or New Year’s presents. The conservatives have a point, but I think their explanation misses something important.

There surely are leftists who are hostile to Christianity, and that likely explains some of the so-called war on Christmas, but not all or, to me, even most. Leftists usually say or do nothing about Easter, and Easter is a far more nearly completely religious holiday than Christmas. Christmas in our time is as much a secular holiday as a religious one, and many non-Christians enjoy Christmas and the Christmas season. Santa, Rudolph, Frosty, decorating trees, decking halls, giving presents, Christmas dinners, and a season to be jolly have little or nothing to do with Christianity. I think that for many leftists, the real difficulty is not with the Christmas but with the merry. A season of ordinary, unsupervised people enjoying themselves and their lives, vigorously displaying good will to the people they meet, giving and receiving presents, and generally feeling benevolent and happy, on their own without external direction goes against many of the left’s fundamental notions of how the world is and should be. It is no wonder many lefties do not care for it and feel uncomfortable with it or even threatened by it.

They might feel worse if they knew how little effect their feelings and opinions have had. Except among cowardly corporations which can be bullied into just about anything and the generally left leaning traditional media, their efforts seem to me to have been mainly a failure. In their private lives people behave as they like and enjoy Christmas. That’s good. They should keep it up.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays, and Happy New Year.

Not Dead Yet

 

Many Trumpists and conservatives are gloating that the results of this year’s election show that the traditional media organizations have lost their power to influence the country or even have become moribund. I think that is wrong, and those in the traditional media did remarkably well, given the cards they had drawn. One should remember that back in the spring Kamala Harris was less popular than Joe Biden and  publicly noticed mainly as an object  of ridicule.

Then Biden dropped out and she was picked as the candidate, giving the traditional media people the task of selling a foolish, unlikable, inarticulate, leftist, lightweight as America’s sweetheart. It was a hard job, and they did it fairly well. She did not lose by much. They were helped by the fact that her opponent was Donald Trump, but what they did is still impressive.

They are not dead yet, and those who do not care for them need to realize that and be ready to play the next hands. The game is not close to over.