How the Leftist Media Beat the Right

I hate to be unoriginal, but watching the vice-presidential debate, I couldn’t help thinking what I’m sure a goodly chunk of the electorate was thinking: Why couldn’t these guys be the ones running for president? (Or as The Onion‘s priceless headline put it: “Voters Tune Into VP Debate To Find Out What Race Would Look Like If This Was Normal Election Year.”)

This is not to say there was no difference between the two men. Mike Pence was considered, eloquent, and statesman-like, while Tim Kaine gibbered and interrupted like Alvin the Chipmunk dressed up as a human being… badly. But whether you liked Pence and hated Kaine or hated Kaine and liked Pence, either one of them was preferable  to Hillary “I’m So Unindicted!” Clinton and Donald “You’re a Fat Loser!” Trump. Both were men who had served in government without extravagant criminality and each understood and represented his point of view in an articulate and intelligent way. Those two qualifications together form a pretty low bar of minimum qualification for a candidate. Neither Clinton nor Trump can get over it.

So, sure, you can say it was the bland leading the bland, but that’s the whole point. The president doesn’t have to be a personality. He doesn’t have to re-invent the nation. He doesn’t have to represent some theoretically oppressed minority by being the first one-legged Asian lesbian to have sex with a minor in the Oval Office. That’s all media guff, all of it. The president is just the CEO of America Inc.. He just has to guide the economy efficiently and keep the wars to a minimum. For you who are young, that’s what presidents used to be expected to do before Obama descended from heaven — like the frozen offal that drops out of airplane toilets in flight — and made incompetence great again.

But now, a media-driven election process serves up candidates of flash and illusion without even basic decency to back them up. And of course we expect that from the left. They need felonious deplorables like Obama and Hillary to sell their lousy wares. Identity-group manipulation. Cover-ups. Lies. Corruption overlooked in the name of a greater good that never manifests beyond the theoretical. Where has leftism ever reigned where this wasn’t the playbook? Leftism lays whole nations waste — the Soviet Union; Venezuela — leads whole cities to hell — Detroit; Chicago — while the leftist elite bask in the golden glow of their own good intentions. This won’t change tomorrow or the day after or the day after that. Their candidate suits them down to the salted ground.

But what about us, the right? We complain about the left-wing media ceaselessly. We rage against their bias. We rail against their lies. And then we nominate Trump, their creation, their Frankenstein thing. He fights! we say — but he only appears to fight onscreen while ceding every important point to the left in reality. He’s a winner! we say — but only on his show. In the flesh, he can’t even take time off from insulting beauty queens to attend to his own election. He’s strong! we say — but it’s only the sound of strength, the sound of manhood, without the goods. Debating someone who took the time to study his narcissistic disorder, he danced to her tune like a puppet; he lost to a girl.

Like Obama himself, Trump’s not a savior; he just plays one on TV. And we fell for it, same as the left went all in for the media’s O and still haven’t realized it stands for zero.

The media are despicable. Every right winger is aware of it. The New York Times, CBS, NBC, ABC — liars; despicable. We know to doubt their every word whether on climate change or Democrat policies or whose gaffes are really gaffes — on everything. Why then did we believe in this creature of theirs when a chance to break the left’s hold on government finally presented itself after eight long years? We should’ve let the media’s slack-jawed nonsense bounce off us — like Pence did with Kaine. We should have stayed cool and on point — like Pence did with Kaine. We would’ve won — like Pence did with Kaine.

Instead, for the right, with Donald Trump, even a victory would spell disaster. The media sold us their crappy product, and we beat ourselves to death with it.