The political and media elites are outraged beyond measure by Donald Trump’s charge that the election could be rigged. How dare he suggest such a thing, they say, for the system is as honest as the day is long!
It shows he knows he is going to lose, they say. It shows that he has no faith in the American system, and is really a fascist at heart.
In reality, it shows no such thing, but it does show that a conversation about whether this election — and the political system in general — is rigged is one that the elites most desperately do not want to have.
And that is why we must have it.
And, if we’re going to have it in an honest fashion, the question should be framed not as “Is the system rigged?” but as “In what way is the system not rigged?”
First, there is the media.
Richard Nixon complained of media bias as long ago as 1960, but even he never envisioned the state propaganda machine we have today. Even just a decade ago, conservative media watchdogs were tallying up mainstream media stories that were favorable and unfavorable to conservative politicians and issues, and finding that unfavorable ones vastly outnumbered favorable ones — which did, however, exist.
Now, even the idea that anything or anyone not left-of-center would get even the briefest fair hearing in the mainstream media seems quaint.
Recently, I stopped by the online portals of the New York Times, the Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS — all the self-anointed guardians of acceptable opinion — and each one featured story after story showing Donald Trump to be evil, stupid, dangerous, and worse.
How many stories from those sources, and others like them, were favorable to Trump, or negative toward Hillary Clinton? Don’t kid yourself.
Anyone who still trusts those outlets as reliable sources of news — and they are legion — will be bombarded daily with the message presented in a thousand ways: Trump is an ignorant blowhard who got the Republican nomination because of the shocking reservoir of racism and bigotry in America. His plans to build a border wall and limit Muslim immigration are stupid, impracticable, evil and divisive.
Whatever the merits of Trump and his positions, they have never — not once — gotten a fair hearing in the mainstream media.
The mountains of evidence of Clinton’s flagrant corruption, meanwhile, merit barely a mention. Friday I saw, to my surprise, a feature on CNN on Wikileaks: the Podesta friendship with and censorship of supposedly objective reporters? The pay-for-play scandal?
No, not a word about those things: CNN was reporting on how a Wikileaks email revealed, in 2015, that Clinton campaign operatives were worried that Al Gore might not endorse their candidate.
And now we know why all this is happening. We now know that, despite their pretensions to the contrary (which are still believed by all too many people), mainstream media outlets are propaganda arms for the Left and the Democratic Party.
Leftist Soros-funded groups bought favorable coverage of the Iran deal and the Muslim migrant inundation, and also bought hit pieces on foes of jihad terror.
Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta is so chummy with some of the top reporters in the country that he cooks dinner for them; how many conservatives were there?
Politico’s Glenn Thrush ran his article on Hillary past Podesta for his correction and approval. How many conservative politicians are accorded that courtesy?
Nor is Thrush’s hackery anything new. Back in 2010, Washington Post reporter Dave Weigel lost his job — only to be rehired later, of course — after his emails denigrating the conservatives he was assigned to cover were leaked. (What mainstream media reporter has ever denigrated Leftists?) But what is new is that in 2016, the Post and other mainstream outlets don’t even bother to keep up a pretense of objectivity. Back in 2010, the Post had to pretend that Weigel’s Left partisanship was unacceptable. Now he is again a member of their staff in good standing, and no doubt is denigrating conservatives more energetically than ever.
What candidate who dares to depart too far from Leftist orthodoxy can stand a chance against this?
Never will his or her positions be presented fairly in mainstream news outlets. Never will he or she be anything but on the defensive when dealing with “journalists.” The opposition will always be presented as the voice of reason, sanity, and truth.
We see this playing out in innumerable ways. Here’s one: according to the latest Rasmussen poll, “Trump has the support of 78% of Republicans and 15% of Democrats and continues to hold a small lead among voters not affiliated with either major political party. Clinton has the backing of 77% of Democrats and 11% of GOP voters.”
Trump has more support among Republicans than Hillary has among Democrats, and more Democrats support Trump than Republicans support Clinton. Yet the newscasts are full of stories about Republicans jumping off the Trump train, and Republican operatives worrying about how much the coming Hillary landslide will hurt down-ticket candidates.
Then there is the voter fraud.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and their bought-and-paid-for media propagandists feign shock and outrage that Trump would dare question the integrity of the very heart of the political process. Meanwhile, two Democratic Party operatives have now lost their jobs over the damning videos by James O’Keefe that show them cheerfully, openly, and even proudly discussing how to game the system, get innumerable fraudulent voters to the polls, and pull off a foolproof, prosecution-proof rigged election.
That there has been no call for any official investigation, no outcry, but only ridicule and scorn from our guardians of acceptable opinion only underscores the point of the O’Keefe videos, and shows how deeply the rot has set in.
Yet O’Keefe’s videos are compelling enough to have cost two of those featured in them their jobs (ironically, the Washington Post report on this was written by … Dave Weigel).
There’s no telling how many millions will vote for Hillary Clinton on November 8 because they have no idea of her deep, habitual, inveterate corruption. There is no telling how many people are convinced that to guard the border and to limit immigration are racist proposals because that is what they have been told, endlessly, by the most respected news outlets in the nation.
So is the system rigged?
We have more evidence that it is than we have ever had before, and what we know now is likely the tip of the iceberg.
Whether or not Hillary wins on November 8, that knowledge cannot be unlearned. The best outcome we may be able to hope for in these dark days is that the election of 2016 will turn out to be the very last one that is rigged.
Let’s make sure that by 2020, the Leftist stranglehold on the political system and the media is definitively broken, with the revelations of this tumultuous campaign being the first cracks in the edifice.
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