On Saturday afternoon, an act of racist terrorism was committed in Charlottesville, Virginia. Among those responsible, according to Esquire’s Charles Pierce, were Ronald Reagan and George H. W. Bush. “Every Republican who ever played footsie with the militias out west owns this bloodshed,” disgorged Pierce in a Sunday post. “Every Republican president -- actually, there's only one -- who began a campaign in Philadelphia, Mississippi, to talk about states rights...owns this bloodshed…Every Republican politician who followed the late Lee Atwater into the woods in search of poisoned treasure owns this bloodshed…Every conservative journalist who saw this happening and who encouraged it, or ignored it, or pretended that it wasn't happening, owns this bloodshed.”
As Americans across the country prepare for the upcoming solar eclipse, some in the media have begun to speculate over whether or not there are, in fact, sinister undertones behind its arrival. In a piece for the Atlantic, Ross Anderson described in detail how eclipses were often dreaded by ancient kings and rulers as a foreboding sign of things to come. He then goes on to link this connection back to Donald Trump, warning how the current occupant of the Oval Office “should heed the signs. An eclipse sometimes bodes ill for a king.”
Christopher Nolan’s film “Dunkirk” has received widespread praise from critics and audience members alike and currently maintains a whopping 93% ‘fresh’ rating at Rotten Tomatoes. Despite this, however, it has received some negative attention by critics who have denounced the picture for not featuring more minorities or women in it’s scandalous quest for historical accuracy. The Washington Post’s Richard Cohen, however, opted for a different route by praising the film as being, of all things, a ‘war film for the Trump era.’
As much as liberals say they despise “fake news,” some of the most powerful and notorious sources of fake news in America are the leftists in Hollywood. Their “based on a real story” manglings and stranglings of history are legendary, from Oliver Stone on down.
The latest example is a new TV series that debuted July 5 on the FX cable channel called “Snowfall,” supposedly a look at the early days of the crack cocaine epidemic in Los Angeles during the Reagan years. This “history” is based on the loony conspiracy theory that the crack epidemic devouring black communities was a CIA plot to fund the Nicaraguan contra fighters. How many times must bunk be debunked?
The mainstream media has a way of either embellishing or omitting information as they see fit. On AMC’s TURN: Washington’s Spies, we see a very similar scenario taking place way back during the American Revolution.
Lest we forget that the left considers the American founding our original sin, a recent string of articles, lawsuits, and so-called “activism” is taking aim at America’s founding fathers. They were too white, too male, not woke enough, some owned slaves. And anyway, the Constitution is silent on gender fluidity.
Barack Obama believes that “there are no red states or blue states, just the United States,” and Sophia McClennen agrees with him, sort of. In a Saturday piece for Salon, the Penn State prof declared that since “the GOP attacks on the idea of the truth and on the concept of fact-checking are only going to get more absurd,” before long “we won’t code maps by blue and red states; we will code them by whether their voters favor facts or fantasy.”
Tonight (Monday), CBS-affiliated Showtime begins The Putin Interviews, a four-night series of interview excerpts with Russian President Vladimir Putin, conducted by far-left film maker Oliver Stone who, judging by a previous series on Showtime, has an affinity for KGB-connected strongmen.
There’s only one “normal” major party left in America, argued Jamelle Bouie on Tuesday. In Bouie’s view, Democrats, “as evidenced by the rapid and normal transfer of power from President Obama to President Trump,” believe that our system “only works if both sides see each other as legitimate actors with the right to wield power should they win it…But increasingly, it seems the GOP does not…We’ve moved from ordinary partisan competition -- even partisan hardball -- to something ominous and illiberal.”
In today’s political climate, an observer would be roundly mocked if they suggested President Trump is the victim of a “spiteful” “witch hunt,” or even a “coup d’etat.” But during the Clinton impeachment drama in 1998 and 1999, liberal journalists trotted out all of those claims as a way to deflect and defend a Democratic President who was impeached for, among other things, obstruction of justice — the same transgression journalists are associating with President Trump.
Last week, vehement anti-Trumper George Will declared that conservatism in 2017 is “soiled by scowling primitives.” Washington Monthly blogger Martin Longman doesn’t disagree, but he contends that Will is partly to blame for that sordid state of affairs.
If Dwight Eisenhower were alive, he might warn the Republican Party about the dangers of its conspiracy-industrial complex, suggested Jeet Heer on Tuesday. As for Democrats, Heer acknowledged that while some of them buy into conspiracy theories, especially juicy ones about President Trump and Russia, they, unlike Republicans, generally deal “responsibly” with “politically convenient, but obviously fantastic, stories.”