A Call to the Media: Blackout Trump
During the primaries, the mainstream press chose to focus on sensational stories that would generate profit instead of issues and actual policy. Trivialities were treated as substance, and the money rolled in.
By doing this, they created the Trump candidacy and conferred legitimacy to what was obviously a bunch of stream-of-consciousness bullshitting by a proven con artist. Donald Trump was a cartoon character, a parody of a tycoon along the lines of Thurston Howell III or C. Montgomery Burns. That he was also 1/2 Eric Cartman made him crassly entertaining, like watching videos of men getting smacked in the balls.
But now that he has allied with a fascist ideologue and a pair of Heritage Foundation stooges, his inane blather has become immensely dangerous. In less than two two weeks he has forced a constitutional crisis that makes 1860 pale in comparison. The United States in 1860 was a largely agrarian society with no presence on the world stage, no colonial interests and limited international trade. The Army’s chief job was exterminating the indigenous natives, and even at that they were only moderately successful (since the Comanches controlled almost all of Texas until the late 1860s). The Civil War began slowly with the infamous caning of abolitionist Charles Sumner by Preston Brooks on the floor of the House of Representatives (an incident that crippled Sumner for life). As violent as this was, it was only a tiny taste of the carnage to come. As many as 850,000 Americans died in combat over the next five years, with hundreds of thousands more dying indirectly. The wounds of that conflict have lasted to the present day, and have had great influence on the current situation.
But as bad as 1860 was, it was nothing compared to the present moment. America is now the most powerful country in the world, with military spending more than double that of the next three countries combined. Our country is currently engaged in combat operations in five different countries and is economically tied to every country on the planet. The US appears to be in the early stages of a coup. The the security apparatus has been decapitated and the state department gutted. A series of seemingly unrelated firings have given a tiny handful of individuals unprecedented power which is being wielded with no regard for the consequences.
The Constitutional apparatus designed to prevent such a thing from happening is also in the hands of ideologues who have been funded by the same individuals and corporations who backed the president.
The mainstream media created this situation by giving legitimacy to a lunatic. They abetted his rise to further their own financial interests. If they want to protect the United States, they must immediately enforce a blackout of Trump-based disinformation. Conway, Spicer, Pence, Trump’s Twitter account must fall under the same sort of media blackout given to child pornography. It must not be given the legitimacy of polite truth.
This time, it not only the republic that is at hazard. It is the entire world.
Read about a possible coup d’etat here:
https://medium.com/@yonatanzunger/trial-balloon-for-a-coup-e024990891d5#.zf13mqnq0
