Don’t Be Anybody’s Bitch—Blame, Lazy Logic, and Outright Lies

2022 Note: this was written after the 2016 US election. Obviously. I stand by the post now more than I did even when I wrote it. 

Man-o-mani-schevitz, the propaganda is so thick.

Ever since Wednesday, November 9th, 2016 it’s been like the end times up in here.

And it’s all Trump’s fault.

You’d think this Trump chump was the devil himself busting up the Virgin Mary’s weekly badminton game.

But he’s not.

He’s just another joker willing to take the job.

The trouble is, liberals are reacting to Trump exactly like conservatives reacted to Obama.

Exactly, I tell ya’!

It’s stupid easy for The New York Times or NPR or MSNBC to scare the bejesus out of a liberal and then blame it all on Trump.

Just like when it was stupid easy for Fox News to scare the hell out of a conservative and blame it all on Obama.

Remember that?

Let’s get in the way-back machine to see the state of our union prior to Election Day 2016.

Prior to President Trump:

• It was practically a U.S. hobby to meddle in one country or another to the point of making refugees out of people we could later turn around and reject.
• We were involved in seven wars and loved us some drones. We were killing us a lot of faraway civilians, ha!
• We were big on arming rebels in countries that we had destabilized. (Because oil, baby, oil.)
• We’d get involved in democratic elections anywhere the U.S. could make a profit. (Again with the oil!)
• We’d learned that the weapons of mass destruction we invaded Iraq over didn’t exist after all.
• Sometimes we used so many bombs we ran out.
• Obama liked George W’s post-9-11 Patriot Act so much, he made it legal for the government to spy on citizens even more! Hot damn!
• There were dozens and dozens and dozens of U.S. military bases all over the world.

Can you just imagine some country having a military base in the U.S?

• The fight for net neutrality was a well-worn topic.
• Racial inequality plagued the nation.
• The lesser of two evils bar was ever-rising. (Or ever-sinking is probably the term I’m looking for here.)
• A U.S. police state was the new normal.
• Whistle-blowing was a suicide mission/death sentence for anyone crazy enough to expose government injustice. (Good lord, it sounds sorta like the mob is in charge!)
• Incarceration was being called the new slavery and the new Jim Crow.
• The per capita number of prisoners nationwide was far higher than anywhere else on the planet.
• It cost taxpayers more to imprison someone for a year than the price of a year at Harvard. (But of course Harvard’s not looking for just anyone, you know.)

The pharmaceutical industry was acting as though it had been ordained by God to drug every man, woman, and child in the nation.

• Predatory banking was all the rage, the banking industry having received not even a good talkin’ to after the housing crisis that nearly took down the nation. All that forgiveness in the name of stability turned out to be just another good ol’ boy move—no one got in trouble and nothing changed.
• Ordinary folks and entitlement cuts were shouldering the nation’s tax burden ’cause the rich don’t roll like that.
• Students were graduating from college with mega-debts, thanks to exponentially-increasing college costs and an oozing wound of a college loan racket.
• The nation’s health insurance was a clusterfuck that no other first-world country would be caught dead with, hahaha.

This was all before Trumpyface buffooned into the Oval Office.

And though godawful in his own special way, the man started none of this.

Zero, nada, zilch, none, zip.

It’s a presidential pattern.

Dufushead the war criminal George W didn’t magically leave all of the above in 2008 to sit dormant until Trump took office in 2016.

That cool cat Obama stepped up to the plate in ’08 and showed ol’ W and his evil sidekick Dick Cheney what it meant to be a manly motherfucker: Obama oh-so-smoothly turned two wars into seven in just eight years. And he multiplied W’s drone strikes tenfold, killing hundreds upon hundreds of unidentified (might as well be invisible) civilians in faraway lands.

But of course Obama was a very fine fella to parade around, and Trump is embarrassing as fuck, but it turns out Trump stepped into as big a mess in 2016 as Obama did in 2008. For those of us who liked Obama, that news stings. It actually stings pretty bad, in fact.

But damn if the media can spot actual news on a regular basis, and instead gets all hot and heavy over stuff like shit-hole country remarks and porn stars—but you know what that is?

That’s the media harping on something to get us all to look the other way.

It’s a very effective strategy.

That’s why they keep doing it.

But we don’t have to keep falling for it.

So don’t be anybody’s bitch, shiny friend.

Look, if someone throws you a flaming hand grenade, you don’t have to catch it. Just let it drop. Then you can look it over and think before you pick that shit up and respond.

Trump-trashing is just one example of how manipulate-able we are—how easy it is for someone to holler “Squirrel!” and get us to freak the hell out.

It’s so easy to get us blaming each other for crap most of us had nothing to do with.

Be fucking discerning, folks. Be skeptical. Cynicism is called for in times like this.

The media shares only what’s profitable for them. Know this.

You’re not too smart to be sucked into the panic machine.

Smart, shiny friends, it takes more than having a good brain to deflect this shit. You gotta have a protective shield around yourself.

The manipulation is slick and subtle.

It’s well-educated.

It seems well intended.

It’s probably waving a rainbow flag.

See, we have a problem when people who question the current talking points are told they’re part of the problem and not the solution (a la George W)—or worse, that they’re Russian tools.

It wasn’t even two decades ago that we invaded a country because George W said, “You’re either with us, or you’re with the terrorists,” and look how that turned out.

The notion that Trump is a monster of larger proportions than any president ever before him—a veritable nouveau Hitler, in fact—while war criminal George W. Bush is a goofy old grandpa is the spin we’re being fed in the latest “George W danced at a wedding” schtick, along with cutesy pictures of Michelle Obama doting on W.

Liberals and conservatives alike ought to bristle at how obvious the manipulation is.

Ask questions and follow that money like a dog with a bone.

Because to you and me, money may mean freedom from having to work our fingers to the bone, but to the greedy and power hungry SOBs out there who own our media, money means they get to own you and me.

Which is not all that hard if we’re easily bought.

Don’t count on the news that shores up all your outrage.

This is the most dangerous kind of news.

In fact, this is the very definition of propaganda.

When you’re all about the news that’s on your side, you’re playing right into the ikky scheme.

And that’s exactly when you lower the price it takes to buy you. 

When the rage is high, when the emotion is intense, when the news is filled to the brim with something, step back and get suspicious.

Check yourself when you start getting sucked into the latest storyline. Decide what you believe.

And due to the fact that our cultural brainwashing runs pretty deep, this actually takes a little practice, so don’t freak out on yourself—you’ll get the hang of it if you promise yourself you’ll stay alert.

You’ve got to shake off the media stupor and figure this out for yourself. It’s a DIY project.

Remember during the primaries, when the media was all over Trump because he was good for their ratings?

And now here we are with these same bonafide news sources telling us to #RESIST.

Weird, isn’t it?

See.

They’re toying with us.

They’re egging us on and counting on us to fall for it all.

The news media is not your friend, even if they speak well and act all nice to your face.

They literally represent the money and power that want to keep you and me in our place.

So when I tell you that impeaching Trump won’t fix a damn thing, and you think, “Oh, good lord, it’s at least a step in the right direction,” ask what, exactly, would be fixed.

Better yet, ask who benefit$ by keeping the subject alive.

It’s not just Trump voters being manipulated.

Nope, it’s definitely not just the deplorables.

The media is terrorizing us all, and they’re good at it. They’re peddling fear, panic, truckloads of division, and distractions galore. In politics and everything else.

Then they capitalize on it all. Every story they suck us into contains a predatory motive.

Every. Single. Story.

Look behind the curtain. Respect yourself. Think for yourself.

Set your bullshit tolerance way low, shiny reader, and don’t be anybody’s bitch.

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