The following article by David Haggith was published first on The Great Recession Blog:
When Donald Trump would not state with certainty that he would accept the election results before even knowing what the results were or how they might come about, liberals wrung their hands all over the media in grief over the loss of democracy as we know it. Hillary, herself, decried that she had never heard anything so anti-democratic and unAmerican in her life.
Now hundreds of thousands of liberals around the nation join in protests and even riots to proclaim, “Not my president” and “Dump Trump.” A few have created petitions for their liberal states to secede from the union. Still others are recommending that the electoral college overthrow the election. They were fine with the electoral college when they were certain that Hillary would win due to the electoral vote outweighing the broad sweep of popular votes that Trump might get, but now that the candidates’ roles are reversed, they say the centuries-old electoral college needs to be abolished.
Of course the snowflakes are also all melting down because they were brought up in a sheltered existence where everyone gets a prize just for participating. Because there were no losers in snowflake schools, this is their first experience of what real-world losing feels like. In the stark world they are just entering outside the educational womb, losing just means you get nothing of what you wanted. Naturally, they’re balling about that. For those who have continued on to college, the womb is trying to wrap itself around them one last time by giving them puppies and hot chocolate and therapy.
Liberals organize for anarchy because of biased media coverage about Trump
Says one group that hated Trump for refusing to say he would accept the election results before knowing why and how the results came out…
#DisruptJ20 call[s] for a bold mobilization against the inauguration of Donald Trump on January 20, 2017: On Friday, January 20, 2017, Donald Trump will be inaugurated as President of the United States. We call on all people of good conscience to join in disrupting the ceremonies. If Trump is to be inaugurated at all, let it happen behind closed doors, showing the true face of the security state Trump will preside over. Itmust be made clear to the whole world that the vast majority of people in the United States do not support his presidency or consent to his rule…. We must take to the streets and protest, blockade, disrupt, intervene, sit in, walk out, rise up, and make more noise and good trouble than the establishment can bear. The parade must be stopped. (Zero Hedge)
In their video, this group even goes as far as to say,
Trump’s success proves the bankruptcy of representative democracy. Rather than using the democratic process as an alibi for inaction, we must show that no election could legitimize his agenda.
https://vimeo.com/191197865
This is beyond hypocrisy. It’s a blatant call for anarchy. As the video title says, it is a call to make sure there is “no peaceful transition” of power. This group appears to be hoping the National Guard will be called out in order to create the appearance that Trump can only “rule,” as they put it, through a police state. Hypercritically, they are the ones doing their best already to make sure that is how it plays out.
I lay the blame for this organized chaos on the liberal mainstream media. It is the outcome to their constant distorted replays of Trump’s words. Yes, Trump’s huge mouth lends itself to easy trouble because he says things as boisterously and provocatively as possible in order to get free media coverage, but the media readily bought into all of that because it sells, and they even hyped what he said every time they replayed it to make sure it sold even more and that it suited their goal of saving the liberal establishment. The cost of that is now peace itself because of the fear factor that the irresponsible media sought to create in hopes of preventing Trump from being elected (and to make bigger headlines).
For example, when Trump said we should send Mexican rapists home, the media constantly replayed that with commentary that turned it into “all Mexicans are rapists,” creating fear in the Mexican-American community that Trump hates Mexicans. What he really said was that a handful of specific Mexicans who were known by the Obama Administration to be convicted criminal rapists and who had been allowed to remain in the US and who subsequently raped American women, should have been sent home before that could ever happen. He was highlighting the shear stupidity of a government that is so extreme in its refusal to deport illegal aliens that it even insists on keeping rapists here. But media bias created a flurry of fear out of Trump’s boisterous words.
Likewise, Trump NEVER said that he has grabbed women inappropriately, though that is what the liberal media kept saying he said. In the now infamous video Trump switches from saying how he tried to seduce a woman and failed (hardly bragging) to saying he was surprised he failed because celebrities can usually get away with outrageous actions, and then he states the most outrageous thing that comes to his mind. He notably switches from saying “I did” to saying “you can” at exactly that point. In other words, “It was amazing I couldn’t seduce her with my offer of a buying spree for her apartment when celebrities can usually get away with doing any outrageous thing they want.”
The fact is that celebrities like rock stars often DO get anything they want sexually. There are always gold diggers and fanatics who throw themselves at celebrities. These are women who would wrap their legs around a celebrity who did what Trump talked about and say, “Bring it on, Big Boy.” This was far from the mea culpa that the media made it into.
The video above takes off with these media misrepresentations as if all of them were fact. So, the media is more culpable than simply being a biased bystander. It has created the narrative that has fueled this fear and rage across the country. As if Trump’s mouth was not provocative enough, the biased media distorted his words at every turn.
Trump might not have accepted the election results if he saw irregularities that looked like evidence of rigging. If so, he might have gone to court — all within his legal rights — just as the Democrats did when Al Gore refused to accept the election results based on irregularities. These people, however, are doing their best to set up blockades to make sure the president-elect can’t even be inaugurated. They’re not just going to protest the election results; they’re organizing to try to prevent the results from playing out!
Media bias continues unabated distortions this past week
Above the pandemonium, the most egregious thing amid all of this hypocrisy that I have witnessed is the disingenuous coverage by the “progressive” press about the liberal riots and violence against Trump supporters.
ABC News mentioned in one report that Trump had not done much to ask his supporters to stop violence, though in fact, he had asked it directly twice on 60-Minutes, which got a lot of replays. Noticeably absent was any statement by ABC News about how neither Hillary nor Obama have done anything to ask their supporters to stop acts of hatred and violence, even though it appears to be their supporters who are creating the lion’s share of violence. Obama, while in Berlin this past week, actually encouraged protestors to keep up their protests without saying a word about ending their violence. He spoke only of the nobility of their protests:
One of the great things about our democracy is that it expresses itself in all sorts of ways…. I would not advise people who feel strongly or who are concerned about some of the issues that have been raised during the course of the campaign … I wouldn’t advise them to be silent. What I would advise is that … organizing matters…. Do not take for granted our systems of government and our way of life. (Fox News)
President Obama was practically a pep-rally speaker for the protests, even though some have been quite violent. He has refused to ask protestors to stop their violence even after being asked to help quell the storm:
Protests have broken out in cities across the country since Trump’s upset victory last Tuesday. Some have been peaceful, but there have been incidents of violence — and a demonstration last Thursday in Portland escalated into a destructive riot. Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway repeatedly has called for Obama to speak out on the unrest. “I am calling for responsibility and decency. I hope President Obama says, ‘Cut it out,'” she told “Fox News Sunday.” Obama, though, so far has not done so, speaking mostly in generalities. (Fox News)
Not just in generalities but in praise of the protests with no hint whatsoever that the primary perpetrators of violence need to stop it. Yet Trump — who said specifically to his own supporters, if any were engaged in such acts, “stop it” — was portrayed by the press as solely being the one who has not said enough to curb violence. The bias in the coverage is the worst I’ve ever witnessed.
Lying through statistics about hate crimes
Toward the end of the week, news stories decried the uptick in hate crimes since Trump was elected, often sounding as if the crimes were Trump’s fault. ABC reported, for example, that “many of the incidents made reference to Donald Trump.” What they didn’t say is that much of the violent uptick has been against Trump and his supporters. The highest reported increase, for example, was in the liberal state of California.
The media has also hugely exaggerated the significance of the increase:
Overall, the total number of hate crimes against all groups reported by law enforcement agencies to the FBI increased from 5,479 in 2014 to 5,850 last year. That remains far lower than the numbers seen in the early 2000s, but the FBI release comes amid numerous reports of attacks nationwide based on race and religion following last week’s presidential election. (ABC News)
Yeah, mostly attacks based on race or religion made against Trump supporters by people who feel afraid that all Trump supporters are bigots because of how the media has played Trump’s comments. The increase the FBI reported includes all the crimes being committed by people of color against White Trump supporters, and still it was only a 7% increase in 2015 (before the presidential campaigns kicked into high gear). It does not include any increase that may have happened in 2016, so there is no justification in attaching the report to the recent violence.
The increase has been presented as if it proves the rhetoric of the Trump campaign during 2015 may have caused a surge of violence. What isn’t said is that in 2013 hate crimes dropped from 6,573 to 5,928 and then dropped again in 2014 to 5,479. So, a rise of less than 400 in 2015 against a drop of about 500 or more in each of the two preceding years is a change that is within the level of normal ups and downs.
No one got all excited about any “huge improvements” in hate crimes in 2013 and 2014; so there is even less reason to be alarmed about a “huge increase” in 2015, given that the change is less than either of the two preceding years. In fact, in 1995, the FBI reported 7,947 hate-crime incidents, and the annual average since then has been 7,573. So, what the media should have reported was that the campaign year of 2015 was 1700 incidents lower than the annual average for hate crimes during the years that the FBI has collected hate-crime statistics (23% lower than the average year)! Moreover, the years have ranged from about 5,000 to 11,500. So, last year wasn’t just well below average but only about half of the peak year.
And that’s how you LIE with statistics! All to make it look as if Trump’s candidacy caused the upsurge.
Some of the liberal commentators this week particularly spoke out against what they said was a huge rise in hate crimes against Muslims — a 67% increase over the previous year! However, a look at the numbers colors the story a little differently there, too: Last year, there were 257 reported incidents of anti-Muslim crimes compared to 154 the year before. That’s a rise of 103 incidents — two more incidents per state for the entire year. When numbers are as small to begin with as 154 (out of about 6,000 hate crimes), its easy to see a 67% increase.
While even an increase of two per state is certainly not good, it is not the outbreak of hatred by Trump supporters that the media kept presenting this week. For a nation with over 320,000,000 people, I think a total of 257 hateful incidents against Muslims is an extraordinarily small number. Incidences against Jews were much higher, and Trump has never said anything against Jews and is more pro-Israel than Obama. You’ll also find far higher incidents of one Muslim sect against another in nearly any Muslim country of your choosing. Any number is too big in that there should be none whatsoever, but that would be only in a perfect world.
Hate crimes against Muslims accounted for 12% of all hate crimes on average between 2001 and 2012), while hate crimes against Christians counted for 8%; but hate crimes against Jews accounted for 66%. The percentage of hate crimes that are directed against each religious group, however, has decreased between 2001 and 2012 compared to the average from 1995-2000, except for Muslims, where it has increased from 2% to 12%.
So, yes, hatred toward Muslims has taken an increasing portion of all hate crimes as hate crimes to other groups has dropped, but it has been increasing for years since 9/11 in 2001, not because of anything Donald Trump has said. For example, hate crimes against Muslims rose 14% in 2014 over 2013 when Donald Trump wasn’t even campaigning. I would suggest it is quite likely that the increase in hatred toward Muslims has far more to do with 9/11 and more recently with the atrocities of ISIS, such as ISIS beheadings, that have happened all over the world, particularly in Paris, in the last couple of years than it has to do with Donald Trump’s rhetoric.
Yet, the media kept trumping up the “surge” of hate crimes this past week because FBI statistics just came out. (These are all FBI statistics, which is charged with compiling statistics for all hate crimes in the US.) The liberal-biased media has attributed the rise in FBI statistics to Trump just because of the reports coincidence with Donald Trump’s victory in the presidential election.
How media bias slanted stories of violence against Trump
Quotes like the following were provided by the liberally biased media as the explanation for the latest FBI statistics:
“We’ve seen how words from public figures like Donald Trump translate into violence,” said Mark Potok with the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks hate groups in the U.S. (ABC News)
Actually, however, the FBI’s report stated that the number of hate groups went down in 2015, and it showed that liberal California has the highest number of hate groups of all states.
Sure last week, not included in any of the statistics that were all about 2015 was much more violent than most weeks, but most of the violence was perpetrated by those who don’t like Trump. Some of it was directly against Trump supporters, and some was simply against anyone or any business in the vicinity of an anti-Trump protest/riot. The media said very little about who last week’s increase in violence was against.
Look, too, at the kinds of incidents the liberal media is reporting as acts of hate:
Two students at a vocational school in York County, Pennsylvania, held a Donald Trump sign in a hallway as someone shouted “white power.” (ABC News)
While I don’t like that statement because there is undoubtedly racial prejudice behind it, can you imagine that the press would call it an act of hatred if two students were holding a Hillary Clinton sign in a hallway as someone shouted “Black power?” Never in a million years would the hypocritical left with all of its double standards call that an act of racism or hatred. Thus, the press perennially creates the illusion that all racism is one-sided.
It should also be noted that much of the increase in hate crimes was not in response to Donald Trump’s incendiary rhetoric but was backlash to Barrack Obama’s changes on gay/gender issues and his support of Muslims. Not that that makes the crimes OK or justified in any sense, but just that those crimes have nothing to do with Donald Trump; but that was never mentioned in the several stories out this past week about the rise in hate crimes over the past two years.
A CBS Insider Exposes How the Media Distort the News
Portland under seige, liberals attack Trump supporters across the nation
So-called protests against Trump’s election in Portland are really all-out riots that have included, setting buildings on fire, blocking off trains and roadways with physical barricades, breaking windows, other acts of vandalism, and assaults, even a shooting. Naturally, the nation’s most liberal cities have been the most violent. (ABC News)
[Portland] Trail Blazers All-Star guard Damian Lillard is questioning the damage and violence taking place in Portland, Oregon, during anti-Donald Trump protests, saying that isn’t the proper way to go about implementing change. “I think it’s very unfortunate that people have done some of the things they have done during the protest. A lot of harm and damage has been done,” Lillard told ESPN on Saturday. “I do understand their frustration, and I commend people wanting to come together for some kind of change. Tearing apart your own city just isn’t the place to begin, and also making your own city less of a safe place isn’t the answer.” (ABC News)
And these people — some of whom attacked police with fire and projectiles and attacked a TV crew — are the ones who are claiming they don’t feel safe because Trump was elected. I think the real truth is that people should not feel safe because of how these people are violently rejecting the election results.
One of the biggest reasons people have protested Trump is because they thought his rhetoric was making them less safe. They were certain Trump’s supporters would become violent if Trump lost and his supporters believed him that the election was rigged. Now, liberals claim the election was rigged because the electoral college didn’t match the popular vote (something they’ve had their entire lifetimes to change if they think it is rigged against them but were fine with when they were certain it would tip the balances in Hillary’s favor).
Earlier this week I reported on two school kids in different schools who were beat up because they supported Donald Trump and about a White guy pulled out of his car and viciously attacked by a group of laughing black people, solely because he was a Trump supporter. Those videos got no play in the mainstream media that I saw. This was covered only by the alternative media that liberals revile.
Activist who claimed that “Trump cannot divide us with his racism,” divided Washington by cutting off all access to the Lincoln Memorial and Pennsylvania Avenue to anyone but themselves. (ABC News)
In Indianapolis, protestors threw rocks at police officers, injuring two.
Not all that Twitters is gold
On the other hand, numerous alternative media sites in the past week carried stories that were nothing more than unsubstantiated rumors. They did so because they were too quick to follow their own biases. These rumors, often based on just some individual’s tweet with a photo, claimed that organizations sponsored by George Soros took out out ads on Craigslist, offering to pay people to protest and that they bussed these hired protestors into cities. These kinds of rumors flew around a lot during the campaign and especially last week, but Snopes.com says they are all untrue, and that does appear to be the case as the support for each rumor is in each case speculation about what was behind the ad or what was behind the photo:
Photographs showing long lines of buses were shared with the untrue claim that they were used to ship paid anti-Trump protesters to various cities. (Snopes.com)
Craigslist ads for legitimate canvassing jobs were mistaken by some conspiracists as seeking to recruit paid protesters to swarm Donald Trump rallies. (Snopes.com)
Truthorfiction.com gave the same analysis:
It’s been rumored that George Soros and pro-Clinton groups funded protests and paid professional protesters after Donald Trump was elected president. The Truth: We haven’t found any proof that George Soros or pro-Clinton groups have funded anti-Trump protests…. A man named Eric Tucker created a stir on social media when he posted multiple photos of charter buses with the caption “Anti-Trump protestors in Austin today are not as organic as they seem. Here are the busses they came in.” #fakeprotests… A FOX affiliate in Austin found that the charter buses were actually being used to shuttle people from hotels to the Tableau Conference being held at the Austin Convention Center. The buses had nothing to do with protests….
Before Eric Tucker took the tweet down Friday, it had nearly 17,000 retweets and became part of a national controversy. ”I thought going on Twitter was not a big deal, I thought, I have 40 followers, I post twice a year on Twitter, I’m not a professional blogger at all,” Tucker said.
Tucker said seeing a bunch of charter buses lined up on 5th Street near Waller on Wednesday, coincidentally around the same time an anti-Trump rally was being held in downtown Austin he said was unusual. So he took to Twitter with the claims the buses were being used to ship in protesters. “I hadn’t really fact checked at all, it was just all kind of circumstantial and then before I know it, it’s a story, I am over 10,000 tweets by the next day. (Truthorfiction.com)
Wikileaks emails, however, did show that Democratic Party campaigners bussed illegal aliens from poll to poll to vote over and over. One commentator, Alan Colmes said last week that never happened, but the DNC’s own emails say it did. I guess those working for the DNC were just lying to each other about their activities.
Why were there no interviews in the mainstream media with those who wrote the emails, asking why they wrote such things? Why was there no investigation into how many emails there are that show these illegal actions? This is why we need the “fifth estate,” but we also need it to be careful and honest.
The Fifth Estate is a socio-cultural reference to groupings of outlier viewpoints in contemporary society, and is most associated with bloggers, journalists publishing in non-mainstream media outlets, and the social media. The “Fifth” Estate extends the sequence of the three classical Estates of the Realm and the preceding Fourth Estate, essentially the mainstream press. The use of “fifth estate” dates to the 1960s counterculture, and in particular the influential The Fifth Estate, an underground newspaper first published in Detroit in 1965. (Wikipedia)
As often happens in human affairs, the radical journalists who made up the fifth estate of the 1960s have become the fourth estate of the new establishment. And that’s why a new alternative media is rising to fill the intellectual vacuum and right the balance; but such sites often jump to publish rumors as news because the rumor suits their own cause. We need to be careful and honest about our facts and not jump to conclusions if we want to build credibility.