Friends, everyone knows that there's still such a thing as the "mainstream media", a.k.a. the "legacy media", and it leans left (to put it mildly), but what is the alternative media, or the "new media", and who has the edge there? This is not my area of expertise, but I'm sure the alternative media could be divided into many sub-categories. One in which right-wingers appear to have an advantage is with social media "influencers". Presumably, this means podcasters and bloggers and people who make short videos for YouTube, TikTok, and the like. The Dems invested a lot of money in dominating this space in '24, and clearly they fell flat on their faces. We can't count on them staying at a disadvantage forever, however. As we speak, they're blanketing the internet with smears against ICE and edited videos of encounters with federal law enforcement that make, or try to make, Trump and Co. look worse than Pol Pot. Expect this war for the "hearts and minds" of social media users to intensify in the months and years ahead, and special thanks to Elon Musk, whose purchase of X kept conservatives competitive in social media at a moment when it looked like we might be frozen out altogether...
Dr. Waddy from Jack: That is an encouraging article. It looks like more and more our side has seized the initiative and is, with intelligence, technical skill and confidence, driving the anarchic far left down.
ReplyDeleteChurchill initially perceived the astonishing WWI proven , horrid truth that the promise of the early 1900s had been thoroughly short circuited. He described the Nazi threat as the progenitor of a "new Dark Age" (and as I remember it), " made worse by the lights of a perverted science". Shortly after victory over the Nazis, he was engulfed by depression at the thought (made plausible by this uniquely qualified historian) that the Hitlerian mantle had simply been taken up by massively armed and extended Stalinist barbarity and that the existential threat to civilization was still fully threatening.
The existential and civilizational clash is being fought out now. With unprecedented good fortune (eg. the astonishing rise of U.S. leader who fully comprehends the stakes ) we have received a real chance to drive the continuing totalitarian nightmare into final failure. Churchill was right; everything we cherish depends on this.
That is an interesting gem about Churchill. He ought to have had second thoughts about the way WWII ended, and about his own role in ending it thusly! It strikes me that a lot comes down to leadership. After Stalin, the leadership of the USSR mellowed. It need not have been so. Possibly we got lucky there. The same might have happened in Germany, of course, had the Germans been on the winning side in WWII. Of course, the other side of that coin is that our leadership, notable for its mildness and selflessness lo these last 250 years, could become more hard-hearted and even murderous in the decades ahead. And a lot of that may be a matter of luck, or the lack thereof, too.
ReplyDeleteDr. Waddy from Jack: If the "American" far left achieves the totalitarian sway it believes its due , then hard hearted and murderous government will certainly be ours and a new and endless Dark Age might well commence. Churchill, if alive today, might have perceived this and made haste to warn "the Great Republic" of it appallingly real and counterintuitive possibility.
ReplyDeleteFDR , upon return from Yalta, told a close adviser: all your misgivings about it are understandable , "but I did the best I could". Churchill was a subordinate partner at Yalta and even more junior during his interrupted tenure at Potsdam. His best was even less. Hell hound Stalin was a formidable negotiator and was armed with the treasonous and catastrophically overidealistic provided intelligence he had about U.S. strengths and intentions
Plus, Stalin had half of Europe in the palm of his hand, and, as they say, "possession is nine-tenths of the law"...
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