In my previous article (see Archive December 23, 2006), I accused Leftists of being, amongst other things, elitists who consider that the ordinary people are not competent to be trusted with choice and decision-making. The Media Class that now rules us is undeniably Leftist (for historical reasons) and is therefore characterized by a sense of intellectual and moral superiority. All nascent ruling classes throughout history have considered themselves superior and there has never been a shortage of writers and academics willing to provide an intellectual rationale of superiority to justify their ascendancy.
A new class could not ascend to power without such self-confidence. Since new ruling classes rarely enjoy popularity amongst the naturally conservative masses, they seize on any justification or device for depriving the ruled of a meaningful voice. In private, if not in public, they tell each other that the ordinary people are intellectually and morally inferior.
Our new ruling class has its own (decadent) morality and a complementary social and political agenda. Little of it is popular enough to command the support of a majority of the people. Sodomy to be accepted as normal; the abolition of the traditional two-parent heterosexual family; an abandonment of laws that enforce the age of consent for sexual relationships; the banishment of Christianity from the public domain; the denigration of Western values; the destruction of national borders to encourage mass immigration, these and most other aspects of the new life-style favored and practiced by our rulers, are viewed with suspicion and even hostility by ordinary people. Of course, in time and with a combination of relentless propaganda and the legal enforcement of political correctness, popular opposition may well melt away. It is possible that future generations will embrace a lifestyle that is not contained by moral and social boundaries, though if so, the US and the West in general will become too decadent to resist an assault by more self-disciplined peoples from the East.
In the UK, the BNP, with the opportunities afforded by the Internet to reach the people directly, is beginning to successfully challenge the Media Class ruling elite. In the USA too, the Internet (and to a lesser extent Talk Radio) is enabling ordinary people to circumvent the lies and disinformation that the Media Class dispenses through the mainstream media and through ‘entertainment’. Technological invention created our ruling class and ongoing technological invention now undermines it.
In the Wall Street Journal of December 20th, 2006, Joseph Rago, an Assistant Editorial Features Editor (now there’s a title!) mounted an attack on bloggers under the headline “The Blog Mob”.
His second and third paragraphs contain some revealing sentiments, so I will quote them. “The ascendancy of Internet technology did bring with it innovations. Information is more conveniently disseminated, and there’s more of it, because anybody can chip in. There’s more “choice” – and in a sense, more democracy. Folks on the WWW, conservatives especially, boast about how the alternative media corrodes the “MSM”, for mainstream media, a term redolent with unfairness and elitism. The blogs are not as significant as their self-endeared curators would like to think. Journalism requires journalists, who are at least fitfully confronting the digital age. The bloggers, for their part, produce minimal reportage. Instead, they ride along with the MSM like remora fish on the bellies of sharks, picking at the scraps.”
Phrases like “anybody can chip in”, “in a sense” and the word “choice” in inverted commas, give us an indication of the distaste that Mr. Rago has for the upstart conservative bloggers (ordinary people) who dare to suggest that the MSM is unfair and elitist. And the gloves come off when he likens them to fish feeding off sharks’ bellies though his word “sharks” is unconsciously apt.
Later in his article he writes, “Some critics reproach the blogs for the coarsening and increasing volatility of political life.” And, “The larger problem with blogs – is quality. Most of them are pretty awful. Many, some with large followings, are downright appalling.” He continues, “The humor is cringe-making, with irony present only in its conspicuous absence; arguments are solipsistic; writers traffic more in pronouncements than persuasion. The participatory Internet … allows sites to interrelate, appears to encourage mobs and mob behavior.” And, “Because political blogs are predictable, they are excruciatingly boring. More acutely, they promote intellectual disingenuousness, with every constituency hostage to its assumptions and the party line. Thus the right-leaning blogs exhaustively pursue second-order distractions – John Kerry always providing useful material – while leaving under examined more fundamental issues, say Iraq. Conservatives have long taken it as self-evident that the press unfavorably distorts the war, which may be the case; but today that country is a vastation, and the unified field theory of media bias has not been altered one jot.”
One more quote and I will stop! “The Internet, like all free markets, has a way of gratifying the mediocrity of the masses. And part of it, especially in politics, has to do with conservatives.”
Readers of our humble blogging website will no doubt need a dictionary to hand in order to understand this elitist of the ‘features’ world, though some of the words he employs do not actually appear in my dictionary. Still, I get his drift and so will you. I will not bother to deal with his casual dismissal of Leftist media bias, nor do more than respond that John Kerry (a Presidential hopeful in the world’s most powerful nation) was revealed as a liar by bloggers, though not by the totally uncritical MSM.
Mr. Rago very much regrets that ordinary people can now comment on the propaganda pumped out by his Media Class and lay bare its lies and omissions. Perhaps some blogs are not well written. Some are contributed by troops in Iraq who have to write from their baking tents when not directly facing death. Their first-hand accounts rebut the MSM lies. I write for this website in between looking after my toddler 11 hours a day and keeping a home functioning. Time is not on our side and so we do the best we can, unlike Mr. Rago and his journalist comrades who are paid to write and have time to consult dictionaries.
What many conservative bloggers are concerned with is truth and accuracy, ingredients deliberately omitted by the writers of the MSM. I would suggest Mr. Rago visit the Biased BBC website for a few days and he will discover how the bloggers reveal the deceits, distortions and downright lies of the highly paid journalists he so much admires.
It would be nice if all political blogs were well written, and we try hard on this website to employ good English, but truth and honesty in content are far more important than style. There is very little truth and honesty in the MSM.
It is late in the day, this 25th December, 2006, but we wish all of our readers a very happy Christmas. This is the day of the year when thinking people acknowledge the miracle of birth, the uniqueness of each and every child and the overwhelming duty of parents to nurture their children.
Mr. Radical and Mr. Right.