Don's Tuesday Column

      THE WAY I SEE IT   by Don Polson Red Bluff Daily News   4/25/2023

Corruption, lies and a big picture

Successful authoritarian governments must effectively control the information that subjects can access, impairing their ability to sort truth from falsehood. “Successful” in this sense means being able to hold the reins of power against all regime opponents or competing political parties.

That’s required literal state-controlled media such as in the former USSR (Union of Soviet Socialist, emphasis Socialist, Republics) and its Pravda, or what exists in current Russia, China (aka Chinese Communist Party, or CCP), North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela or other dictatorships. The message or narrative goes through official channels and is fed to the news-readers and print outlets, or rearranged so as to appear independent.

While structurally different, the news media in America accomplishes the same thing, with consistency throughout the MSNBC/CNN, network news, NPR/PBS media-verse mirroring old Soviet or current CCP functionaries. The uninformed-but-savvy populace: “They lie to us, we know they are lying, they know we know they are lying; and yet they continue to lie while we continue to pretend we believe their lies.”

The leaks of Pentagon military and spy secrets by an Air National Guardsman through a gaming group chat room had basically one media narrative. The history of leakers of secrets to the media shows that, while truthful kernels may be present, “the truth,” as Winston Churchill reportedly said, must be “attended by a bodyguard of lies.” I don’t know the truth in the whole leaks story beyond the fact that he was arrested, and a narrative has approvingly been propagated. All should be regarded as spin and supposition.

What we do know—making political and media figures the grossest of hypocrites—is that everything involves “leaks” from “sources familiar with” the matter; news stories rely on anonymous or confidential off-the-record information. “The truth” is often absent from a battalion of lies. Reread the above “They lie to us, we know they lie…but we pretend…”

Townhall.com: What (Matt) Taibbi and (Glenn) Greenwald have both highlighted is that the establishment media peddles classified information all the time with impunity. It’s refreshing to see some vestige of progressive media get irate over a…narrative, which Taibbi aptly noted as “leaks for me, but not for thee.” Greenwald, who reported on the massive information collection operation that Edward Snowden leaked when he was with The Guardian, unloaded when he appeared on Fox News with Jesse Watters last Friday:

“Anybody who has picked up the New York Times, The Washington Post, or has the misfortune of hearing MSNBC or CNN, knows that corporate journalists, every single day, report classified information that has been leaked. They go on TV all the time and they say anonymous sources told us X, Y, and Z.

“Yet, none of this kind of uproar ever happens because those are authorized leaks…things the CIA or the FBI or the Pentagon want the American people to hear. It's a form of propaganda…This was an unauthorized leak. It reveals that the Biden administration has been lying about the extent of their role in Ukraine’s war…”

Greenwald continues: “Whatever your views, we should want to know about this, but they don't want us to know. So now, [they] have to clamp down harder. [They] have to keep things more secret…spy on you and take away your rights. And…the people demanding this most loudly are people who call themselves journalists. They're the ones down at the Pentagon saying do more to keep everything secret except for the things you tell us to tell the American people.

“Edward Snowden…was the reporting we did 10 years ago or so. And what that showed was under Obama in the name of the war on terror, all this immense, mass indiscriminate spying aimed at the American people was being conducted. Courts ultimately ruled it was unconstitutional…But it never really went anywhere, Jesse. They still have this gigantic spying system in place. Not on Al-Qaeda or China or ISIS, but at the American people. It’s the U.S. security state. They regard American citizens as enemies and they are using this incident now as an excuse to justify even more domestic spying.”

Please excuse the lengthy quote; I couldn’t write with authority and you must know.

Other bombshells: Democrat Senator Mark Warner, outraged over this leak, expected media silence over his leak of a top-secret FISA application in March of 2017. That falsely-predicated FISA application provided fodder for the “Russia-collusion, impeachment hoax” inflicted on President Trump.

The House Oversight Committee: up to nine of Joe Biden’s family and connections profited from the influence-peddling of Hunter Biden.

An IRS supervisory special agent is seeking whistleblower protection to share information with Congress about intervention, mishandling and “political interference” in the criminal probe into Hunter Biden. A.G. Merrick Garland is implicated in said “intervention,” and lying to Congress about it.

Secretary of State Anthony Blinken (then-Biden campaign adviser) was instrumental, in October 2020, in 51 “intelligence experts” colluding to lie that Hunter Biden’s laptop was “Russian disinformation.” Their misrepresentations supplied the rationalization for news media to ignore that story—public knowledge of which would have prevented Biden from winning the election. Stolen, indeed.