The Dogs That Aren't Barking. Why Are U.S. Media Chatterers Silent On Trump's "Momentum"?

One of the hackneyed, dubious propaganda tropes of U.S. corporate media hacks, reliably trotted out during presidential election seasons, is "momentum," or "Big Mo." The idea is that a candidate who wins, or "wins" (does better than projected to do by polls) in this or that state caucus or primary, will do better and better because of "momentum," like  a rock or a snowball rolling down a hill, picking up speed and size as it goes.

More often than not, "momentum" turns out to be ephemeral in the instances when "the" media ballyhoos it. Not that they ever admit that.

"Momentum" is applied to candidates the corporate propaganda system wishes to promote. (Meanwhile, candidates like Ralph Nader, who filled Madison Square Garden in New York City with people who paid for the privilege of attending, are blacked out by the media. In this election, Bernard Sanders was virtually ignored until recently, even though he was getting more votes than Donald Trump. Trump, of course, of omnipresent in the U.S. media.)

You'd think, given the U.S. media's Trump-obsession, and the fact that Trump obviously IS going from strength to strength, that this more than anything would be a "momentum" moment.

But no, not at all. Even though in the last 5 primaries, Trump got from 54% to 65% of the vote! (So much for the wishful line saying most Republicans didn't vote for Trump, therefore they're against him.)

The reason for this is that the U.S. elites are increasingly alarmed by the prospect of a Trump candidacy (or in the "worst" case, a Trump presidency). This is because Trump has proven disruptive of the established political order. Not because he's a revolutionary. Because he says things out loud that are supposed to be tacit, to avoid causing class and race conflicts to burst into flame, instead of kept smoldering under the surface, allowing deniability.

Trump also is "unreliable" on "foreign policy," as he does not faithfully hew to U.S. imperialist scripts. Here again, his statements incite conflict, with China, and with U.S. "allies" (satraps and clients and lackeys). Were he to act on his claimed intentions, it would upset a number of apple carts.

And he even praised Russian Bogeyman Putin!! Doesn't he know Putin's a Bad Guy?

Clearly Trump is unschooled in "foreign policy," and says "irresponsible" things. To keep the American people brainwashed in the ideological catechisms of the moment of U.S. imperialism, it is necessary to create the illusion that the propaganda describes reality. The illusion is potentially spoiled when someone highly visible says the wrong "message."

U.S. Chatterariat Overlooks Trump's Big Mo

 

Lessons (About "The" Media, That Is) From the Ecuadorean Earthquake

Day after day, we're getting media reports on the Ecuadorean earthquake. Actually it's pretty much the same report. There was an earthquake. Buildings were damaged. And people died. The number who died slowly creeps up. Not much more than that.

The "coverage" amounts to a bit of hand-wringing- Oh, those poor people, isn't that a shame- and implied sympathy.

This falls into one of two categories of story regarding "Third World" countries. These countries- and their people- only get U.S. media attention over two themes: natural disasters, and The Commies Are Coming.

Any time a "leftist" leader comes to power in a Latin American country, for example, "leftist" meaning one who tries to enact policies to benefit the majority of the people of the country, for a change, instead of a tiny, rich elite at the expense of everyone else, that president is demonized. We saw it with Hugo Chavez of Venezuela, (who died of cancer, likely a result of CIA poisoning), Cristina Fernández de Kirchner of Argentina, Evo Morales of Bolivia, and Rafael Correa of Ecuador. The U.S. media has shamelessly spread big lies about Chavez, Kirchner and Correa in particular. Kirchner was smeared as having made a secret deal with Iran to cover up Iran's alleged role in the bombing of a Jewish center in Buenos Aires. This was provably false, yet the New York Times for example treated it as credible, even though if you read far enough down in their articles, it was obviously a false allegation. (That's typical of that smarmy paper. And also proves their conscious intent to deceive.) Correa was consistently smeared as some kind of enemy of a "free" press, also crap. The fact is he was viciously libeled, won a case against one defendant organ, and forewent any compensation voluntarily! That's the evidence of the "persecution" of the press. Reactionary media organs consistently work with the CIA in these countries to destabilize progressive regimes, and if there is any pushback or self-defense, the U.S. media and government go into overdrive, screaming "REPRESSION!"

In the cases of the fascist regimes, military dictatorships, and terrorist death squad states, on the other hand, the U.S, media and government are virtually silent. In fact, approving and supportive. For example, the "liberal" New York Times hailed the 1973 CIA coup in Chile that put the murderous general and traitor Augusto Pinochet in power, and for years afterwards ran approving propaganda about his regime.

In the current case of the Ecuadorean earthquake, this is a relatively minor natural disaster, in which only a few hundred people were killed. Contrast that with the Saudi Arabian-led bombing campaign against Yemen, in which over 6,000 people, more than 3,000 of whom were civilians, have been killed. Markets, mosques, apartment buildings, weddings, and hospitals have all been singled out as targets, The U.S. has provided the warplanes and munitions for this attack, is providing aerial refueling for the attack planes, making their missions possible,  and U.S. officers are stationed in Saudi command centers, providing targeting information for the Saudis. On all this, the U.S. media is virtually silent. 400 dead Ecuadoreans are worthy of commiseration, but not 3,000 (or 6,000) Yemenis, whose deaths, unlike the Ecuadoreans, were avoidable.

Of course, it would hardly do for the U.S. propaganda system to report on murders enabled by the U.S. government. That wouldn't be "responsible journalism."

Desperately Seeking Relevance: NPR, BBC Jump On Prince's Death

The musician/performer Prince died. His fans care. The rest of us, maybe not so much.

But to some propaganda platform managers, this is more important than actual news, enough so to take up time that might be used for significant information to instead tell us, over and over, that his fans care, and wish he hadn't died, and to play snippets of Prince's music, again and again. There is "reporting" from impromptu tribute sites created by fans. Thus is 30 seconds of information stretched like Turkish taffy into many minutes, even hours, of "coverage."

U.S. government radio propaganda network NPR and British government global propaganda network BBC made it the top story. NPR even "called on a couple of Prince scholars" [sic] during the morning "news" program "Morning Edition" (April 22) to opine on their favorite Prince tunes. Who ever knew there were such a thing as "Prince scholars"? Not I. I figured there'd be aficionados, not "scholars." Silly me.

Live and learn!