Democrats, their Media, and how they got us Vietnam

The Establishment media talks endlessly about being the sole source of “real” news.  These massive corporations – with financial holdings and economic interests that go well beyond “media” – are really just part of the larger entertainment industry.

Of course, this is just a sales pitch to buy their products.  Establishment media claims it is the best or the only source of reliable news.  And it claims that all “alternative” sources (non-corporate/ non-Establishment/ or in New Jersey, non-subsidized) are so-called “FAKE” news.  That too is a form of advertising – a negative attack on a competing product – not unlike the advertising campaign used to promote this product…

The truth is that Establishment media long ago lost its credibility with the American public.  It happened when it got involved in politics and allowed the desire for a particular electoral outcome to trump its integrity.  It happened in 1964, when Establishment media traded intellectual curiosity (going where the facts took you) for partisanship (presenting the “facts” to achieve a desired end).  You can see the effects today, as in this exchange between two reporters…

The one seems ready to swoon, almost sexually aroused by the pronouncements of the other.  And to what end?  Rasmussen recently released polling numbers indicating that 54 percent of American voters buy Trump’s story on illegal immigration and the treatment of children at the border, while just 35 percent have swallowed the Establishment media’s version.  This is what happens when you sell bullshit for so long.  People turn you off.

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The 1964 presidential campaign between Democrat incumbent Lyndon Baines Johnson (LBJ) and Republican Barry Goldwater was as contentious as the Clinton-Trump race of 2016.  The Establishment media and entertainment industry overwhelmingly supported LBJ against Goldwater, a populist right winger.

The Establishment pulled out all the stops, even lining up more than a thousand psychiatrists to publicly question the Republican’s sanity…

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So much for Establishment media and “fact-checking”. 

Long after the election was decided and the Republican safely defeated, the American Psychiatric Society ruled that what had been done to Barry Goldwater was “unethical” and to prevent it from happening again, passed Section 7 in its Principles of Medical Ethics.  Informally called “The Goldwater Rule”, it states that it is “unethical” for psychiatrists to give a professional opinion about public figures they have not examined in person and from whom they have not obtained consent to discuss their mental health in public.

What the Establishment media perpetrated was so egregious that the Courts allowed Goldwater to sue Fact magazine.  Editor Ralph Ginzburg was sued for libel and Goldwater collected $75,000 (approximately $592,000 today) in damages. Now that is “FAKE NEWS”!

Of course, all the major newspapers – led by the New York Times – endorsed LBJ. 

Hey, how old are you if you were a voter the last time the New York Times endorsed a Republican for President?

Answer:  At least 82 years old!

Yep, the New York Times has not endorsed a Republican for President since 1956!  How is that for fair and non-partisan?

In its 1964 endorsement of LBJ, the New York Times raised some themes that we recognize today:

“In fact, of the Goldwater-Miller campaign, the less said the better.”

“…if the wrong choice is made, the nation will face foreign disaster and domestic chaos.  The choice is not what it usually is in American Presidential elections: a choice between two variations of the middle.  This time the choice is such that if President Johnson and his administration are defeated, and Senator Goldwater and his adherents are elected, the country will be facing an upheaval of major proportions in both foreign and domestic policy.”

“Defeat of the Goldwater-Miller ticket will help restore control of the Republican party to the ranks of reason and moderation and thereby strengthen a two-party system that has been seriously endangered by their nomination.  But more important than this consideration is the fact that a Goldwater-Miller victory would divide the United States from its allies, would hearten and solidify its enemies, would represent a triumph for the radical right, a defeat of liberalism, a retrogression from the domestic policies that during the past generation have brought this country to its present state of prosperity.  We hope and believe that the American electorate will give the Johnson-Humphrey ticket a resounding victory.”

In aid of achieving this “resounding victory”, the Establishment media went all out… to the point that they willingly shilled for LBJ when he sold the Congress and the American public on the need to provide him with war-powers to pursue a broader conflict in Vietnam. 

Later this summer, will fall the 54th anniversary of the Gulf of Tonkin incident – which directly led to America’s war with North Vietnam.  In fact, today we know that the incident was almost entirely fabricated.  That there was, in fact, no “incident.” 

But the media was on a “mission” to elect a Democrat President and elect him they did.  Lyndon Baines Johnson won with 43 million votes and 486 electoral votes.  He won 44 of the 50 states and control of both Houses of Congress.

But the lie that helped him win continued to haunt America.  58,000 dead American soldiers, marines, sailors, and airmen later – after a decade believing what the Establishment media had been too partisan to question – the facts began to emerge.

Only a fool would trust the Establishment media on any issue in which they have a partisan interest.  It is the same as in 1964, when they lied… and we died.