Yeah, I don’t think the Kenny Chesney example that the young reporter used is a good example at all. Also, I am inclined to buy to some degree Burris’s claim that this is tied in some way to the very public and very nasty on-going contract negotiations between the print writers guild and the newspaper.
My experience is that there are very rarely any white knights in any dispute.
I’m just making the point that for conservatives, any media that they deem to be even mildly critical of their movement or anyone on their “team” is now just dismissed as “fake news.” That is not good for anyone and I believe is the primary culprit for why things have become so nasty. They appear to be increasingly losing touch with reality.
I know that sounds harsh but that’s my honest opinion.
You have an investigation into the president’s ties to Russia, which results in guilty pleas or convictions of 17 people and it’s dismissed as a hoax perpetrated by “the deep state.”
In any other administration, Republican or Democrat, that would’ve been THE story of their presidency. However, here, the level of denial is so absurdly strong that they are comfortable pretending that it was really no big deal.
That’s just not normal.
And that’s not even getting into the transgression for which he was impeached, which was basically blackmailing Ukraine into lying about Russia.
Then, you have a pandemic that has wiped out countries around the world and has killed 115,000 Americans and has become the third leading cause of death in the United States in FIVE MONTHS and that too is a “Democrat hoax.”
That’s not normal and it is not good for our nation because you can’t have an honest debate on something that starts off just west of Cuckoo Junction.
As for this case, Burris is weakened by the fact that the white reporter, Jonathan Axelrod, has joined the chorus of support for the young black reporter. Axelrod himself has publicly acknowledged that he made a strikingly similar transgression earlier that same day, but received much different treatment.
Why?
Also, Burris’s claim that this is a non issue because Alicia Johnson is typically a social media reporter and this is not a social media story doesn’t make sense because social media is very clearly a central aspect of this entire story.
How do they think all of these rioters were meeting up in the same spot? Did it just happen?
I am just worried about what I’m seeing in the culture because I see an empire that is clearly in decline — for lots of complex reasons — and I’m not sure that everyone realizes just how much trouble we are in right now?
We literally have a third the country — maybe a little bit more than that — that is operating under an entirely different set of facts on everything than the rest of the country.
I asked them about Michael Flynn and you’ll see what I mean. They will swear to you that is a story of government overreach and proof of “the deep state conspiracy.”
They really believe that. It’s completely crazy and completely belied by the actual reality of what has happened and what is continuing to happen there, but that’s exactly where we are.
How can we sustain this if we’re not even agreeing on the basic foundations of the ideological debate?
The answer is we can’t. The problem is that neither liberals nor conservatives are going anywhere. Both sides are growing more inflamed and intense. Where is that going to lead?