Here’s the latest from the crossroads of faith and media: 11/02/20

Bill Maher, Don Lemon and America’s Great Divide:

IMHO: I, for one, essentially side with Bill Maher on this one – as Lemon’s near-cartoonish smugness is a pretty good example of why so many people have such low regard for the media – as demonstrated by this Pew Research Center polling data.

Let’s face it. Too much of the media will distort and, sometimes, out-and-lie for the political advantage of their team – their team, for the most part, being the corporate globalists whose interests are in, at least temporary, alignment with the Marxist and totalitarian government of China.

The Globalist Corporate Media (GCM) isn’t mainstream. Like China (and Marxists in general), it sees both national and personal boundaries as affronts to its unquenchable desire for total control over individual thought, beliefs and actions.

Despite their surface disagreement about the prospects and desirability of Americans on both sides of the political divide getting along after the election, my concern is that Lemon’s divisive view will prevail in the GCM, including AT&T’s WarnerMedia. That’s the parent company of both HBO and CNN, as well Warner Bros (film, TV and interactive divisions), DC Entertainment, Cartoon Network, TBS, TNT, TruTV, Cinemax and (with fellow GCM behemoth ViacomCBS) 50% Viacom of The CW.

Follow the money and you may conclude that neither CNN nor HBO (nor the GCM as a whole) is really interested in your free speech, your religious liberty or your hourly wages. They’re after the reach, power and profits of China’s enormous market. That’s why you can look long and hard to find a GCM-produced Hollywood film even mildly criticize China, let alone take on its human rights abuses. The Information Class that runs the GCM (which includes social media giants Facebook and Twitter and the search engine virtual monopoly Google) would much prefer to have Americans refighting the Civil War than to come together and take note of what’s going on today.

The bottom line: I’m not on board with everything President Trump says or does but he’s not Hitler and, unlike stories critical of Joe Biden, the GCM won’t be censoring criticism of him.

And, BTW, here’s proof that the GCM will lie. What else explains not only its refusal to retract demonstrably false allegations (see below) that the president has refused to condemn racism and white supremacy but to persist in them.

I honestly don’t think a true racist would support economic Opportunity Zones for poor and minority neighborhoods or giving black parents (and all parents) the choice not to send their kids to failing public schools. And, of course, pre-COVID, unemployment rates for blacks (and just about everyone else) fell to record lows. As African-American conservative Gianno Caldwell writes in the New York Post: The black community has a genuine opportunity in this election. If enough blacks vote for Trump, the black vote will finally be competitive. Politicians will at long last actually care about producing positive results for the black community to woo black voters, rather than treating them as another box to check.

President Trump is from perfect but, if he’s a totalitarian, he’s a most ineffective one (unable to even control the rules of the debates). Meanwhile, politically-correct totalitarian ideologues already have their grip on the GCM, academia, global corporations as a whole, the Democratic Party and, unfortunately, much of the government bureaucracy. Giving them the White House (and, via potential packing, the Supreme Court) is not my idea of a good and balanced way forward.

And, speaking of political correctness, despite being a very strong critic of this president (which is his right), Bill Maher, to his credit, also has fearlessly spoken out against Cancel Culture assaults on free speech and thought. He’s tolerated, in part, I think, because he is so effective at using comedy to undermine Trump. If Trump is gone, will he have outlived his usefulness? Maybe, in the privacy of the voting booth (or wherever his ballot is cast), Maher may actually vote for Trump.

Encourage one another and build each other up – 1 Thessalonians 5:11