The "balance" boondoggle
How the mainstream press helps "conservatives" inject negativity into America's bloodstream
David Remnick, the editor of The New Yorker, was on Morning Joe today talking about how the mainstream press won’t highlight President Biden’s fantastic successes in the first 27 months in office. They play it down because it would look out of balance.
Biden has had more high-profile successes than any president since Lyndon Johnson.
Put COVID down by pumping 500 million vaccinations into arms
Cratered the unemployment rate to its lowest in half a century—even for minorities
Kickstarted the post-COVID financial system by putting liberal economic policies to work
Negotiated the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill that is starting to put Americans back to work at decent jobs for the first time since offshoring began
Got some movement on gun sanity from Republicans after 30 years of inaction by negotiating the bipartisan Safer Communities Act
Made democratic commitments to Ukraine in the face of Russian aggression and power up NATO like never before
Killed Ayman al-Zawahiri, the successor to Osama bin Laden at Al Qaeda
You can see 23 such successes HERE. And these make up only a short list.
But reporting accurately on success after success doesn’t look like “balance” to the media mind. The feckless stupidity of Republicans chasing conspiracy theories and obsessing over “wokeness” and intently ignorning seriously troubling issues and making everything much worse by taking away as many rights as they can from people they hate—all this would seem “out of balance” with Biden’s positive successes.
So, to “balance” things, the media reports the successes briefly, being careful to qualify them as achievements that please liberals rather than accomplishments that help all Americans, even those who hate Biden. Then they laugh it up with digs about Biden’s age, gaffes, tripping, and so forth. Taking him down a notch “balances” the account.
Unfortunately, it also leaves the American public largely unaware of his historically unprecedented triumphs. And that makes the pathetic showing of Republicans less noticeable—again misleading the public about the true state of affairs.
A “balance” that ignores the truth is a stupid implement.
For youngsters in the audience, let me explain how old-fashioned balance scales work so you can better understand why the metaphor is so distorted.
A balance scale has two pans supported by a fulcrum. In one pan, you put the material you want to weigh, and in the other pan you put some standardized weights. When the pan to which you are adding weights reaches equilibrium with the other pan, you add up the standard weights and that tells you the weight of the material in the other pan.
This metaphor has been used shamelessly in politics for quite some time. We used to have something in the media call “the fairness doctrine.” It meant that television networks needed to provide roughly the same amount of time for Democrats and Republicans to make their cases on the airwaves.
Ronald Reagan’s FCC tried to kill the doctrine, but Congress passed legislation to codify it into law. Reagan vetoed the legislation, effectively extinguishing the equal time principle in the media.
Why were Republicans dead set against the fairness doctrine? Because it was clear to them that equal time was not enough. With only equal time, Democrats bashed their heads in. As I showed in my long series on the “principles” of “convervatism” (see a list of all the posts HERE), all “conservative” notions are rooted in fear. They are so warped that they get trounced in any fair discussion.
In order to obviate defeat in the public square and in order to continue to deceive the public about the essence of their “principles,” “conservatives” had to do away with the fairness doctrine and create an isolated media environment where their falsehood and lies cannot be challenged.
Be that as it may, the fairness doctrine was stupid to begin with. Republicans got trounced regularly when they had equal time because they had nothing to say that was valuable. It’s not good enough to “balance” political speech by providing equal time to each party. It matters what you put in each pan.
Standard weights are made of heavy stuff that is worthless. If you weigh gold against it, you don’t say that the standard weights have the same value as the gold. The fairness doctrine made that stupid mistake. It “balanced” the amount of time given to worthless Republican notions with the amount of time given to valuable Democratic ideas. You can allot equal time, but you cannot equate worthless with valuable.
Since the fairness doctrine was dropped, Republicans have had an unlimited amount of time to say whatever they want. They created their own media to exclude contrary arguments. This makes their corrupt notions stew and boil down to a virulent slurry of fear-filled falsehoods. So what they say nowadays has become much, much worse than worthless.
As I also showed in my series, nothing “conservatives” say has any positive value. Moreover, what they say is poisonous. The fear that dominates conservative attitudes generates distrust, arrogance, hatred, and violence. It infects every statement made by “conservatives.”
So, returning to the image of the balance, it’s not just that we have one pan of worthless stuff balancing one pan of valuable stuff. The pan with the worthless stuff is also infected with malignant and lethal poisons.
But that is not the only misuse of the “balance” metaphor by the press. The media don’t just “balance” valuable material with worthless and infected material. They then take both batches of material, mix them up, shovel the mixture out in front of the audience, and say, “Here. You figure it out.”
That’s a recipe for disaster.
And disaster is what we now have. Nearly half of the voting public actually thinks that “conservatives” have ideas when in fact they don’t. And, on top of that, they think they like those non-existent ideas.
As I have said many times, “conservatism” has no ideas. It has irritable mental gestures, like “small government,” “low taxes,” “tough on crime,” and “trans athletes.” These mental gestures are irritable because they are rooted in fear. When fear kicks in, people get edgy, defensive. If it continues, they get angry, aggressive. Since “conservatives” fear anything they don’t understand, they are edgy, defensive, angry, and aggressive almost all the time, because they understand almost nothing.
And this is why “conservatives” cannot generate any genuine inspiration. They have become so angry and aggressive that their deep-rooted fears no longer let them rest. Their frenzied hatred of “the woke” and their relentless crusade to undo all the civil rights advancements of last century are only two aspects of their now irrepressible fear.
This is the reason why the cruelty is the point. Being right is no longer even an option for “conservatives,” so the goal must be to dominate—truth, justice, and decency be damned.
It is so sad to be living in this time when only one major political party cares about saving democracy and justice. The other party is entirely devoted to fear, hatred, and domination. If an authoritarian can assuage their fears, punish those they hate, and dominate society, then they’re only too ready to throw out democracy. The sooner the better.
That’s why I’ve been looking for real inspiration these days. And recently, since it’s the time of year for graduations, I’ve been looking to commencement speeches. Coming as they do at the moment when young people are beginning their life-adventures in earnest, they are perfect occasions for positive inspiration.
Unfortunately again, too many commencement speeches repeat the tropes of achievement, success, wealth, and personal advancement. Too many never tell you that you can attain all those things and still lack meaning.
If you are looking for some true inspiration, how about this?
In the world in which we live, knowledge consorts with Strife; and the belief that knowledge is an unqualified good has precluded your seeking out the one force able to liberate knowledge from the dominion of Strife: Only Love can conquer Strife.
Only Love can render knowledge harmless. Only Love can transform thought and sensibility into wisdom and compassion. Only Love can bind the separate moments of existence into a whole, meaningful life.
This comes from a 1998 commencement speech called “Choose Love” by William Pastille. It’s available on Amazon Kindle for free if you have Kindle Unlimited. I think you will find it truly inspiring. And if you know any students who are graduating, I think they would find it inspiring too.
It’s too bad that “conservatives” inject their venomous fear into our society nonstop.
And it’s much worse that the mainstream press, with their stupid notion of “balance,” keeps helping them to do it.
Thanks, Tommy. I just fixed the link, or tried to. It works for me now.
Very insightful article. The link to Biden’s successes no longer works