(Editor’s note: The following is excerpted from a chapter in the recent book, “Unmasked 2020: Colorado’s Radical Left Turn and a Warning to America”)
Edgar Allen Poe died in 1849 at age forty, just four days after he was found deliriously wandering the streets of Baltimore. Five years before his untimely and unexplained death, Poe wrote of a traveler vacationing in southern France in the Fall of 1844. This unnamed traveler thought the opportunity to visit “too good to be lost” as he passed near a “Maison de Sante,” one of France’s infamous insane asylums, or, as the traveler translated to English, “a private mad-house.”
In his essay describing the experience, The System of Dr. Tarr and Professor Fether, Poe’s unnamed traveler is shocked to learn of a recent, severe change in the operation of this Maison de Sante. Their uniquely original practices such as no punishments of any kind and rare confinements, which had spread throughout the country’s private asylums to tremendous acclaim, had been eliminated. The superintendent, Monsieur Maillard, had returned to traditional “treatment” methods, which included physical punishment, restraints, separation and confinement. The traveler, who had heard through his “medical friends” in Paris that this “system of soothing” was universally adopted throughout the country, told Maillard, “I am very much surprised at what you tell me; for I have made sure that, at this moment, no other method of treatment for mania existed in any part of the country.” Maillard replied, “You are young yet, my friend, but the time will arrive when you learn to judge for yourself of what is going on in the world, without trusting to the gossip of others. Believe nothing you hear and only one-half that you see.”
When it comes to Colorado’s mass-media machine, that advice is, hands-down, a no-brainer!
The Inmates Have Taken Over the Asylum
My research to find the origin of the quote “the inmates have taken over the asylum” led me back only as far as the 1920’s. Though Poe never uses the phrase in that 1845 story, which is built around that premise, I could find no earlier examples of the concept. If you substitute “win-at-all-cost radical leftists” for “inmates,” and you believe that left-wing government and its supportive mass-media machine are the inmates’ modern asylum, as I do, then you will understand my point below.
In Colorado in 2020, intelligent observers already know the inmates have indeed taken over the asylum. The radical left primarily controls the reins of governmental power and does so in partnership with the state’s mass-media machine.
In March 2020, Democrat Governor Jared Polis seized legislatively designed (and the lawyer in me argues, unconstitutionally created) “emergency” powers under the 1984 Colorado Disaster Relief Act. He acted in response to a dangerous and, at the time, largely unknown disease, a “coronavirus” which had originated in Wuhan, China.
As an aside, according to the mass-media machine, this disease can only be called COVID-19 lest you, I, and especially the President of the United States, be deemed a racist for reminding anyone of its undisputed origins in China. This stricture is rigorously enforced despite the fact that, in January, news outlets considered mainstream, such as MSNBC, CNN, NBC, NPR, Bloomberg, New York Times, Los Angeles Times, Washington Post and, yes, Colorado’s Denver Post, all referred to the Chinese and/or Wuhan Virus countless times.
Use of such location references was common in all media up to and during January 2020, until Democrats seized the virus’ name as another “blame-it-on-Trump” campaign issue. All these news outlets now decree that, during the run-up to the re-election effort of Donald J. Trump, use of words such as Chinese, Communist Party, Wuhan, grouped together or individually and added to the word virus, indicate (no, conclusively prove!) that the speaker is a racist. Nonetheless, I call it the Chinese, Communist Party, Wuhan Virus in order to remind people, not that the good people of China are responsible for unleashing it on the world, but that their Communist Party rulers are.
In responding to the Wuhan Virus pandemic declared by the federal Centers for Disease Control, Governor Polis used his self-determined emergency powers to decide which Colorado businesses were “essential,” such as marijuana dispensaries and abortion clinics, and which ones were not and, thus, could be ordered closed. By August, the Governor had unilaterally extended these “emergency powers” for over five months with no end in sight. He had expanded these powers from closing or restricting businesses and ordering people to stay home, with certain exceptions, to ordering people, including children eleven years old and up, to cover the lower half of their faces in public, decreeing that bars that don’t serve food must shut down, and mandating that restaurants who serve alcohol cut off adult beverage service at 10:00 pm (then a month later, 11:00 pm) — and damn well be able to prove it should government inspectors or armed liquor enforcement agents decide to inquire. Apparently, even as the Wuhan virus gets older, it’s not able to stay out later. But you are. Your King has decreed it.
Under the Disaster Emergency Relief Act, the Democrat-majority state legislature could, with or without a few votes from the Republican minority, pass a joint resolution to end the Polis emergency declaration. Under the Act, the Polis emergency declaration was to last only 30 days. However, without a joint resolution from the legislature or a successful court challenge (currently, the seven-member Colorado Supreme Court is made up of six Democrats and only one Republican appointee), Governor Polis can extend his unilateral decision-making every 30 days, indefinitely. (Note: Some legislative Resolutions require a two-thirds “super-majority” vote, but in the case of the statute giving the Governor special emergency powers, only a simple majority is required. Not too surprisingly, the Democrat majority in the Colorado General Assembly has thus far declined to exercise that option).
As we will explore below, and admittedly with occasional exceptions, in the Queen City of the Plains, the television media I grew up with, along with our only remaining “major” newspaper, the Denver Post, are content to, using the Chinese Communist Party Wuhan Virus name “restrictions” as just one example, primarily toe the Democrat Party line. Every day from April to August was filled with reports of the number of “cases.” Minimal analysis, or even straight-up reporting, was offered regarding favorable trends, such as a declining rates of new cases, hospitalizations and deaths. Why wasn’t it front page or TV/radio headline news that, according to the Colorado Department of Health and Environment (CDPHE), as of August 28, 2020, over five full months into the pandemic:
- Almost 90% of the coronavirus-related deaths in Colorado are people age 60 and over, even though the 60 and over age-group comprises only 20% of Colorado’s population and 19% of the cases?
- That 53% of deaths are age 80 and over, even though that age group is only 3% of the population and fewer than 5% of the Virus cases?
- That the millions of Coloradans under age 40 have experienced less than 1.6% of the virus-related deaths?
- That institutional living (nursing homes, assisted-living centers) is the riskiest, most dangerous environment for contracting and dying from the disease?
- Why is there not a news focus on the fact that Colorado has abundant, available medical treatment options?
- That the $66,000-per-day cost of the never used, Polis-decreed “Colorado Convention Center emergency hospital” has been shrunken from 2000 beds to 250?
And so much more. Why no in-depth coverage of the horrific social and economic consequences of the Governor’s five-months-and-counting “emergency orders,” which are destroying our state’s economic and social fabric every single day?
I’m not talking about the political fights over extended unemployment, initial food shortages in food banks, and the Left’s insatiable need for more social spending. I’m talking about front-page or newscast leading stories about the ongoing destruction of Colorado families’ life-long dreams.
In a rare exception to the focus on case numbers, on August 11, 2020, the Denver Post reported on the front page that, according to the Colorado Restaurant Association, 62% of the restaurants in Colorado will close forever within six months under current or worsening conditions. Many are already gone (Morton’s Steakhouse downtown, The Fresh Fish Company after over four decades, C&C Coffee Kitchen in Castle Rock to name a few) and other small businesses are seeing similar disasters.
These and other predictable and preventable social and economic consequences do not arise from the fact that we’re dealing with a novel virus, one which is primarily dangerous to elderly, ill, and confined persons. The virus did not cause these severe dislocations and human tragedies. They arise from the Governor and his health experts’ exercise of and preference for unilateral control, their tunnel-vision focus on numbers of cases factored into ineffective, inaccurate, and sometimes non-existent modeling. And, in the opinion of many, the Governor’s actions stem from a clear understanding that if life returns to normal and the economy begins to hum too soon — that is, before November 3 — Democrats will pay the price on election day.
It is undeniable that the current and worsening economic conditions referred to by the Post are being caused by government actions, not by the health impact of the Wuhan Virus. Outside of a few conservative talk radio stations, web sites, small newspapers, and news aggregators in Colorado, there is no focused reporting or analysis of these other critical, and one might say opposing, trends and factors by the major print and electronic media.
Using the definitions of the terms I laid out above, it is clear that the inmates have taken over the asylum. As a result, believe nothing that you hear and only one-half that you see.
We Did Not Arrive Here by Accident
Anyone who’s uncertain of the brilliant, simple strategy that brought Colorado to this place, and hasn’t already done so, should read a book published a decade ago in 2010, The Blueprint,How Democrats Won Colorado and Why Republicans Everywhere Should Care, by Adam Schrager and Rob Witwer. It is the story of the planned takeover of Colorado state government by a group of four multimillionaires who began coordinating their political funding and endorsements, and their financial support for a network of progressive non-profit organizations, way back in 2004. One of those four innovative kingmakers was Colorado’s current Governor, Jared Polis.
Over the past two decades, Conservatives and Republicans have been out-planned, out-played, and out-spent by people who are now permitting and, in many cases, embracing an effort to win a presidential election through orchestrated chaos.
Who profits most from the planned downsizing of the dynamic growing economy Colorado and the nation were enjoying at the end of February 2020? Before our Governor let “health experts” take over managing our economy, did we see such chaos, pessimism and desperation? Before the Governor assumed nearly unlimited emergency powers on March 11, 2020, and set our economy on “self-destruct,” did we see Marxist-run mobs attacking police officers, citizens and the State Capitol, anarchy in our streets, cancel culture, and paradoxically, virtually limitless government power, all supported by the most activist, corrupt, coordinated media myth-making machine in history?
21st Century technology makes such coordination easier now than at any time in history. Once the desired messages for the news cycle, or the election cycle, are selected, variations of the same themes can be produced in a matter of minutes and shared with hundreds of thousands, even millions, of people in a matter of seconds. Multiple independent assessments of story choices from hour-to-hour and, day-to-day news story logs, make unassailable the fact that the most well-known TV and print media outlets lean to the left. Newspapers and television news departments are entitled to have strong opinions and political biases; it is the uniformity and echo-chamber effects of this uniform Leftist bias that is subversive to the goal of a well-informed public.
Talk radio remains the single, strongest opposition to leftist media dominance. The most successful conservative outlets and effective shows make quite clear that they are presenting opinions, not masking their opinions under a claim of neutral observation or simple presentation of facts.
As demonstrated by the massive collapse in 2010 of Air America, the largest commercial effort that tried to compete in the talk radio marketplace from the Left, Liberal radio just doesn’t cut it on its own. Left-wing NPR Radio has managed to survive, but only at taxpayer expense.
The Corrupt Coordinated Democrat Media Machine
So, what shall we call this focused, effective, disastrous media machine? In a 2012 article, columnist Mike Paranzino identified and dismissed several options. “Mainstream media” or the “MSM” isn’t accurate. He pointed out that pornography is far more popular than NBC or the New York Times, but that doesn’t make it mainstream.
In a 2019 Gallup poll, only 26% of Americans polled identified themselves as liberal, with 35% conservative and 35% moderate. In other words, by almost 3-1, the liberal view is still the minority view in America. But, because liberals control entertainment, media and, sadly, so much of the education system, they convince themselves that they hold the popular view, use their platforms to persuade people who aren’t dialed into the same, and work overtime to dishearten conservatives into believing that we are out of touch with real America, “their” America. It’s a tactic, an effective one, and one we must overcome at election time and beyond.
How about Drive By Media or State Run Media, Rush Limbaugh’s favorite designations for the liberal media machine? I have to admit, I chuckle when I hear them, but I don’t really know what Drive By Media means and, when Republicans are in charge, State Run Media doesn’t really apply.
Denver talk radio legend Mike Rosen, who always made it a point to tell you where he sat before he told you where he stood, referred to “them” as the Dominant Liberal Media, as I recall, and was always quick to remind us that public regard for this predominantly lefty media was at historic lows. It still is, as local liberal news stations, especially on TV, compete for a piece of an ever-shrinking pie and the more conservative cable TV channel, Fox News, continues to dominate programming with often as many as nine out of ten of the top-rated shows in the Neilson ratings.
Newt Gingrich has favored the term, Elite Media, which I guess can create some disdain in the everyday person, the working schmo (or schmo-ette) who feels controlled or snubbed by those “betters.” While each of those names have one form of appeal or another, none of them pack the punch that’s required. We need a name that reminds us, especially now in the midst of lefty media’s, round-the-clock Trump Derangement Syndrome during the run-up to the November election, just how much bias “they” bring and, potentially, how much damage “they” can do. We have the tools at hand to understand, confront, and expose them such as talk radio, instant access online to information, video, alternative opinions and more, and social media for sharing if we’re willing to do the work. But, often, time is short and something pithy can make the difference. If you have ideas, I hope you will send them to me.
In the meantime, I’m going with the Corrupt Coordinated Democrat Media Machine. Not short enough to be pithy, perhaps. But, again, if the shoe fits….
Have we always been prey to a Corrupt, Coordinated, Democrat Media Machine in Colorado? No, in fact, it is a fairly recent arrival. As a Denver native born in 1959, it was the norm growing up for our Rocky Mountain News to be delivered in the morning and the Denver Post to be delivered in the afternoon. I knew nothing then about Republican versus Democrat political viewpoints, conservative versus liberal perspectives, editorial license, or competition for the news consumers’ dollars. I thought that a morning paper explained what happened the night before and an afternoon paper described what happened earlier that day. It wasn’t until much later in life that I learned that the Rocky Mountain News was started in 1859 as a weekly broadsheet (the same newspaper style as the Denver Post), was Colorado’s oldest newspaper and perhaps Colorado’s longest running business, and that the co-publisher of the first edition was a woman who accompanied the printing press as it rode on an oxcart from Omaha, Nebraska to the part of the Kansas Territory that would eventually include Denver.
I had no idea, then, that the Denver Post, self-described “Voice of the Rocky Mountain Empire,” was originally the Evening Post starting in 1892, then the Denver Evening Post. It was actually founded to stem the departure of Colorado Democrats from the Democrat Party over the presidential nomination of Grover Cleveland (because Cleveland disfavored the Federal Government’s purchase of a critical and profitable Colorado asset: silver). Go figure!
The only distinctions I really drew at the time, as a comic strip connoisseur and “paper boy” delivering the afternoon Post from the huge canvas bags hanging from the front of my bicycle, were that that the Rocky’s eventual tabloid style was much easier to manage than the Post’s broadsheet design and that Sundays seemed to be a competition to see which paper weighed the most. But, as the inability of the news market to support two newspapers inexorably led to the demise of the Rocky Mountain News, the paper always considered the more conservative of the two, the distinctions in perspective became much clearer.
Eventually, in 2001, the two newspapers tried combining resources with both producing a daily paper during the week and, for the weekend, the Rocky only publishing on Saturday and the Post only publishing on Sunday. They each provided a single page of editorial content for the other for their weekend versions. The two editorial staffs had a healthy battle of ideas each weekend and the political leanings of each became much clearer. When the two daily, one-weekend model failed, the last Rocky printed on February 27, 2009, and only the Denver Post was left standing. The speaker of the Colorado State House at the time, Democrat Terrence D. Carroll said, “I’m afraid of the echo chambers that are emerging because more people are choosing to get their news only from sources that reinforce what they want to believe.”
The Denver Post did, and still does to some small extent, provide a forum for some conservative perspectives on its opinion pages. However, what is tolerated as permissible speech and presentable ideas is wildly divergent depending on where within the political spectrum one resides. It is perfectly acceptable in the editorial section of the Post for lefties to justify, if not celebrate, the defacing and destruction of historic buildings and statues or the burning of cities in the name of social justice and the “right” to rip perfectly healthy human babies from the womb of their mothers right up until the time of their birth. But, a conservative columnist, Jon Caldara, who dares to express the simple and scientifically unassailable idea that there are but two biological genders, male and female, can — and did! — find himself relieved of his role as a rare voice of opposition to the leftist drumbeat.
Outright falsehoods, like the claim that President Trump supports white supremacists because he said there were good people on both sides of an event in Charlottesville where a young woman was killed by a supremacist, are repeated so often that they become part of subsequent stories and are treated as fact. President Trump was referring to people arguing for and against the removal of historic statues, not to people engaged in violence, and he expressly and emphatically said so.
A reporter provided what was presented as news coverage in the Denver Post of a July 19, 2020, Pro Police Rally in Denver’s Civic Center Park, where Denver police were ordered to stand by and not interfere as domestic terrorists, who announced their intentions publicly several days prior in a “Stop the Pig Rally” posting, caused property damage and physical injury to participants. They prevented police supporters from even completing the Pledge of Allegiance and one patriotic song. I was the emcee for this rally. The reporter called me and quoted me accurately. But, in the title to the story, the reporter described the patriotic event and the criminal attack as “dueling rallies.” When I personally told her that describing the attack this way was outrageous, her only response was that “(a) story commentator also raised that objection. Thanks for the feedback.” But the misleading reference was never changed.
As a full-time conservative political activist and part-time talk radio host, I am probably more focused than most on shadowy story manipulations, intentional or otherwise, that occur in news reports every single day. Often, those of us who still use radios flip through our favorite stations, especially at commercial breaks, but may stick around after a good tease about an upcoming guest, story, or news headline.
A hot topic for conservatives this election season is voter fraud. One single word can completely spin a “news” story about a Tweet or comment by President Trump. For example, on July 30, 2020, President Trump tweeted: “With Universal Mail-In Voting (not Absentee Voting, which is good), 2020 will be the most INACCURATE & FRAUDULENT Election in history. It will be a great embarrassment to the USA. Delay the Election until people can properly, securely and safely vote?” Provocative? Sure. Stimulative of strong opinions across the political spectrum? Certainly, and I would say intentionally so. The left says there is no evidence of significant voter fraud. Yet, to those on the right, voter fraud is well-documented in, for example, a non-exhaustive study by The Heritage Foundation. This single analysis identifies almost 1300 cases of voter fraud which resulted in nearly 1200 criminal and/or civil penalties, including some in Colorado.
The Democrat push for all-mail balloting systems to be set-up in all states as a response to the COVID-19 virus and an increased understanding on the right of strategies such as ballot harvesting and endless recounts to a desired outcome create a reasonable basis for skepticism, inquiry and debate.
A news report on the President’s Tweet could fairly say, “Today in a Tweet, for the first time President Trump posed the question about whether this November’s election should be delayed as a result of voter fraud.” Yet, in countless stories, including television, print, or network feeds and local reads by radio news reporters, the “reporting” was: “Today in a Tweet, for the first time President Trump posed the question about whether this November’s election should be delayed as a result of unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud [emphasis added].” On August 25, 2002, in an AP story printed on the front page of the Denver Post about President Trump’s concerns around election integrity, the author refers to Trump’s “unsupported concerns.”
That happens so frequently, so casually, that we barely notice it. The honest news reporters and, especially, the casual viewers and listeners, don’t begin to understand just how much we are being played by the tiny number of companies (6) that control the vast majority of the mainstream news today and have for some time.
There is a relatively new online news and opinion source in Colorado that I have had great hope for. It’s called the Colorado Sun and it has an opportunity to be a provider of significant original content rather than reprinting so much copy from liberal sources such as the New York Times, the Washington Post, AP, etc. as the Denver Post, with a skeleton crew, is forced to do.(Don’t get me wrong. The Post is forced to use stories from other sources, NOT to insure they come from the same highly partisan sources).
In a very timely piece for me as I finish writing this chapter, on August 25, the Sun did a story entitled “How Colorado Republicans Transformed from Never-Trump to Trump Loyalists in Four Years.”
As one of the state’s Ted Cruz delegates to the 2016 Republican National Convention who opposed Donald Trump, I don’t care that I wasn’t interviewed for the piece. Those that were interviewed expressed their current positions well. But, with only one exception among the interviewees, none of us were actually “Never-Trump.” I always described myself at the time as “Barely Trump” once Trump became the nominee. As the article helped explain, Donald Trump was an unknown quantity for conservatives prior to his election, so many of our votes were cast in opposition to Hillary Clinton. President Trump has delivered on so much of his promised conservative agenda that he has won a vast majority of us over.
The nuances between the different 2016 delegates, such as Never-Trump versus Barely-Trump, may not have been significant to the interviewees or the author of the piece. But it is fascinating to note that, in the daily newsletter that goes out in an effort to draw attention to their stories from the day before, The Sunriser, following a teaser paragraph from and a link to the Trump loyalist story, has 4 bullet-point references to other “related” stories:
1) “This year’s attendees to the RNC from Colorado say the limited in-person event has been “spectacular,” a story from their publication. (OK.);
2) “Night 2 of the convention was “another tsunami of untruths” from the president and other speakers, according to fact-checker” from the Washington Post. (Oh, really?);
3) “The Trump administration is also under fire for using the powers and assets of the federal government as props for a political campaign — a form of corruption that could be a violation of the Hatch Act” from, you guessed it, the Washington Post. (Is there a pattern developing here?); and
4) “The RNC pulled a speaker after she tweeted an anti-Semitic rant yesterday [emphasis added], but still featured a speaker who said it would be “smart” of police to racially profile her adopted “brown son” and endorsed a “household voting” system that would take votes away from wives,” from Politico and the Huffington Post. (Am I “paranoid” if someone really is following me?).
How do you explain phrases like “dueling rallies” and “unsubstantiated” or “unsupported allegations” in a “news” story, and story groupings like the one I just described, without concluding that the bias runs deep in those organizations?
I am told by people who have studied the history of journalism in America, and a brief review confirms, that partisan newspapers are nothing new. But their partisanship was clear for all to see. They didn’t pretend to be what they are not, balanced. The new thing that allows them to get away with it now is lack of competition. Throughout the latter 19th century and well into the 20th, most large cities, not unlike Denver, had dueling Republican and Democrat newspapers. Well into the late 20th century, Sacramento had the Democrat Sacramento Bee and the Republican Sacramento Union. Washington, DC had both the Post and the more Republican Washington Star well into the ’60s. Phoenix had the more Democrat-leaning Phoenix Gazette before the Arizona Republic became the sole source of newsprint. But today, in most large cities, few such competing voices have survived.
Meet Kyle Clark
As further evidence that you should believe nothing you hear and only one-half that you see, I will leave you with an example from a popular local television figure.
Kyle Clark is a news anchor on the NBC affiliate in Denver, Channel 9, KUSA, and the host of Next with Kyle Clark. Next is described on its Facebook page as “like the news . . . only new.” At times, Clark provides commentary, which is clearly defined as such, and he is active on social media. Of course, these are both appropriate venues for presenting his opinions, causes, ideas. His Twitter feed is a good place to ascertain where he stands politically (as is mine and, hopefully, as is yours if you have one).
A meeting I recently had with Mike Lindell, the recovering methamphetamine addict, profoundly successful creator of the My Pillow line of bed and bath products, and a strong supporter of President Trump, got me thinking about a prime example from Clark which exposes his smug, elitist views. When Lindell decided to devote his production facilities to making personal protection equipment during the height of the Chinese Communist Party Wuhan Virus, television networks covered the press conference announcement. Lindell, who attributes his drug sobriety to welcoming God into his life, encouraged people to read the Bible during his remarks.16
In response, on March 30, 2020, Clark tweeted: “TV Networks are airing a My Pillow commercial. Ok” followed by “The pillow guy is explaining how America must turn back to God and praising the President.” The disdain drips from the post, and many of Clark’s Twitter followers picked up on it, even called him on it.
For people of faith, Lindell’s remarks were affirming and reassuring, a reminder of a higher power that promises a better day and the opportunity in America, greater than anywhere else in the world, to create our own rags-to-riches tales. For non-believers, at the least, the remarks were quaint, rendered with kindness, and without condemnation. This is but one example, but the derision flowing from the simple tweet exemplifies how elite know-it-alls, like Clark, view those of us who see Lindell as a fallen, now inspiring, American, God-praising success story.
Perhaps Clark could celebrate a different rags-to-riches story, even one that attributes redemption to faith in God, so long as it doesn’t involve someone who also happens to support Donald Trump. Regardless, his political biases explain his scripted reporting of a recent news story. On the 57th anniversary of the iconic and eternally profound Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” speech, a march was planned by a leftist group that was also protesting the police shooting of a wanted felon in Wisconsin, Jacob Blake. Blake was shot while resisting arrest on a felony warrant for sexual assault, domestic violence and trespassing, and climbing into a car with his three young children. The resulting riots literally led to massive fires, destruction and some deaths in Kenosha, Wisconsin where the crimes and subsequent shooting occurred. Nationally, similar protests are becoming increasingly violent as the 2020 presidential election nears, with people being injured and killed, police being disobeyed and attacked, and businesses being ransacked and, sometimes, burned to the ground.
As a result, citizens are organizing all around the country, including here in Colorado, to protect life and property, and to stand resolutely and, if needed, forcefully against the violence. One such organizer is Colorado native and Marine John “Tig” Tiegen, a survivor and hero of the 13 Hours in Benghazi and a security and use of force expert. Tiegen put out a call for citizens to make themselves available for the Jacob Blake protest and be ready if the leftist mob was, again, intent on mayhem. In reporting the story on “Next” the night of the affair, Clark took great pains to describe Denver’s “peaceful protests” during the day (the destruction almost always comes after dark) before quoting a protest organizer, who was warning people to go home because of “potential right-wing violence in the streets tonight.” These were not Clark’s words as he was quoting another. But he provided no context for why military heroes might organize with other citizens to, as Tig described it, “protect what’s OURS!”
It’s perfect, if you’re a leftist: devious, subtle, effective. The hero becomes the bad guy for anyone who is not paying attention. Your local news anchor, hard at work.
Conclusion
We must become more proactive and interactive with our media if we don’t want to one day soon find ourselves living in a 21st Century, real-life version of George Orwell’s prophetic 1984. Make some noise. Think it through before you do so it is much more than just noise. Letters to the editor, emails and social media posts that point out hypocrisy, bias and falsehoods, and speaking powerfully through your own circles of influence are critical. A fair and honest media, or at least adequate competitive and citizen voices to expose the biases and outright falsehoods of “the other side,” are some of the most important mechanisms a free society has with which to hold their government accountable.
The story of Colorado’s Corrupt Coordinated Democrat Media Machine driving the leftist agenda to election day and beyond warrants a book of its own. With only a chapter here, I have provided you with some examples that I hope will, at the very least, remind you to assess the biases of the news sources you rely upon and, hopefully, to think about your own:
- What assumptions are you making when you take a news story you read or hear at face value?
- Should you get on your computer and take a look around for some additional or competing information or perspective?
- Did the story you’re formulating an opinion around or relying upon for a decision you might make–like voting–omit key facts or lack significant context?
- Were some of those smooth, seemingly benign words or phrases like “unsubstantiated” allegations or “dueling rallies” slipped in to change your perception of events?
- Did the smiling news anchor selectively quote a leftist “fearing” “right-wing violence in the streets” but not tell you that the citizen defenders organized only after our Queen City, and some of her citizens, had been beaten to a pulp, repeatedly, for months?
- What will you effectively do to counteract it and to encourage others to do the same?
One can never go wrong leaving with quotes from former President Ronald Reagan who, during National Library Week in 1981, said, “If we are to guard against ignorance and remain free, as Jefferson cautioned, it is the responsibility of every American to be informed.” Long before that, in 1964, in his prophetic and must-watch “A Time for Choosing”18 speech, then Hollywood actor Ronald Reagan reminded us that “(t)he trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant, it’s that they know so much that isn’t so.” The seemingly innate desire of concerned citizens to be accurately informed is an essential trait to the maintenance of a civil society, and one that is being hyper-utilized by the Corrupt Coordinated Democrat Media Machine to flood us with INaccurate, often misleading information.
It’s happening 24 hours every day because the inmates have, in fact, taken over the asylum. We let it happen. But, it’s not too late for our precious Colorado. Get involved. Do your work. Recruit others to help spread the word. Vote like the future of our state is depending on you, because it is. And, from this moment forward, believe nothing you hear and only one-half that you see.
Randy Corporon is a Colorado attorney and political activist
