My wife and I were talking about how conservatives never learn. The specific individual in this conversation was not exactly a conservative, it was Jordan Peterson, but the point was the same.
Dr. Peterson recently granted yet another interview with yet another dishonest news media hack. Once again, for Peterson, who is unique in this category inasmuch as he has the mental capacity to intellectually destroy any idiot who foolishly attempts to out-brain him, it worked out OK. In fact he then wrote about how he’s conflicted as to whether these media foul-ups actually help his cause by exposing the louts for what they are, or hurts him.
But it rattled him enough write this blog entry:
Why I (stupidly (?)) agreed to an interview request from the Sunday Times
It’s a good read (and listen to his tape of the whole unedited interview for the actual truth!). But do note that you should not try this at home.
The lesson here is that even someone with Jordan Peterson’s smarts can slip-up and make this mistake (and then smack his own forehead); but while Peterson can then muse about whether it helps him or hurts him in the end, few if any other non-left-wing thinker, speaker, podcast host, columnist, or politician, can entertain such a conflict. There is no conflict. You simply don’t likely have the same ability to deal with news media hacks as Jordan Peterson does, and history shows it will not likely work out well for you.
But nothing seems to stop small and capital C conservatives (here and in America) from plunging into shark-infested waters and, over and over again, losing limb after limb. And election after election. To say nothing of the culture.
Anytime I see a Republican on CNN or MSNBC I cringe, waiting for all those barely semi-polite welcomes and clearly forced niceties to end, and the partisan daggers (and sneers, and smirks, and eye-rolls…) to come out and — bonk — metaphorically smash him or her over the head with some inane premise or hideously biased, leading question. Same in Canada as another hapless Conservative MP or candidate earnestly agrees to an interview on CTV, Global, or CBC, or with the Globe and Mail or whatever —and I sit there waiting for the smug, passive-aggressive, personal and political diminishment and sometimes total destruction to inevitably begin.
In almost every case on TV, it’s an all-too polite conservative up against three or more well-practiced, and well-informed left-wing hot-take ‘n bumper-sticker pros — plus the obviously left-wing host or anchor — which is an arrangement the media think is fair (and who could blame them?). Other times the questioner has the gotchas all quietly prepared, ready to pounce on the unsuspecting and almost always ill-prepared, meek conservative. Too often, the question is one already posed 900 times in the recent past (abortion, are you a racist, immigration, gender choice, hidden agenda, abortion, climate, Trump, gender equity, abortion, racist…) and even still, possibly rattled and feeling bullied and outnumbered — and that quixotic, dare I say idiotic need to appear polite — the defensive-sounding conservative fumbles despite a solid answer being readily available.
Left-wing media are piranha tanks where people on the Right are made out to be pariahs. That’s the game. They are not designed to be fair, there is no equity, no justice, no search for truth, no good faith, no good will; And the conservative loses by design. This may have started as the media’s hidden agenda (hey!) but the bias, bigotry — and apparent hatred in some cases (hi CNN) — is now so obvious that you don’t have to do the Jordan Peterson smack yourself on the forehead thing, the system smacks you in advance, saving you the trouble.
Given what has transpired over the last couple of months (and back over the years now, when we think about it honestly), why do so many conservatives still fully engage on Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube? Despite what we all know about these censorious companies — notably the now undeniable fact that they want you silenced, conservatives act as though they are magically immune to this left-wing virus. The truth is you are not vaccinated. You are not wearing a mask. You are not physically distancing. You don’t have an open window. And yet you walk into these rooms stuffed full of lefties you know to be infected. You’re doing everything wrong.
Just this week I got emails from the Conservative Party (“Who is Erin O’Toole?” — well if ya have to ask…), the National Citizen’s Coalition (“Click to watch “Feeling Stuck, Canada?”“), and others, pointing to their newest ads or videos or articles which they posted on…. Facebook. And Twitter. Forget them smacking their foreheads — they seem to be waiting for Facebook to bonk them on their heads for them! The best explanation is they’re waiting to get banned so they can make a stink… in the news media! Maybe they’re hoping to get deplatformed completely, thus enabling a cleaner and more victim-y break from those hellholes (which will then be utterly mocked by the media; rinse and repeat).
Various Liberals have appeared in thousands of interviews and appearances and articles on TV, radio and newspapers, blathering on (most often lying, obfuscating, deflecting, refusing to answer, rambling on about gender equity, etc.) about all manner of things of their choosing, or ever-so kindly asked of them. With all of the Trudeau Liberals’ corruption, scandals, and its numerous total failures, rendering Trudeau and his government among the worst in memory, the polling appears to show Canadians think the Trudeau Liberals are doing a pretty OK job and if an election were held today, the Liberals would win.
Bonk.
You can’t win this game when the game is so clearly rigged against you. The answer to this is not clear to me right now. Maybe it will be. But sometimes we just know what the answer isn’t, and in this case, it isn’t doing the same thing over and over again. I could vacation in China right now, but that, too, sounds insane to me.
PTBC was founded by Mr. Johannesen in 2000.
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