It pains me to say this, but CNN is right.
Alright, well, not completely right, but in Brian Stelter’s post-2024 election piece titled Trump’s return to power raises serious questions about the media’s credibility, he makes a surprisingly lucid point about the demise of the mainstream media. Stelter somehow managed to correctly critique the absolutism with which the right celebrates this phenomenon. Stelter invoked one executive’s comments about the issue: “A Trump victory means mainstream media is dead in its current form. And the question is what does it look like after.” This implies the broader question behind the trend, which people claim began the minute Trump was elected in 2024.
Well it is “after,” and I’m afraid the Right has not done enough to restrain the rhetoric it pronounced dead just a few months ago.
In my 12 years of being eclipsed by Liberal propaganda in my New York public high school system, I have come to observe that the “Adolf Trump,” systemically racist, we’re-all-gonna-die diction that legacy media outlets parroted for years is far from dead among today’s youth.
Being all of my social circles’ token Conservative, I am often the kid my peers come to when they have a question about my beliefs or theirs. I know the territory this responsibility comes with, and I welcome inquiries at quite literally any time of the day.
Knowing this, one of my friends took advantage of my openness. A few mornings ago, I woke up to this text (slightly altered for anonymity and grammar):
“Hi.
Today I woke up and read the news.
It made me remember a conversation (about totalitarianism) in [school].
Cuz right now, our country is kinda looking like 1933 Germany in my opinion…”
6:31 A.M.
Based on the omitted parts of the text, I knew she was talking about Trump’s immigration policy. I responded:
“Tell me when you’re [available] and ready to call because you’re falling right into the trap the media wants you to, and it’s not good to be afraid like this. Let me explain what’s happening from my point of view. I hate when people are scared like this.”
This is not the only instance I have experienced this level of distraughtness from a peer. It genuinely concerns me. Like all of the other conversations I have had, my goal was not to win my friend over and hang up having convinced her of Trump’s greatness, but to simply show her that we are not, in fact, parallel to 1933 Germany.
I believe I accomplished my goal, as I got her to concede that she does not seriously believe that millions of people will be targeted and exterminated in death camps in the next ten-or-so years. But in my inevitable time of reflection after the encounter, I could not stop asking myself one question.
“you’re falling right into the trap the media wants you to…”
What media? Yes, CNN still runs through the night, and Tim Burchett still cleverly humiliates his pursuers on Capitol Hill, but my friend surely isn’t watching any of that. The mainstream media is dead, for all intents and purposes, of course!
But if it truly was dead, no one would lie tangled in webs of folly my friend still seems to be caught up in. We would all be free thinkers, for sure!
What media?
Social media. Social media is the new mainstream media.
Like a serpent, Leftist ideologues have simply shed their cable-network skins and grown into a new skin to infiltrate the minds of the upcoming generation. Instead of the venom flowing through the mouths of Don Lemon, George Stephanopolous, or Kaitlan Collins, it now flows through the mouths of Harry Sisson, Dean Withers, and Hasan Piker. Not enough has changed to truly dance on the grave of the Leftist news narrative. Twitter may now be a place of free speech and expression, but Google still overwhelmingly favors publications like The Atlantic and The Guardian, whereas in the search itself a user would need to clarify “Daily Wire” in order to see anything remotely right wing.
What media? Educational media is the new mainstream media.
For various reasons, I am not explicitly in favor of or against the idea of schools discussing politics in the classroom, however because this now happens on such a wide scale, compared to decades past, our classrooms have become places of (likely) indoctrination. I myself can attest from personal experience that in instances when a teacher is trying to be unbiased, even the words he may use still taint the scope of public school discourse. Additionally, (as was well asserted in another recent piece) the materials used in the curricula are heavily—and covertly—biased.
In the dawn of the technological age, there will always be some adaptation of the mainstream narrative we have long been familiar with. As it mutates from cable television to 30-second-attention-span-destroying clips to whatever future medium of communication technology lies in our future, the politically correct narrative pushed by power-hungry elitists will never see a true death, and hyperbolizing its end will certainly not help our cause. Does this mean we are finished? Will the omnipresence of this Orwellian Newspeak forever eclipse our attempt at subjecting the public square to rational debate?
There is no clear-cut solution to this ever-enduring issue, but it doesn’t mean that we should lapse in our attempts to find one. We are not finished. With diligence, we have the power to weaken the narrative. We will never be finished, because that objective is too grandiose for us humans to reach. This imperfect world is forever flawed, but the best we must do now is to continue speaking our minds, representing our philosophy, and remain happy warriors in our fight to save the republic.
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