Gaslighting About the Gaslighting
Jonah Goldberg as self-anointed Defender of His Journalistic Vocation
Some reporters could have covered Joe Biden’s age better. But there was no massive media coverup.
Until this year, I had not been closely watching the day to day commotions of American politics, full of sound and fury signifying nothing. However, as a way to unwind, I had taken to watching clips on human follies and foibles on YouTube. President Biden has become a popular subject, not only on conservative American sites, but as far afield as Italy, Israel, India, and Australia.
There were abundant incidents wherein Biden extended his hand on stage to the phantoms in his mind or robotically recited the words on a teleprompter, such that “stage directions” were also recited. One of my favorite larks was when the White House Easter Bunny was sent in to save Biden from engaging with the pre-selected audience ad lib. That was back in April 2022.
Normal rules of evidence suffice to indicate Biden’s loss of acuity even prior to this year. Yet, mainstream media mostly went along with the ruse that Biden was compos mentis. When individuals or news agencies questioned the prescribed script, MSM piled on them as Far Right hacks.
When Robert Hur, the special counsel who deposed the president, said that the president was not fit to stand trial and therefore chose not to bring charges, the media described him as a tool of the Republican Party and character assassinated him.
Besides the Hur Report (February 8), who was caught between a rock (Biden as culpable) and a hard place (Biden as incapacitated), an extensive WSJ report of his decline behind closed doors (June 6) was likewise repudiated and scorned by the MSM as a Republican hit piece.
The G7 incident (June 13), wherein Biden wandered off from the photo shoot to address other parachutists and was gently redirected back by Italian PM, Giorgia Meloni, not unlike the White House Easter Bunny in 2022, was dismissed as a deceptively edited video. Some versions of the incident were. However, the telling point was in the reactions of the other G7 leaders, European classiness disguising their private belief that Uncle Biden was cognitively diminished.
MSM echoed the White House denigration of the Hollywood fundraiser incident (June 16), wherein a ‘frozen’ Biden was guided off the stage by Obama, as a “cheap fake.” Again, the telling point laid in Obama’s action.
But the gold, silver, and bronze medal for shameless sycophancy goes to Joe Scarborough, in a paean, not only evidentially false but which ridiculed the common sense and common experience of the commons. How is this ferret still on the air?
I'm about to tell you the truth. And F--- you if you can't handle the truth. This version of Biden intellectually, analytically, is the best Biden ever. Not a close second. And I have known him for years.
A common stratagem by sophists is to cast doubt upon each particular incident (and then claim that incident fully discredited). However, it is in the composite picture of these multiple artifacts that a conclusion of Biden’s mental deterioration can be reasonably reached.
Some self-anointed Defenders of the Vocation have taken it upon themselves to prove that there was no massive media coverup. Such will thrash for those rare examples among mainstream media which demonstrate that “age” issue was considered. But in framing the issue in terms of “age,” rather than in terms of “mental acuity,” there is intentioned deflection from the true issue. George Will, who is older than Biden, may not be as sharp as he once was. Yet, he is still able to cobble together a complicated, careful, and coherent argument ad lib.
Some journalists kept their integrity. In almost every age, there shall exist rare birds whose psyche cannot countenance living within the lie. My argument, however, is that an overwhelming majority of pundits and their patrons accepted the prescribed Narrative, sometimes out of cowardice.
This fealty does not need be a conspiracy, especially if everyone within a given media organization shares a fervent, “my side, right or wrong” loyalty to the Party, who thereupon asperse every leader from the opposing faction as some reincarnation of Emmanuel Goldstein.
Capitalist Conservatives have likewise thrashed the wilds to find and promote persons from humble means, who by their wits and grit, rose to wealth, status, and/or prominence. The optimates (“best men”) of the late Roman Republic likewise brandished novus homo (i.e., Cato the Elder, Cicero) and gave them greater visibility. In each case, these examples of social mobility were celebrated in order to sustain the legitimacy of the existing regimes, even as they became rarer near the end.
Exceptions are not proof of the general reality.