Conservatives Sell Their Souls to Trump Over Media-Bashing

In the conservative commentariat and intellectual classes, the deal with the devil that is Trumpism seems increasingly complete. Stalwart conservatives who for years—in some cases decades—defended the principles of limited government, personal liberty, and strict adherence to the Constitution have hiked their skirts and dropped their panties, swooning as Big Donnie Trump talks dirty to the media.

In a depressing twist, many members of my party and ideological persuasion have become advocates for Donald Trump on a scale that ranges from grudging to toadying, for a simple reason that seems to overwhelm all other factors: He attacks the media. Many are willing to forgive almost any sin because of it.

All it took to break the spirit of far too many in the conservative class was for Trump to leaven his deranged, autocratic rantings with “fake news” and “duh librul media” bait to compromise the ideals and credibility of a large swath of the conservative firmament. People who think of themselves as being smarter than the average bag of hammers are missing that they’re the just the latest victims of the Trump Con.

We now routinely see a formulation something like this:, “Well, Trump isn't perfect, but at least he's attacking the media.” It's the haute-bourgeois pleasure of watching someone else to do your dueling.

For decades, the rallying cry on the right was: “If only we could overcome the liberal media monoculture, the truth and strength of our ideas would finally break through. If only we could really be heard on economic matters, on foreign affairs, and on race, the Republican Party and conservatism would finally get a fair hearing in the minds of the American people.” It wouldn’t have to be a zero-sum game of replacing one set of biases with another; the rightness of our ideas would carry the day.

But in a White House press room that includes staff “writers” for Infowars and Breitbart in press conferences, the Trump Administration isn’t looking for up-the-middle coverage; they’re looking for partners in the fake news explosion that helped Trump win the election. Conservative writers and thinkers who look away from the creepy authoritarianism, apocalyptic religious war fantasies, lavish corruption, overt economic statism, and general ineptitude simply because Trump snubs the established press aren’t doing the movement any favors.
Let’s be clear; the mainstream media deserves a kick in the ass so hard they reach orbital velocity for their professional missteps, insularity, ideological blinders, vast self-regard, and occasional outright malice against conservatives. However, as a justification for every one of Trump’s failings, reveling in their misery falls wildly short of the mark. It’s certainly not enough for the movement once graced by the ideas of Burke, Hayek, Kirk, and Buckley to sell so cheaply.

It’s not an argument for mainstream media malpractice, Obama, Clinton, social justice silliness, George Soros, or the Pentaverate to say that imitating the worst behavior of the liberal elements of the national media doesn’t honor the ideals we claim to serve. Instead, it makes a mockery of our ideas if we believe our a Trump-centric media monoculture is a positive outcome.

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2017/02/14/conservatives-sell-their-souls-to-trump-over-media-bashing.html


More to read on the link

Bashing the media.  Will it bring down the media, or will it bring down the Republicans?

There's a limit to what you can sell.  Facts are facts, and people just don't buy Alternate Facts.  There was a school of philosophy that tried to sell this notion.  It was called Idealism:

Google wrote:In philosophy, idealism is the group of philosophies which assert that reality, or reality as we can know it, is fundamentally mental, mentally constructed, or otherwise immaterial. Epistemologically, idealism manifests as a skepticism about the possibility of knowing any mind-independent thing.

The obvious response: Try walking off a cliff, if you don't buy reality.  Remember when this was the thesis in the film The Matrix?  Still haven't tried it?

No one else will try it either.  That's the reason why the world of the Alt.Right will ultimately fail.  Facts are facts, and no one is jumping off the cliff to try to disprove it.

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof;

... or abridging the freedom of speech,

or of the press;

or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

- the First Amendment to the United States Constitution