I actually do recollect seeing the movie of that name and a mildly amusing venture it was, into speculative political fiction; a whole war generated out of thin air by an unholy cabal of scheming bureaucrats, a conniving segment of the entertainment industry and a tame media, eager to be spoon-fed an appealing story if it would goose ratings by a point or so … and all in the cause of burying a political scandal involving a US president by setting up a war, with a hero and a theme song and cheering crowds and all. The movie was based on a book by Larry Beinart – weirdly enough, I also have a copy of it on my shelves. The book is much, much darker than the movie, but the premise is just as improbable; the national news media and the Industrial Entertainment complex going all in to generate and publicize a war with the aim of re-electing a Republican president at the bidding of and through dark money provided by a Republican eminence grise? Talk about the suspension of belief necessary to find that concept credible; not even with a bucket truck and one of those enormous construction cranes used for high-rise projects …<!–more–>

I thought at the time that both novel and movie were a diverting trifle, but really – was the national news media really that transparently credulous? I was an innocent in those days. Not so much the innocent after seeing the Tea Party protests and rallies being viciously calumniated solo and chorus by the entertainment and mainstream media. My cynicism dial was turned up to eleven, following that experience. Yes, they are that transparently credulous and incurious regarding any apparent contradictions between what they are spoon-feed and what is going on before the lying eyes of the rest of us. Now they are doing the same kind of group character assassination on those who refused to get a vaccination or a booster vaccination for the Chinese Commie Crud, or who object to anti-white racism taught to our children in the public schools, or who do rather like earning a living at a small business without being looted and burned into bankruptcy.

Now in this lamentable century, where anything goes in the established media, even if it seems ludicrous at first or second glance in comparison to reality. We are seeing a concerted effort on the part of our national establishment media to vanish the rising cost of practically everything at the grocery store; who are we supposed to believe, the establishment news media and the Brandon administration or the evidence of our lying eyes? We’ve had two years of the Chinese Commie Crud, with masks, lockdowns, mandatory vaccinations, and requirements for vaxx passports – so what if the dreaded Covid plague didn’t quite become the 1918 Influenza epidemic, or the medieval Black Death, either. It still provided an opportunity for bureaucrats and elected officials of an authoritarian bent to let their inner dictator out for a romp, and for the establishment media to do their best to scare the snot out of everyone. It’s becoming plain that the Commie Crud wasn’t a tenth as deadly as it was all made out to be, early on. A lot of us besides Canadian long-haul truck drivers are as tired of it as we can be, and likewise tired of being called racists and fascists for saying so. Can the news media go on wagging the Commie Crud or the inflationary dog for much longer? What other media tails are trying to wag the reality dog? Discuss as you wish.