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Nov. 10, 2016 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin
22:04
The State of the Media After Trump #DrainTheSwamp
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I've got some really bad news, my dudes.
It looks like our Lady Hillary has actually lost the 2016 presidential election to he who must not be named.
If you're anything like me at the moment, you're going to be despondent.
You're going to be really downcast.
You're going to be in a low place.
There are going to be actual tears when you think about how this didn't work out the way you wanted.
I mean, I know that the last two elections, we've had a Democratic candidate, but this time we didn't get the Democratic candidates.
And that's really bad.
I mean, I literally cannot even.
It has to be a joke.
I cannot believe this is happening.
I'm literally about to fucking kill myself and I'm not kidding.
You better fucking fix this shit right now.
I literally am gonna die.
I need an ambulance.
I can't believe it.
I'm serious.
I need the white supremacist capitalist patriarchy to come and take care of me right fucking now.
Because I was in the process of smashing it.
And god damn it, if it didn't resist me at every turn.
I'm really upset.
I can't.
I can't do this.
This is not fair.
So what I'm going to do is get together with a bunch of my friends and go out and burn the American flag because I didn't get the candidate I like.
So fuck America.
But you know what?
That didn't make me feel any better.
I'm still really pissed off.
Really pissed off.
So what I'm going to do is go on Twitter and see if there's anyone I haven't blocked yet and see if any of them care about the fact I'm upset.
Oh yeah, this looks like my kind of hashtag.
Fuck Donald Trump.
Yeah, I'm fucking with you, buddy.
I'll never say the words President Trump, no matter how technically accurate they are.
Damn right we can cancel all our classes.
Duh.
We're mourning the death of our values here.
The values we thought our country stood for, even though we are the ones actively saying we know our country doesn't stand for these values because it's a white supremacist capitalist patriarchy.
Oh my god, yes.
Yes, absolutely.
I am definitely blacking up for Twitter.
I am definitely doing this.
I mean, this is just solidarity with the poor oppressed peoples around the world.
People oppressed by the white man.
The evil white man like my dad who wouldn't give me the extra money I wanted.
God, I hate the white man.
Mm-hmm.
Donald Trump made America hate again.
I can't believe it.
Retweet.
You know, I feel like my feelings are more important than what's like actually going on.
So I'd really like it if people could take my feelings into account before they make their decisions.
Because that would make me feel really good.
And if you don't, you hate women, you misogynist.
I tell you, America is just so full of hate.
It's just so full of hate.
It's just like those fucking white men, those evil straight cisgendered white patriarchs who are just, they're just awful.
I just hate them in every way.
I hate everything about them.
And I just, I just kill all men.
Hashtag kill all men.
Just come on.
Wouldn't it be better if there just were no white men around?
You know what?
A revolution is coming?
I think they're right.
I think they're absolutely right.
I mean, we just need to smash the patriarchy, man.
And just like give out everyone's stuff.
And like, everyone will have all the same stuff.
And that'll stay constant forever.
That's a totally viable plan, isn't it?
I mean, that's sensible.
That couldn't go wrong.
I mean, how could anyone come to any harm?
I mean, people are all biologically identical.
There is simply no difference between any single person.
So there's no need for anyone to have anything different.
And anyone who disagrees with our perfect system can just be shot because they'd be an oppressor.
They are actually the people who voted for bullying, hatred, and misogyny.
It's actually like a public service to shoot these people.
I do not support the not my president movement.
We are a constitutional what of a what?
No blocked.
I don't see anyone blaming the Democrat Party for nominating the most corrupt candidate.
Well, no, fucking block.
Double blocked.
You're not my president, cry babies, fail to realise you're back.
The most corrupt candidate fucking right wingers.
Why are they caring about corruption?
Fuck's sake, there's more important things like misogyny, dicks.
Fucking hell, blocked.
Say, when the top trending hashtags are not my president, America is over party and America Kaka, it's obvious that this is not what America wants.
Fucking, yeah, fucking like and fucking retweet that.
This is how democracy is meant to work.
What is trending on Twitter?
If it's not trending on Twitter, it's not what America wants.
Doing it by like counting votes is fucking fascist.
That's how fascists win.
That's how he won.
It's fascist.
Today I woke up in fear for my Hispanic and black people, America KKK car.
I think they're going to come for the blacks and Hispanics.
I'm really worried.
I'm really worried that there are going to be like right-wing death squads just marching through the streets.
Just frog marching black people back to Africa or something.
You know, people shouldn't be fearing for their lives while he's thinking about the future of the country.
I mean, this is practically fascism.
I mean, this is what Hitler did.
He became the leader of a country and then he exterminated all the Jews and that led to the creation of Israel and then the Jews started exterminating all the Palestinians.
This is getting me really worked up.
I'm going to have to find out more.
I'm going to have to go to the one source of reliable news on the entire internet.
I'm going to have to go to BuzzFeed.
Muslim Americans fearful that Islamophobia is a winning message.
I'm frightened.
I am petrified.
They're going to kill all the Muslims.
Lots of LGBT people are horrified at the prospect of a Trump presidency.
What do I wear to the conversion therapy clinic?
Is the guy who administers my shock treatment cute?
Should I shave my legs?
They're going to murder lesbian and gay people and obviously trans people as well.
People with disabilities are expressing disbelief that Trump is president.
If I met Trump, he'd be happy to mock my disability.
Imagine what he'll do to people like me.
He'll probably put them through a meat grinder or something.
God, could this be real?
I mean, these people feel like Donald Trump is about to exterminate them or something.
Like he's about to just kill all the Muslims, the gays, and the disabled in America.
Like he's going to send around right-wing, jack-booted death squads to round them up and march them into, like, oh god, oh god.
I think I can hear them coming!
God, that was a weird dream.
Anyway, so Hillary lost.
Well done, America.
You actually managed to fight the machinery of the Clinton campaign and win.
And on hardly any budget either.
So it just goes to show that if there's a will, there's a way.
And what I really, really am enjoying from this is the media backlash.
You're awake, by the way.
You're not having a terrible, terrible dream.
Also, you're not dead and you haven't gone to hell.
This is your life now.
This is our election now.
This is us.
This is our country.
It's real.
Oh, we're not just awake.
We're properly woke.
The media has found themselves in an interesting position, where their candidate that they had backed and colluded with in order to try and make her president of the United States is not the president of the United States.
Thanks to WikiLeaks, this election cycle, we were privileged to have a remarkable amount of information about the inside goings on in not only the Hillary Clinton campaign at the top, but the DNC and their connections with the media.
And it was just utterly incestuous.
It was exactly as bad as you would expect it to be, if not worse.
And so it's at this point where you've got to look at it and go, right, okay.
The media's overwhelming support of Hillary is unnatural.
She is too corrupt.
Any journalist worth their salt would be tearing chunks out of Hillary left, right, and centre because she is exactly the kind of person an adversarial press would attack instead of defending.
Even the people who didn't see the WikiLeaks releases knew there was something rotten about this relationship.
They knew it was weird.
They know that she is the establishment candidate.
And they know that journalists are supposed to attack the establishment.
Everyone can see that the media's relationship with the public is backwards.
They don't care about the people they're reporting to, who give them their money in exchange for this reporting.
They care about the people they are reporting on, and in many cases just attack the people they're reporting to.
This is absurd.
And this has caused the media and the politicians to, in the Democratic establishment anyway, to find themselves in a bubble where they have effectively become detached from the conversation that everyone else is having.
And so as a result, the media did totally miss the mark on this one.
Which led to certain papers printing out, Good Morning, Mrs. President.
Now, if that were me, and I was backing a candidate that I thought was a surefire win, there's literally, like, I mean, Donald Trump at some points was like 1% chance to win the election.
And so, if I thought that this candidate is so overwhelmingly likely to win, and I make a bunch of plans with the certainty that this candidate will win, and then they lose, I don't know about you, but I would be reassessing almost everything about my worldview.
I would be going back to the things that I thought I knew, and I would be analyzing them in depth and from as objective a point of view as I could to try and establish exactly why I had misread the situation so drastically.
But of course, that is not what the left-wing media are doing.
They are instead freaking the fuck out.
From the Huffington Post.
America has done what seemed unthinkable.
Donald Trump is the next president.
From The Guardian.
The Guardian view on President-elect Donald Trump.
A dark day for the world.
An American tragedy, says the New Yorker.
Alright, chaps, I don't actually think you are quite partisan enough yet.
I don't really believe that you are true leftists.
So what you need to do is change all of your headlines to Donald Trump is a Nazi.
Because if you thought for a second anyone reading this thinks there is a shred of objectivity within any of these papers, you are fucking wrong.
Only 6% of your audience actually think that you might be telling the truth.
Seriously, that should tell you something.
And if we're not just blatantly doom-mongering, we're suddenly concerned about the integrity of the Republic.
President Trump, a colossal failure for democracy and our terrifying new reality.
Really a failure of democracy?
Actually sounds like Trump is a successful democracy.
Oh, and I love this.
The Republic repeals itself.
Do you have any indication that Trump has done anything to disrespect the democratic process?
Do you have any indication that he's done anything to try and undermine your republic?
Because we have evidence of Hillary doing that sort of thing.
But get a load of Paul Krugman.
The US election was rigged against Hillary Clinton.
Are you fucking serious?
It was rigged against her, was it?
Must have been all that media bias in favour of Donald Trump.
Must have been all that collusion going on with the RNC.
Fucking what are you saying?
Let's ask the Independent, how President Donald Trump will wreck the world economy?
Fucking hell.
We should probably just throw him out of office right now, shouldn't we, Independent?
We might not have cared about any of this while our chosen candidate was cheating her way to the top of the Democratic Party, but now it's a really important thing.
We didn't care when the Project Veritas videos came out that the guy literally said, well, there's vote fraud going on all the time from the Democratic Party.
They bust people around to commit vote fraud all the time.
This is something endemic to the system.
You didn't give a shit then, but oh my god, now?
Now?
But unsurprisingly, the Guardian takes the cake again.
This is a terrifying moment for America.
Hold your loved ones close.
Are you... Are you serious?
Are you fucking serious?
Like you've just elected Sauron or something.
Oh, and don't forget that Donald Trump's racism will stretch American democracy to its breaking point.
And this hatred we have not seen since Jim Crow.
I mean, we're practically back to the time when black people were second-class citizens because Donald Trump has been elected and we totally know what we're fucking talking about and we're not lunatics.
But has anyone thought of the women?
I don't think they have.
I think someone needs to think of the women, don't they?
How America failed women.
What does the US election result say about misogyny?
It means, of course, that every girl knows how Hillary Clinton feels right now.
I mean they all know what it's like to be a warmongering sociopath who has cheated her way to the top only to be pipped at the post by a complete twat.
But the real question, and I don't think you've really considered this, is how is Jessica Valenti going to tell her daughter that America elected a racist sexist bully?
Because when you have characterised your opponent to this degree, their victory might well seem like the end of the world.
I mean if you genuinely believe all of the shit you're saying, and I've got no reason to think they don't, then yeah, they might genuinely think this is the fucking end of the world.
But this is because they are fucking nuts.
They have been trapped in their echo chamber for such a long time, they've talked themselves to the edge of this cliff, and now Trump has won, they've just decided to fucking jump.
They have of course decided to totally double down on everything that got them into this position in the first place.
And the position that they're in is a really, really bad one.
As I understand it, Donald Trump and the Republicans now control the presidency, the Senate, and the Congress, with Trump likely to appoint at least one, if not more, Supreme Court justices.
This is why Lacey Green is freaking the fuck out and saying things like, We are now under total Republican rule.
Textbook fascism!
Fuck you, white America!
Fuck you, you racist, misogynist pieces of shit!
She seems to actually believe she is living in some new version of Nazi Germany.
That Donald Trump is some new Hitler, and that he's about to commit a genocide.
I think these people are too deep into their own ideology to be able to accurately assess what's happening and why.
And I don't think they're ever going to listen to the real answer when it is so much easier and more convenient for them to call you a racist or a misogynist or just tell you that you're a piece of shit, even though they don't know you and don't know anything about you.
I would like to put it to the left-wing media that you as a class have lost all perspective on what is going on and you are freaking out and making the problem worse.
I don't think that Donald Trump is actually a misogynist.
I don't think he is actually a racist.
And I don't think he is actually a fascist.
I think you people are ridiculous.
And I think that the general public thinks that too, which is why Donald Trump just got elected, you morons.
But I know what you're going to say.
Am I so out of touch?
No, it's the children who are wrong.
I was going to mock a bunch of fat, ugly celebrities who had pledged to move to Canada should Donald Trump win.
Not Mexico for some reason.
And instead I've decided I'm not going to waste my time.
There's just no point.
I'm going to talk about Wikileaks.
Now, Wikileaks and Project Veritas as well, but mainly Wikileaks.
Wikileaks was a major thorn in the side of the Clinton campaign, and I really think it was responsible for a lot of damage done to her public impression, her image, the optics of Hillary Clinton.
When she is being investigated by the FBI because of Wikileaks information, or the Clinton Foundation is being investigated by the FBI, because I think it was from Wikileaks information.
It just looks terrible for Clinton, to the average person.
It just looks awful.
Why is she being investigated by the FBI?
Jesus Christ, I don't read WikiLeaks, but...
No, I'm not...
God, she's awful.
And to a normal person, she'd probably have just been another corrupt politician, which is certainly not a selling point, because that's really, I think, one of the main things people are really sick of.
But it really helped out with sort of alternative press that were prepared to dig through these emails and actually discover the evidence of wrongdoing.
And that, I think, was, again, another just huge blow.
But more importantly than that, even if that didn't affect the wider public, it was really important for us to understand how they work.
To have the machinery laid out before us.
I mean, it was just such an amazing thing to have.
Historians will be so pleased Wikileaks exists.
And I really think that they have done a fantastic job of holding power accountable.
And I guess ultimately that's what I'm concerned with.
Holding power accountable.
And for the longest time, it's been the regressive left and their cronyism and cohorts in various industries that they're prepared to infect.
And so it's been important to keep them accountable.
But now, I'm sure we're all aware, the Republicans are back in the saddle, and Donald Trump is the man who must be held accountable.
Now, this doesn't mean that I'm going to produce nothing but content that denigrates Donald Trump, although if he does something silly or outlandish or frankly openly wrong, then I will of course be critical of that.
And it's important to remember that the Regressive Left, they've suffered a defeat, but they haven't been destroyed.
They are rallying as we speak.
If you look at every single media outlet, they have got a new narrative.
We're going to rally our forces and fight this.
We're going to fight this all the way.
I mean, it's going to be difficult for them to do that since they've pretty much ceded institutional power to the Republicans, but they're still going to propagandise the people.
I don't know how well that's going to work, but we'll see how it goes.
But what I'm saying is they are still a powerful force, and I think they are more dangerous than Republicans.
But the Republicans, as I said, do now hold the institutional power, and so it is definitely worth holding their feet to the fire when we can.
And I think it's really worth proposing something now.
I think that if Donald Trump genuinely wants to drain the swamp, as he said on his campaign, one really good way of starting would be to offer a pardon to Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, and I'm not sure if he can pardon Julian Assange.
I'm not sure if he's been charged with any crimes in the United States, but offering a symbolic pardon may be a really, really good gesture.
The fact that these people have been punished does create a chilling effect where other whistleblowers are afraid to come forward because they can see how the people who have done this have had their lives ruined.
And I would really like to get their lives unruined because they did us a great service.
They all have.
We wouldn't know really key information if it wasn't for these people.
And I really think that if Donald Trump is committed to draining the swamp, to getting rid of this corruption, encouraging and supporting whistleblowers is the way to do it.
Donald Trump actually pardoning these whistleblowers would make me think that he might actually be serious about draining the swamp and tackling corruption rather than just using it as a convenient piece of campaign rhetoric.
I really think this is worth pushing in Trump's dystopian New World Order.
The only way to properly tackle corruption is through disclosure to the public of things that they need to know.
These people have done that.
This is why Donald Trump is president.
There is every reason to fight for this.
We should be keeping our public servants honest, and the only way we can do that is by Forcing them to be
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