One of the first lessons our parents teach us as children is whom to trust and whom not to trust. The most consistent theme of these vital moral lessons of life is truth. People who are truthful are trustworthy, and people who are liars are untrustworthy. It's such a bedrock principle that no one would deny it. That makes the theme of this column all the more bizarre, because as a nation we have clearly been led by corrupted and untrustworthy people, and led by them to a destination of ruin.
The father of the murdered police officer in Boulder, Colorado, murdered recently by a Syrian émigré, was speaking in a national interview, and among the many poignant things he said was how his late son would be outraged that the media would use his death to advance gun control. The father pointed out that his son owned an AR-15, and was a staunch supporter of the Second Amendment, and its right of law-abiding Americans to own firearms.
The father's narrative was strong. It points to just another false narrative by the American media, working in willful cooperation with leftists political groups, to undermine liberty in America. It would be merely terrible if the lies ended there. But, the media's lies and distortions have reached an epidemic level, and have gone so far as to put the future of the United States in jeopardy.
Joe Biden held his first press conference this past week, in the middle of March, over five months after being elected President, and nearly two months after being sworn in to office. By comparison, Donald Trump held the first of many press conferences within a month of taking office, and held them immediately after the 2016 election. Normally, the media would conduct those first pressers with a soft and respectful approach, part of the so-called honeymoon period.
Trump never got a honeymoon. From the first, Trump was bombarded with accusational questions, many of the reporters barely even asking questions, but instead conducting ad-hoc editorial screeds, attacking Trump. Compare that to the treatment that Biden received.
Biden walked in to a press conference that had been carefully choreographed. The questions were all submitted ahead of time, and from those questions dutifully submitted, Biden's team selected those they deemed the most inviting, and prepared Biden for days ahead of time. The preparations included a now infamous paper with reporter mug shots, complete with the question that would be asked, along with the rehearsed answer that Biden would read in reply. The paper even included pencil marks, circled numbers, indicating the order in which these pre-selected reporters would be asked to announce their questions.
Too many Americans have traded their integrity for wealth and power, and in the process rejected the moral lessons their parents taught them about following the trustworthy and rejecting the untrustworthy. We have a deep problem in America, one that built up over decades, and one that will take decades to fix. It's no foregone conclusion that it won't end up destroying America. We should all dispense with the pretensions that we have not already risked the great American experiment.
Not even CEO's conducting shareholder meetings are given such amazing support. The Biden press conference was likely the most staged event in American Presidential history, teed up to a level unheard of, much less carried out. And despite all the preparation, how did Biden look?
In short, he was a national humiliation!
Not even the most ardent Trump supporter could bear to watch the ugly and embarrassing spectacle. Over and over, President Biden stumbled to find his words, despite those words being written down for him to reference. Often, the stumbling became so acute, that Biden had to interrupt his own answer as he simply lost his train of thought, as well as his command of his own previously rehearsed script. The entire world was treated to this mangled event, watching America being disgraced by such a dishonest and utterly destructive charade.
Put aside for a moment, how our enemies in Cuba, Venezuela, China, Russia, Iran, and those remnants of Islamofascists, reacted to it. Think of how our friends and allies reacted to it? The best thing about being an American is that far more people in the world love America than hate America, and most of those who hate America are either kept ignorant of America, or profit in America's failure. Mouths opened aghast across the world as Biden went on his pathetic public display. The entire world reacted, "How could America have elected such an incompetent boob to become President!' Indeed, most Americans must have wondered the same thing.
Therein lies the ugliest truth of all.
The American people, at least not in majority part, did not elect Joe Biden to be President. Joe Biden was elected by a three-year orchestrated smear and cheat campaign, one initiated shortly after Donald Trump tapped into the popular discontent that Americans had with America's federal government. Trump was elected over Hillary Clinton in 2016 because frankly enough Americans had become disgusted with Washington politics, a class of self-appointed bureaucrats who put their selfish interests ahead of the interests of the American public.
Trump was the answer to all that, the best choice Americans had to reverse the self-destructive path led by a group rightly termed, "The Washington Swamp." For all his warts, Donald Trump was at least honest and told the truth. You could believe what he said because what he said was not the pre-scripted, politically correct pabulum of the self-declared elite class. Donald Trump could stand before the assembled media for two straight hours and field dozens of fiery questions, and without notes, fire off fact-filled answers and maintain command of the room. That was leadership. And many in the American left hated Trump precisely because he could turn the lying media efforts against the media itself.
The "fake news" mantra was not invented by Trump, but he certainly took the label and made it stick to the media like the well worn corrosion that had long ago flaked off whatever integrity the media possessed. Now, with Biden having leveraged the bitter fruit of a years' long leftist campaign to sue state governments to enact gross violations of election laws, combined with a China virus unleashed on the world to cause a pandemic and global economic meltdown, allied by a corporate and social media industry that cozies up to dictators for profit, all girded by a media that destroyed all pretense of journalism, we now finally see the results of all that rotten corruption.
We see a President of the United States show the world he is a feeble old man, barely able to stand, and certainly unable to conduct difficult affairs with any degree of coherent leadership, much less competence. The criminally corrupt media, the Democrat national machine and its many willing surrogates, and the bribery of rogue governments like China, have brought America to its greatest crises in political leadership in national history.
The Washington Swamp, so fearful of losing its gravy train of personal fortune and power, had conspired with all these other corrupt institutions to put a figurehead into the Oval Office, bearing the office of President in name only. The Swamp and the leftists of America have the President they coveted. It took 70 odd unarmed Americans illegally storming the Capital Building on 6 January 2021 to cause some Democrats to recoil in fear. That's why the National Guard was belatedly brought in to ring the Capital, as well as barbed wire fencing erected to create what was termed Fort Pelosi. That was fear. But, vice react with wisdom, the Democrats doubled down on castigating millions of fed up Americas, questioning their patriotism. The same Pelosi machine now is trying to codify violation of the Constitution, protected by barbed wire and federal troops. Their latest efforts is House Bill 1, which if adopted into law would subordinate state election laws to the federal government, which clearly violates the Constitutional mandate that the state legislatures shall determine the place and manner of their various state elections.
Only rogue governments need protection from their own people. Fort Pelosi is a sad visual reminder of just how horrible our federal government has become. They think they need protection from us, and that is likely due to how much they realize their latest efforts undermine our Constitution, and place our liberties at mortal risk.
There are far more than 76 million Americans disgusted with the state of affairs in Washington DC. Those are just the ones who voted for Donald Trump in 2020. Many more may have hated Trump so much that they held their noses and voted for Biden instead, but still hold a nervous outlook on whether they made a foolish choice. After Biden's press conference, and the way the Democrats have treated recent criminal events, most have no doubt come to regret their choices for Biden.
Still, it took millions of fraudulent mail-in ballots to put Biden in the White House. The man who almost certainly won the election if only legitimate votes were counted, is living in Florida now, biding his time, and hoping the current group of incompetents in Washington don't utterly destroy America before we the people have a second chance to restore integrity and competence in our government.
Too many Americans have traded their integrity for wealth and power, and in the process rejected the moral lessons their parents taught them about following the trustworthy and rejecting the untrustworthy. We have a deep problem in America, one that built up over decades, and one that will take decades to fix. It's no foregone conclusion that it won't end up destroying America. We should all dispense with the pretensions that we have not already risked the great American experiment.
As a nation, we have chosen to follow liars, and we all now see clearly why our parents taught us what they did.
-- Ken Stallings
This column is copyrighted under provisions of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) and all rights are reserved. Please do not re-transmit, host, or download these columns without my written permission.