Lol, Buzzfeed

It's time to upgrade the Fake News shitstorm to a Category 4. That designation would imply we are a single increment in derangement from open calls of insurrection against the elected president, and inciting mob violence against the opposition. Perhaps there's one more step between where we are and the full extreme of partisan propaganda, but I don't know what it would be.

The first item of the week was a report by Buzzfeed that Trump had compelled Michael Cohen to lie to Congress. The left erupted into yet another round of "this is the end of Drumpf" predictions and renewed calls for impeachment. I first saw the headline on Reddit and responded with a simple "lol, Buzzfeed." As you can imagine, I was downvoted deeply into oblivion. Liberals encountering the comment would have been annoyed at its obvious bias and ignorance, and yet it was probably the most sober analysis given by anyone as the story was breaking. The technically correct response to any anti-Trump scoop that's breaking from Buzzfeed is "lol".

To their credit, some major outlets kept a bit of distance from it. Of course, they've been burned endlessly by these kinds of claims, and this one was no exception. In a truly remarkable scene of poetic justice, the story was refuted by none other than the Mueller team. We always love to see liberal fratricide, and watching the fake investigation chop the fake news at the knees was truly a thing to behold. Why they did so is a matter of debate, but I'd wager that Mueller knew that he'd soon be inundated with demands to prosecute the fake crime, so he quickly got in front of it.

The normal process unfolded. Outrageous claims backed by anonymous sources. Full spectrum meta-reporting, where the major outlets loudly trumpet the reported claims, while carefully adding qualifiers to maintain plausible deniability. An absolute avalanche of social media outrage coupled with vows from Democrat officials to pursue the serious allegations. Some examples of the reporting & editorials that came up in a news search:

• CNBC - Trump told his lawyer Michael Cohen to lie to Congress about Russia Trump Tower deal, BuzzFeed report says
• Bloomberg - BuzzFeed's Trump-Cohen Story Describes Clearly Impeachable Crimes
• Washington Post - Mueller Might Finally Have His Smoking Gun
• National Review - REPORT: Trump Told Cohen to Lie to Congress About Moscow Trump Tower Plans
• Townhall - Dem Rep: This Is 'The Most Serious Threat' to Trump's Presidency
• CNN - Republicans stay mum on bombshell BuzzFeed reporting

It's the usual thing. All outlets which ran sensationalist headlines - or cautiously ran the story but without strongly emphasizing that it was an unvetted claim made by a tabloid - share the blame for the latest fiasco. The problem isn't that Buzzfeed would print fake news. The problem is that all the other fake news outlets would amplify the report until it became the biggest headline of the month. There is no journalistic integrity in running sensationalist horse manure so long as you have a handy cop out for when the story is utterly destroyed the following day. It's a sad showing for even the morally bankrupt field of journalism when the winning argument in response to major breaking news is "lol". The result will be the same lasting disinformation. The majority of liberals on social media now believe that Trump compelled Cohen to lie, and no amount of reason or evidence will convince them otherwise. So, in some regards the operation was a success for the liberal outlets, as it further radicalized their audiences.

In other fake news, the new two-minutes hate has been focused on some Catholic high school kids attending the March for Life. Twitter is in a fury about white kids in MAGA hats who did not properly cower before some Indian protestors. Apparently, the footage has been cut to depict them as oppressing some hapless minorities, when the full footage shows that the smaller Indian group were the ones being confrontational, and they have a history of that kind of behavior. Styx covered it here (with his typical foul language). I normally try to link to Bitchute when I can, but this time it's out of necessity, because YouTube has removed the video as "hate speech." See for yourself. That's the political discourse these days. An analysis that effectively states "those conservative kids did nothing wrong" equates to hate speech. (They also believe family is an offensive term.) Meanwhile, the leftists on Twitter are doing everything they can to ruin these kids lives, by revealing their identities which they'll then leverage to try to get them fired from their jobs or have their college admissions denied, in addition to just the normal public shaming with national media support.

And that's why I say we're at a Category 4 for fake news. Instigating a virtual lynch mob is just one step from instigating a real lynch mob. Running clearly fake news to impeach the president is just one step from calling for open revolt. Remember what they say about how bankruptcies happen: slowly first, and then all at once. Don't fall into the comfort of believing any of this is remotely normal or maintainable, or else when it all quickly unravels we'll find ourselves muttering, "we should have seen it coming." We see clearly what is happening, and any lack of preparedness for the brewing storm will be our own shortcoming.