The mainstream media is helping Trump kill us. pic.twitter.com/G3MccVt9ez
— Oliver Willis (@owillis) April 5, 2020
I have to admit, though, that this genuinely makes me wonder how our current corporate media would have reported on various stories throughout history given their current tendency to normalize what, for my money, is insane. And I wonder if it would have gone something like this:
In 1553, Mary Tudor ascended to the throne as Queen of England. In an attempt to reunite her country with Rome and Catholicism (having broken with Rome under her father Henry VIII, who formed the protestant Church of England), she declared the marriage of her parents valid (Henry’s marriage to Mary’s mother Katharine of Aragon was declared invalid, initiating the break from the Catholic Church). Mary’s husband Philip of Spain (also Catholic) persuaded the British Parliament to repeal Henry's religious laws, thus returning the English church to Roman jurisdiction.
Reaching an agreement to reinstitute the Catholic Church in England with Rome took many months and Mary and Pope Julius III had to make a major concession: the British monastery lands confiscated under Henry were not returned to the church. However, by the end of 1554, an agreement with Rome was finalized, and, adopting a new tone, Mary revived the Heresy Acts, in which numerous Protestants were executed, including Thomas Cranmer, the imprisoned archbishop of Canterbury under Henry.
The absence of a strong national government in 1932 Germany prompted two influential politicians, Franz von Papen and Alfred Hugenberg, along with several other industrialists and businessmen, to write a letter to German president Paul von Hindenburg. The signers urged Hindenburg to appoint Adolf Hitler as leader of a government "independent from parliamentary parties," which could turn into a movement that would "enrapture millions of people." Hitler ran against Hindenburg in that year’s presidential elections, and though Hitler lost, he emerged as chancellor after two further parliamentary elections—in July and November 1932—had not resulted in the formation of a majority government.
On 27 February 1933, the Reichstag building (home of the German parliament) was set on fire, possibly by members of Hitler’s National Socialist (or Nazi) Party. Adopting a new tone, at Hitler's urging, Hindenburg responded with the Reichstag Fire Decree of 28 February, which suspended basic rights and allowed detention without trial. The decree was permitted under Article 48 of the Weimar Constitution, which gave the president the power to take emergency measures to protect public safety and order. Activities of the German Communist Party (KPD) were suppressed, and some 4,000 KPD members were arrested (and yes, somehow I think we remember what happened in the years that followed, right?)
After the end of World War II, the U.S. continued their military assistance to Chinese nationalist leader Chiang Kai-shek and his Kuomintang (or KMT) government forces against the People's Liberation Army (PLA) led by Mao Zedong during the civil war. Likewise, the Soviet Union gave quasi-covert support to Mao by their occupation of north east China, which allowed the PLA to move in en masse and take large supplies of arms left by the Japanese's Kwantung Army. To enhance the Red Army's military operations, Mao, as the Chairman of the Communist Party of China, named his close associate General Zhu De to be its Commander-in-Chief.
Adopting a new tone in 1948, under direct orders from Mao, the People's Liberation Army starved out the Kuomintang forces occupying the city of Changchun. At least 160,000 civilians are believed to have perished during the siege, which lasted from June until October. PLA lieutenant colonel Zhang Zhenglu, who documented the siege in his book “White Snow, Red Blood,” compared it to Hiroshima: "The casualties were about the same. Hiroshima took nine seconds; Changchun took five months." On January 21, 1949, Kuomintang forces suffered great losses in decisive battles against Mao's forces. In the early morning of December 10, 1949, PLA troops laid siege to Chongqing and Chengdu on mainland China, and Chiang Kai-shek fled from the mainland to Formosa (Taiwan).
With all of this in mind, I thought I’d present this as a Sunday meditation, seeing as how we’re not able to attend services (or at least, we shouldn’t be anyway, until we’re over this COVID-19 thing).
Update 7/21/19: This, in response to another nutso, alleged "press briefing" by Our Traitorous Orange Pustule today...
THE NOTE: The president is displaying a new tone and a new level of engagement, after aides and allies have pleaded with him to recognize the gravity of the moment, @rickklein writes. https://t.co/8giw8IfiE3
— ABC News Politics (@ABCPolitics) July 21, 2020
1) called it a China virus 2) wished an accused sex trafficker well 3) will not commit to more money for testing. So, New Tone!
— Brian Schatz (@brianschatz) July 21, 2020
No questions about the reports of the Russian bounties on our troops in Afghanistan (here).
Currently, we're at about 140,000 dead from COVID-19, the world's worst site of the pandemic (here).
And 22 million jobs were eliminated during the pandemic with some coming back I know, though at this moment, that's threatened by more Repug stalling from #midnightmoscowmitch about additional help for those who need it (here).
Our utterly useless corporate media really never will learn.
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