On The Grave Concerns Of The Pundits And Talking Heads Being Nothing About Nothing But Their TV Careers

THE EXTENT TO WHICH the people who work in "journalism" are either compelled or feel compelled to stick to what they and their bosses think of as the most popular view of the military, of wars, has a lot to do with the conventional view of the end of America's involvement with propping up the failed Afghan government and the army which made deals with the Taliban and then melted away without a fight.  That myth includes the whole notion of "nation building" as what we do after the American military, the strongest and most well equipped on Earth, goes in and smashes things, which they can do quite well.  They can get rid of what is there at any given time, they cannot change a country or a collection of feudal states - what Afghanistan is - and turn it into little America.  If our media and the "pundit" class, itself a product of the media that elevates them to that stagnant and eutrophic guess pool, cared enough to learn from the recent history of that nonsense, they'd never have pretended that's what was going to happen.  They and the people who went into Afghanistan pretending they could create a freedom for women, for others in Afghanistan by setting up girls schools and establishing various schemes for setting women up in business in a few of the cities - where most people don't live, to start with, were setting up a small minority who liked that idea.  I feel sorry for those who get left behind and got targets put on their back, they are real tragic figures in this.  

The fact is the media, almost all of the pundits don't give the slightest damn about the people of Afghanistan, as is being documented, the media sure as hell did their best to largely ignore them as did the Bush II regime as soon as it got its real war of preference, the invasion of Iraq, another disastrous result by the feigned nobility of our pundit class and those it works for in Republican-fascist administrations.  They will use the plight of women, the horrors of the Taliban rule, the murders, especially if they are beheadings or stonings  or other picturesque, terror theater barbarities and the such.  Where was the coverage of the crimes of the Taliban in the areas they quickly gained power over all during the past 20 years?  I would guess the same nowhere in evidence  that their non-coverage of such things in acceptable dictatorships like Saudi Arabia or other Western created hell holes like Congo - Joe Biden goes down as the most honest American President of our lifetimes for his honest, plain-talk about that.  I can tell you one thing, I am not waiting for a post-presidency to say that about Joe Biden the way I did in expressing my respect for Jimmy Carter, I'm saying it right now. 

I am expecting this to be the turning point in the American media trying to do what they inevitably do with Democratic presidents, they tear them down in ways they never do Republicans no matter how bad.  Not in the past and not now when the only alternative to Democratic governance is Republican-fascist mob rule.  

No, I give the American media, especially that on TV and the radio and the internet the loathing that it has earned, with very few exceptions.  They are in the business of selling themselves, Jefferson's stupid view of them was based on having little experience of what they would soon become, though he may have had some slight knowledge of that during his own presidency.  Anyone who would prefer the thing it has become under "free press" absolutism is a tool of gangsters.