Is the selection of President an Illusion of Choice?

The globalist neo-liberals were confident that Hillary Clinton would win the Presidential election. They were stunned and surprised by the Brexit vote, then equally and perhaps more surprised by the election of Donald Trump.

The coastal and Washington elites control a major part of the regular old school press. (1) There is merely an “illusion of choice”for the news. The press claims to not be biased, but only the deluded or naive believe that anymore. Those reporting the news won’t admit to being neo-liberals or operators for the globalist agenda. The special “pet” press members were secretly invited to private dinners with Hillary Clinton to get their marching orders. (2) “We need to be elevating the Pied Piper candidates so that they are leaders of the pack and tell the press to (take) them seriously.” (3) (4)

The elites thought that through the media they would as usual control the minds of the population and attempt to control the electoral process. They could move a story or bury a story and push their agenda. The purpose was to manipulate the voters  to consider the wildcard candidates, including Donald Trump, as valid candidates when in actuality the candidates were just straw men for Hillary Clinton to knock down in her eventual victory.

Meanwhile the Democratic National Committee was secretly maneuvering their party to make sure Hillary was their nominee and used the press to push down Bernie Sanders. Hillary made sure to round-up a number of super delegates in her pocket.

Wasn’t America already pretty great?

Donald Trump tweeted and spoke at his campaign rallies. The press covered every outlandish statement and twisted other statements to make them appear even more outrageous. Trump didn’t even have the support of the Republican party and was treated with contempt. Trump still kept rising to the top of the polling numbers and other Republican candidates dropped to the side. The press was glad, as well as appalled, when Trump won the Republican nomination. They thought that Trump was making it easy and there was no way that Hillary could lose now.

MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 17, 2016

Trump went from being a Pied Piper to a Jack-in-the-Box who couldn’t be  kept in his box. Trump did end runs around the main stream press with his tweets. The main stream media kept covering his every word, as they had been instructed. He could yank their chain with a politically incorrect tweet and dominate the news feeds. The media became his puppet and the Trump train kept rolling on.

Infowars.com or ‘Washington Post’ or Aunt Betty?

Alternative news sources also emerged as a player. There are more options now, even beyond conservative talk radio. Comedy shows are even a news source for knowing about trending topics. Foreign news is accessible now on the internet, which can give a broader perspective. The control of the news slipped away and people were biased, jaded and just not listening.

Trump’s nationalist, pro-America stance resonated with many in middle America.

The distrust of main stream media was apparent to anyone paying attention. The elites talked to themselves reading “The New York Times” and  “The Washington Post” and “Financial Times”, which all require a paid subscription. Do the elites actually think they are talking to anyone but themselves with these newspapers? Fewer people were reading any newspapers, much less newspapers requiring paid expensive subscriptions. Even for reputable news organizations there is a failure to report the real news. Many merely parrot a trending story. Filling 24 / 7 airtime or website content streams ends up with endless speculation as filler and jumping onto stories without proper vetting. The news has lost credibility by their lack of quality, which only leads to further loss of viewers and readers.

Fewer get their news from television or the networks. More people have “cut the cable” completely, so no one is even listening. On the internet the filters of search and social media used to do targeted advertising also help mirror back views. People end up in their own bubble, including the politically correct liberals staying in their own safe zones where Hillary would win. People in the big cities and in Washington are not hearing the stories of real people outside their own bubble zone. If people step outside their bubbles, then they do so only to mock and ridicule the other bubbles.

The media establishment, let’s face it, we do live in New York, Washington, and in Silicon Valley and Hollywood. That’s the west coast and the east coast.

Judith Miller (member Council on Foreign Relations) (5)

The elites thought maybe the race could be close, but convinced themselves that Hillary had her “firewall” states. She would surely get as many votes as Obama. She would win women and non-whites. She would garner the support from co-opted Bernie Sanders voters. She must win because she had worked so hard for so long and she “deserved” to be President. It was her turn after all.

http://memeshappen.com/media/created/it39s-my-turn-to-be-president-Bill-promised-me-meme-30717.jpg

The Donald Trump / Mike Pence ticket was labelled racist, sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, and xenophobic. Anyone considering voting for him were considered ignorant “deplorables”. The main stream press dug up recordings from 10 years ago and old New York tax returns. They pulled out the stops to find dirt or insinuate dirt, which included that he was in the pocket of Russia’s Putin. Meanwhile Trump would mock the press and his deplorables loved him for it. He continued to draw large crowds while Hillary couldn’t get a crowd even pulling famous popular singers to rally for her. The elites still didn’t see it.

The polls were quietly going off the rails. People were lying to pollsters about whether they were actually voting for Trump to avoid the politically correct crowd hounding them. Why not lie after all? Isn’t that what Hillary would do?

There are huge populous forces at work here that are being missed.

We failed to see this enormous revolution coming.

Judith Miller

The disenfranchised were in pockets of the internet sharing their views and tuning out the mainstream filtered propaganda from the Hillary surrogate press corps. The American workers tossed on the ash heap of globalism rose up, as did women and minorities taken for granted. (6) The elites of the coasts and large cities smug in Ivory Towers were not prepared for the quiet insurgency of American populism. They were not prepared for losing control of the narrative through the owned media puppets. Facebook was said to be filtering out conservative voices (7), which only added more to the distrust of the news feeds. People turned to alternative sources for opinion and information, including sharing emails with information from dubious sources. Politically incorrect completely bogus news stories bounced around in emails and private instant messages.

Here’s the problem for the ordinary voter… without the media they are not going to learn what Donald Trump is doing that he doesn’t want them to know. We need a check and a balance in the form of the media however flawed we are or how much we get wrong.

We are there to tell people what the powerful, be they corporations or powerful politicians, don’t want them to know. Without us it is really hard to run an effective democracy whatever our flaws, which are many.

Judith Miller

Judith Miller, Pultizer prize winning reporters, fails to admit that media too often is actually there to tell people what the powerful DO want us to think. They report and opine on what the powerful want us to know while failing to report on other news. The whistle blowers are silenced by the same powerful forces. The media of all sources and the advertisement by the corporations all try to feed thoughts to the “ordinary voter” to influence their minds. They view the people as uneducated, ignorant and even stupid. The powerful and their media spokespeople fly over the Heartland of America and think they know better what is necessary to make an “effective democracy”.

Trump campaigned to the electoral college and worked every vote, even in the Hillary “fire wall” states. He did campaign stops till the very last-minute. He was campaigning while Hillary was getting over pneumonia and while she was “preparing” for debates.

Now the shocked liberal elites try to figure out how they could possibly have lost to such a buffoon. How could their polls have been so wrong? Do we think that Hillary and the DNC understood cyber-security to keep Podesta’s emails safe from prying eyes? Did it have to be Russian secret cyber agents doing the releases? They blame Russian spies for Hillary’s loss. All the emails did was show the hypocrisy and subterfuge of the Hillary camp, which many already suspected. Her smugness that she would win and deserved to win and was owed the Presidency was apparent. That she was part of the globalist elite agenda was also quite clear.

Yes, this is real life…. https://t.co/NEU67a7U1o

— Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) October 8, 2016

The media was stunned that all their hard work and smug superiority merely ended with them being snookered by the American people. Yes, this is real life.

Trump won the election. President Obama and Hillary Clinton accepted the result. Hillary graciously and tearfully conceded to Trump. The Western elites scratched their heads at how this could have happened and was the world order going to fall into the sea now? Henry Kissinger, a respected globalist member,  has tried to calm the hysteria making the rounds including to the Chinese leadership. (8) (9)

The elites wrote opinion pieces for each other to read in their elite publications and complained of their shock on talk shows. How can they make sure this doesn’t happen again? How did they go so wrong in their campaign strategy? How did they fail to know the right poll numbers? How did they fail to brainwash enough people to vote the way they wanted? How can they take back control of the news feed? How can they make use of the large young population and direct them to their future purposes? Did they spend enough money? Should the electoral college be abolished? Can the internet be controlled or news filtered to make sure people don’t read the wrong sites? They want to gain their control back and will be pulling the levers of power to work towards that end. The minions of the elite and the powerful globalists are meeting and talking and trying to figure out how to control the internet and what we see and what we can know, so they can again claim to be there for our good.

Some non-elite liberals continued in denial. Placards were raised and people chanted “Dump Trump” in the streets, as if that would accomplish anything. People cried on their social media. (10)

Trump went on a thank you victory tour speaking directly to the people without need of the national press corps. (11) He continues to use Twitter to his millions of followers, which also sparks more news coverage. He continues to draw outside the lines of the approved Presidential coloring book. Elites wait for a chance to travel to Trump Tower to have a meeting and try to talk some sense into him. They leave behind advice for him in papers they’ve worked on about things like Middle East doctrine. They tell him that Assad must go and it is okay for Saudi Arabia to bomb Yemen with US cluster bombs. Henry Kissinger, Al Gore, President Obama, Madeleine Albright and many more are all hoping that Trump will take their advice. (12) (13) Meanwhile Hillary Clinton goes on walks in the New York woods doing fan selfie snaps. (14)

Some die-hard deluded liberals hoped for a coup within the Electoral College. That dream was laid to rest. There is discussion about abolishing the Electoral College, as an attempt to move the power to a “mob rule” democracy where the elites think they can control the narrative. The argument they comfort themselves with is that Hillary won the popular vote in the nation. They do not want to face the reality that Hillary did lose. If the race was run on a popular vote, then other variables would have come into play and Hillary probably still would have lost. (15)

The Electoral College system worked as it should. It did not “misfire.” The election’s outcomes were ultimately about what Americans wanted and what they did not want — not about electoral mechanics.

James E. Campbell

Donald Trump is now officially the President-Elect. Obama is winding down the last days of his administration.

(1) Business Insider: The Illusion of Choice

(2) Wikileaks: Journalists Dined at Top Clinton Staffers’ Homes Days Before Hillary’s Campaign Launch

(3) Podesta emails from Wikileaks: April 2015 DNC plans regarding the 2016 Republican presidential field

(4) Politico: They Always Wanted Trump

(5) Judith Miller – Youtube video: Media were completely shocked by Trump’s win.

Wikipedia on Judith Miller Judith Miller is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, graduate of Princeton University, and worked at New York Times etc. As of 2016, she is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations.

(6) NBC: Trump did had more minorities and women than Romney in 2012

(7) Gizmodo: Former Facebook Workers: We Routinely Suppressed Conservative News

Snopes: Is Facebook censoring conservativenews

(8) Kissinger says give Trump a chance to world order elites

(9) Businessinsider: Henry Kissinger talks to China leadership about Trump

(10) Unhappy liberals still voicing their frustration in the streets and social media

(11) Donald Trump closes Thank you tour

(12) Madeleine Albright and Stephen Hadley advice for Trump on Middle East

(13) Al Gore talks to Trumps on climate change

(14) Hillary Clinton doing selfies with fans in NY woodlands

(15) Why Hillary Clinton Supporters Need to quit whining about the electoral college

James E. Campbell is a UB distinguished professor of political science at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, and is the author of “Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America”.

Updated on 01/25/2017:

Why Trump won: Clinton used media contacts to elevate Trump during primary in "Pied Piper" strategy https://t.co/DAmWNq9K0f see attachments pic.twitter.com/NAUJoFMMnD

— WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) January 24, 2017