Media Mayhem

Monday, October 13, 2025

The Israeli hostages are home.  Trump wins big – it is that simple.  But the mainstream, legacy media, well, they just don’t get it.  George Stephanopoulos just flat out cut the V.P. off.  (Which the host attributes to his inability to face up to the fact that Trump has won this one.)  And CBS could be looking at a whole staff changeover.  (Go Bari Weiss!)    Ratings are tanking.  Polls show they are not trusted.  We are witnessing a suicide as they absolutely, positively refuse to change.

Everybody knows this is the “Schumer Shutdown,” motivated because Schumer does not want to be primaried by AOC who is motivated to oppose Trump at all costs and in all ways.  Democrats are outnumbered and outvoted, but they cannot bring themselves to capitulate.  They are more than willing to make life very difficult for millions of Americans, most especially our men and women in uniform, to prove it.  Change is needed, but change seems impossible.

I have written quite a bit about the fact that all of this recalcitrance is rooted in Trump hatred and more importantly how such hatred rots the soul of the hater.  But as I watch events unfold, increasingly there is another thing at play.  The inability to capitulate is born of an enormous level of self-regard.  A fact that makes the suicide analogy of the first paragraph even more apt.  Since Hitler comparisons seem to be the currency of the day, let’s not forget he committed suicide rather than face losing the war.

Here’s the thing – capitulating indicates some level of shame.  It is an admission of being wrong and we are all ashamed when we have to admit we were wrong.  We live in a world that considers shame toxic.  Oh sure, the psychology pros will try to tell you there is a difference between normal shame and toxic shame, but when you get down to it the window for normal shame is so narrow that nothing gets through it.

Now, most people that live in the public eye, media and political, are motivated to some level by seeking affirmation – just the opposite of shame.  So now we understand why they cannot admit they are wrong – even when their failure to render that admission is “suicidal.”  (Watch Katie Porter from last week, you’ll get it.)

If each of us were to sit down and think about it, I think we would learn that we have all known someone that suffers from this enormous level of self-regard and shame avoidance in our lives.  Usually we work our way around them somehow and they end up semi-sequestered where they think everything is hunky-dory while the rest of us just know they are a bit delusional.  I can think of such a person in every office I have ever been in.  Well, somehow over the years we have let them sequester en masse in the news media and Democrat politics – and now we are all paying the price.

Hence the tumultuous times we live in.  Like a two-year-old learning what “NO” means tantrums, like that thrown by Stephanopoulos or the CBS union, are unavoidable to get things back to some semblance of normality.  Just like the parents of two years old’s, much patience is required.  We need to remember that.