What leftism touches it ruins.

Firefighters trying to contain the massive wildfires in Oregon, California and Washington state are constantly on the verge of exhaustion as they try to save suburban houses, including some in their own neighborhoods. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez)

It is the received wisdom among political professionals, political junkies and the political commentariat that so-called independent and moderate voters decide elections. Almost equal numbers of voters are certain to vote either for the Democrat or the Republican, leaving the independents – the “swing voters” – the experts say, to actually determine the winner.

If you are one of those in the mushy middle and if you haven’t yet decided how you’re going to vote, I offer this observation.

Leftism, such as that which now pervades the Democratic party, destroys everything it touches.

There are numerous examples, but we have only the space for two.

Example One is California — as we discussed last week. Once the richest state in the union, California is now a fiscal and sociological disaster. The millions of acres of California wildfires currently in the news are the result of decades of far-left environmentalism. The environmental lobby has acted to prevent the clearing of dead trees and underbrush from California’s forests, preferring the dead, dry foliage to be allowed to “decompose naturally so as to provide nutrients for the soil.” Fine, but for the fact that dead underbrush turns into kindling, just waiting for lightning or an errant spark to set it off.

Today, this fire season’s death toll stands at 85, while smoke over the state is so thick and widespread that streetlights in San Francisco are turning on automatically in the daytime.

California’s once-vibrant middle class is a shadow of its former self. With beleaguered middle-class families possessed of the means to do so decamping for places like Texas, California is increasingly becoming a dichotomous state consisting of the very, very wealthy and the profoundly poor – with fewer and fewer people in between.

Example Two is the media. The “press,” as we used to call it, has always had a leftward tilt. But starting in 1974, when reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein took down Republican president Richard Nixon, a full-on leftist hijacking of the press began. Every journalism school student since Watergate has been taught that journalism as a profession exists almost solely for the purpose of destroying Republicans.

Today the leftist takeover of the legacy media has been so successful that its practitioners no longer bother to offer even a pretense of objectivity. Walter Cronkite at CBS was once called “the most trusted man in America.” Today, there is exactly nobody in media that most people trust.

A report released this summer by the Gallup organization ranked the media dead last in public trust of American institutions – a list that include hospitals, local government, state government and even Congress.

The left’s debasement of California and of the media are just two examples. We could add movies, music, TV, schools and colleges and most of the country’s largest cities to the list of things that leftism has ruined.

So, you “swing voters,” do everyone this favor. Examine as objectively as you can what fully applied, hard-left liberalism brings about. And then let that examination inform your vote November 3.

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Paul Gleiser

Paul L. Gleiser is president of ATW Media, LLC, licensee of radio stations KTBB 97.5 FM/AM600, 92.1 The TEAM FM in Tyler-Longview, Texas.

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27 Responses

  1. “Every journalism school student since Watergate has been taught that journalism as a profession exists almost solely for the purpose of destroying Republicans?”

    Certainly NOT at Trump University J-School! Although that curriculum may date-back to when Trump was a Democrat.

    But seriously…I call your bluff.

    WHAT IF — and this is a novel concept — WHAT IF the news media simply…reported the news? NOT how-they-want-you-to-FEEL-about the news…but Jack Webb style, “just the facts?”

    If y’all haven’t yet, I would love to poll-the-panel here about WGN America’s new “News Nation” prime time newscast:
    http://www.talkers.com/2020/09/08/monday-memo-noise-fatigue-news-renaissance/

    PLEASE WATCH, and tell me if, like the old Chinese restaurant gag, you’re hungry again an hour later. CAN YOU STAND just hearing…the news?

  2. Buddy Saunders says:

    There are fools beyond all recovery. Holland is one. if Holland’s thought process is typical of the left, then we stand at a very great advantage.

    • We’ll take THAT as a no to the WGN poll.

      How about Shep’ Smith’s new prime time newscast. See no evil there too?

    • Ron Eagleman says:

      Yes Buddy, in my few interactions with him, the lights are on, but no one is at home. I cannot decide whether he is an intentional devil’s advocate, WWA “villain”, or just a shallow Liberal. One thing is for sure; he does not have the courage to respond to an uncomfortable question.

      • So The Eagle Man will also pass on my-calling-Paul’s bluff, unwilling to sample the-newscast-that-just-reports-the-news.

        As the elder ape warned Charlton Heston at the end of “Planet of The Apes:”
        “You may not like what you find there.”

        Let’s flip over all the cards…

        Paul: If nobody else here is curious, have YOU, a media aficionado, seen News Nation?

        And if you haven’t, will you, then share your sense of whether this unflavored approach is too-quaint-to-click in today’s predisposed culture?

        • Paul Gleiser says:

          I will sample the product. But I’d like to stipulate that a new news product that can plausibly use as a raison d’être “we only report the news” is the second form of tacit confirmation of my premise that the vast majority of journalism as we once knew it has, in fact, been hijacked by the left.

          The first such confirmation is called Fox News.

  3. Jim Lee says:

    Another good analysis Paul. I will forward this to my leftist friends in California. Keep up the good work my friend.

  4. Richard Anderson says:

    Excellent work Mr. Gleiser.

    If you want America to return to normal.. meaning..
    * safety for all our citizens in every community, county, and township
    * restoration of law & order in our cities
    * a country where peace officers are held in high esteem
    * an end to lockdowns across the U.S.A.
    * schools and colleges continuing to reopen nationwide
    * churches continuing to reopen nationwide

    then do this..

    vote every democrat OUT
    vote every Republican IN (i.e. this means FOR TRUMP and every other GOP candidate running for office).

    Let no one deter you from casting your ballot this November 3rd, 2020, as this election is, IMHO, the most important in America’s 244 year history.

  5. Richard Anderson says:

    LET FREEDOM RING.

  6. Ron Eagleman says:

    “What leftism touches it ruins” is a very thought-provoking commentary for the uncommitted “swing voter”. These are two of many examples of leftist governance and behavior that have been very destructive. The environmental religion, which embraces tree hugging as one of it’s basic tenets has led to loss of untold lives and property. The downgrading of the curriculum and acceptance requirements for a Journalism degree has produced the egocentric, ignorant, and gullible goobers that populate the press and other media. Since these “journalists” are so filled with a false sense of superiority and higher calling, they do not recognize their ineptitude and how far they have actually strayed from real journalism.

  7. Michael Reagan says:

    Here is a little West Coast factoid on forest management. California forest are catalogued as “Fire Climax” forests. Redwoods, the Big Trees, all pine trees, firs, larch trees, etc. need fire; low heat fires. The controlled burns the US and California State Forest Services once provided enabled majestic groves to thrive and replenish. Low heat fires do several crucial biological services to these trees and the life that depends on these trees. Fire enables them to thicken their bark, helps thick seed pods to burst open where the actual seed can touch the soil and germinate, and it helps trees self prune lower limbs to prevent wild fires from running up a tree trunk like a cannon fuse. The Chaparral of Southern California is a fire climax environment as well. Fire and California go together as the all knowing Guru of Guru’s, Forrest Gump said, “like peas and carrots”. Cannot have one without the other. BUT, as Paul pointed out, the Enviro Nut Jobs along with the Democrat controlled governments of the State have allowed years and years of detritus to pile up under the trees and Chaparral areas to the degree of what is happening today. IT IS NOT climate change. Controlled burns are as old as the Native Americans who first figured out that burning in late winter, early spring brings on a boon of new growth for the animals our ancestors depended on most. The ONLY people to blame for this monumental disaster are the Democrats in control and the so called educated idiots who feed us dribble that can easily be refuted and exposed as nothing more than lies and stupidity. The lack of burning in California and all the West Coast is a prime example. All those forest in some form or fashion have evolved along side with fire; they are co-dependent for healthy vibrant ecosystems.

    • Richard Anderson says:

      The title of this supposed news piece is itself misleading as a further reading into the body of the article makes clear. At best, it seems to me, nothing but a hit piece on Tucker Carlson of Fox News Channel.

      Mr. Carlson, is an unusually very able news commentator and news analyst who goes where others dare not go, because he is NOT a believer in woke-ness* *i.e. political correctness. The leftist dems are desperate to silence this man because he is causing them so much political damage by uncovering the TRUTH. Kudos to him! for his important work for the American people.

      • Young Carlson is what radio calls “a shock jock;” and ratings suggest it’s working; tho Fox attorneys’ logic is damning-with-faint-praise…

        • Richard Anderson says:

          Tucker Carlson is fifty-one years old and has wide broadcast experience.
          He ends his Fox News Channel television show speaking these words.. “I am the sworn enemy of lying, pomposity, and group think.”

          Group think is woke-ness* and that is the very embodiment of Marxist thought.

          To be sure, woke-ness is un-American and anathema to our beloved Constitutional Republic where rugged individualism and FREEDOM of thought & speech is cherished and is fought for and died for.
          Good be on Mr. Tucker and may God bless him.

    • Ron Eagleman says:

      I assume that the link is to discredit Tucker Carlson, and to celebrate Shepard Smith’s brave resignation from Fox? Shep demonstrated his bravery by joining the Liberal gaggle at CNBC, where he will be much more comfortable. Shep got his panties in a wad over Tucker’s failure to condemn Joe DiGenova’s comment that Judge Napolitano was a fool for opining that Trump’s involvement in the Ukranian issue was a crime, and an impeachable offense. The resignation following the blowback from the on-air criticism of Tucker was more a fit of jealousy over the large discrepancy in viewership than an act of courage.

      • No. Young Carlson can speak for himself.

        I’m pointing-to the item about CNBC’s new, deliberately not-opinion-based newscast, for the same reason I noted WGN America’s similar presentation, responsive to Paul’s concern about coverage bias.

        Eager for reviews from discerning eyes here.

    • Debut tonight, 6CT, CNBC

  8. C M Solomon says:

    Why do we bother to respond to the idiotic diversions from the Holland Tunnel Vision source of Marxist lunacy?

    • Yet you do, eh?

      Fun Fact: Holland is an upstream family surname; and The Holland Tunnel is named after submarine pioneer John Philip Holland (Google it), a distant cousin (my DEAR Old Dad ascertained with no small amusement).

      But IT’S NOT ABOUT ME. These new shows we welcome to the cable news arena have made It their mission to avoid the coverage bias concern Paul raised.

      You may be less curious than he and I.

    • Ron Eagleman says:

      Yes CM, as my mom told me years ago: a serious and productive discussion depends on two or more people being serious and having something productive to offer. In my interactions with him, I find his responses to be totally insincere and unproductive. I am beginning to believe that the curriculum and acceptance requirements for high school English teachers are much the same as for journalists.

      • Tell your mom you’ve made yourself unavailable for serious and productive discussion of efforts to report the news minus the bias that concerns Paul enough that he raised the issue.

        • Ron Eagleman says:

          Actually, I was referring to other interactions, which demonstrated your unwillingness to respond to straightforward questions that were uncomfortable for you to answer. My late mom also warned that those who do not have the courage of their convictions should be ignored. In my humble opinion, strawman arguments, irrelevant links, and changing the subject from the Paul’s current thesis are not signs of a person with courage of convictions.

          • SO AS FOR Paul’s current thesis:

            Reconsider not-weighing-in-on WGN News Nation – as Paul says he will – and Shep’s 6P CT show which debuted last night?

  9. C M Solomon says:

    When we freedom-loving Americans accurately identify a Marxist Cult follower of the Leftist Democrat Party (of whom the vast majority of the pro-tyranny, anti-American media and social-media propagandists are members [or owners]), it is our duty to expose their hatred of our country and its heritage and recognize that we are engaged in a patriotic WAR with their treasonous ideology and must reject their clever duplicity designed to constantly LIE their way to domination of their ignorant victims (subject to becoming converts) in order to illegally overthrow our God-given, Constitutional form of government, at all costs!

    If Saul Alinsky can dedicate his Marxist “Rules for Radicals” to Lucifer, I can righteously proclaim that the treasonous saboteurs of the Radical Leftist Democrats that have infected our institutions in America for the last 60 years are, in fact, agents of Lucifer and are EVIL to the core of their humanity, or what is left of it!

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