(Ben Sellers, Headline USA) When you step back and look dispassionately at the patterns of behavior, it isn’t hard to see that the Left, as a whole, may be in the throes of a collective mental-health breakdown.
There simply is no parallel to their level of intolerance with exposure to any sort of competing ideas or worldviews.
You don’t see Republicans, for the most part, out destroying the yard signs of Kamala Harris supporters or confronting people angrily over their apparel, no matter how objectionable the Biden–Harris policies may be.
A man attended a Kamala Harris rally wearing a Trump shirt and later went to a Trump rally wearing a Kamala shirt. The contrast in how he was treated at each event is astonishing. pic.twitter.com/sg1VSf1Ku4
— Catch Up (@CatchUpFeed) July 30, 2024
You don’t see Trump officials trying to jail their rivals, ban them from the ballot or censor their speech as a threat to “democracy.”
Nor to assassinate them, for that matter.
And you certainly don’t see Republicans practicing self-immolation to get their point across.
Yet, no matter how many times leftists may be called out on their coquettish, narcissistic tendencies and their crash-and-burn, hubristic impulsivity, there is never any comeuppance.
In fact, it only seems to make them more irrational—and much of that has to do with a mainstream media that has now grown utterly schizophrenic with its cry-bully persecution complex.
In one breath, it can cheerlead horrifying leftist proposals from the likes of Gavin Newsom, Kamala Harris and others to make serious threats against fundamental First Amendment rights in America.
Dear God, please save us 🙏 pic.twitter.com/I4knXZK3QO
— Joel Fischer 🇺🇸 (@realJoelFischer) October 10, 2024
Meanwhile, the leftist press wants everyone to know about the so-called PRESS Act, which basically gives it the legal blessing to use anonymous sources—a technique often weaponized by corrupt media institutions working in tandem with intelligence agencies and other government entities to selectively launder phony or misleading information like the Russia-collusion hoax and the Hunter Biden laptop hoax into the public.
FIGHTING FIRE WITH FIRE
As noted in the past, my own relationship with the values and principles of journalism has been an uneasy one: In a perfect world, I would buy into big ideas like objectivity, transparency, truth-seeking and independence with every ounce of my being. If something is worth doing, it’s worth doing right.
I even spent several years teaching students at the high-school and college levels how to do it by the book, hoping that my efforts would help keep alive the embers of a dying practice.
But from very early on in the industry, which I entered into more than two decades ago, it quickly became clear that there was a deep fissure between what those stated values were and the unspoken code of the newsroom.
The field has been infiltrated by radical idealogues who have actively—and in bad faith—subverted those values to undermine them for their own ends, effectively limiting freedom of thought to their own toxic groupthink.
In such a reality, the only way to remain committed to the values of intellectual honesty, fairness and balance is to actively position one’s self as a counternarrative to debunk the dishonesty and reframe the warped perspectives.
That is no easy task, considering these corrupt forces now maintain institutional control, and fancy themselves the arbiters of “truth” and gatekeepers of “ethics.”
In recent lawfare cases, we have seen just how pernicious—and, indeed, evil—this system of two-tiered justice driven by a distorted partisan narrative can be.
That includes the unprecedented prosecution of Tina Peters—a gold-star mother and election whistleblower who sought to expose the manipulation of voting machines in Mesa County, Colorado, during the 2020 election and received an eight-year prison sentence for her efforts.
Tina has asked her supporters to view and share the Mesa County Colorado Voting System Forensic Examination and Analysis reports 1-3 found athttps://t.co/KX6NmSwuBp
Which includes
#1 https://t.co/t6eYr3boeZ
#2 https://t.co/Qj55h12hu9
#3 https://t.co/AKnZqOh67T— Tina Peters🇺🇸 Whistleblower of fallen Navy SEAL (@realtinapeters) October 8, 2024
A MENACE TO SOCIETY
Another shining example of how far overboard purported “watchdog” institutions have gone in failing to regulate their own conduct played out recently with the Society of Professional Journalists, which has fallen into ill-repute in the era of DEI by comically ignoring and undermining its own ethical code on countless occasions.
SPJ’s newly elected president, Emily Bloch, does not inspire confidence that the organization is making any effort—as some journalistic institutions have attempted recently—to right their course after humiliating public setbacks, loss of credibility and, most obviously, industrywide financial failures.
To be sure, the SPJ is still trying to peddle its vaunted Code of Ethics (which has stealthily become woker in recent years) for a few quick dollars wherever it can.
But the SPJ itself has repeatedly ignored those precepts, openly embracing its leftist identity in social media posts, whether through a myopic lack of self-awareness, a brazen lack of shame, or sheer ignorance about what those ethical obligations even mean.
In one particularly egregious post, it recently began promoting stickers with the word “journalist” using the same font and puke-green color palette used by the Kamala Harris campaign—both having been borrowed from a marketing campaign by British pop-star Charli XCX.
When called out on the impropriety, two commenters—both of whom claimed “journalist” in their LinkedIn job titles—coyly attempted to brush off the connection to the Harris campaign.
“This guy doesn’t know about Brat Summer,” wrote Halie Brown, a self-described freelance “journalist” and media “professional” in Orlando.
“Charli XCX did it first, my guy,” wrote Rachel Schneider, a self-described multimedia “journalist” and broadcast personality who has now moved into PR work, in Knoxville, Tenn.
Most alarming of all, however, was the reaction of Marco Cummings, a digital content producer with the Denver Gazette and SPJ board member—who likes to crow about his “nonpartisanship,” despite being a former Bernie Sanders supporter, according to records from the Federal Election Commission.
Rather than attempt to justify the SPJ’s decision to align itself with the Harris campaign, Cummings simply opted to attack the messenger.
“[I]t seems like there’s a disconnect here,” he sniped.
“It’s ironic to see you questioning journalistic ethics while missing the mark on both research and trends like ‘Brat Summer,’ which any modern journalist with digital and research competencies should be familiar with,” he added. “Bias doesn’t substitute for fact-based analysis. I’d recommend brushing up on SPJ’s Code of Ethics yourself, especially the parts about accuracy and fairness.”
The implications of journalism’s failure—to hold itself ethically accountable either in maintaining any sort of objective independence or any truth-seeking function—have been at the heart of the unraveling we currently are witnessing in western civilization. Whether they are a cause or the symptom of an even larger disorder, it is difficult to say.
However, if the first stage of recovery is acceptance, the Trump-Deranged Left still has a long way to go before it can heal itself, if it ever does.
Ben Sellers is the editor of Headline USA. Follow him at x.com/realbensellers.
