The Real Enemy Is Getting Off Scot Free - The American Spectator | USA News and Politics
The Real Enemy Is Getting Off Scot Free
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When the sponge is full of water, the new water runs off it. Public opinion — and myself when I’m at the bar — is like a sponge. Public opinion is becoming increasingly impermeable. In these times of information saturation, the capacity for informative, emotional, or rational impact on the citizen is extremely limited. Social networks have destroyed the old hierarchy of news dictated by newspapers. Some people think this is a good thing, but I don’t. Twitter would have you believe that a jihadist attack leaving 200 dead is tantamount to a puppy having been run over. Algorithms have no idea about anything, not even journalism.

Biden is a president who seems to have an inexhaustible stock of stupidity, inconsequentiality, and misery. But he endures without major headaches thanks to the pandemic.

One of the few things that remain useful about being a journalist is the ability to sort information and deliver it in an orderly fashion. While managing newspapers, I spent hundreds of hours explaining to new journalists in my newsroom the importance of getting that hierarchy right. Often the boldness of the headline is part of the editorial game; often enough the font size of any given text will tell you as much as you need to know about the story. And, as in any other profession, presenting the information with the correct hierarchy is something that not just anyone can do. Any journalist with a little talent knows how to do it. A computer programmer does not. Maybe that’s why I, with the help of enough beer, am capable of writing a column, but incapable of programming a game like Tetris.

I say this because the coronavirus is deactivating the power of the press, already diminished by the new communication channels that have pushed it out of the limelight. That power was also a way of controlling the government. But since COVID, everything is COVID. There is no other subject on television, radio, or newspapers. Despite the inconveniences and headaches, I suppose that every ruler dreams of having something as absorbing as this pandemic, to prevent the newspapers from focusing their headlines on the economy, unemployment, or the cultural battle. But all that is still there. Remember: if the coronavirus doesn’t kill us, socialist economic policies will.

Biden is probably the most inept president to have passed through the White House for as long as I can remember, and that is saying a lot, because the list of incompetents includes guys like Obama, the world-renowned salsa dancer, and Clinton, the unfaithful gardener. I cannot include Carter, that prodigy of stupidity, because he left the White House as I was beginning to write my first political chronicles, inside my mother’s womb. Yes, obviously, I was born with the great Reagan; his presidential debut was a driving force behind my decision to push my nose out into this world, with a hopeful glow.

As I was saying, Biden is a president who seems to have an inexhaustible stock of stupidity, inconsequentiality, and misery. But he endures without major headaches thanks to the pandemic. The press is too busy looking for new variants of new variants of old variants of the coronavirus to turn its eye to the disastrous management of the absentee president and his sibylline vice president.

And, just like the press, public opinion is drenched in pandemic. This is logical. The discussion about freedoms, health care, and the dead is relevant, no doubt, but it is also worth stressing that after two years it becomes a sedative for public opinion. My long-time readers will know that I always write in bars. That allows me to listen to a couple of thousand conversations a week. In addition to being privy to all the adultery going on around the neighborhood, as well as other personal hygiene issues that I will spare you, I used to hear the ardent political discussions. But it has been a long time since anyone has talked about the economy, only about masks, vaccines, and the rise in the price of beer.

The conservative awakening has to happen: it’s time to turn the page and start scrutinizing government in earnest for once and for all. Of course, the state machine never stops. Unfortunately, the Biden administration never stops working, pandemic aside, and it does so in a way that is pernicious to the interests of Americans, to the economy, and to the moral integrity of a nation that needs to reconnect with old Western values. Not so long ago, all the secularist demons and social-democratic stupidity that now afflicts us crept into Europe through cracks just like the ones Biden is opening up in the culture war.

No government should be given leeway. But especially not the Biden administration. They would love two more years of pandemic. They won’t get it. The only pandemic here is incompetence, and the only deadly virus, socialism.

Itxu Díaz
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Itxu Díaz is a Spanish journalist, political satirist, and author. He has written 10 books on topics as diverse as politics, music, and smart appliances. He is a contributor to The Daily Beast, The Daily Caller, National Review, American Conservative, and Diario Las Américas in the United States, as well as a columnist at several Spanish magazines and newspapers. He was also an adviser to the Ministry for Education, Culture, and Sports in Spain.
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