Easter and the Mainstream Media

Americans as a whole have sized up Obama as the radical leftist that he is, and they have turned on him and his entire agenda. No doubt the alternative media—via the web, talk radio, and Fox News—have contributed greatly to documenting the never-ending list of actions, events, and speeches that confirm the gut level repulsion Americans have been feeling.

The key to the great awakening that has occurred and is ongoing is that the gut level repulsion came first, and is in fact the evidence of a gut level—or if you prefer a more religious term during this Easter week, a soul level—embrace of the truth of the basic American ideal of individual freedom and responsibility under God. Americans know freedom is not the norm in the world, and we know something unique and special in the history of the world occurred when a group of people pledged their lives, fortunes and sacred honor to establish a nation on self-evident truths about the relationship between God and man, including man’s divinely endowed individual rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. We know that the ‘idea’ of America is God-given.

We can sense when American ideals are being threatened, and it sometimes takes awhile for that sense to reach a boiling point, but once it does—and it has unmistakably reached and exceeded the boiling point as to Obama—no amount of PR orchestration is going to bring down the boil. We have had enough. As measured against the America of the founding—the America that stirs the soul--the Obama/Reid/Pelosi regime has identified itself as fundamentally anti-American. It is fundamentally anti-truth. It is fundamentally anti-God. It will not stand.

But when the history of this era is written, one of the biggest and most troubling questions to deal with will be: what happened to the American mainstream media in this so-called age of Obama? They are transparently a propaganda organ for the Obama administration, and at least to outward appearances, they have become such wholly voluntarily. They are seeing their viewership and subscribership plummet, but they either don’t know or don’t care why. They march in lockstep to the White House talking points; they see the largest grassroots rebellion in the history of the United States right in front of them and they either try to ignore it, or they voluntarily participate in orchestrated left-wing efforts to demonize, distort or otherwise question the legitimacy and sincerity of what is going on.

We are running out of adjectives to describe their behavior, whether it’s patently dishonest crowd estimates; automaton-coverage of faked claims of protester violence as if they were not faked; failure to retract obviously false stories about such incidents—and these examples are just from this week’s list. “Irresponsible” doesn’t begin to capture it. “Pathetic” isn’t strong enough. “Tyrannical” gets a little closer, but the most deeply troubling aspect of what they’re doing is that they appear to have no clue that what they’re doing is tyrannical.

Which, in maybe an odd sort of way, gets us back to Easter. Stick with us here—we’re not going to add to or usurp the millions of Easter sermons that are coming up. But there is a parallel worth noting. Why did ‘the state’ crucify Jesus? What did he actually do that was worthy of execution? Read the Gospels, and the worst accusation you’re going to find is that he hung around with sinners too much, and healed occasionally on the Sabbath, which a few literal lawyers of the day said violated the day of rest.

The basic reason certain elements were so stirred against him is that he spoke of a kingdom and of laws beyond the reach and control of mere mortals. THAT upset those in authority; THAT nullified the idea that power came from whoever had the most horses and chariots; THAT denied the people’s ability to define their own codes of behavior and made them accountable to a moral law that they couldn’t just brush aside with a sword or a king’s decree.

Fast forward to the present age. It is impossible to remove God from the American founding. The Declaration of Independence is done; it’s final; and the words aren’t going to change. And they create a foundation for the country that is built around the acknowledgement of God as Creator, and the express affirmation that individual rights come from God. This will never change, and it will forever be true.

Those who make up the American mainstream media have been on a decades-long drift away from faith in anything other than man. To a certain degree, who can blame them? Their purpose, as they have seen it, is to report what their eyes and ears tell them about the disease, discord, and injustice that they see, and they see plenty of it. The notion that there are solutions or at least remedial directions that come from that which they can’t see and hear with their eyes and ears—namely, God—is simply repugnant and even laughable to many of them. But if someone like Obama comes along and basically disses this God stuff and kind of walks above it, and seems to have a man-approved pedigree of education and temperament—well, now you’re talking about the potential for real solutions to problems. Now you have a chance to bury this God idea once and for all. Now you can ridicule into the ground anyone who voices the view that maybe what our eyes and ears report about the latest lack or limitation isn’t quite as true or permanent as it is made out to be. Now you can ‘fundamentally transform’ America.

And so off the American media have gone, hitching themselves to the Obama administration, and comforting themselves with the firm belief that all that disease, discord and injustice—which is surely still out there—will be fixed if we just give enough power to the pedigreed betters of society and get away from these vile, ignorant people of faith (especially those of the Christian faith).

We wish we could wake up the American mainstream media.

There is a reason we’re still celebrating Easter 2,000 years after the actual events, while the names of the scribes of Jesus’ day and their opinions are nobodies and nothing. The reason can be abbreviated into one word, Truth, and the America of the founding is linked to that Truth. (We’re all linked to it, including those who work for the mainstream media.) Truth blesses and makes us all free, if we’ll only acknowledge, respect and obey it as our starting point, and then act as best we know how in following it. But the refusal to make it our starting point, and the habitual disputing, denial, disrespect and disobedience to Truth do not bless and cannot make us free—they actually assure only that any moments of glory will be fleeting and illusory, followed by complete failure and disgrace. Obama and the American mainstream media are on this path.

Paul Gable

April 2, 2010