Last year when I was asked to write a chapter for a US book on the incredible inroads and attacks on our civil liberties during the thuggish Covid lockdown years I decided, in part, to rank the worst offending groups. The lawyerly and doctorly castes were bad. They were woeful in fact. But the politicians as a class, the ones who ultimately made the calls, were worse – and there were very few exceptions to that generalised claim, as any Australian knows who looks for politicians who, say, resigned from Cabinet on principle (nada, zero) or who spoke up publicly and loudly against the massive authoritarian over-reach and aping of the policies of the Chinese Communist Politburo (a mere handful at most).
So I gave the silver medal for thuggish lockdown commitment and stalwart thuggery to the political class. However, in terms of letting all of us citizens down I reserved the gold medal for the journalists of the legacy media. As a class they exhibited no scepticism. No thinking for themselves. They were fearmongers and PR agents for the modellers, public health gurus, ‘nudge’ manipulators and politicos. Yes, there were some brave exceptions. But very few. What we got from the legacy media was a sort of attempt to play the type of media you’d see in George Orwell’s 1984, dealing in Big Brother doublethink. And all of that is on top of the verifiably huge drift towards the political Left of the legacy media over the last few decades.
Well, if you were hoping things would get noticeably better after the lockdowns ended, they haven’t.
For just one instance, let me take you to the murders of two young children and the wounding of at least 17 others in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week. It took place at a Catholic school with the murderer shooting at random through a stained-glass window during the first school mass of the academic year. The legacy media embarrassed itself reporting on this because it went against all the progressive class’s and legacy media’s (but I repeat myself) deeply held shibboleths and Left-wing bromides. You see the murderer was a man, Robert Westman, who back in 2020 had changed his first name to Robin and come out as transgender. He said he was now a female. And he hated Donald Trump. And he left behind a sort of manifesto that oozed antisemitism along with other bits of nastiness.
Hellbound and Down 