Eeyore’s Cabinet: Living in Our Kingdom of Lies

Victor Davis Hanson // Private Papers

Part One

Isn’t it true that almost every “big” news story of the last four years has proved to be an utter lie?

Moscow Fantasies

Do we even remember the months of the Russian collusion lies? The daily fare that in one hour or so Trump would be indicted and frog-marched, and the next hour he would turn state’s evidence? That Russians were in constant communications with the Trump campaign, that Carter Page was a Trump Russian “asset”? The Alpha Bank Russian computer pings? That Brennan and Clapper winked and nodded to us about their secret sources that proved Trump was going down.

How about the “end of Trump” Michael Cohen “bombshells”? The Glenn Simpson courageous investigations? The brilliant Christopher Steele? The furrowed brows and pained looks of our best and brightest news readers talking of “bombshells” and end-of-the-world “walls are closing in” epitaphs for the Trump family? 

How much wasted time, money, and resources went into James Comey’s various “operations” or into “Bob” Mueller’s 22 months of chasing his own tail? Or the wasted reportage on the DNC/Perkins Coie/Fusion GPS/Christopher Steele dossier firewalls, all leading back to the checkbook of an embittered Hillary Clinton, forever braying about a “stolen election,” which meant paying Steele to blame the Russians hadn’t worked? 

And the super ship “dream team”? It wrecked itself on the shoals of Peter Strzok, Lisa Page, and the forger Kevin Clinesmith.

Bat s–t

What happened to the bat/pangolin origins of COVID-19? And the “lies” of “racist” Trump spreading “conspiracy theories” about a leak from a Wuhan virology lab? Remember how it was racist for Trump to talk of the “China virus” even as his accusers repeated ad nauseum scare stories of the “Indian variant” and the “Brazil strain” and “The South African mutation” and the “UK bug”?

It was all a lie that the virus could not have been birthed through gain-of-function research and misadventure. It was all a lie that any who sought answers along those lines of inquiry was a “nut,” a “crank,” or indeed a “racist”? How much untold damage did the media do in silencing, Soviet-style, legitimate inquiry that might have made the nature of the epidemic far clearer, far earlier. 

The Reichstag Capitol “Coup”

It was all a lie that organized, armed insurrectionists, in premeditated fashion, stormed the Capitol, murdered Officer Sicknick, caused the deaths of four others, and brought along plastic ties to round up progressive politicians as hostages—as requisite to taking over the country 

No leaders found. No plans uncovered. No arms possessed, much less used. No murdered officer. Natural deaths of all three others—except an unarmed protestor and military vet shot by a still unknown officer. No ties brought in by the protestors. No videos released by the government that might “prove” an insurrection.”

So, what was “it”? 

A buffoonish misadventure of mostly irate and unhinged protestors who in ad hoc fashion unlawfully entered the capitol and then rioted, and smashed stuff up?

It was not the “greatest assault on Washington since the Civil War”—unless you think the 9/11 blasting apart of the Pentagon was small stuff. Or was the 1932 Bonus March of over 20,000 angry vets, demanding past due military severance bonuses from World War I, no big deal? For 90 days they camped out near the Capitol—until steamrolled out by US troops firing on the crowd and backed by tanks. 

Or do we remember the 1950 running gun battle between Secret Service agents and Puerto-Rican-nationalist assassins intent on killing President Harry Truman as he slept at Blair House? Or many more such gunmen reappearing four years later who shot down the House visitor’s gallery and wounded five congressmen? 

Or how about left-winger James Hodgkinson’s murderous attempt to take out key Republicans while playing baseball? He was a former Sanders supporter who severely wounded US Majority House Whip Rep. Steven Scalise and three others. Or the six-day 1968 DC race riots that saw 12 die and 1,200 fires set, and about the same number of buildings destroyed or damaged. And on and on.

Instead, we were told to envision that the likes of some nut playing a Shaman in a cow costume and the leftwing Mr. Sullivan, a Black Lives Activist instigator, who egged on the crowd and who took films to sell on the internet, were the core ingredients of a preplanned rightwing revolution.

The Ol’ Joe Biden From Scranton Myth

And perhaps the most egregious lie? That good ol’ Joe Biden from Scranton was running to unite the nation, after Trump’s “tearing it apart.” At 78, Joe was still in his old nice-guy top form, or so we were told. Forget, the media ordered us, the stealth primary campaign, the basement refuge, as he outsourced to others the general campaign, the somnolent transition, the 10AM-2PM presidency, the falls, the slurred words, the weird stream of half-conscious outbursts, the now trademark creepy references to girls, the fantasy lies about no vaccinations before his inauguration, and the shouting and screaming for emphasis on his teleprompted, lose-your-way speeches.

Prune away the media lies, and the American people voted in a 78-year-old cognitively challenged president, whose myth of the return of a 1970s moderate was used as clumsy cover for a hard-left, 21^st-century agenda’s take-over.