Low Effort Mid-Wits at Waco Paper Attack Leader, Others in Haughty Virus Rant
If you want to advance your journalism career in the current year, the quickest way is to take the dominant neoliberal views of the day and amplify and exacerbate them.
As someone who fancies themself a professional name-caller, the name-calling in this op-ed is truly next level.
This editorial started out to bestow praise on local Republicans, Democrats and other community groups for helping register voters in McLennan County. As of Tuesday, 146,223 folks were registered to vote locally in the general election, some 10,000 more than in the 2016 election. Unfortunately, midway through this journalistic exercise, the Republican Party of Texas offered further proof of right-wing radicalism afoot: Newly elected state party chairman Allen West led a group of zealots in filing suit against Republican Gov. Greg Abbott for extending the early voting period by six measly days to reassure voters legitimately worried about long lines at polling places during a pandemic. West and company also object to Abbott’s allowing voters who qualify to drop off mail-in ballots at the local election office throughout early voting rather than just on Election Day.
The real journalistic exercise is having to navigate their website in the midst of endless ads.
Thus far, they’ve already proclaimed it’s “right-wing radicalism” to want the normal voting dates. Their rationale is not explained beyond “there’s a virus.”
One wonders on whose side these cranks and contrarians count themselves. There’s Jim Graham, executive director of Texas Right to Life, providing further proof that this crowd considers the lives of the unborn sacred, other lives in a pandemic not so much. And there’s Julie McCarty, president of the resilient NE Tarrant Tea Party, which for us raises questions about a supposedly liberty-loving group that objects to expanding in-person early voting, given that in-person voting is what so many Republicans claim to favor over mail-in balloting (which has not been expanded in Texas).
A key characteristic of the mid-wit is to make superficially logical statements. Here, we see it’s implied there is some inconsistency with Jim Graham’s worldview because he both opposes mother’s killing their children and wants to keep the voting protocols the same.
Ok… having to squint pretty hard to see this one guys.
The editorial board also cites the Northeast Tarrant Tea Party, a group that hasn’t existed in over a year and is now True Texas Project. Remember, it’s a journalistic exercise they said.
And there’s retired Lt. Col. West, carpetbagging Republican Party leader from Florida who last we saw was in Austin likening mask-wearing mandates to tyranny. He might consider how the governor’s expansion of early voting doesn’t even mandate mask-wearing. Quite a bunch.
Yeah, quite a bunch.
The authors then downplay the fact that all of our laws have been suspended because of a cold virus hoax, and the lawsuit’s primary claim that we should still have rights despite the media lying to everyone about a death virus. It’s implied by the editors that this virus thing isn’t the biggest hoax in human history, which of course it is.
Yet this crew has voiced no reservations about the governor’s taking charge whenever hurricanes threaten the Texas coast and during extensive mop-up afterward.
Truly brilliant
They go on to call Sid Miller a name. Again just to reiterate, none of the name calling has any context other than “they disagree with me.” I’ve really never seen anything like it.
At least when the NYT or WaPo smears someone, they’re able to explain their reasoning somewhat. It may be by lies by commission or, most often, omission, but at least they try. Here, we see they are cramming as many smears as possible with only a dusting of superficial reasoning.
The Democrats are ramping up their propaganda machine, they plan on trying to steal the election. Antifa and BLM will probably engage in mass terrorism as every news source outright refuses to report that Trump won the election. Facebook has already said they will ban anyone who claims Trump wins and that its “perfectly normal” for the election to take weeks to sort out.
While it was good we seem to have avoided mass mail-in ballot schemes, we’re not out of the woods yet. In person voting slows down fraud, but if early voting is extended it becomes easier to steal votes.
Masks essentially nullify voter ID laws and will make prosecution impossible due to cameras not being able to identify people voting over and over. This means the longer there is to vote, the more fraud they can do. Extending the election dates only gives Democrats more time figure out how to steal the election.
We damn well know none of our elected officials in the legislature will say anything if Democrats steal the election right in front of our eyes.
Basically, we have a lot riding on one guy right now.
