Ah, that line — Jack Nicholson in ‘A Few Good Men’ (about 45 seconds in) —

But, strange thing is, our MSM really is acting like they ‘can’t handle the Truth’.  Yeah, yeah, sure, sure — they want to be ‘thorough’ and all but… they never have a problem ‘penciling out’ the ‘what would happen’ if Trump came up innocent.  That’s easy.

But it’s the very rare MSMer indeed who’s gone so far as to describe in well-informed detail what the sequence of events would be if the very worst of the implications of this terrible story bear out — exactly as they ARE going to.  In fact, I can’t think of a one.  And that’s weird.  Because even the more progressive journo’s (the Joy Reids) haven’t projected that deeply into the marrow of Trumpian guilt.  But I quibble…

Joy Reid is one of the ‘good ones’.  So are Ali Velshi & Stephanie Ruhl.  Nicolle Wallace’s show is great as is Lawrence O’Donnell’s and Rachel’s (of course) and, these days, ‘Morning Joe’ (the conservative ‘daily dose’ of ‘Come To Jesus’).

And then there are the Chuck Todd’s of the journalistic world… the Chris Mathews’s…

Now, I don’t so much watch Cable TV News for ‘news’ as I do to see how our MSM is ‘REPORTING’ the news.  As a storyteller, it disturbs me when stories either are told badly (most of what our MSM does) or are told badly BY DESIGN.

‘Told Badly By Design’ is a whole other rant — another time, same place.

As we’ve watched this Trump story roll out over the past two years, we’ve seen our news media behave… how to describe it?  They had — still have in some ways — a ‘blind spot’ where it comes to Donald Trump.  Even KNOWING that virtually everything he says PROBABLY IS A LIE — they still behave (whenever Trump speaks or Tweets something) as if whatever Donald Trump says IS TRUE.

It’s weird.

You’d think the first instinct every single journalist would have — having been ‘burned’ by this lying motherfucker and his repeated lying — would be:  “Oh, yeah, you lying orange fuck?  PROVE it.  Prove it with FACTS.  Figures.  Shit that’s REAL, got that?  REAL, you liar — REAL!”

And pretty much every conversation would end there — because Donald Trump can’t prove anything (other than that he’s going to end up one of the worst humans in the history of humans).

But guys like Chuck Todd nod at almost every bullshit thing the Trumps and their enablers spew at him.  He accepts their lies as if he believed them to be true — and not worth the time or effort to challenge.  That’s a dereliction of duty.

But I’m sure Chuck Todd is not a bad guy.  I’m sure he wants to do his best.  Same with Chris Matthews.  I have no reason to believe he’s not an utterly delightful man who it would be an absolute pleasure to spend time with.  I’m SURE that’s true.  But we’re talking about a glaring inadequacy in reporting perhaps the Greatest Story of Our Lifetimes.  Never mind ‘inadequacy’.  We’re talking ‘TOTAL INABILITY TO DO IT’.

Now, I’m not, by nature, a ‘There Is No Answer’ kind of guy.  That always seems to depressing.  And not entirely honest — because, I believe, there’s always an answer.  We may not KNOW the answer yet (and we may not like it when we learn it) but it exists — and if we get lucky or are skilled enough to tease it out from its hiding place, we will KNOW it in some way.

My goal then, always, is to KNOW EVERY LAST BIT of the Truth.  Good, bad or indifferent.  I want to know — because knowing WHAT REALLY IS vs what actually isn’t will most definitely make an impact on my life.  I will make far better decisions with far better outcomes if I know vs if I don’t know.

Which makes journalists — like Chuck and Chris — so odd to me — because they spend so much time and effort putting on blinders — denying the existence of one area of information (the fact that there IS a Trump-Russia Investigation that has already progressed a long, long way — including indictments and GUILTY PLEAS) while talking about other areas of information (Trump’s toxic ‘Tax Plan cum Continuing Theft By The Already Disgustingly Wealthy) — as if the one couldn’t possibly have anything to do with the other.  Too bad that ain’t the case.

The word that’s finally come to me — to describe what these journalists — and other people — are doing is ‘REDACTING’.

It’s as if ‘reality’ were filled with ‘inconvenient details — contradictions & terrible secrets — that some people simple refused to acknowledge; maybe it’s too much for them to grasp; maybe they’re just not capable of grasping what’s going on.  So they ‘block them off’ from the rest of how they process the world — they isolate those details as if they didn’t exist.  They REDACTED the inconvenient truths — and then built the narrative they were reporting on the remaining (no longer factually as accurate) narrative bits and pieces.  And then they wonder why so much of what happens shocks the shit out of them…

The name ‘George Papadopoulos’ comes to mind.  The name ‘Felix Sater’ will be the next name that sends the MSM scrambling — because they REDACTED him from their view of this story.  That should ‘serve’ them…