2020 is the single most important election since 1860.
This is not hyperbole. The future of America’s representative democracy is at stake.
The Left plans to change fundamental policies that will cripple earnings and economic vitality. More ominous, the Left is planning to change the rules that have governed America since 1789. Their sole purpose is to achieve permanent all-pervasive power.
More frightening is that these threats are being successfully hidden from the electorate – thanks in large part to “legacy” media, social media, academia, and the Deep State. They have collaborated nonstop for years to advance liberal-progressive-socialist agendas, protect their favored candidates, and censor, cancel, shame, and intimidate moderates and conservatives into silence, meekness and irrelevance.
America’s news media took a sharp left turn in the 1960s. During the 21st century, what is now considered the “Mainstream Media” (MSM) dropped all pretense of being professional journalism. They are now overtly the Left’s propaganda arm.
“News anchors” and talk show “moderators” are no longer selected from working reporters, but from career political operatives. The result is an echo chamber of anti-Americanism, and now anti-Trumpism.
This Leftist echo chamber dominates over 95 percent of television, radio, print and digital “news.” Except for a handful of conservative radio personalities, Fox Cable News shows, and conservative blogs, the Left’s echo chamber shapes an alternate reality that almost totally controls political, historical, cultural, and scientific discourse – and permits virtually no deviation or dissent from their reality and agenda.
Their worldview, talking points and intolerance have even taken over our sports, entertainment, religious institutions and K-12 education. There is virtually no relief, no sanctuary anymore from their anger, political ideologies, or quest to rule every aspect of our country and lives.
This dominant echo chamber may well propel the Democrats into the White House and a Senate majority, while retaining their House majority.
The classic 1944 movie “Gaslight” is about a diabolical villain who creates an alternative reality to drive his victim insane, to steal her riches. The term “gaslighting” is based on this process of creating a fraudulent reality so that the victims make wrong decisions, to their detriment.
That is what 2020 is about. It is the Gaslight Election.
Since the Summer of 2016, the Left’s echo chamber has created a narrative, fueled by the bogus Steele Dossier, that Russian leaders are puppeteers controlling Trump and his inner circle. Wild assertions went (and still go) unchallenged. A fake whistleblower, coached by Congressional Democrats and shaped by secretly backdated regulations, launched a reckless impeachment.
While the entire scheme of lashing Trump to Russia, and then Ukraine, was exposed as a fraud, the Left’s echo chamber barely reports this fraud or how it was accomplished. In fact, most of the echo chamber reprises Russia, unchallenged, whenever it can.
Tragically, Judicial Watch has had to sue even Trump agencies to force their release of exculpatory information. Career bureaucrats have successfully delayed these facts from entering the public domain.
At the same time, former Vice President Biden is on video bragging about doing exactly what was the basis of Trump’s impeachment, to laughter and applause by the Washington, D.C. elite. Efforts to hold Biden accountable have been thwarted by FBI and intelligence officials for years.
The Left’s echo chamber remains silent – just as it is about the shocking revelations of the Biden Family’s questionable and perhaps even criminal collusion with Chinese, Russian, Ukrainian, and other foreign organizations, which were exposed in great detail in emails from Hunter Biden and his associates’ computers.
It is just as important to not report something.
The Left’s echo chamber also set the ultimate trap for Trump’s re-election. COVID-19 remains Trump’s Achilles’ heel because scary and highly inaccurate models generated by the Imperial College on March 16, 2020 forced America’s economic near-suicide. The Left’s echo chamber demanded that Trump shut down his booming economy, supposedly to prevent millions of deaths.
The model turned out to be fundamentally flawed. Now the Left’s echo chamber blames Trump for this year’s economic downturn, while ignoring the devastating medical, psychological, and other effects of the lockdowns. Leftist governors use their independence under federalism to enforce draconian measures that are not based on current science. This slows the economic recovery through Election Day.
Biden, Harris, and their media allies wear masks every time they are on camera. They wear masks when they are outdoors and over 30 feet from others. No science or health organization recommends this. But it serves as a symbol for COVID-19 remaining a “dire threat,” with Trump to blame. The Left’s echo chamber makes no effort to question this shameless propaganda ploy. Instead, it promotes it and will continue to do so until just after the election (if Biden wins).
The Left creates visual equivalency by providing only tight shots of Biden and Harris at their podiums, ignoring the fact that fewer than ten people are in the audience. Trump’s 20,000+ rallies are either not covered at all or show only tight podium shots, making his huge crowds appear as small as Biden’s.
Biden’s countless lies about his attending Black churches and colleges, his groundless assertions, and his fiction about awarding medals, remain unchallenged. His radical agenda for the Green New Deal, tax increases, medical and medical insurance takeovers, and aggressive gun control go unreported. Meanwhile, debunked accusations, like Trump hating the armed forces, dominate news cycles.
The Left over-samples registered Democrats, sometimes over 50 percent to only 38 percent or less for Republicans, to generate polls showing Biden trouncing Trump.
The Left’s Gaslight Election may succeed because over 60 million have early-voted, just as facts about the Biden family’s foreign influence peddling slowly seep out. Some early voters have already voiced “buyer’s remorse” of having voted before they knew about the Biden family’s corruption. Congressional Republicans’ glacial investigative pace enables the Left’s reality.
A Democrat sweep in November will be tragic for everyone except liberal elites. Trump’s tax cuts will be erased, and new taxes added. Four years of regulatory relief will evaporate. All of Trump’s government reform executive orders will be voided within hours of Biden’s inauguration.
Gun control will rapidly expand. The 1619 anti-American indoctrination curriculum will be forced into every classroom. Illegal aliens will be granted wholesale amnesty and added to the voter rolls. American energy independence will vanish, and Americans will suffer from the absurd policies that have made California the land of pricey energy and rolling blackouts. Hollywood and sports celebrities will roar back into prominence, virtue signaling Americans about race relations and carbon footprints.
Even worse, all investigations of Biden, Obama, Clinton and the Deep State will end within hours of a Biden/Democrat victory, extinguishing any hope that truth and justice will prevail. America and the world must hope and pray that this Leftist echo chamber fails despite its size and power.
Scot Faulkner is the best-selling author of: "Naked Emperors: The Failure of the Republican Revolution." He also served as the first chief administrative officer of the US House of Representatives and director of personnel for the Reagan campaign and went on to serve in the presidential transition team and on the White House staff. During the Reagan administration, he held executive positions at the FAA, GSA and Peace Corps. Read his reports here.