Manipulating reality

Photo by Pinho . on Unsplash

Over the weekend, there was a protest in New York City. It centered around Islam, though I haven’t bothered to do a deep dive to determine whether it was all of Islam or just the radical flavor of it, though I’m inclined to believe the former consider who was behind the event. I honestly don’t care enough to look.

There was a protest, then someone tossed an IED into the mass.

Now, whether or not you agree with the protestors or any counter-protestors is irrelevant. In a free society, people can say things, even if you dislike them. That doesn’t justify throwing IEDs at people.

But there’s something inherently disgusting about the way this whole thing was framed.

From Townhall:

When two suspected terrorists threw a homemade bomb at a protest of Christians, New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani first condemned the apparent victims instead of the attackers.

Mamdani posted on social media:

“Yesterday, white supremacist Jake Lang organized a protest outside Gracie Mansion rooted in bigotry and racism. Such hate has no place in New York City. It is an affront to our city’s values and the unity that defines who we are.

“What followed was even more disturbing. Violence at a protest is never acceptable. The attempt to use an explosive device and hurt others is not only criminal, it is reprehensible and the antithesis of who we are.”

The media largely framed it similarly. This was the result of a right-wing protest, the result of white supremacy, and things of that sort.

The problem is that the two men who have been arrested for this incident, 18-year-old Amir Balat and 19-year-old Ibrahim Nick, shouted “Allahu Akbar” before tossing the IED into the crowd of protestors.

In other words, it was the act of radical Muslims, and not the act of the protestors.

Look, from what I can see, Lang is a bit of a clown show and is a bit more extreme in his beliefs than I want to associate with, but none of that means this is his fault. Sure, you could make the argument that if there had been no protest, especially against Islam, the attack wouldn’t have happened.

That sounds suspiciously like, “If she hadn’t been walking down that street in a skirt that short, she wouldn’t have been raped.”

Blaming the victim has always been complete BS, and this is no different.

What happened, though, is that people like Mamdani and the mainstream media know that most people aren’t going to delve very deeply into what happened. They’re going to see the headlines, hear the politicians pontificate on it briefly, and then form a decision.

This is why so many people think Kyle Rittenhouse shot three black people in Kenosha, when he actually got three white guys.

They got the narrative spoon-fed to them by the media and by talking heads to try to manipulate reality by framing things a particular way. They’re not necessarily lying, in that they’re spreading inherently inaccurate information. Instead, they’re creating a narrative by taking the facts and presenting them in an inaccurate manner.

They frame it in a way that will give an impression, all while knowing the truth isn’t quite what they’ve presented.

If called on it and forced to explain it, they can hide behind the fact that every word in the headline is true, then pretend they were unaware of how people would take it.

That’s how it works, though. It’s not the lies that are the problem. Those can come back to bite the media on the ass all too easily, as several media outlets have learned—CNN, for example, like made sure a teenage kid never had to work a day in his life because of that—so they try to skip that.

Instead, they load up one side as the unequivocal truth, omit anything that doesn’t help their case, and then send it to the American people as if it’s actual journalism.

In the Texas-23 race, they’re doing it against Brandon Herrera, by taking clips out of context, running them as if they’re something nefarious—which they might appear to be without the full context—and pretending this is good journalism, even when it’s absolute BS.

Because reality is what it is, and you can’t change that. What you can do, though, is make sure a lot of people never get the full picture, showing them what you want them to see and hiding anything else. You’re then manipulating reality, not through violating the laws of physics, but controlling perception of it, which amounts to the same thing as far as the impact goes.

Except that we can see the truth and call them out on it.

You cannot hate the media enough. You might think you do, and I’ve had people claim they do, but the truth is that you can’t. You’d suffer from spontaneous human combustion long before you ever got to the point you hated them sufficiently.

What’s really said is that they totally brought it on themselves.

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