Trump, the Media, and the Only Choice We’re Given

Today I’m asking whether eleven years of reaction architecture around Trump is itself part of the agenda, as 2030 looms.

There was a time when I would have read President Trump’s statement about Iran and immediately arrived at the same conclusion GhostofBasedPatrickHenry of Badlands Media did.

Trump lays an intricate trap.

The media says one thing.

Trump says another.

The media gets caught.

Trump wins.

The public distrusts the media even more.

Narrative warfare.

Here is Trump’s post concerning Iran:

And here is the model comment for how most people got behind Trump starting in 2015, and how many still support him:

To be fair, there is still a great deal of evidence supporting that interpretation. It certainly works well for the conservative press. Every time another story collapses in mere days, every time another narrative shifts overnight, every time another “fact” quietly disappears behind the onslaught of something new, millions more Americans conclude that the media is lying to them. The Mockingbird media has spent years torching what little credibility it had left, and regardless of where things end up with Trump, such an awakening is largely due to him.

It is not even debatable whether the media is lying to us.

But what if that is not the only possibility worth considering?

What if another question is not whether the media is lying, but whether conservative Americans have been guided into a bullpen where they assume the media is always the villain and Trump is always the truth-teller?

I ask that question not as a critic of Trump per se, but as someone who once occupied that exact position.

I’m just wondering if we’re about to be challenged in an enormously spiritual way, and part of the trick for eleven years was to get well-meaning people with sound values inside a mental cage.

Indeed, many readers will recognize the path. First comes the realization that the media lies. Then comes the realization that government lies. Then comes the realization that corporations lie. Eventually a person begins questioning nearly every institution in public life.

That process can be healthy. And for that reason, we are truly blessed to have had Trump win. The danger arises when the human mind, desperate for stability, replaces the point of the plot God is showing us with one that provides comfort and an escape from any looming cognitive dissonance.

In that sense, the possibility worth pondering is not that Trump is secretly working against his supporters. That is too simplistic. Rather, it is that the entire spectacle may be functioning as a binary trap in which both sides play necessary roles.

One side says trust the institutions.

The other says trust the man fighting the institutions.

The public chooses a side.

The emotional investment deepens.

The spectacle continues.

And almost nobody steps outside the operating system long enough to ask whether the system itself is the problem.

Or to return to the metaphor we have used for a long time now—the cave.

This is where concepts like Revelation of the Method become useful. Modern power structures often appear remarkably comfortable exposing portions of their own corruption. It is one problem I’ve grown to have with Trump. Scandals are revealed. Officials contradict themselves. The public becomes increasingly aware of manipulation.

Yet somehow the underlying system continues operating.

Perhaps this is because social media outrage itself has become the power source keeping it humming. Perhaps it’s because modern populations can be managed not only through deception but also through carefully curated revelations about deception.

That possibility should at least be entertained. After all, if the media truly is losing credibility at such an alarming rate, what would be the next logical step?

One would expect Americans to become less dependent on such a dark and wicked system.

But the trust has simply shifted elsewhere. The public has merely moved from one wall of shadows to another.

I do not claim to know the answer in full, but the patterns are impossible to ignore. I simply know that every major political story now seems to arrive prepackaged with heroes, villains, tribes, emotional cues, and algorithmically approved reactions. The public is expected to choose a side almost immediately. That expectation alone should make thoughtful people cautious.

Ghost is undoubtedly correct that Trump is exposing the media’s dishonesty. But charity toward readers requires us to acknowledge another possibility as well.

What if the deepest trick is not convincing conservatives to distrust the media? We’ve had eleven years of that with no significant change.

What if the deepest trick is convincing conservatives that choosing between the media and Trump is the only choice they have, forcing them deeper and deeper into a psychosis brought on by the realization that they’re doing everything they’ve been told to believe is right, and yet nothing ever gets, well, right?

The citizen trapped inside a such a prison rarely notices who built the walls or why nothing ever improves….

Or who benefits from keeping him there.