A battle with an inevitable end

I’m no longer a newspaperman. But since I spent the better part of my adult life in one newsroom or another, I guess I still qualify as one of King Donald’s Enemies of the American People. Like my former colleagues, I wear his scornful label like a medal.

 Of course, it makes no sense for Trump to declare full-scale war on the press. I can only assume our President-who-wishes-he-were-Czar has never heard of the old saying that you should never pick a fight with someone who buys ink by the barrel.

Perhaps he thinks that admonition only applies to the nobodies of the world, not to a big shot like him. He revels in the financial difficulties his tormentors in the news media have suffered of late. He delights in referring to the “failing New York Times” or the “failing Washington Post.” He’d like you to believe CNN’s ratings are dropping like a rock. Alas, Donald dear, they aren’t. They in fact are rising, thanks mostly to you, as are digital subscribers to both the Times and Post.

The truth can be so inconvenient at times, wouldn’t you say?

In fact, there’s a real strategy at work here. King Donald is not blindly lashing out at the news media in a fit of pique. By discrediting the news media – by repeating over and over and over that they produce only “fake news,” that their practitioners are disloyal traitors, that they are despicable human beings –he is laying the groundwork for the day when the house of cards tumbles and he is driven from the office he already has disgraced. And those cards will fall. Of that, there is little doubt.

Consider this. Who sits atop Trump’s enemies list? The American news media and the intelligence community – the two entities that can bring him to his knees if accusations are true that his representatives colluded with the Russians to throw the presidential election to him.

There hasn’t been such a news frenzy to uncover wrongdoing at the top levels of government since the heady days of Watergate. The Times and Post, traditional rivals, are locked in a fierce competition to break things wide open. Don’t bet against them, either. They’ve done this before.

As for the spooks, they have the tape recordings, if they exist, that can prove the accusations and send some of Trump’s lackeys to the slammer, where they belong. And the CIA and its confederates in the shadow world of espionage loathe the preening narcissist who has attacked their patriotism and demeaned their competency. I suspect they’re only waiting for the right time to drop the hammer on Agent Orange.

Add to this volatile mixture a White House that is leaking like a sieve, with Trumpites falling over themselves to detail the dysfunctionality of this carnival act masquerading as an administration.

What can Trump and his brownshirts do to prevent the end of their hopes and dreams? They must do everything in their power to discredit the media and the CIA and anyone else who asks too many questions or who knows too many answers.

So they strive to convince their hard core supporters that it’s All Lies. Lies, lies, lies. “Our enemies are liars,” they say over and over. “Don’t believe the leakers in the intelligence community. Don’t believe the lying media. WE are the only people you can trust. WE are your Only Salvation.”

I believe they will fail – and badly. I think there is an inevitable end to this sad, sad tale, and I believe the truth will prevail sooner or later. And it will be much-maligned members of the news media who will uncover that truth and send it into every corner of the country.

I have faith in my former colleagues, who have suffered for more than 10 years through layoffs and cutbacks and ever increasing workloads. This is the kind of story they live for. It is the kind of story that may yet demonstrate the essential nature of a free and vigorous news media.

Several days ago, in response to a Facebook post I wrote in praise of journalist Dan Rather’s social media commentary, my friend Michael Precker imagined the Times and Post as sailing frigates firing cannon broadsides at “Trump’s pirate ship.” Michael knows I’m a fan of Patrick O’Brian’s famous series of historical novels about the era of fighting sail during the Napoleonic wars.

Inspired, I engaged in a little exercise of my own. I reproduce it here, mostly for my amusement and perhaps for yours:

“A la O'Brian, here's another analogy. Trump's White House is the French navy. To outward appearances, it puts on a pretty show, brass gleaming, sails snowy white and lines taut and shipshape. But it serves the whims of a brooding tyrant, petty and egotistical, with ambitions to enslave the world. And in battle, it is all bark and no bite. Its tactics are flawed, its execution sloppy and inconsistent and its gunnery shoddy and slow. The Times and Post are capital ships of the British navy. And although their sails may be a bit tattered from prolonged combat, their hulls pockmarked and patched from past cannon strikes, their crews are highly motivated and supremely disciplined, their gunners dead-eyed marksmen whose crews work like well-oiled machines to pound the enemy ships again and again until they are shattered, burning wrecks.”