What goes around comes around

OPINION:

The significance of the baleful and gleeful reactions of many in response to Donald Trump’s recent arrest and booking in Fulton County, Georgia, reflects the degree to which the mainstream media has effected thought control in America and elsewhere — including some who read this newspaper (“Trump arrest results in ‘absurd mugshot coverage,’” Web, Aug. 27).

Repetition of the narrative manufactured by the mainstream media and its political and institutional allies has conditioned millions into accepting that Trump is a criminal and rightfully must be prevented from ever being elected again. Through relentless repetition, varied only by tone and volume, alternative views and dissenting facts have been pilloried as “extremist,” “deplorable” and “fascist.”  The consequence of that process was starkly apparent by the vindictive, Pavlovian reactions of talk show hosts and their toadies in screening Trump’s mugshot released by the Fulton County jail.

The question any discerning viewer should be asking is the extent to which these media people are able to distinguish between news and views. What should be apparent is their utter lack of objectivity and impartiality, yet daily millions unquestioningly absorb what they say as being reality.

Completely absent from the outlook of the mainstream-media talking heads is the distinction between an indictment and a conviction. For them, the principle of ’innocent until proven guilty’ does not exist.

The treatment to which Trump has been subjected (which includes the uncalled-for bail payment of $200,000 despite his 24/7 Secret Service detail) marks a nadir in the liberty of the American republic. Trump is the victim of a vituperative, politicized justice system that was standard practice in the USSR, which is why it indicts its opponents.  

By their promotion of the Russia-collusion falsehood,Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden and Barack Obama were complicit in election perversion in 2016 and in sedition, as the Durham investigation established. Yet none of them has  been indicted. 

Still, their day is coming. What goes around comes around.

DUNCAN DU BOIS

Durban, South Africa