HIV for the Body Politic

There is a deadly disease which attacks the immune system, hampering a body’s ability to defend itself and therefore condemning this body, through a slow and painful process, to a withering, wasting death. Beset on all sides by agents, processes and circumstances that would harm it, a body sustains its vitality only through a rigorous defense from the various toxins, viruses, gamma rays and other lethal instruments with which one must contend. A body declines in proportion as this protection is compromised. The insidious disease of which I speak runs amok even now. By design it inserts itself into the body and propagates within it, using the body’s own processes to grow and expand before strangling the immune system that keeps it alive. No cure has ever been found; no medicine can eradicate it. I refer, of course, to the metaphorical body of our society, and the disease is journalism.

Am I being unfair? Consider how like a swarm of viruses journalists are. They act with a singleness of purpose and in unison. A journalist can no more dissent from its brethren than a lone virus can choose to cause a different disease. A single journalist is enough to cause an infection, for where one appears it will soon multiply until a hoard of these vermin are propagating their filth. They have but three goals, two mere subordinates in service of the third: they must stay alive, they must reproduce and they must attack the host society that they infect. Journalists, as is reported of HIV, assail the body’s defense system and allow nature to break it down.

There are two principle tools which mankind uses to better his existence. From the lowliest Stone Age tribe to the most modern society, a people must make use of these tools or expire. I refer to Fact and Reason. Very simply, individuals of a thriving society must accurately discern the pieces of the world around them and interpret these in a larger framework if they are to act intelligently. But a society which has contracted journalism sees distorted facts, if it sees them at all, and acts by corrupted reason. No matter the puissance of its science, if it be matched by equally potent journalism a society will progress no more than so many naked pierced Brazilian frog swallowers. Insofar as a culture has advanced, it is during those times when science has bested journalism, if only briefly.

Is a society afflicted with murderers? Has every decent and reputable study on the subject concluded that executions act as a powerful deterrent against murder? Then here come the journalists to repeat ad nauseum that no deterrent effect for execution has ever been found. Perhaps, they reason, the putative lack of respect for life implicit in the act of execution encourages more murders. They chastise us for treating killers by the very code of ethics they themselves chose. They deny any distinction between the initiation of killing and killing in response. With the facts thus denied and reason sullied, the death penalty in America was hamstrung. The only price we paid was, in a time span of thirty years, 100,000 more murders than would otherwise have been committed.

Are thrift and saving the foundation for a strong economy? Then journalists prefer to prolong and deepen recessions, recommending lavish spending at just the time when a higher saving rate could ameliorate the hardships of a weak economy. Is a strict gold standard the cure for the injurious business cycle? Then journalists heap scorn on anyone who advocates for it. Is fractional reserve banking fraudulent? Then journalists adore it. Is an armed citizenry a danger to criminals? Then journalists shall report on every accident involving a gun and ignore any beneficial use. Does a once-in-a-lifetime candidate for president understand economics and have a long established record of support of sound policy? Then journalists will ignore him as long as they are able and cast him as a kook when he simply must be acknowledged. Is warfare and imperialism the death of any society? Then journalists will zealously embrace any war hawk and choose from their number a candidate to anoint.

Perhaps no better example of the malignancy of journalism can be cited than that of Global Warming. I do not refer to the warming of the globe, an occurrence which was well established up to 1998, but rather to the idea that man’s contribution of CO2 to the atmosphere is causing the warming. There is no more discredited theory in all the sciences of human invention. As I write these words the facts of the matter are available. The ice core samples which showed a positive relationship between temperature and CO2 have been reviewed with more precision, and it is now known that temperature changes drive changes in CO2 content, precisely the opposite relationship which Global Warming predicts. More recently, a comprehensive survey of atmospheric temperatures revealed absolutely no greenhouse warming signature in the atmosphere, specifically warming in the tropical mid troposphere.

The revision of the ice core sample removed the first and only piece of empirical evidence for Global Warming. The comprehensive atmospheric survey neatly destroyed the theory. But this is no impediment to the truly virulent journalist. Indeed, the less substance its arguments possess, the more successfully it bamboozles the public, for it does not depend on facts and logic, but on repetition and strident denunciations. When its case is baseless, it simply redoubles its efforts. As I write these very words the public is convinced that a scientific consensus has been reached and that Global Warming is both lethal and real. And what is the target of this Global Warming hooey? Why, no less than civil society and the industry which supports it. Unless we wish the planet to be destroyed, we are told, we must give up our progress and begin to live like so many orangutans.

At every opportunity journalists attack the mechanisms of human progress and enable the machinery of its destruction. Were their deceptions not met with the modicum of calm and reason that our species does possess, we would soon be reduced to a race of ignorant savages, prey to the murderers among us, bereft of the industry and science which sustain us, economically ruined and wallowing in our superstitions. At this point, with journalism extinct, we could progress anew.

How did we come to be so infected? Did our planet have unprotected relations with a promiscuous asteroid? The unhappy fact is that journalists arise from our own ranks, like healthy cells suddenly turned cancerous. This we know, as we know that the cancerous journalist will turn on its own species and seek to convince it to allow itself to be destroyed. Very little else is understood of this infirmity. Why does an otherwise hearty individual desire to be a journalist? Is the journalist born, or is it made? Does it come to its profession already malignant, or is their a corrupting process? We don’t know the answers to these questions, and until we do there is little we can do to cure journalism. I call upon those with the necessary skills to research the matter. I propose that those with the necessary funds finance the investigation. Every man and woman of sound mind must contribute to the cause. We are all in this together, my friends. Let the race for the cure begin.