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Anyone who can read this article is well aware that oxygen is a requirement for human life. If we find ourselves in a situation in where there is a shortage of oxygen, we will quickly lose strength, pass out, and eventually die.
Because it's a much rarer circumstance, we may not be as familiar with the dangers of too much oxygen. Over the years, though, medical personnel have learned the hard way that an oxygen tent can all too quickly become a raging, all-consuming inferno.
The same holds true in politics. Occasionally you hear someone say that a loud-talking candidate "takes all the oxygen out of the room." This means that he is skilled at getting and keeping the attention of the media, and with them donors and voters.
Of course, there are only so many news-minutes and newspaper pages per day; an article covering Politician A is an article not covering Politician B. If one candidate consumes all the oxygen there's nothing left for anybody else.
. Every presidential candidate knows that in order to get elected, you first must get noticed. However, this isn't just a skill for politics. Hollywood stars, pop singers, celebrities of every sort, and web sites like Google are masters of garnering eyeballs.
Over the years, it's taken more and more effort to catch the jaded eyes of modern Americans, which is why so many modern celebrities make a habit of being outrageous and shocking. So it makes sense that actors and other celebrities can make it big in politics, Ronald Reagan and Arnold Schwarzenegger being merely the most famous.
But the mainstream media has learned that, just as with oxygen tents, too much political oxygen can cause a campaign to self-combust. Over the years, such coulda-woulda-shoulda presidents as Edmund Muskie, Howard Dean, Sarah Palin, and Herman Cain have shot up in the polls - and then just as quickly shot back down again when they blew up under the spotlight.
Famous people self-destructing makes magnificent news copy and grips the attention of the fickle public, so journalists like to bring about these spectacular events. You don't run for President without being pretty full of yourself already. When suddenly you're on the front cover of every newspaper and every TV screen, it takes inhuman self-discipline not to think you're some kind of god - and we all know what happens to people who allow themselves to succumb to that sort of hubris.
It's blatantly obvious that the media is using exactly this approach with Donald Trump. For the past month or more, it's been all Trump, all day, every day. Even here at Scragged, we note, The Donald has received a headline article each and every week; the last candidate to receive this honor was Barack Obama and we know where he ended up.
What's the effect on the other candidates? Let's let The Donald himself explain:
I couldn’t care less about Lindsey Graham. He’s registered at, I think, zero in the polls.
And neither can anyone else. In fact, a recent ABC News / Washngton Post poll shows Trump as having nearly double the support of his closest competitor, Scott Walker - and vastly more than the rest.
Which raises the question: Are the media simply setting up Trump in order to tear him down later, while in the meantime using Trump as a brush to tar all Republicans as racists/bigots/greedy/stingy/etc.?
Of course they are. But, just possibly, they've miscalculated: From his performance thus far, Trump has demonstrated an amazing ability to speak truths in a stunningly blunt, even rude way, so as to make the elites and media go nuts - at the same time as vast numbers of ordinary Americans are shouting, "Finally, somebody famous gets it!"
Our national elites, whether they be political, media, entertainment, academic, or financial, live in highly insulated worlds these days. We can't help but recall Pauline Kael, once a noted New York-based film critic but now only remembered for relating her shock that Nixon beat George McGovern in 1972:
How could Nixon have won? Nobody I know voted for him!
As a card-carrying member of the Manhattan elite, Ms. Kael was probably telling the truth - and yet Nixon beat McGovern in every single state save Massachusetts (plus DC). Our elites have only gotten more politically exclusive since 1972.
So when the media mandarins expresses their shock and horror that Trump might characterize illegals as criminals, they may well be doing so secure in the knowledge that literally every single person they know feels the same way. It's entirely possible that they are completely unaware that, actually, the overwhelming majority of Americans are angry at the ongoing invasion of their nation, and that, while we all recognize that not every last illegal, Mexican or otherwise, is an ax murderer, nevertheless the concept of the rule of law still commands allegiance.
This is borne out by the fact that the more strongly the media expresses revulsion at Trump's pontifications, the higher he rises in the polls. Illegal immigrants are the bottom of the barrel? Right on! John McCain isn't the world's best exemplar of a winner? Dern tootin'! The media is mostly frauds and liars? Normal people have known this for years.
So long as what the media believes to be true is in fact false, they'll continue to believe that trumpeting the "falsehoods" of Trump will turn America against him. And so long as Trump continues to say what everyone down here on the ground knows to be true... he'll continue to gain ground.
Just possibly, Donald Trump will consume all the media oxygen provided, but instead of self-combusting, he'll breathe raging fireballs of truth right back at the media, all the way to the White House.