I’m not sure it’s possible for one to not see the foolishness involved in the reporting of anything related to Donald Trump these days. Only the most partisan of Democrats could fail to acknowledge the obvious bias and agenda in what passes for journalism in the U.S. at this point in time. Before continuing, I will reiterate now what I have said many times; I am not a Trump fanboy. I was extremely skeptical of his candidacy, and he was far from my first choice. That being said, it is getting more and more difficult to pay much attention to the “reporting” taking place today when the desire to trash a public figure is so prominent that disparaging stories are written because he takes two scoops of ice cream with his dessert (insert eye roll here).

I’m a “big picture” kind of guy for the most part. I’m also a skeptic. For those reasons and more, I don’t often get swept up in the day’s stories. More often than not, I wonder what’s *not* being reported more so than becoming anxious about what *is* being reported. Because of that, I’m going to offer some food for thought about the President’s firing of FBI Director James Comey.

1. The Director of the FBI serves at the pleasure of the President. Hearings don’t need to be convened, HR doesn’t need to weigh in – if the President wants to fire you, the President has that power. Period. End of story. Doesn’t. Matter. Why.
2. This particular FBI Director has earned scathing criticism from all political sides. One can only defend his job performance through a highly politicized and agenda-rich perspective. Many prominent Democratic figures are on record calling for his head.
3. The President exercised restraint and showed deference to protocol. How, you say? It doesn’t take a Rhodes Scholar to see Democratic obstructionism has caused difficulty for this administration through foot-dragging in reference to cabinet nominations. The Director of the FBI’s boss is the Deputy Attorney General, who reports to the Attorney General, who reports to the President. Jeff Sessions wasn’t sworn in as the Attorney General until February 8th. Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein wasn’t sworn in until April 26th. Comey was fired on May 9th, just shy of two weeks after his boss was finally allowed to take his position. Hardly a questionable timeline given the circumstances. President Trump waited on the formal recommendation of Comey’s next two levels of supervision before ending his service as FBI director, when he could have done it on January 20th.
4. Rod Rosenstein is widely regarded by both sides of the aisle to be exceedingly apolitical, very ethical, and a consummate professional. This lends significant credibility to his recommendation for Comey’s dismissal. Given his record, it is unlikely he would produce a recommendation with which he disagreed.
5. Relieving the leader of an entity does not immediately end the activities of said entity. The only person in the FBI throwing up their hands and not doing their job any more as of May 9th 2017 is James Comey. Every other FBI agent reported for duty on May 10th and continued doing their work, and every investigation currently under way by the FBI will continue to be conducted until it is concluded or ordered closed. Judging by the apoplexia on display from the usual suspects, one would think no FBI activity at all has taken place since Comey was fired. There is simply no logic in acting as if this is the de facto end of any investigation.

Let’s review: We have an FBI director with an easily documented and indefensible record of poor job performance (marvel at my understatement), two levels of supervision recommending his removal, and the end of his chain of command has the clear and unrestricted power of dismissal. And your problem is?

Accusation: He was fired to hinder investigations which may cause trouble for the President.
Counter: Even if he was, it cannot be proven. Move on. The time to make hay in regard to this is if the new director takes provable action to actually impede any particular FBI investigation for political reasons.

Accusation: He was going to fire him anyway. He just waited on those recommendations, which he ordered to be written, as a form of political cover.
Counter: One could just as easily say, possibly with more credibility, he wanted to fire him but asked for input from every link in the chain of command between the two in order to make a more fully-informed decision. That shows good leadership. I may not like the man as a person, but do you really think given his record of performance he doesn’t know a thing or two about being a leader? The timing of it, as previously mentioned, was largely determined by Democrat foot-dragging.

There are multiple investigations being conducted by multiple entities looking into possible Russian interference in our election. There may be more. This firing will have no effect on the FBI’s ability to do what it does. For that matter, I think it more likely to cause a “double down” response, ultimately causing more scrutiny, not less.

Ultimately, I personally believe the Russia argument is a pile of excrement, and largely a product of sore losers hell-bent on causing as much pain as possible for this administration. There is much more documentable evidence of Democrat involvement with Russians than Republican. In any case, let them investigate. As I said, I believe nothing credible will come of it. If it does, then the necessary steps will no doubt be taken.

This firing is no smoking gun. At most, one should make a note to consider this as a small piece of the puzzle if a smoking gun is ever found. In the mean time, right now, the firing of James Comey just doesn’t matter.

As a historical archaeologist, a large portion of my education was in history.  History was always my favorite subject in school, likely due to some excellent teachers in that subject.  The American Civil War is the most interesting period of history to me and has been for many years.  I’ve been fortunate to have visited several Civil War battlefields and museums, and I’ve even gotten to do archaeology on a few.  No period in history has left such an indelible mark on our culture, especially for those of us who grew up in the South.  My own ancestry includes at least one Confederate soldier and probably one Union, but I haven’t been able to prove it yet.  Those four years changed everything, some for the better and some for the worse.  The battles and military strategy are fascinating, but it’s the people which interest me the most.  Sure, Grant and Lee and their subordinates have volumes written about them and rightly so.  But the people who you don’t read about in books also have a story to tell.  The common soldier who left his family farm and traveled to town to enlist, then went to fight in places he had never heard of for causes he may not have fully understood, he’s what intrigues me.  What causes a man to leave his home and go fight, fight against his countrymen and possibly his own relatives?  For the Confederate soldier, he knew his home and life as he knew it were being threatened and that was cause enough.

Politically, there is little question that the issue of slavery was central among the causes of the war.  It was not the only cause, but was certainly paramount among them.  The many issues, political, social, and economic, that brought on the war are beyond the scope of this article, but may be discussed in a future contribution.  Unfortunately, history is written by the victor, so the war today is often taught and understood as a fight between the noble Union that only wanted to free the slaves and the wicked Confederacy, which only existed to preserve slavery.  This is a gross over-simplification of the issue.  Slavery had little direct impact on the lives of most men who fought for the Union.  There were many soldiers who considered themselves abolitionists, but that was not necessarily their reason for joining the fight.  The primary goal of the Union forces was to prevent the division of the United States.  Abraham Lincoln made this clear in an 1862 letter to Horace Greeley, editor of the New York Tribune, where he stated:

My paramount object in this struggle is to save the Union, and is not either to save or to destroy slavery. If I could save the Union without freeing any slave I would do it, and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone I would also do that.   

The January 1, 1863 Emancipation Proclamation freed the slaves held in the Confederate states, but did nothing for those in the border states.  It was as much Lincoln taking advantage of a political situation as it was a noble effort to free enslaved human beings.  I do not mean to minimize the impact of the Emancipation Proclamation, only to point out its political value.

For the Confederate soldier, he likely as not owned no slaves.  Estimates vary wildly, but it appears that approximately one third of soldiers in the Confederate army were from slave-owning families.  It would be interesting to know what number of slave owners were officers versus enlisted men, but that is research for another day.  Slavery was an integral part of the Southern economy, so yes, the preservation of slavery was important to many Confederate soldiers and was most definitely a central cause of the War.

The difficult question is how do we view Confederate soldiers and their leaders through the lens of history?  Were they inherently evil men fighting for an evil cause?  Were they heroes who fought and died trying to protect their homeland and way of life?  This question is still hotly contested even 152 years after the end of the War.  As a historian (at least partly), it is my opinion we must view the behavior of people from a perspective of the time in which they lived.  We can all agree today that slavery was a horrible, evil practice.  It is a shameful, ugly scar on our collective past.  But in 1861, it was an economic reality for those who relied on the production of cotton and other agricultural products, particularly in the Deep South.  For the Confederacy, the Civil War was about slavery in much the same way the Gulf War was about oil.  Most wars are fought over threats to the economic well-being of the combatants.  The fact the Confederate economy depended on slave labor does not make the practice any less reprehensible, but it does provide context for why thousands of young men were willing to suffer what they did.

Sadly, modern political correctness dictates all things Confederate to be inherently evil.  People who express pride in their Confederate ancestors, or even their Southern heritage, are labeled as ignorant racists intent on glorifying slavery.  It is no longer acceptable to display the Confederate flag.  A note here to point out that most people have no clue how the true Confederate flags appeared.  The flag which gets everyone fired up is the battle flag, the so-called “Southern Cross” (featuring the St. Andrew’s Cross), not any of the three official national flags or the Bonnie Blue flag.   Even states such as Georgia and Mississippi, which had flags featuring the Saint Andrew’s Cross, have been pressured to change or stop displaying them.  I was angry to see my home state of Georgia caved under the pressure, but I was very proud of the response.  The new flag looks like nothing so much as the First National Confederate flag!  The critics of the original Georgia flag were too ignorant to even notice!

The whole flag thing was bad enough, but now they’re after Confederate monuments.  Municipal governments across the South are under pressure to take down statues of Confederate generals and soldiers and to change the names of streets, schools, and buildings named for them.  New Orleans has caved and is even now removing statues of Lee, Beauregard, and Davis.  This is a dangerous over-reaction.  While it makes the politically correct crowd feel good about themselves, like they’re somehow atoning for the sins of the past, hiding the history of the Confederacy and its people is short-sighted and ignorant.  Where does it end?  Are we to remove the Confederate monuments and memorials from Gettysburg?  Should the statue of Lee on Traveler on the spot where he met his shattered army after Pickett’s Charge be taken down?  What about the Confederate soldiers who are buried in Arlington and other national cemeteries?  Why not dig them up and hide them away somewhere?  I contend there is no difference as these monuments serve the same purpose.  They remind us of our ancestors, of their accomplishments, and their faults.  Lee was a great man and general, whose tactics are still being taught in military academies across the country.  But like every human, he was flawed.  The fact he owned other human beings should not be minimized or ignored, but it should be understood in the context of the time in which Lee lived.

Today’s proponents of this revisionist history appear to take it for granted I have no right to be proud of my Southern roots. I beg to differ! I am proud of my Southern ancestry, including those who served the Confederacy.  My great-great-great grandfather, John W. Hardy, served in the 40th Georgia Infantry and was captured north of Atlanta.  He was then taken to a Union POW facility in Ohio called Camp Chase, dying there from the small pox he contracted before being taken prisoner. He never owned slaves.  I am proud of his service, and of the courage he displayed while fighting to protect his home.  I would almost certainly disagree with many of his opinions about people and why he was fighting, but I’m proud he did it.  It isn’t right to deny us our history and it frustrates this American to see so much effort being put forth to do just that.  If we’re all supposed to get along and all supposed to be equally important, it makes no sense to marginalize the 25% of the country’s population inhabiting the South.

In closing, I will leave you with the inscription on the Confederate Memorial located at Arlington National Cemetery (yes, Arlington).  The memorial was placed in the early 20th century during a time of reconciliatory feelings between the federal government and former Confederate soldiers.  Think about these words the next time you start to cheer the removal of someone’s history.

Not for fame or reward
Not for place or for rank
Not lured by ambition
Or goaded by necessity
But in simple
Obedience to duty
As they understood it
These men suffered all
Sacrificed all
Dared all-and died

As always, patient reader, I welcome your feedback, good or bad, on this article.  Feel free to comment, but please keep it logical and civil.  I hope you’ll share TFA with your friends.  Thanks for reading!

The word ‘tolerance’ gets thrown around a lot these days.  Often, it is being screamed by someone demanding  someone else be more tolerant of some belief or behavior.  In many cases, I’m not sure the term is being applied properly.  Before we get started, let’s have a look at the definition of the term tolerance, as provided by Merriam-Webster:

tolerance: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one’s own; the act of allowing something.

Obviously, there are other definitions, but this is the one which applies to our discussion here.  Tolerance, in my opinion, includes the ability to accept things with which we might not agree or understand.  Sadly, the term is generally not used this way in current discussion of politics and social issues.  “Tolerance” to many exists only when others agree with and argue for their view of the world, no matter how narrow it might be.  There are many behaviors which I simply don’t understand, but I have come to accept that people that indulge in those behaviors are still good people and have a right to conduct themselves in the way they see fit.  Whether I understand it or not does not matter.  I just have to accept it.  However, I do not have to go out of my way to support the behavior, only the person.  In addition, I was raised to “mind my own knitting”, a Georgia way of saying that I should look to my own house and not worry about what others are doing, as long as they aren’t causing others harm.  One example is homosexuality.  I don’t understand it at all, but I accept that I have many gay friends who are great people.  I want them to be happy and not have to worry about being treated like second-class citizens.  I’m not likely to show up at a Pride parade, but I’m not going to judge anyone based on their choice of partners.  And, simply put, it’s none of my business!

The antithesis of tolerance is intolerance, another term which gets used a great deal these days, usually in conjunction with some political disagreement.  The way it gets used now includes a suggestion of hatred on the part of the person accused of intolerance.  It is important to remember that disagreement does not necessarily imply hate.  It is sad that we have come to a place in our discourse where this simple fact has been forgotten.  I have seen with increasing frequency those who claim to be tolerant being quite intolerant.  This has been going on for many years, but has really become a major issue since the presidential election.  I have said for years that no one is less tolerant than a leftist, and they are showing it to be true.  I can’t understand how anyone could vote for Hillary Clinton.  But I accept that some people felt like she was the better option.  This single fact does not change my opinion of people who I know personally.  If we were friends before the election, your vote isn’t going to change it.

Unfortunately, I have not seen the same level of tolerance from the left.  I should be used to it, since it’s nothing new.  I mean, we’re supposed to tolerate all religions, but Christians can be insulted at will.  We’re supposed to tolerate so-called alternative lifestyles, but anyone who simply supports traditional marriage is attacked and labeled as a bigot or homophobe.  We’re supposed to celebrate people of different cultures, but those of us who are proud of our Southern heritage, warts and all, are labeled as ignorant racists.  Gun owners are called a litany of names.  All of this is perfectly acceptable to so many “tolerant” individuals, because they don’t have to tolerate that with which they do not agree.  As aggravating as this is, it has gotten so much worse since the election.  I have been called everything but brother, only because of the way which I voted.  The pure hatred which spews forth on social media from the left is disturbing.  It is coming from people whom I thought were more mature than that, people who have been outspoken but respectful in the past.  It sent people who were already intolerant right over the edge.

There are many things which we should never tolerate:  racism, sexism, religious persecution, etc.  But attacking people’s intelligence and moral character over their vote is really just shallow and immature.  It smacks of sour grapes.  In closing, I’ll say this: if you’re going to yell and scream about tolerance, you better check yourself and make sure you’re being tolerant.  You don’t have to like it or agree with anyone, but you do have to accept their right to an opinion.  You never know, they might be right.

I hereby declare, on oath, that I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign prince, potentate, state, or sovereignty, of whom or which I have heretofore been a subject or citizen; that I will support and defend the Constitution and laws of the United States of America against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I will bear arms on behalf of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform noncombatant service in the Armed Forces of the United States when required by the law; that I will perform work of national importance under civilian direction when required by the law; and that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; so help me God.

This is the oath sworn by people when they become a naturalized citizen of the United States.  If you’ve ever seen one of the ceremonies where they actually recite this oath and become Americans, you know that it is a powerful moment.  The recent controversy over immigration has been on my mind.  I’ve wondered why anyone that goes through so much to get into this country wouldn’t just go ahead and become a citizen.  I’ve been doing some research on that subject, and came across this oath.  I’ve seen it before, but it has been a while, so I read through it again.

If you stop and think about what a person is actually saying when they take the Oath of Citizenship, you realize how profound a thing it is to become a citizen.  Take a moment to read it and think about what it means.  The very first sentence requires you to renounce any allegiance that you have for a foreign government or leader.  No matter where you were born, where you came from, or what form of government that you lived under, you are saying that you will no longer follow that leader or form of government.  That alone is a powerful statement and a step not to be taken lightly.

But then it goes on to say that you will obey and defend the Constitution, that you will bear arms against our enemies or serve the Armed Forces in a non-combatant role if required, that you will work for the national good if required, and that you will do all of this of your own free will.  Wow.  That is quite a commitment, especially for someone not even born here.  How much love for a place and hope for the future must you have to take this oath?  Seems like quite a bit to me.

In thinking about what this means, I was struck by the fact that so few of our elected leaders live up to what we require of naturalized citizens.  I don’t think that most of them have even read the Constitution, much less are willing to support and defend it against all enemies, foreign and domestic, or bear true faith and allegiance to it!  Some of them have actually borne arms on behalf of the United States and they are to be commended.  But they are the minority.  Can you imagine any of the self-important performers in Hollywood taking this oath?  How about the faux-intellectual media hacks that tell us what to think every night?  No chance.

Here’s something to ponder: would you take this oath today?  Read it and think about it.  Go line by line and ask yourself if you would do what it asks you to do.  Would you make this commitment, knowing all the benefits and hazards of living in a free society?  Could you do it without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion?  I know that many of you reading this would do it without reservation.  But the sad truth is that far too many native-born American citizens would not. Far too many of us have forgotten what it truly means to be a citizen of the United States.  Thankfully, the naturalized citizen that takes this oath and native-born citizen that believes in what it stands for are what keep this country strong.

It has been a while since I last wrote, but I’ve been thinking about this post for quite a while.  After the presidential primaries, I kept asking myself how we came to be in a situation where Hillary and Trump were our major party candidates.  Ever since Trump was elected, I’ve tried to understand how he won.  I honestly did not expect him to win. With the media squarely on her side and not even bothering to pretend otherwise, I thought it was a forgone conclusion. I personally felt like he was the “least terrible” of the choices, but that’s about it.  Now that he has taken office, I’ve seen several conversations discussing why he won.  It’s usually chalked up to Hillary being female, the FBI, Russians, aliens, or any number of other ridiculous excuses.

So what led us to a point where Trump seemed like the better choice?  How could he win a free election when very few people honestly liked him?  Sadly, it comes down to anger; an anger that has been simmering and building over the last 8 years as the social fabric of this country has been torn apart.  What does that mean?  It means that the Obama administration and all of the people that supported him are directly responsible for the election of Donald J. Trump to the office of President.

The so-called Affordable Care Act is a case in point.  There was a completely unnecessary rush to pass that bill that completely ignored alternative ideas that were put forward.  We end up with a giant bill that not one person read prior to having to vote on it.  It got crammed down our throats and now thousands of people that were paying for their own health insurance either can’t afford it or are getting half the benefits for twice the cost.  If you supported that, you did this.

The left lost its collective mind when the president of Chick Fil A stated that he supported traditional marriage. He didn’t say that he hated gay people.  There was no indication at all of any sort of discrimination toward the company’s employees or customers.  But that didn’t matter.  Those that do the most yelling about tolerance once again showed that their rhetoric doesn’t apply to themselves.  Boycotts and demonstrations were held in an effort to damage his company, never mind that the damage would be felt only by his employees.  And don’t forget that many of those employees were getting help paying for college by this hateful company.  But that didn’t matter.  If you were one of those boycotting Chick Fil A, you did this.

In 2014, 18 year old Michael Brown assaulted a convenience store clerk in Ferguson, Missouri, and stole a handful of cigarillos.  As he strolled down the middle of a public road, he was stopped by Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson.  Brown chose to ignore the officer’s instructions, then decided to fight him.  The result was that Officer Wilson had to shoot Brown, who was killed.  As it happens, Brown was black and Wilson was white.  Instead of waiting to find out what actually happened, the media immediately assumed that shooting was racially motivated.  There was no evidence of that being the case, but it made a good story and they went with it.  Their attacks on Wilson and the Ferguson Police Department helped fuel riots that destroyed numerous businesses and led to several nights of violence.  Obama called for the nation “to remember this young man through reflection and understanding” and offered sympathy to his family.  No such sympathy was offered to Officer Wilson, whose life was destroyed because he did his job.  The entire incident was investigated, as it should be, and Wilson was found to have not been at fault.  All of this was just a waste.

Sadly, this scenario would become all too familiar in the months to come.  Every time an officer, who happened to be white, had a violent confrontation with a criminal, who happened to be not white, it was assumed that the officer was a racist pig and vilified immediately.  The media went out of its way to show video out of context to convict the officer in the court of public opinion and this was continuously supported by Obama.  This shameful situation has led directly to the deaths of police officers across the country as militant thugs feel justified in attacking those whose job is to protect them.  Those of you that supported the unrest in Ferguson and Obama’s handling of that mess, you did this.

Gun owners constitute a major block of voters, and tend to actually do just that.  They also tend to be responsible, law-abiding citizens.  But if you actually believe anything that was said about gun owners by the Obama administration and his pets in the media, you’d never know that.  During his administration, he lost no chance to place the blame for any crime committed with a gun squarely on the estimated 44% of Americans that legally own a firearm and never commit a crime with it.  It wasn’t the criminal, terrorist, or maniac.  It wasn’t the deplorable state of mental health care.  It wasn’t activist judges releasing criminals from jail.  No, it was you, the legal gun owner.  The only solution ever discussed by his administration was expanded restrictions on ownership.  And since very few people actually supported those ideas, he tried backdoor attacks in the form of pressuring banks to illegally deny loans to businesses in the gun industry.  His justice department thought it was fine to send guns to Mexican drug lords in some crusade to prove that American gun shops were supplying the guns, which proved to be false and directly resulted in the death of at least one American Border Patrol agent.  If you supported any of this madness, you did this.

In 2009, a US Army officer murdered 14 of his fellow soldiers in cold blood at Fort Hood, Texas.  As he started shooting, he yelled “allahu akbar”, the favorite battle cry of Islamic terrorists everywhere.  It was proven that he had been in contact with Al Queda operatives just prior to his attack.  But Obama declared it to be a case of “work place violence”.  It was only years later that he finally admitted that it was terrorism.  In July 2015, four Marines and one Sailor were murdered in Chattanooga, Tennessee by a young, Islamic devotee of Anwar Awlaki. His attack was obviously carefully planned.  It would be months before the administration would finally admit that, yet again, US citizens had died at the hands of radical Islamic terrorists on US soil.  Now, it is an absolute fact that the vast majority of American Muslims are peaceful citizens.  We all know that.  But there are cases where the worst of their faith have influenced others, convincing them that they are somehow doing something righteous by committing murder.  But the Obama administration was too busy trying to convince us all that terrorism wasn’t happening here, and if there was, it was somehow our fault.  If you think that calling a radical Islamic terrorist a radical Islamic terrorist is somehow intolerant or somehow anyone’s fault but his own, then you did this.

After 8 years of Obama and his cronies, there were a whole lot of us that were tired of it.  We were tired of being made the scapegoat for every bad thing that happened while no attention was paid to those that actually caused the problem.  It was obvious that Clinton promised only 4 more years of the same.  For me personally, I voted for Trump only because I did not think that the best thing for this country was four more years of wedges being driven between us based on race, religion, or economic status.  For some, Trump’s angry rhetoric mirrored their own anger at the situation that we find ourselves in, and I understand that, too.  So how did Trump get elected? If you supported Obama and his administration and their divisive policies, you did it.

In my opinion, few if any aspects of human behavior are more weaponized by media than the first impression. An example could be made from the title of our blog, The Frustrated Americans. If all one did was read the title, a derogatory response could be formed by simply dismissing us as just some angry old guys yelling “…get off my lawn!”. There would likely be no lack of those eager to jump on that bandwagon with much more vituperative criticisms. The issue, you see, is the next sentence: “Voices of reason and logic in a world often lacking reason and logic.” Read a little more, look for the author’s intent just a bit, and context is established. We’re not angry – we’re frustrated by the frightfully small amount of reason and logic in our national discussions. One more sentence, and one could avoid an incorrect assumption. If you haven’t heard the old saying about what happens when you assume, it is easily found and very appropriate here. That tendency, exacerbated by our excuse for an education system, is very much weaponized by modern propaganda to craft desired responses rather than report truth.

Prop·a·gan·da
ˌpräpəˈɡandə/noun
Derogatory information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.

One need not be a Mensa member to see this has been the primary focus of American media for many years now. Quoting out of context is but one of many techniques which are used. My aim with this post is to illustrate how one might learn to recognize it and be less subject to being mislead.

EXAMPLE ONE: Ben Jacobs is a reporter for The Guardian, which is a British newspaper. “Latest US news, world news, sports, business, opinion, analysis and reviews from the Guardian, the world’s leading liberal voice” is how they describe themselves. On 6 NOV 16, he tweeted the following:

       “We are going to deliver justice the way it used to be in this country”

Those who didn’t bother to check the source of the quote responded in a predictable fashion, with dire predictions of violence, dictatorial behavior (behaviour?), and accusations of various ‘-isms’. Here are his words in context:

       “We are going to deliver justice the way justice used to be in this country,

at the ballot box on November Eighth.”

In my opinion, Ben Jacobs intended to mislead readers and malign Donald Trump. Take note of the day he sent this tweet. Mere days before the election, he is irresponsibly and purposefully spreading misinformation. It is remarkably clear what was actually meant by the comment when taken in context. It is also remarkably clear words were taken out of context in order to forward an agenda.

EXAMPLE TWO: Lest one think me a fanboy of The Donald, he has been accused of doing the same. The Hill accused him of quoting Michelle Obama out of context when on the campaign trail he said this:

       “I see how much his wife likes Hillary, but wasn’t

       she the one that  started the statement: ‘If you

       can’t take care of your home, you can’t take care

       of the White House or the country’?”

Trump was accused of implying Michelle Obama was saying Hillary is incapable of running the White House due to the well-known domestic issues between her and Bill. Here is her full quote:

     “Our view was that, if you can’t run your own

       house, you certainly can’t run the White House.

       So, so we’ve adjusted our schedules to make

       sure that our girls are first, so while he’s

       traveling around, I do day trips.”

The Hill is alleging it was deceptive on Trump’s part to use those words in that fashion because Mrs. Obama wasn’t talking about Hillary, she was talking about her own family. Yes, she was — about how her family is run better than Hillary’s, don’t you think? Isn’t Trump’s implication the same as Michelle Obama’s in the big picture? This was more about The Hill stretching to make an accusation than anything else, if you ask me.

It would not be hard at all to cite dozens, if not hundreds of additional recent occurrences of this practice. My aim with this post was not to exhaustively document examples, but to hopefully open a few eyes and spur some thought. This American is frustrated because this phenomenon should be the exception, but it seems more and more to be the rule.

Question what you read. Anytime you are being presented the words of an individual from any source other than that same individual, I advise a little research before forming an opinion. Don’t be fooled by today’s ever more present propaganda.