Quoted from memory: A senior army officer gleefully said, about Prime Minister “Maggie” Thatcher participating, just as she would do in a real emergency, during a national emergency exercise: “When we play, Maggie plays!”….
…Servicemen dying for Epstein? Really? Maybe so. Here’s a Youtube clip now behind a cookie wall.
It was at the 9:11 minute mark that Senator Mark Kelly, a former combat aviator, being interviewed on television by Jen Psaki, said, “… You know, this is a president, I mean, who knows why he got us into this? Was it the Epstein files? I’m not sure. I’m not sure we’ll ever know.
Meanwhile the Department Of Justice is refusing to obey the law on releasing the Epstein files, a refusal made possible by their new DOJ culture. I wonder if they boast to each other about having legal immunity just as Trump has enjoyed since July of 2024.
Culture influences more than government departments. “They say” journalists once had a culture of “journalism ethics.” The grizzled editors and seasoned reporters were on a separate floor from the business: the ad sales force. Evidence of their new cultural change was on Bill Maher’s TV show: A Black American wearing a presidentially serious suit and tie walks on stage as the band plays “Hail to the Chief,” and then proceeds to say things in a quiet voice, saying things that President Obama would have been crucified by reporters for saying, things that were word for word quotations of President Trump. Journalism has changed.
Reporters changed years before Trump got into power in 2016. According to Winning Bigly, by the insightful Dilbert cartoonist, Scott Adams, Donald Trump had a trick: Imagine Trump saying a very ugly quote, or acting out so badly that it was like an arrow had hit him and was visibly sticking out for all the reporters to see. To be remarked on, day after day, with the story to be analyzed, refusing to die. But no. Nope. No-sirree!
Instead, Trump would whirl to present a new side, and attract attention, perhaps another arrow of outrage. Then he would whirl again to hide the newest arrow. Call it “new news.”
By keeping in action, with constant blunders and scandals, it was if he seduced the journalists into constantly forgetting and forgiving. Call it “motion teflon.”
Later, Steve Bannon codified a version of Trump’s whirring called “flooding the zone.” By one account, Bannon would give the reporters three things to focus on, the reporters would always fumble the ball, and one or more of the outrages would get through, unremarked on, unknown to the public. Call us “a nation of sheep.”
For his first election Trump’s power base was the heartland. And all over middle America, in noisy gymnasiums in the evenings, basketball coaches believed in a culture of winning. But if during their daytime practice the players were passing the ball without first doing a fake, then under the game lights their passes would be straight, immediate, without guile. Next day the coach would scream, “What you do in practise is what you do in a game!” Prime Minister Thatcher knew this when she participated in emergency drills. Call it “Practise culture.”
I think culture is sticky, while Senator Kelly’s poor colleagues are being wounded and killed in the deserts surrounding Iran, as sticky as during the second Great War. As you may recall, as war clouds were forming on the edge of the Great Depression, there weren’t enough resources to go around. Not enough blank ammunition. The officer who’s memoir led to the TV series Band of Brothers recorded a tragedy. A sergeant spotting a nearby Nazi perched in a tree. The sergeant swung his rife and shouted, “Bang!” …
If idiot reporters “practice” to enable flooding the zone for Trump’s first term, then they will continue doing so for his second term, as if they had never learned any lessons the first time around. And they won’t ever stop “sane washing,” editing to make it sound as if Trump’s irrational flood of words has a point… thought out in advance. Call it “sticky idiocy.”
During Trump’s second term he used a form of “flooding” by cutting research, while firing thousands of people, apparently faster than reporters thought people would be able to grasp. And he engaged in a practice of distraction after distraction to get his own way, even declaring nine emergencies in one year, paired with executive orders. To Trump, distractions are normalized behaviour to avoid being accountable for… the Epstein files… As to whether the president would care about desert casualties, this is the same commander-in-chief who wore his white “Trump merchandise” baseball cap to an airport funeral transfer—an outrage so bad that Fox News covered it up by secretly showing last year’s footage. Call it “cover up” news.
Trump employs distraction because it works. During this time of undeclared war, no one in the White House “press corps” has said a word about enforcing the law about Epstein, even as weeks turn into months into, so far, nearly two seasons. Don’t call them “real journalists.”
If distraction is a sticky normal business for Trump, then deciding to distract yet again, all by himself, without asking anyone —neither Congress nor the C.IA. nor the State Department experts— would be perfectly normal. This is why I implored my Member of Parliament, when Trump asked for NATO help, such as sending a Canadian or British naval reserve minesweeper to Iran, to just say NO!
Not unless the Epstein files can be released first.…
…Margret Thatcher never thought she was better than her lads in uniform. The “iron lady” never insulted them or her Members of Parliament: When her MPs asked her to resign for the next election, she resigned.
Meanwhile, over at the White House, the press corps has, for some time now, normalized their post-journalism ethics.
I know one thing for sure: No reporter will ever question Trump as to whether losing out on a potential mine sweeper was worth it to withhold the Epstein files.
… …
… …
Sean Crawford
At latitude 51.05
July 25,
2026
From yesterday, July 24, Words to Describe Trump: a poll on words, reported by Belle of the Ranch, complete with an explanation as to why he puts his name on things.
