I wasn’t going to write a post today. I have a guest post from David Burkhead, and at any rate, Dan and I ran away halfway through the afternoon, to a hotel room, so we could spend the weekend catching up on writing, because between stomach flu and family, November has been a disaster, I have books WAY overdue, and he’s barely started 9th Euclid’s War.

Of course, because someone (likely several someones) has a voodoo doll of me. So Dan is having a second bout of stomach flu and while I don’t have it, I have the “funny taste in mouth” that means I’m barely fighting it off. So this might not be the most successful writing weekend ever. I already slept close to 12 hours.

Anyway, the problem with the undisclosed location (as we know) is that it has a television on CNN all through breakfast. And that meant I had to write a blog post.

I’ve got a blog post about it somewhere in the archives. But it’s not quite the same thing. Now entire industries are doing this, and it’s amazing. (Not in a good way.)

Years ago, watching science fiction magazines and newspapers of various sorts come and go, I identified a process I called “roll hard left and die.”

When a magazine or a newspaper or any news or entertainment media was in real trouble, they went hard, hard left, then died.

It took me a little while to realize this was a sane strategy. In a field completely controlled by the left, when you knew that your job was in peril be it through missmanagement or whatever, your last hope was to go incredibly hard left, so you could blame the failure on ideology. And instead of not being able to find a job, you found yourself lionized by all the “right” (left) “thinking people.” New jobs were assured.

I watched this happen four times with a particular magazine editor, who killed sf magazines through publishing things that REALLY weren’t science fiction besides being preachy. But every time the magazine got in trouble it would go hard left, and when it died the editor was offered another, better job. (No, I’m not going to pick a public fight by identifying it, because this is a writing weekend.)

Then I started noticing it with newspapers and news magazines, both here and abroad.

It got so bad, I could identify when a magazine was in severe trouble, because it would go from “left leaning” to “To the left of Lenin” in nothing flat.

And then we come to where we’re now.

This morning at breakfast I watched CNN extensively interviewing a guy who wrote an article called “The Chaos inside Donald Trump’s transition.” Mind you ALL of his reporting is based on unattributed leaks inside Obama’s administration AKA the gang that couldn’t shoot straight.

I told Dan “Remember all the articles about the rough Obama transition? Or the ones about Clinton, which, according to bios published way later was indeed rough, and some people never submitted clearance paperwork EVER even in his second term? No? I wonder why?”

I mean this campaign was amazing by the brazen way they supported Hillary. Part of the reason I decided Donald Trump was the least of two evils is that the press was covering so hard for Hillary that I couldn’t trust her with power of any kind. In fact, I voted for Trump because of the press’s performance. I’m not alone, either. Pollsters are “blaming” his victory on “suburban females who changed their mind the last week.” (Thereby causing the democrats to manufacture insufficient votes, one presumes.)

Having managed this amazing feat, what is the news doing? Rolling harder left, chasing dust motes and nonsense, making a case out of the president elect going out alone with his family for a family dinner without informing them, and generally going even more in the tank for the left.

I’ve been watching this with mainstream publishers for three years now, and I still don’t believe it. I’ve watched publishers who were “lean left” become wholly owned subsidiaries of the leftist project, no dissenters need apply to the point they’re now shedding middle-of-the-road writers. And I’ve thought “How much trouble are they in?”

And now I’m watching this with the news AS A WHOLE.

The problem is that they’re doing what they’ve watched done/learned by example. It’s not a rational calculus that goes “If I go hard left, I’ll be lionized and have a new job.” Or maybe it is, but at least part of it is instinct. They want to go out “a hero.”

Our tech is changing institutions too fast for the good old monkey brain. If they looked around they’d see their ENTIRE field is in trouble and no one will be left standing to give them a job when their hard roll left causes the total collapse of their employer.

At this point things are changing so fast, they think they’re rolling over to a new job. But they’re just rolling in the deep.

In the end, we win, they lose. And part of it is the roll left before dying. But, until then they’re going to be very annoying.

Now go work, because I’m going to, also.