







Most of America seems to gauge the opinions of those around them using platforms such as Reddit, Twitter, Facebook, Youtube, etc. But as most of you know, those platforms provide a highly skewed and artificial picture of true public opinion due to how highly manipulated they are.

All this got me to start thinking about whether or not the anti-Trump Democratic sentiment is really as widespread and as rabid as those platforms and the mainstream media would have us all believe. Is it possible that once you step outside of the highly manipulated mainstream bubble, that the anti-Trump sentiment is actually quite a bit lower than has been advertised?

One way to test this theory is to see how much of an appetite there is for this sort of anti-Trump, pro Democratic rhetoric. So for this, we look towards something that tells us what is popular, and what is not, and that’s television ratings.

The first example of that may be the new Sacha Baron Cohen show “Who Is America?” which recently aired on Showtime. In trailers for the show that went viral and created a huge amount of free advertising, the show mostly went after conservative figures. It was another lefty hit piece, which in and of itself I don’t have an issue with. However, what did get my attention was how low the ratings were for the first episode. Despite the week long coverage on most mainstream news media outlets, the show’s ratings were terrible. Just 327K people tuned in to watch the episode, which places it 70th among original episodes that aired on cable. Considering the show was in the headlines all week receiving free advertising, those numbers are pretty terrible which tells me there simply wasn’t much interest, despite the media portraying it as groundbreaking. This seems to me to be an example of once you step outside the mainstream media bubble, you start to see things as they really are.

Next, we have a series of shows on Comedy Central that have all under performed before finally being cancelled due to low ratings. Most recently, The Opposition starring Jordon Klepper. Just by the show’s title you can already tell it’s a nod to #theresistance which has been the supposed movement of anti-Trumpers. But in The Opposition, they regularly tried to attack and belittle conservatives and typical Trump supporters. But once again, the show performed poorly before finally being cancelled this past June.

The cancelling of The Opposition was preceded by the cancelling of the Larry Wilmore show. Another political show that was heavily biased in favor of Democratic talking points and ideology along with constant identity politics. Even with the lead in of The Daily Show, it failed to gain traction despite its constant attacks on Trump. The audience just didn’t seem interested and it was cancelled.

What these examples show me is despite being on a network that built its most popular shows around left leaning political parody, there is no real appetite for these heavy handed anti-Trump shows, even among those viewers who would be most receptive to it. One would think if the anti-Trump sentiment was so strong out there, there would be more of an appetite and audience for shows such as Cohen’s and Klepper’s, but there appears to be very little of an appetite at all for such content.







Next, we look at local news stories and the reactions among people who actually live in that area. Not only that, we look at the stories and reactions before the mainstream platforms can put their spin on it.

A recent story out of heavily liberal Portland, Oregon illustrates this point. In this story, a city train driver apparently put up a small, post card sized, hand made sign with the slogan “MAGA” written on it. The sign was displayed in the corner of the train window. It wasn’t long before a picture of the sign was shared on Twitter, forcing the city of Portland to issue a statement that they are looking into it for a possible violation of city policies.

@trimet why do you have max operators with MAGA signs in their window? Is this an endorsement of the over policing of poor people and PoC on your transportation? pic.twitter.com/tk5q6K7LMB — Gregory McKelvey (@GregoryMcKelvey) June 12, 2018

But what makes this interesting is that it took several days before the story went mainstream. Before that it was simply a story posted by the local Portland newspaper, The Oregonian. And this is where it gets interesting. If you look at the comments in those early days on The Oregonian web site, just natural comments since The Oregonian isn’t inundated with shills, most of the comments were in favor of the bus driver’s right to show the sign. Not only that, they were attacking the person who reported it. All of this was posted by residents of Portland, which should be one of the most liberal places in the country.

What this anecdotal story in Portland suggests to me is that once you strip away the shills and brigading that is rampant on sites like Reddit and Twitter, you see that the rabid anti-Trump rhetoric is very rare, even in heavily liberal places like Portland.

Of course, as I said previously this is all anecdotal. But it starts to paint an interesting picture. I could go on with many more examples just like the ones above, but it seems to me that once you get out of the mainstream media bubble and social media platforms that totally manipulate their content, you start to see that the anti-Trump extremist position is actually not as common as they would have you believe. Now don’t get wrong, there are plenty of people on the left who hate Trump and hold extreme positions, such as those who support Antifa. But I believe the total number of those people is way over-represented in the mainstream media and on social media platforms. Those platforms are trying to convince the public that being rabidly anti-Trump is the majority, and by leaps and bounds. So these examples not only illuminate the real state of public opinion, they also show how massively manipulated social media platforms and the mainstream media have become. They are propaganda tools, pure and simple. When reality does not match their narrative, that is proof that they are indeed propaganda.

I suppose the real answer as to where the majority of this country stands will only come in the midterm elections in November. That will truly be the test as to whether the propaganda tactics of the mainstream media and social media companies were successful or not.







