Bad News is No News

I Can't Hear You

There hasn’t been much news about America in the Danish media this week, which reflects the Danish media’s conviction that when Democrats are in power, bad news is no news.

Joe Biden’s job approval is down to 40% in the Quinnipiac poll (53% disapproval), 43% in Rasmussen (55% disapproval), and 44% in Economist/YouGov (49% disapproval).  He’s underwater in every poll tracked by RealClearPolitics except for Reuters/Ipsos, where his 48% approval is just one point above his 47% disapproval.

Americans are even unhappier about the country than they are about Biden’s performance: the RCP average has 61% who think it’s on the wrong track, and just 32% on the right track.  The wrong track numbers range from 54 (Harvard-Harris) to 65 (Rasmussen); the right track numbers range from 29 (Economist) to 41 (Harvard-Harris).

Inflation continues apace, supply chain disruptions are intensifying,  and the misery index has roughly doubled over the past year.

More Americans have died from the Wuhan virus in 2021 than in 2020.

A new Gallup poll puts Americans’ trust in the news media to its second lowest level ever recorded, behind only a measurement taken in the middle of the 2016 Clinton v. Trump campaign. It’s the lowest it’s ever been among Republicans, and independents are as low as they were in 2016. Only 36% of Americans believe the major news media report the news “fully, accurately, and fairly.”

A global energy crisis is poised to wreak havoc on the northern hemisphere this winter—the last winter before the 2022 American midterms, in which voters are likely to be reminded of Joe Biden’s antagonism to American energy independence.

And China has threatened to nuke Japan should the Japanese make any effort to prevent China’s “peaceful” annexation of Taiwan. (“We will use nuclear bombs first. We will use nuclear bombs continuously. We will do this until Japan declares unconditional surrender for the second time. When we liberate Taiwan, if Japan dares to intervene by force—even if it only deploys one soldier, one plane or one ship—we will not only return fire but also wage full-scale war against Japan itself.”)

Counterfactuals can’t be proven, but it’s fair to suspect that all of these stories would have been saturating the Danish media if the Dread Tyrant Trump were still in the White House. They’d be screaming out at us from the headlines, and talking heads on television would be frothing with rage.

To review: Americans don’t like the direction in which their country is headed; they disapprove of the job the president is doing; they don’t trust the media; inflation is making them poorer; goods are becoming scarcer and energy more expensive; and Americans are still dying like flies from the pandemic.  China is literally threatening to use nuclear weapons against Japan. The border crisis is only getting worse. Crowds at ballgames and at malls are now chanting “fuck Joe Biden.” 

Imagine the fun ace correspondent Steffen Kretz or the execrable David Trads could have with all that if only the president weren’t a Democrat!

The president is, alas, a Democrat… so…

Chirp. Chirp.

On the plus side, though:

Pierre Collignon has a Saturday piece in Berlingske explaining the “two principle errors that make Marxism dangerous.” One: Marx was wrong about the inherent flaws of capitalism. Two: Marx believed violence was justified. No mention is made of the 100+ million dead souls Marxism slaughtered in the 20th century, or Marx’s insistence that the family had to be destroyed to enable his utopia, but… baby steps, right? One thing at a time. Give Collignon enough ink and eventually he’ll bring those silly academic Marxists around, maybe even before they seize the means of production.

Meanwhile, DR has a whole article about the terrifying brinksmanship playing out between China and Taiwan right now that actually mentions Joe Biden. (It only mentions him once, in the second to last sentence, and only to note that he’s got a virtual meeting planned with Chairman Xi later this year, but still.) There’s no suggestion that China’s sudden aggression toward Taiwan might have anything to do with the ineptitude and cowardice of the old man stumbling and mumbling and fumbling around at the controls of the Arsenal of Democracy, but that’s surely only because DR trusts its audience to understand that as a given.

And as if that’s not already an embarrassment of riches, TV2 has a whole article about Joe Biden’s Department of Justice declining to prosecute the law enforcement officer who shot Jacob Blake in Kenosha last August. Of course no mention is made of the fact that, at the time, candidate Joe Biden chose to fuel the flames of anger and resentment by visiting the knife-wielding madman Jacob Blake in Wisconsin, while President Trump visited Wisconsin to voice support for the now entirely vindicated police, but c’mon man, that was like four days ago.

So as we hurtle headlong toward a catastrophic energy shortage this winter, and a global supply chain collapse depriving us of the goods and services we take for granted, and as inflation makes us all poorer and a third world war looms over the Pacific, let all Danes give thanks that Joe Biden is in the White House—otherwise we might actually be hearing about these things.

And that would be a bummer.