{"id":3570,"date":"2018-07-15T10:20:56","date_gmt":"2018-07-15T14:20:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/?p=3570"},"modified":"2018-07-15T10:20:56","modified_gmt":"2018-07-15T14:20:56","slug":"morale","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/15\/morale\/","title":{"rendered":"Morale"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the Bronze and Iron Ages an army won a battle based on the strategy and tactics of its general and the training and discipline of the troops.\u00a0 But the wild card that could turn victory into a rout was morale.\u00a0 Sometimes something ridiculous like a peal of thunder issuing from the wrong quadrant of the sky or a priest finding the wrong color entrails in a sacrifice would be enough to spook an entire army and snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory.<\/p>\n<p>But this is the Information Age.\u00a0 We\u2019re too smart to be cowed by superstition or fooled by clumsy lies.\u00a0 Yeah, right.<\/p>\n<p>Nowadays morale is the business of the media.\u00a0 They tell us who will win elections and who is on the right side of history and what is beyond the pale.\u00a0 And morale can be the difference between someone going to vote or staying home.\u00a0 So, morale is a real factor in human affairs but one that is difficult for the man on the street to measure or even discuss meaningfully.<\/p>\n<p>Luckily, I\u2019m not the man on the street.\u00a0 I\u2019m a pundit wannabe who has to package a bunch of zeroes and ones onto an electronic page to try and entertain my long-suffering readers.\u00a0 So, I can talk till the cows come home and might even bump into the truth if I\u2019m not careful.<\/p>\n<p>Here are two questions:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is it worth to the Right to have someone like Trump tell the world that the Emperor has no clothes?<\/li>\n<li>What is the result when the Deep State and the Media fire point blank at Donald Trump for eighteen months without a single scratch and all he has to do is make a disparaging noise and say fake news?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The answers are:<\/p>\n<ol>\n<li>It\u2019s worth everything.<\/li>\n<li>The result is that the Media is a spent force.<\/li>\n<\/ol>\n<p>I\u2019ll explain.\u00a0 It\u2019s been thirty years since Ronald Reagan left office.\u00a0 That\u2019s how long it\u2019s been since a Republican won a fight with the Press.\u00a0 Bush Senior, Bob Dole, W, McCain, Romney, JEB!, you name them.\u00a0 They\u2019ve all been nothing but cannon fodder.\u00a0 They can\u2019t fight and they won\u2019t fight.\u00a0 Having a fighter in the White House is worth more than having seventy seats in the Senate and three hundred seats in the House.\u00a0 It can\u2019t be overstated.\u00a0 Every day we can hear and see the results of his run-ins with reporters and the startling statements he makes about politicians, business leaders and foreign leaders.\u00a0 And every day he blows up some other sacred cow or boondoggle.\u00a0 And the cumulative effect of this is all the Sacred Cows have been discredited.\u00a0 The term fake news isn\u2019t just a zinger.\u00a0 It\u2019s become the default opinion about anything the Media says.\u00a0 Used Car Salesmen are considered more trustworthy.\u00a0 As I said above, the value of this cannot be overstated.<\/p>\n<p>And so, the Media is a toothless tiger.\u00a0 They\u2019ve become the subject of scorn and abuse.\u00a0 And the multiple media victims of the #metoo campaign and the recent case of a reporter having an affair with a federal employee to obtain classified documents only reinforces the impression that a career in journalism is only one level above crack whore.<\/p>\n<p>So, for the Right Wing, all of this is like a pardon from the Governor to a Death Row prisoner.\u00a0 Even up to six months ago when the Press would breathlessly report the latest Stormy Daniels tidbit or Mueller leak, Republicans would run around in circles shouting that the sky was falling.\u00a0 I think that is finally over.\u00a0 Even the most gutless Republican has finally learned to ignore all of this junk, once and for all.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>And that\u2019s just the tip of the iceberg.\u00a0 It doesn\u2019t even consider the morale boosts that come from a President who can with the stroke of a pen wipe out Coal and CO2 legislation in the EPA or pardon a rancher being harassed and imprisoned by activist judges.\u00a0 And with Trump in the White House, even formerly unreliable Supreme Court judges suddenly hand down a string of right wing decisions.\u00a0 And the President fills the federal courts with judges who won\u2019t dismantle the culture in order to satisfy bizarre social justice whims.\u00a0 And with his latest Supreme Court recommendation, he more than credibly fulfills the long hoped for but always frustrated dream of a reliably conservative Supreme Court willing to reverse the transparently unconstitutional decisions of the past on affirmative action, aberrant sexual behavior and first and second amendment violations.<\/p>\n<p>And so, to rap this thing up, I am saying that in addition to all the things President Trump is doing to improve the country, one of the biggest benefits he provides is the boost to morale.\u00a0 And this morale boost is just the thing that may get you through the tough battle when everything else is almost even.\u00a0 If we ever get to the point where things are riding on the razor\u2019s edge, high morale may be the thing that carries us over the finish line first.\u00a0 Remember this the next time the naysayers say nay and the bell tollers toll doom.\u00a0 It\u2019s fake news all the way down.\u00a0 Keep the faith baby.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Back in the Bronze and Iron Ages an army won a battle based on the strategy and tactics of its general and the training and<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,6],"tags":[143,139,740,1117,1185,16],"class_list":["post-3570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-current-events","category-trump","tag-drain-the-swamp","tag-fake-news","tag-let-trump-be-trump","tag-media-drum-beat","tag-morale","tag-trump"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v20.4 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Morale - Orion&#039;s Cold Fire<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/orionscoldfire.com\/index.php\/2018\/07\/15\/morale\/\" 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