I am Nataya, recorder of the history of all, across the ages and throughout the worlds, all is recorded, and can thus be told.

All right, I’m getting serious here now and I’ve got ideas coming fast and furious.

My political junkie side continues to wonder at the phenonemom that is Trump and how much air time Trump got during the campaign season. Early on MSNBC fired Melissa Harris-Perry when she would not toe the Trump mandate line. She said it straight then that there was a Trump mandate – almost every segment must have some Trump angle. It makes one wonder. Right after Trump announced there was a huge anti reaction because Trump was so openly racist – remember Mexico is sending their rapists… etc, etc…

Trump threatened to sue MSNBC and TeleMundo and then …. nothing except there was rumor of settlement and apparently there was a Trump mandate that appears to last to today. We know that during the election that Russia was running a major disinformation campaign – the media was either unwitting or perhaps at highest levels witting accomplices to the spreading of the propaganda. It’s a bit harsh but the media does have control – they didn’t have to cover every move of Trump, they didn’t have to be so negative about Hillary, they didn’t have to make email equal everything that Trump did but they did. They also did not need to not cover policies. They could have given Hillary Clinton airtime and not just Hillary talking about Trump

I continue to be amazed as I listen to news hosts, pundits, reporters all say how well Trump drives the news.   Um – they are the ones who decide which stories to cover. They were the ones who chose to set the bar so low that Trump tripped over it.

In my continuing sketching out of this tale of mine I saw something today. MSNBC has been my politics home for years but as it gets more Trump-centric I’ve been looking around and finding the joy in CSPAN that my mum used to have – I wish I could share it with her now -but that is neither here nor there. I’ve also been switching to more news channels for longer periods of time. MSNBC, part of the NBC empire that was sued by Donald Trump… I understand the value of a free and open media and I am always nervous in criticizing them and there are people at MSNBC who are fighting for the truth even under a Trump dictated regime but truthfulness and what you are covering are different things. As I switched around today my conspiracy theory self saw it.

In my story of how you take over the country and turn it from a democracy to a nation run by 5 major ruling families (my Star’s End series) you might take a news channel that is known for having what is called a left leaning approach – I would argue that they were known for telling the truth and pushing against the growing propaganda of the Republican armed Koch backed party. Your choice in definition. I, personally, believe that the so-called left is more inclined to believe in science, facts, art, that kind of thing.

So in this story  you get that channel in some kind of compromising or threatened position or perhaps it management is simply part of the game. You put in a directive. You make it loose enough that you keep your liberal base of watchers but you also start to tilt things. Propaganda slips into that network and the reputation of the media falls further as you alienate more people and it becomes harder to differentiate facts and not, truth and not… you get the people most likely to figure out what you are up to – Russian connections, Koch plans, money focused into a few very wealthy families with less left for everyone else – fighting the image you have created for them and trying to validate their own existence.

You also leave people wondering what is going on. What is true? What isn’t true? You tell them that everything about the country is failing. You tell them that we are losing everywhere – it isn’t reality but if you say it enough people begin to doubt, maybe begin to question their own sense of reality. It makes it easier to take that next step into autocracy.

My writing obviously takes us down that path but it isn’t one we have to travel but this something is happening to us. This is not normal. It’s happened before. Let’s not let it happen again.