You Don’t Hate the Media Enough (4): Patterns of Conflict

I am not sure if you have been following the saga of the North Carolina GOP nominee for governor, Mark Robinson. Last week CNN’s K-File, “the leading investigation team for the social, mobile generation,” reported that “more than a decade ago” Robinson had posted various comments to an … um… adult web site under a pseudonym.

CNN provided several pull quotes of Robinson’s supposed comments that expressed fondness for certain genres of the adult industry, another stating that “I’m a black NAZI!” and another that “slavery was not bad.”

CNN has been going to town for the past week on this, reporting on what Robinson wrote, then reporting on reactions to what he wrote, then reporting on his campaign crumbling based on what they reported, and then reporting on reactions to the campaign crumbling… you know the drill. This story showed up on every corporate media outlet with every story stating, often several times, that Robinson was “Trump endorsed.”

Did I mention that the Robinson story got more and longer play than the second attempt on Trump’s life?

Let’s face it, while Robinson denies the story and we can poke holes about a few sensational quotes and the larger context, Robinson is politically finished. He was already behind in the polls before the story broke and people, or enough of them, exercise an abundance of caution when it comes to casting votes for people they suspect might be p**n-watching Black Nazis. That’s just the way life is.

Early in my career I was taught an early version of “dance like no one is watching, but text and e-mail like it will end up in court” — or as my mentor said “act like what you are doing is going to end up above the fold of a newspaper.” I also recognized, thirty years ago, that the Internet is forever.

I’m not going to excuse what Robinson wrote, and if as a Christian he is being a hypocrite in some ways, well, so are many of the people I see on Sunday. We are all dependent on God’s grace. Robinson is finished. His staff is quitting, no doubt fund-raising is collapsing faster than his polls.

However, let’s leave Robinson the man aside for a moment and focus on the larger structure of the story.

A man running for governor, in a race and state that has little to no national significance, made some inane and perverted comments on an adult web site, more than a decade ago and long before he entered public life. CNN did not provide any evidence that Robinson has engaged in any such behavior since then, let alone while being in public office.

This same man who is running for governor has been dropping in the polls for the past three months — from a tie in June to 14 points down at the beginning of September — long before this story broke.

So in the middle of one of the most contentious elections in our nation’s history, already studded with extraordinary events such as multiple attempted assassinations of one candidate and the last-minute withdrawal of an incumbent president, CNN decides to focus its “crack” K-File team on this obscure state-level race.

CNN made an extraordinary investment of resources into investigating Robinson. The piece on Robinson runs more than 1,800 words, nearly 2x the average word count for the other K-File stories which deal almost exclusively with people and issues on the national tickets. The Robinson exposé broke with the general “he-said, she-said” pattern of those other stories and actually involved some real digging through primary material. CNN traced Robinson’s supposed pseudonym through other sites and forums, through Twitter. A real, honest-to-goodness investigative report.

Then there was the aforementioned broad coverage that CNN gave to its reporting on Robinson, giving it multiple spots every day on its network and top-page coverage on its web site. The story got national play across multiple outlets for several days. This incredible focus on an obscure race in North Carolina came during not only the final weeks of the most tense national elections in our history, but a few days after the second assassination attempt against the Republican nominee.

Note, again, for all of the work that went into the story, CNN provided no evidence that Robinson has visited any such adult sites or made any related remarks in more than a decade.

So why did CNN do it? Why run this hit piece? A proverbial mountain out of a mole hill? In the doldrums of an off-year election, this might have been a one-day story with maybe a follow-up or two but not the multiple day media frenzy it became. A story of local or regional importance but not this national feeding frenzy. Why?

Was it another entry from the old playbook of “exposing the high holy Republican hypocrite?” No, Robinson is too small-game given the circumstances.

Maybe to hurt Trump in the swing state of North Carolina by depressing Republican turn-out? Perhaps, but if so, a little overboard. The story did break right before ballots were printed, so Robinson is going to be an albatross on the NC GOP from now until Nov. 5. But that’s too local and regional.

Provide a little stray voltage to switch the topic from the second Trump assassination attempt? No, this story was in the works for weeks, and plus, the lefty media has already latched onto the P. Diddy story to provide that electrical juice.

Provide a pretext to keep mentioning the words “Trump,” “slavery,” “Nazi” and “p**n” together in the same sentence for several days? Yeah, now I think we’re onto something. The other night I heard the opening from Monday’s Rachel Maddow show where she repeated Robinson’s comments, linked him to Trump, and came to the conclusion that this was what Robinson (and Trump) had in store for all of us if elected.

This is nit-picking on steroids, but it’s information warfare par excellence. After all, the media isn’t looking back in time to report on how more-important figures than Mark Robinson also have shady pasts: Tim Walz and China, Bernie Sanders and his cozying up to Nicaragua and the Soviet Union in the 1980s.

CNN’s hit piece is accomplishing three goals for the Left. First, it is appealing to swing voters by pointing to what they can sell as a real-life Republican fascist (Robinson). Second, it’s strengthening cohesion among the Democratic base by using Robinson as a symbol of the stakes involved. Three, and I think most important, it’s sowing confusion and doubt among parts of the Republican coalition, both by exploiting exising fissures and by spreading demoralization at a critical time.

Fear. Uncertainty. Doubt.

John Boyd had a lot to say about the psychological aspects of conflict, from “Organic Design for Command and Control”:

Operate inside adversary’s observation-orientation-decision-action loops to enmesh adversary in a world of uncertainty, doubt, mistrust, confusion, disorder, fear, panic chaos … and/or fold adversary back inside himself so that he cannot cope with events/efforts as they unfold.

Cohesion vs. Disruption

That’s what the Robinson story is about.

If he was around today, Boyd would have a lot to say about what’s about to go down over the next several months.

11 thoughts on “You Don’t Hate the Media Enough (4): Patterns of Conflict”

  1. Media … I suppose that it was my good fortune to have trained as a military public affairs and media operative so early on in my life that a sense of restraint was instilled in me, when it came to posting on blogs and later, on social media.
    I know nothing of Mr. Robinson, his works and ways … but really, he could have used a sense of discretion.

  2. Google, Amazon, and the various social media platforms essentially function the same as an intelligence agency. They collect and collate information, build portfolios and profiles, and then act on them. It’s all information and the ability to track profiles and information use is the holy grail

    With the AI the ability to analyze and develop patterns in the information will only grow. Data sets are the feed grain for the AI beast so basically the ability of a company to obtain your profiled browsing history is a huge advantage

    Robinson is a very unsympathetic character, especially to conservatives which is why they have vacated the field and allowed CNN to run its op.

    Somebody’s going to have punch back… maybe Tom Cotton will go on CNN again and ask them since they are digging up 13-year old browsing history on p**n sites when will they start looking at the 30+ year relationship of Walz with Red China?

    Get me those 2 kids from the ASU Turning Point chapter who got busted for trying to get a professor on tape who was pushing LGBT ideology into schools. Turn them loose on this Andrew Kaczynski guy who does the K-File stuff and get him on video to answer when he will do some real work and whether he thinks his mother would be proud of him to grow up and be a partisan lackey

  3. This is nut-picking on steroids, but it’s information warfare par excellence.

    The key word here is “warfare.”

    The left and its media arm are making war against America and its people.

    I know little about Robinson and I have less reason to care, but I get the impression that he is pro-American and pro-Trump. He is getting the Alinsky treatment of picking a target and polarizing people against them, in the same way they attack Trump and any other Republican who seems inclined to do anything more than roll over.

    The GOP establishment of NC is abandoning him, as usual, because you can bet your last nickel the party much preferred another useless drone who would let the left get away with anything they wanted.

    We don’t hate the media enough, but we also don’t hate the gop establishment enough either.

  4. “We don’t hate the media enough, but we also don’t hate the gop establishment enough either.”
    Agreed – what a whimpering useless lot of weasels they have turned out to be, generally.

  5. Robinson is a very unsympathetic character, especially to conservatives which is why they have vacated the field and allowed CNN to run its op.

    Unsympathetic to what conservatives? The GOP establishment?

    It seems to me “vacating the field” is pretty much all the GOP ever does when challenged. I’ve had enough.

    Somebody’s going to have punch back… maybe Tom Cotton will go on CNN again and ask them since they are digging up 13-year old browsing history on p**n sites when will they start looking at the 30+ year relationship of Walz with Red China?

    You know how the party could start punching back? By not abandoning their candidate for governor because people who hate them conducted an op.

    But they won’t, because they’re craven and worthless.

  6. Xennady: “we also don’t hate the gop establishment enough either.”

    I try, Xennady. I try! But there are only 24 hours in the day, and there is so much to hate about the Institutional GOP. Plus I also have to set aside a few minutes each day to express my well-earned contempt for the Demoncrat Establishment too.

  7. After all, the media isn’t looking back in time to report on how more-important figures than Mark Robinson also have shady pasts: Bernie Sanders and his cozying up to Nicaragua and the Soviet Union in the 1980s. Bernie Sanders Praises Imperfect Cuba (Burlington Free Press, March 28, 1989, page 6.Printed on April 1)

    “The people we met had an almost religious affection for him,” he said. “The revolution there is far deeper and more profound than I understood it to be. It really is a revolution in human values.”

    1. “almost religious affection for him (Fidel).” Bernie had a translator, which in Cuba would have been state-supplied. Did Bernie really believe that Cubans would give him their candid opinions of Fidel, knowing that whatever they said to the state-supplied translator would be reported to higher ups in the government?
    Having worked in Latin America in countries ruled by oppressive Generals, my experience is that it is sometimes possible to get candid opinions on politics, but those candid opinions are NOT going to be expressed in the presence of a fellow countryman. One-on-one only. When the third person is a government-supplied translator, even less likely to be candid.

    2. “It really is a revolution in human values.” Ah yes, the Commie New Man. It was nonsense when Lenin proclaimed it. It was nonsense when Fidel proclaimed it. It was nonsense when Hugo Chavez proclaimed it. It was also nonsense when Bernie Sanders parroted it.

  8. Consider Kamala. She slept her way into the political arena. She “evolved” her political views from being radical/progressive to more moderate, so she would seem more palatable to the electorate. Those are, to me at least, red flag issues, but she is apparently immune.

  9. She hasnt changed her values shes the same marxist shes as sharp as maduro

    Robinson spoke on the gun witchhunt the lockdowns and all proper outrages they have purge 700,000 phony voters from the rolls though

  10. Embrace the power of “all of the above.” Why limit it to just 1 motivation when they can accomplish several things at once?

    I’m just kind of curious why it’s so important to know about this guy’s words on a porn site from a decade ago but not some government officials literally screwing chinese spies within 5 years ago.

    Funny how I just don’t get the feeling the media are sincere in their concerns….

    Google, Amazon, and the various social media platforms essentially function the same as an intelligence agency. They collect and collate information, build portfolios and profiles, and then act on them. It’s all information and the ability to track profiles and information use is the holy grail

    With the AI the ability to analyze and develop patterns in the information will only grow. Data sets are the feed grain for the AI beast so basically the ability of a company to obtain your profiled browsing history is a huge advantage

    A.I.? Good sir, there are entire regions of the Internet where volunteers do info ops that put the CIA to shame. 4chan is just the tip of the iceberg.

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