American journalists have an exalted view of themselves, fancying themselves an immaculate priesthood that must be admired, obeyed and worshipped. They are constantly telling themselves that they are impartial and unbiased, and that they are pure of heart. They also become visibly upset when they are laughed at by the public. Even though their philosophy is to criticize and destroy lives, they become sarcastic, or furious, or vicious if anyone in authority criticizes them.

For the fact of the matter is that most journalists in the United States and Western Europe are essentially clones: they think alike, they talk alike, they have the same politics, they cover the same stories, they spike the same stories, they vote the same way, they have the same viewpoints, they suppress dissenting viewpoints and facts, they adopt a mob mentality when they go into one of their periodic fits of lynch journalism and character assassination, and they viciously persecute and purge any journalist who does not conform to this mold, relegating the heretics either to oblivion or, just as bad, to the very fringes of the journalistic profession.

The number of such instances can run into the hundreds and citing just a few would derail the flow of the narrative because journalists would immediately rise to the occasion to defend and quibble over the details, so I shall just cite the American journalists’ propensity to promote international military crusades.

The first occurrence was in 1898 when the American media precipitated the Spanish-American War. The Spaniards in Cuba were unquestionably extremely and stupidly autocratic, rigid, and punitive. The American journalists focused and at times exaggerated the Spaniards’ cruelty in newspaper stories on an almost daily basis (i.e., fake news) until Americans felt that they had to intervene to end the cruelty and the vestigial existence of colonialism (many decades later, American Communists in universities would rewrite histories to make it seem that the United States embarked on building an empire). An unprepared American military fortunately found that the Spaniards were even worse off.

Two decades later, America entered a world war which it really had no direct stake in, partly due to the sinking of the Lusitania, as American journalists were fed on British propaganda over German soldiers boiling babies to make oil, raping nuns in churches, and the Zimmerman telegram.

This tactic was repeated in the Second World War. Churchill, as is well known, tried every trick to get the Americans to fight the war for the British and nowadays it may read like heresy, but America again really had no personal reason to enter that war. Even though the American public was dead-set against entering that destructive war, FDR engaged in an undeclared naval war with Germany through an antisubmarine campaign and by instituting Lend Lease to Britain. Radio and print journalists were openly hostile to Germany and were pro-British (admittedly with good reason). As a result of the horrifying atrocities by the Japanese forces in Nanking, at a time when many Americans were besotted by China because of missionaries and Pearl S. Buck’s maudlin novels, FDR provoked the Japanese government into attacking Pearl Harbor (the provocation, incidentally, was made much worse by certain bureaucrats acting on their own; see Bradley’s The China Mirage).

Beginning in the late 1960s, with the Vietnam War and on to the subsequent two decades, American journalists reversed their usual habit and agitated against any military involvement to topple communist governments or to stop communist insurgents. The reason for this reversal was frankly because many of them had embraced Marxism---and still do.

This was temporary, of course. The atrocities in Lebanon’s civil war during the 1980s had journalists crying that “something needs to be done.” Later, the anarchy in Somalia elicited a similar response (“while the world watches and does nothing”), followed by the two wars in Iraq. All involvement by Americans were fiascos. It should also be remembered that, prior to those fiascos, George Bush, Sr. invaded Panamá to capture the dictator Noriega after being goaded for months by the press for being a wimp.

This past year, in Syria (“a humanitarian crisis,” “while the world does nothing”) journalists’ efforts to get America bogged down in yet another Middle Eastern quagmire resulted only in a half-hearted effort at military action, inhibited no doubt by acknowledging that the American government had no idea what was really going on in the area. President Obama was roundly criticized for “abandoning American global leadership” by not putting troops on the ground to wander around and shed their blood in overthrowing the Assad regime---so that the fanatics of ISIS and al-Qaeda could fill in the vacuum created by Assad’s fall. Senator John “The Walking Dead” McCain, as usual, urged that America stick its nose in a conflict in which it was completely in the dark. Hand in hand with the Syrian debacle is the present increasing hysterical anti-Russian rhetoric by the journalistic clones who insist on a new Cold War (which is ironic since for decades the leftist media denounced anyone who criticized the Soviet Union, or communism, as paranoid McCarthyism). The hysteria can often be heard in their radio and television discussions and reportage. Throughout, they hypocritically decry “the loss of American leadership,” i.e., sticking our noses where it doesn’t belong.

And if you think that what I have written is an exaggeration, do note that the journalists who were demonizing President Trump as being the incarnation of Hitler because he wanted to enforce our immigration laws to the point that they would foam at the mouth and go crosseyed when his name was mentioned had nothing but praise the day after he ordered a missile strike into Syria as retaliation for Syria’s government supposedly using chemical weapons against civilians. And since then they have been subtly urging the administration into escalating action.

But, regardless, it could be argued that one way for American presidents to deal with the clones agitating to militarily intervene in other countries is to simply ignore them and... turn the television off. Although that solution has its merits, it unfortunately ignores the fact that, given the chance, journalists will constantly be asking the sitting president, or the besieged White House press secretary, about “the terrible humanitarian crisis in X.” It also ignores the fact that congressmen will likewise also be brainwashed by the media, or be hounded by journalists, and they, in turn, will approach the president, or pass symbolic legislation. So a different, permanent, solution is needed.

But whatever the solution is, keep in mind that it is the mainstream media that is real enemy.

Armando Simón is a retired college professor who lives in San Antonio and is the author of A Cuban from Kansas, Very Peculiar Stories and The U.