It seems that National Review’s editors, for whom I used to have the utmost respect, have shown themselves to be “of very little brain” when it comes to understanding the conservative base and the machinations of the Clinton-Democrat-Media Complex.  In “No, the Election Isn’t Rigged,” the editors boldly assert that Trump’s claims of a rigged election are “bunk.” 

[T]o “rig” an election at the national scale would require logistical know-how seen only in Hollywood capers. To think that the same Clinton campaign that had trouble putting away Bernie Sanders has now arranged to steal an election on a continental scale defies logic.

While they admit there can be no doubt about media bias and press hatred for Trump, a rigged election is just a conspiracy theory peddled by surrogates like Jeff Sessions and right-wing propaganda outlets like Infowars and Breitbart.  To suggest otherwise is laughable.

Stop right there.  Uh, hello, Your Editorship?  This entire election has been a study in the connivance among the press, the Clintons, and the entirety of the Democrat machine.  That’s the rigging of which Trump speaks – not the voter fraud version, which is the sole thrust of Your Editorship’s article. 

Unfortunately, this screed is another in a long line of commentary at National Review obsessed with the defenestration of Trump – to coin a favorite word of Jonah Goldberg’s – and not the actual “rigging issue.”  We know this to be the case, for were it otherwise, they would have focused on the longstanding and alarming consanguinity between the media and the DNC that threatens not only liberty, but the very legitimacy of the fourth estate.

Trump and his supporters see very clearly that there is an unmistakable blackout by virtually every mainstream media outlet of any news regarding Hillary Clinton’s emails and server, her policies when secretary of state, her complicity in Benghazi, her role as enabler to Bill Clinton’s sexual transgressions and her threats to the women “who must be heard,” and the recent email revelations from Wikileaks.  In contrast, the same media have detonated an all-out “media coverage bomb” of the women Trump is alleged to have violated – without doing any background checks, without first seeking comment from the accused, and without presenting any skepticism in their coverage, but, instead, showing complete deference to the claimants (remember the Duke lacrosse players?).

These are the very same ingredients used by Democrats in every election to crush the opposition – from town councilman to president.  In the past, Republicans would routinely capitulate and turn the other cheek in fear of fueling the fire – reluctant to give further attention to whatever the issues are, whether women in binders, dogs on roofs, intelligence and college grades, military service, the 47%, seeing Russia from Alaska, tax returns, etc.

The press did this in conjunction with the Obama campaign with Sarah Palin in 2008 and repeated it against Mitt Romney in 2012 to the point that the partisanship was indisputable when, in the guise of “fact-checking,” Candy Crowley lied and took Obama’s side on the Benghazi situation during the second debate.

The collusion is nothing new.  Everyone is aware of it.  We even have recently released emails proving it.  What’s new is fighting back.  Call it rigged or biased.  Call it collusion or facilitation.  It doesn’t matter.  Trump is calling it out.  He is standing up for himself, the party, conservatism, opposition, freedom, the truth, the People, and the base. 

These days, most of us toss these self-flagellating articles by the conservative elite right out the window with all of the other defenestrated detritus.  Why?  Because the old playbook doesn’t make any sense.  It never did.  When Trump takes on the elephant-in-the-room issues that the party has danced around for decades, the rest of us say: Amen.  It’s about time.         

My advice to the highbrow editors at National Review is to revisit A.A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh, in whom there is great wisdom.  They might then understand that “when you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”  

The rigged process discredited by the editors is very Thingish, indeed.