On February 15, 2017, Rush Limbaugh hit upon a gem. His several paragraphs encapsulate the theme and methodology of a narrative-driven system. First, here is a portion of the transcript. I realize it’s a lengthy segment and I trust he won’t be upset at the extent of the quote. But it’s to a point, given at the end.

The Barack Obama Shadow Government Coup Against Trump
Feb 15, 2017

There is one thing — and I’m just trying to simplify this for you. There is one thing that keeps propelling this story forward, and it is that the Russians stole the election for Trump by hacking the Democrat National Committee and its servers and John Podesta’s email. There’s no evidence. In fact, you can state with ontological certitude that the Russians had no impact whatsoever on the outcome of the election. It wouldn’t have been possible. But even if you want to live that lie and say that they did, then you would have to say they wanted Hillary Clinton because she won the popular vote, and that’s about all any outside force could hope to affect.

When you start trying to hack and manipulate outcomes in the Electoral College battle, there isn’t a single source anywhere that could do that. Otherwise if somebody had figured that out, whoever that guy is with would always win. So the lie that is the engine and the fuel for all of this that we’re going through is that this election was illegitimate, that the Russians hacked it — and, furthermore, that Trump and his campaign staff were in regular contact with the Russians during the campaign. This story has run twice now in the New York Times, and both times the New York Times admits that there is no evidence whatsoever.

They have no evidence.

It’s akin to the “seriousness of the charge” being so grave that we must continue to look into it. There is no evidence for the primary assertion that is driving this entire attack on Trump. This attack is coming from the shadows of the deep state where former Obama employees remain in the intelligence community. That would be at the CIA; that would be at the Defense Intelligence Agency; that would be at the National Security Agency. They are there. They were not elected. They were appointed.

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The same with this phone call of Flynn and the Russian ambassador. They won’t release the whole transcript because they know the whole transcript does not help them. In fact, my guess is the entire transcript of that call would undercut the illusion that they are trying to present. And that is that Flynn gave assurances to the Russian ambassador on the very day Obama expelled 35 Russian diplomats. “Don’t sweat it! As soon as Trump’s in there, the sanctions are lifted and your guys are back.” There is no evidence whatsoever that that was ever discussed or said in a direct fashion.

And yet the news stories every day are trying to convince you that that is exactly what happened — and that, furthermore, there’s even more damning news and damaging news to come. So what we are living in the midst of here is — and look, I’m not trying to pat myself on the back, but I warned everybody that this is who Barack Obama is and this is what he was gonna do. The only thing I was wrong about was the technique. I thought Obama’d be on TV bitching and moaning about Obamacare being unraveled.

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They cannot accept it. They have constructed this lie to assure themselves that they didn’t lose, and that is that the Russians tampered, the Russians hacked, that Trump worked with the Russians, and that they and Hillary and the Democrats got screwed out of what is rightfully theirs, and that is never-ending entitlement to power. They reject an election. They reject and hold in contempt the people who voted in that election, and they’re now trying to reverse the results of that election in as undemocratic and un-American a manner as could exist short of a military coup.

And they are doing this in consort with the American media, which is not media. Meaning they are not competing for your opinions. They’re not competing for your support. They’re not in the arena of ideas. They are on the side of the embedded shadow government attempting to destroy political opponents they don’t like. This is the kind of thing that happens in Cuba, banana republics, Venezuela, the lesser developed nations that don’t even make a pretense at democracy or representative republicanism or anything of the sort.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to now delve back into the specifics of what is going on in the deep state, the embedded bureaucracy where the Obama shadow government is doing everything it can to overthrow the Trump presidency. And make no mistake that is what’s happening. And make no mistake that the media has thrown in with it. The media is now doing the bidding of the Obama shadow government, the remaining Obama administration members, all of the intelligence agencies at the defense department, at the State Department, all of these people leaking made-up things, nonfactual things that allow the media to continue to run stories that are nothing but speculation, that fall under the rubric of the seriousness of the charge.

Whatever Flynn did, whatever Flynn is alleged to have done pales in comparison to what’s happening to our country by the Obama shadow government. And I choose to the word that way because that’s what it is. It’s a bunch of former Obama bureaucrats that he put in the various agencies that didn’t leave when he did. Clinton has some people that are still there and this is how the left operates.

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And look at what’s happened here in just the span of one week, if I may put this all in perspective for you. In the span of one week, we have seen left-wing tyrannical courts seize control of immigration. In the span of one week, we have seen left-wing tyrannical bureaucrats attempt to seize control over national security, Articles 1 and 2 of the Constitution. In this same week we have rogue leftists and Obama administration leftovers in the intelligence communities violating civil rights and exposing intelligence-gathering methods and leaking all kinds of national security secrets in criminal acts. This indeed is action in violation of federal statute.

We have read that there are indications of the undermining of the Trump presidency by Barack Obama and his shadow government and by his network of 250 community organizing chapters. Now, this sabotage — and make no mistake that’s what it is — the sabotage of the Trump administration began well before Mike Flynn’s resignation. It began well before Donald Trump was inaugurated.

The attempt to sabotage the Trump administration can be traced back to even prior to the election. But you can certainly trace it back to after the election when the New York Times first ran its story that elements of the Trump campaign were in contact with officials in Russia during the presidential campaign. That’s the only story. There is no evidence. There is just an allegation that Trump campaign officials — and who they mean by this is Paul Manafort. Now, Paul Manafort, former campaign manager, he was the first one, Paul Manafort has been doing business with Russia long before he ever started working for Trump.

So you take a little irrelevant indiscriminate fact over here, then you take the Trump campaign and you put the two together where they don’t fit and you’ve got a news story. And you’ve got Trump officials talking to Russian officials during the campaign, which the media insists the Russians hacked. There’s no evidence for that. There’s never been. It’s cut-and-dry. There’s never, ever been any evidence that the Russians had anything to do with the outcome of the election. There’s no evidence, and if you look very closely, you don’t find that specific allegation because the people who are making the allegation know full well it didn’t happen.

The Russians had nothing to do with who won the presidency. They had nothing to do whatsoever with it. There isn’t any evidence to suggest it, not in terms of the vote, not in terms of casting ballots, not in terms of counting ballots, the Russians had nothing to do with it.

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The point is there’s a bogus allegation that is fueling all of this. The Flynn resignation, the Flynn controversy, everything about this that you’ve seen in the last however long you’ve been watching, two days, three days, two weeks, three weeks, it is all fueled by the New York Times leading the pack for the Democrat Party to assert that the election was hacked by the Russians. The Russians worked together with Donald Trump to screw Hillary Clinton out of the presidency. It is a lie that they have told themselves so much, I actually now think they believe it.

They cannot accept the fact that they were rejected. They can’t accept the fact that their boy wonder, Barack Obama, was rejected. That doesn’t compute. So they’re unable to accept the hard, cold reality of what happened all during the campaign and the election. So they’ve constructed this alternative reality with alternate facts. And this whole Flynn story is predicated on that assumption. The Russians hacked, Trump helped them, and Hillary lost. And even in the news stories reporting this, you will find the phrase “investigators have found no evidence to prove.”

So all there are are conclusions, conclusions by analysts who’ve looked at the evidence and who are concluding. But conclusions are just somebody’s random thoughts. They are not evidence in any way, shape, manner, or form. New York Times today: No evidence the Trump campaign colluded with the Russians in hacking Democrat National Committee and the election. It’s right there in their story. It’s buried. It’s way at the end of this. You’ll not see it unless it’s pointed out to you, but it’s right there. No evidence the Trump campaign colluded.

No evidence, yet. Yes, we must continue to investigate. We must continue to look. We must continue to listen to our people in the deep state, the embedded bureaucrats at the intelligence agencies, departments of state and defense, who are continuing to look deep to see if they can find the link between the Trump campaign and the Russians and the hacking. As of now, no evidence. The New York Times has run this story twice. They ran this story last fall. They ran it again yesterday and the day before.

Last night the New York Times put out a breaking news alert. I happened to receive it. “Intercepted calls show members of the Trump campaign had repeated contact with Russian intelligence before the election.” This breaking news went out last night around 9:15. I was minding my own business bothering nobody and I get this alert. I looked and I knew immediately that it was a crock. I knew immediately that this is bogus because intercepted calls, this is the intercepted call, one of these intercepted calls is the call between Flynn and the Russian ambassador for which they will not release the full transcript.

So we have to trust those who have heard the transcript of the call. “And why was there a transcript of the call?” you might ask. Very simple. The National Security Agency has been bugging the Russian ambassador. They’ve been following him. It’s what we do. They’re an enemy. The Russians are an enemy; the Iranians are an enemy. We keep track of ’em. And so Flynn called the Russian ambassador, so they heard the call. And I’m here to tell you, if they heard Flynn openly say anything about sanctions being removed, they would have touted this when it happened. This is all speculation.

“Intercepted Calls Show Members of the Trump Campaign Had Repeated Contact With Russian Intelligence Before the Election, Officials Said.” It is unadulterated McCarthyism. They’re going to take Trump out from the get-go. They are making no bones about it. But if you read further, what you find is there isn’t actually any evidence. This is a fake breaking news alert. It’s designed to pollute the minds of people who read it, who will never read the full story and who will never read “analysts have yet to find any evidence linking the two.”

All we have here are “officials suggesting that intercepted calls show repeated contact.” Well, there’s nothing unusual about repeated contact, if you know anything about this. This hit piece that ran yesterday in the New York Times was titled, “Trump Campaign Aides Had Repeated Contacts with Russian Intelligence,” and they cite “more leaked intelligence information targeting Trump that shows repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election.” The implied allegation is obvious: Trump colluded with the Russians to take down Clinton and thus steal the presidency!

There’s just one problem here, folks.

It’s a 1,300-word article. In the third paragraph, the New York Times admits that its sources, quote, “said that so far they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.” Well, then why run the freaking alert last night when in the third paragraph of the story following the alert, you will find “so far they had seen no evidence of cooperation”? So last night we get a breaking news alert that experts monitoring intercepts have found contact between Trump campaign officials and Russian officials! Sound the alarms bells!

And then if you read the actual story the next day, which happens to be yesterday, you find out that in the third paragraph the New York Times admits that its sources — these “officials” who had seen the intercepts — said that so far they had seen no evidence of such cooperation. It’s a bogus story then. There’s nothing to follow. There’s no reason to print, no reason to go with it, no reason to run it, no reason to believe it. If there is no evidence of any collusion between Trump and his team and the Russians, then what the hell was the purpose of the breaking news alert last night which reads:

“Intercepted Calls Show Members of the Trump Campaign Had Repeated Contact with Russian Intelligence Before the Election”? Third paragraph: “[S]o far, they have seen no evidence of such cooperation.” They had to put it in the story. If they didn’t put it in the story, they could be brought up. It is… But the damage is done because the breaking news alert last night filled CNN and their morning news show today, filled Fox & Friends. It was all over the place. MSNBC. (impression) “The New York Times says that there was collusion! There was collusion!” And the New York Times alert said that. But the story didn’t.

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And this is the second time they’ve done this, this same exact story. I compared the two. The first occurred last fall, the almost the identical story. And in both stories, there have yet developed any evidence of collusion. So in four months they have not been able to unearth any hard evidence. Even with the help of the Obama shadow government, they have been unable to unearth any hard evidence of collusion. It doesn’t matter. They are reporting that there was “contact” between Trump officials and Russian officials.

Because what’s driving this is the Russians hacked the election working with Trump to steal it from the legitimate, should-have-been winner Hillary Clinton. Another headline: “FBI Probing Russian Intel Contacts with Several Trump Campaign Officials.” And here it is again: “The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that so far they had seen no evidence of such collusion.” You want to hear what comes before this? “Phone records and intercepted calls show that members of Donald J. Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and other Trump associates had repeated contacts with senior Russian intelligence officials in the year before the election, according to four current and former American officials.

“The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians,” or just contacting them. “The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.” [HotAir:] “The probe started with the FBI concern over Russian hacking of the DNC and John Podesta as an attempt to sway the election. So far, though, the investigation can’t even determine if the contacts were about the election at all…” They can’t even tell us that the Trump people talking to the Russians was even about the election, and yet look at the news stories and look at the cable news networks bouncing off this, and look at what you now probably think because of it.

You are being lied to on purpose, and with full-fledged knowledge of the people lying to you, and they’re doing this under the guise of presenting to you news.

BREAK TRANSCRIPT

RUSH: I want to read to you from the staple story that they ran back in October.  Are you ready?  “For much of the summer, the FBI pursued a widening investigation into a Russian role in the American presidential campaign.” This is before the election, folks. This is last October. “Agents scrutinized advisers close to Donald J. Trump, looked for financial connections with Russian financial figures, searched for those involved in hacking the computers of Democrats, and even chased a lead — which they ultimately came to doubt — about a possible secret channel of email communication from the Trump Organization to a Russian bank.

“Law enforcement officials say that none of the investigations so far have found any conclusive or direct link between Mr. Trump and the Russian government. And even the hacking into Democratic emails, FBI and intelligence officials now believe, was aimed at disrupting the presidential election rather than electing Mr. Trump.” That’s from last October. They just redid the story this week adding Flynn to it and continuing the lying premise.

Let’s make it even simpler. I think 4 points can surmise it:

  1. The NY Times published multiple pieces with zero credibility. No backup, no facts, no names.
  2. The falsehood continues by adding names, again without evidence.
  3. Leftists in government and media continue to push for investigations based on innuendo, not on fact
  4. The general public is told to believe it, not because of the validity of the information, but because they’re not supposed to like Trump.

This is called disinformation. It doesn’t have to be true. It only has to be persuasive. The obfuscation of fact evades many because the MSM has created a nation-sized echo chamber. Where only one narrative exists there can be only one reasonable conclusion.

The concern is broader than the NYT is obvious. Certainly it is a broader problem. Take, for example CNN. For weeks we saw the “hands up, don’t shoot” mellow-drama play out every morning. It was the language of anarchy. Certainly not a credible threat against police, it was the luxury of isolated wealthy urban-dwellers. At least it was until two NYPD officers were gunned down. Then CNN spent at least a week apologizing for their vile rhetoric. They understood the power of their words. Now they have actual blood on their hands. They have acknowledged that sin but remain generally unrepentant.  We were told to believe CNN. They were supposedly trustworthy.

That gives weight to the phrase “alternative facts.” What if the narrative of the echo chamber is wrong? What if there is another narrative which explains the facts better? Education is the challenge of conservative media. The apocalyptic message of some will distract us from the goal of preparing the people.

Conservatism is best when it takes the offensive. A defensive posture will always lose.I could write about as much as Rush spoke. That would be more gas on the fire. But what is really needed is that other narrative, and that’s all about education.