Americans Are Experiencing Renewal and Relief -- Aristotle Called It 'Catharsis'

THE AMERICAN PEOPLE ARE GOING THROUGH A CATHARSIS. Britannica discusses catharsis in the classic Greek tragedy sense : "Catharsis, the purification or purgation of the emotions (especially pity and fear) primarily through art, but also through any extreme change in emotion that results in renewal and restoration....In criticism, catharsis is a metaphor used by Aristotle in the Poetics to describe the effects of true tragedy on the spectator....Tragedy then has a healthful and humanizing effect on the spectator or reader....Debate continues about what Aristotle actually means by catharsis, but the concept is linked to the positive social function of tragedy....The interpretation generally accepted is that through experiencing fear vicariously in a controlled situation, the spectator’s own anxieties are directed outward, and, through sympathetic identification with the tragic protagonist, his insight and outlook are enlarged." We remember the Greek tragesies of Oedipus and Antigone, or the Shakespearean tragedies of King Lear and Macbeth. In these dramas, the audience experienced catharsis in a timespan of not more than several hours. But, Americans have been through a real life tragedy that lasted more than two years. The catharsis is not only proportionately greater but deeper, requiring more time for the "healthful and humanizing" effects to be felt. One thing is certain -- those who did not accept the ending of the American real life tragedy cannot experience the catharsis or be healed and renewed by it. • • • EVIDENCE OF AMERICA'S CATHARSIS. Newsmax reported on Monday the results of a HarrisX Poll showing that : "A majority of registered voters say they’re open to giving President Donald Trump a second term -- with almost a quarter of them citing the economy as their reason. In the HarrisX survey conducted for TheHill, 54% said they’d think about voting for Trump; 46% said they wouldn’t even consider casting a ballot for Trump. The economy will figure prominently in voters’ decision, according to the poll; 22% of those saying they could vote for Trump cited the economy as their primary reason. 'Clearly the economy is always the issue in every presidential election,' GOP pollster Ed Goeas told Hill.TV. 'Because that's what it always is. Jobs, the economy, taxes. Basically, do people feel their lives are doing better economically than when that president went in?' The margin of error in the poll -- which was conducted before a summary of special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation was released -- is plus or minus 3.1%.Here’s some other findings : 95% of respondents who said they voted for Trump in 2016 said they’d do it again in 2020. 76% of 2016 Hillary Clinton voters said they would 'never' vote for Trump; 24% said they’d at least consider it. 65% of respondents who didn’t vote in 2016 said they’d never vote for Trump; 35% said they could do so." • While the HarrisX Poll was taken before the Mueller findings were released, it was made in the period leading up to their release, in which many were beginning to warn that the Mueller findings could "disappoint" those who believed the President had "colluded" with Russia. • • • THIS WAS AMERICA'S FIRST ATTEMPTED COUP D'ETAT. That was enough to lead most Americans to see the enfolding of the radical Democrat cabal as a major test point for the Republic. The New York Sun published an essay be Conrad Black on Monday. Its title was "US Was Closer To Coup D’Etat Than Ever Before." Conrad Black wrote : "No reader of my previous comments on the subject would expect surprise from me about the verdict of the Mueller report. No one nominated by a major political party to the presidency of the United States would have dreamed of cooperating with any foreign power to influence a US presidential election. Aaron Burr, who was thought to be running for vice president but ended by opportunistically challenging Jefferson for President, requiring that the House of Representatives determine the victor, and who was later accused but acquitted of serious crimes, would not have done that. Millard Fillmore, who succeeded to the presidency on the death of President Zachary Taylor and later ran as a third-party candidate in 1856 for the American Party, nicknamed the “Know Nothings,” which opposed immigration and the eligibility of Roman Catholics to hold public office, would not have dreamt of it. The Russian-collusion argument was always an absurd, a practically insane proposition. The fact that it enjoyed the currency it did as long as it did illustrates the cognitive incapacity of the Obama-Clinton majority to accept that they were honestly defeated in 2016. Worse than that, while it was just mad partisanship by most Democrats and most of the political press, the collusion fraud was a crime, of extreme gravity, by its perpetrators." • Black even used theatrical similes to describe what happened : "Donald Trump is like a circus actor who excites laughter and only as he exits at the end of the program is his full talent recognized. He ran against the Bushes as much as the Clintons, and the congressional Republicans gave him no assistance at all for six months. There is little Never Trump and RINO sentiment left in Congress. But the Democrats signed on almost unanimously to some variant of the Russian-collusion fable, and stuck with it to the bitter end, to the point of not realizing that the end has come. The Democrats said Mr. Trump was protesting too much, and was acting like he was guilty....Mr. Barr attracted three Democratic votes in the Senate confirmation vote, a rare occurrence in this administration, and six weeks later, he finally strangled the mutant monster of fraudulent impeachment. Yet in febrile Democratic minds, it still lives. Much of America’s political and press community no longer knows the difference between truth and lies and political life and death....It is Mr. Barr’s decision whether to prosecute, and he explained in his report to the bipartisan Judiciary Committee leaders that laying a charge of obstruction of justice would require proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the president had committed an obstructive act, with corrupt intent, and in contemplation of a real or apprehended legal proceeding, and that in his and Mr. Rosenstein’s opinion, that threshold was not met on any of the three required criteria." • Conrad Black is an historian of major proportions -- his biography of Richard Nixon is definitive, and so he knows his subject -- and when he writes : "It is now confirmed, as many of us have been alleging for many months, that the original counterintelligence investigation was set up on the basis of information former intelligence and FBI chiefs John Brennan, James Clapper, James Comey, and Andrew McCabe knew to be false. The entire collusion claim was a political smear funded by the Democratic National Committee and the Clinton campaign, and all of those just mentioned as well as Mrs. Clinton, former attorney general Loretta Lynch, her deputy Sally Yates, others who made false FISA-warrant applications, and a large group of smaller fry, are up to their eyeballs in criminal abuse of high offices and betrayal of the nation’s trust." • • • THE MPACT OF THE MUELLER COLLUSION PROBE ON PRESIDENT TRUMP. We who have supported Donald Trump from the beginning were always a bit worried that he would simply give up -- although what we knew of the man told us he would never give up on anything. Conrad Black described his suffering : "The President and his family have endured merciless torment by the intellectually corrupt national press and the lawless opposition. His restraint at the end of the story has shown more taste than his enemies would have thought him capable of; he is owed an apology. All those who said there was clear evidence of Trump–Russian collusion, including dozens of congressional Democrats and scores of prominent political-press figures, should be shamed and ashamed. And the ringleaders in confecting this monstrous aggregation of defamatory lies should be legally punished, with the due process they tried to deny the nation’s leader. Attempts to drive a President from office on the basis of allegations of betrayal of the country that they knew to be false is as close as the United States has ever been to an attempted coup d’état. It is time for the legal system, which has ground slowly to a just verdict, to do the same to those responsible for this disgraceful episode. This must never happen again; not in America." • • • CATHARSIS REQUIRES ACCEPTANCE OF THE FACTS. American Thinker has been full of analysis about the effects of the Mueller report's conclusions. • On Tuesday, editor Thomas Lifson wrote : "The man who used to run the CIA, and lost his job when Donald Trump took office, did a huge amount of damage to the United States by calling the sitting President a traitor. Because of his presumed access to information unavailable to the public, many foreign leaders had reason to believe that they could resist the demands and requests of President Trump by simply outlasting him in office. Think Kim Jong un, Xi Jin ping, Angela Merkel, and of course Vladimir Putin for starters....Brennan has been throwing around charges of treason for a long time : Brennan castigated Trump for a widely condemned joint appearance with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Finland in which Trump suggested he found Putin more credible than the US intelligence community’s assessment of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. 'Donald Trump’s press conference performance in Helsinki rises to & exceeds the threshold of ‘high crimes & misdemeanors’,' Brennan tweeted, using language associated with impeachment. 'It was nothing short of ‘treasonous’. Not only were Trump’s comments ‘imbecilic’, he is wholly in the pocket of Putin. Republican Patriots: Where are you???' ” • Lifson notes that Brennan has never lowered his attack level : "Brennan has kept up his false attacks on Trump through regular appearances on MSNBC, where he is a paid contributor. Including very recently, as Terry Moran of ABC is pointing out : '@TerryMoran. John Brennan has a lot to answer for -- going before the American public for months, cloaked with CIA authority and openly suggesting he’s got secret info, and repeatedly turning in performances like this.' " Here is the Brennan video < https://twitter.com/TerryMoran/status/1110010116361932800 > and the tweet that provided it : "Terry Moran✔@TerryMoran Replying to @ad1220 He used the prestige of his position as DCI to advance his argument that the President was a criminal and a traitor. What he did makes it harder for future DCIs to maintain the confidence of the country; he poisoned that high office with partisan hackery." • But, writes Lifson, "now that the Mueller Report has stated there is no evidence of any collusion between Russia and Trump or any members of his staff, Brennan is attempting to squirm out of responsibility for his lies." Here is the video : < https://twitter.com/PolishPatriotTM/status/1110211940104704001 > and the tweet that provided it : "Wojciech Pawelczyk@PolishPatriotTM Brennan on MSNBC : 'Well, I don't know if I received bad information but I think I suspected there was more than there actually was. I am relieved that it's been determined there was not a criminal conspiracy with the Russian government over our election.' " • Lifson notes : "Of course, what Brennan must really be worried about is his probably large role in launching the spying on the Trump campaign that took place long before Crossfire Hurricane was begun by the FBI counterintelligence operation under Peter Strzok and Lisa Page." • Meanwhile, Lifson sheds light on one of the President's moves to warn the media that they are now in a post-Mueller world : "I have to wonder how much longer Brennan’s gig at MSNBC will last, given the memo that the Trump re-election campaign has sent to all the networks. Via Legal Insurrection : 'Six Democrats were mentioned in a memo sent by the re-election campaign to networks : Senator Richard Blumenthal, Representative Jerry Nadler, Representative Adam Schiff, Representative Eric Swalwell, DNC Chair Tom Perez, and John Brennan, former CIA director.' From CNBC : 'Trump’s re-election campaign sent a memo to television producers on Monday instructing them to 'employ basic journalistic standards when booking' six current or former government officials that the campaign said 'made outlandish, false claims, without evidence' while on air. The others targeted in the memo either declined to comment or did not respond to a request for comment from CNBC. The Trump campaign letter ....which was distributed to producers for all the networks and cable outlets, cited comments that the guests made on air alleging that there was evidence of collusion. 'Moving forward, we ask that you employ basic journalistic standards when booking such guests to appear anywhere in your universe of productions,' wrote Tim Murtaugh, the campaign’s director of communications, in the memo. The campaign wrote that the producers should 'begin by asking' the following question : Does this guest warrant further appearances in our programming, given the outrageous and unsupported claims made in the past? 'At a minimum, if these guests do reappear, you should replay the prior statements and challenge them to provide the evidence which promoted them to make wild claims in the first place,' Murtaugh wrote.' " • Lifson points out : "One thing we know : Rachel Maddow, MSNBC’s biggest eyeball-getter, isn’t penitent in the least : 'John Ekdahl @JohnEkdahl She’s taking this well 2:29 AM - Mar 26, 2019" Here is Ekdahl's posted video : < https://twitter.com/JohnEkdahl/status/1110353033131687936/photo/1 >. • • • RATINGS WILL BE USEFUL IN CONVINCING THE MAINSTREAM PROPAGANDIST MEDIA TO CHANGE. Brennan, Schiff, Nadler, Swalwell, Blumenthal, Perez -- the Trump campaign could have added many more names, but the point was well made. And, its warning was re-inforced by viewer ratings. American Thinker's Peter Barry Chowka gave us new Neilson Media Research ratings on Wednesday : "The long-awaited news on Sunday that the Mueller Report had exonerated President Trump of collusion with Russia instantly shed major new light on the complicity of the mainstream media in perpetrating the mass delusion of collusion. The news also had an immediate and potentially game-changing impact on the cable news television ratings. Starting on Sunday and continuing all day Monday, CNN and MSNBC -- the two cable 'news' channels that over the past two years have morphed into high-impact electronic facilitators of the anti-Trump resistance -- saw their ratings plummet - precipitously. Meanwhile, the Fox News Channel (FNC), the only mainstream media outlet to even question the whole collusion meme from the outset, trounced the competition. On Monday, Fox News had more than twice as many viewers -- in both total numbers and in the preferred 25-54 year old demographic -- than MSNBC and CNN combined. According to Nielsen Media Research, FNC surpassed CNN and MSNBC combined in every hour on Monday from 5 PM to 12 midnight while CNN had its 2nd lowest weekday prime time ratings of 2019 and its 3rd lowest demo of the year." • Chowka noted that the Fox News prime sime stars -- Tucker Carlson, Sean Hannity, and Laura Ingraham -- did some of their best shows ever on Monday. Greatly assisting their efforts was their access to and the expert editing and presentation of an archive of video clips of CNN and MSNBC hosts and guests projecting the demise of President Trump and predicting his indictment at the hands of Special Counsel Robert Mueller going back to 2016 and right up to last week." Chowka says that in watching Fox News on Monday, he "hadn’t experienced such a natural high since the evening of November 8, 2016 when Donald J. Trump was declared the winner of the presidency." Catharsis?? You bet. • Chowka provides a long quote from Hannity's Monday show : " Mainstream media has lied to you for years. We have so much to unpack here. I'm just telling you tonight, it's the tip of the iceberg. This will take months. Stay with us. I have so many details. And we are holding everyone accountable. Mueller’s report on Russia election interference finds, as we have been telling you, zero collusion between the president, his campaign, and Russia. Tonight, Newt Gingrich, Senator Lindsey Graham, the great one Mark Levin, Rudy Giuliani, Jay Sekulow will be here in just a moment. My opening monologue and how we got here, what it means -- and more importantly where do we go forward.....Many of you since yesterday have been writing to me and you want me to spike the football. I am not in any type of celebratory mood. This is a time where every American that now knows the truth should be angry at what has happened here to all of America. I am ticked off, and the rest of the country should be, too. This is only the first chapter. This must be a day of reckoning for the media, for the Deep State, for people who abused power -- and did it so blatantly." • Chowka tells us how the networks got to Monday : "On Monday evening, Fox News not only exceeded the number of viewers of MSNBC and CNN combined. It also beat two of the broadcast network channels, including CBS, which ran a Mueller Report special, and ABC, which programmed Fix It. In 2017 and into 2018, I reported extensively in a series of articles for American Thinker on the cable news wars and the low and high points of Fox News. After 15 years of ratings dominance, Fox News in early 2017 was in trouble : its brilliant co-founder and CEO Roger Ailes had been forced out in July 2016 and months of tumult followed, including the upending of FNC’s dominant prime time schedule early in 2017 with the departures of hosts Megyn Kelley and Bill O’Reilly. After the disastrous summer of 2017, Fox News righted itself with the strongest conservative prime time opinion line-up in its 20+ year history, with Carlson, Hannity, and Ingraham holding down 8-11 PM ET. According to most metrics, in 2018 and 2019 to date, FNC has held on to its overall ratings lead, not only well ahead of its cable news competition but almost all other cable television channels, as well. It was often bested in prime time, however, by MSNBC and its virulent, one-sided, non-stop anti-Trump programming especially in the 9 PM hour when resistance icon Rachel Maddow often beat Sean Hannity in the demo and sometimes in total viewers. The ratings success of MSNBC and to a lesser extent CNN -- which usually did much better in the demo compared with its paltry numbers of total viewers -- suggested that the strategy of the executives at NBC and CNN starting in November 2016 to go all-out 24/7 anti-Trump was paying off. The collapse of the ratings for these two resistance channels since this past weekend, however, may be a sign that not only is their heyday coming to an end -- but that the whole political game in the wake of the Mueller Report has changed and with it, the prospects for the looming presidential campaign and the re-election of President Trump in 2020." • American Thinker's Tim Gorman wrote on Tuesday : "The meme being pushed on MSNBC, CNN, and by the Democrats is that Mueller's assertion that there is no evidence of collusion between Trump, the Trump campaign, and Russia doesn't mean that collusion didn't happen. It just means that Mueller couldn't find any evidence after 2800 subpoenas and interviewing 500 witnesses. This meme is being used to justify the Democrats expansive investigation into the collusion issue with 81 requests for information on the subject and threats of subpoenas if the information is not provided. The MSM and the Democrats just can't quite seem to get over Hillary's loss in 2016 and they will try to overthrow Trump in any manner possible using any rationale they can devise. When asked what evidence was used to begin the investigation into collusion when Mueller could find none, the talking heads and the Democrats just avoid answering. Today is just one more sad day for the believability of the MSM and the Democrats. When will it end?" • Perhaps it is ending even now, as CNN and MSNBC reflect on the Trump campaign memo they received earlier this week. • AND, there si also the beginning of lawsuits aimed at the propagandist media. Bruce Thompson wrote in American Thinker on Tuesday : "It may be Spring according to the calendar, but America's dominant media outlets are heading toward a brutal winter season when it comes to accountability for the actions. Not just a reckoning for pushing a hoax about Russian collusion with a presumed treasonous Donald, but potentially gigantic judgments in courtrooms. Recently, two parties have filed notable defamation lawsuits against powerful press outlets. The most talked about has been the 2 (so far) filed on the behalf of Nicholas Sandmann, the young student from Covington Catholic High School. His attorney has filed in Kentucky. Given that the press is so unaware of the attitudes of potential fly-over country jurors that they failed to predict the election of President Trump and failure of the Mueller probe, they may not recognize the financial threat those suits pose to their future. Time will tell. The settlement prices are in the $250 million range." Thompson raises another lawsuit that has gotten less coverage : "But my personal interest is in the most complex and nuanced suit filed on behalf of Don Blankenship, the unsuccessful Republican candidate for the Senate seat now held by Democrat Joe Manchin. His suit asks for $12 billion! Talk about 'the audacity of hope'! So, I spoke to one of his attorneys, Eric Early of Early, Sullivan, Wright, Gizer & McRae. We had a pleasant, but brief conversation. The core of his position is that they firmly believe that Mr. Blakenship has been defamed and that he will win at trial. He suggested that anyone with an interest in their position read their filing with the court. I first became aware of the case in a story on the Mediaite website, which provided a link to the actual document. Here is how they described their conversation with Mr. Early. 'Fox News, CNN, MSNBC and the other defendants in this case, when they represent themselves as a news outlet or news source, the public’s reasonable expectation is that they are indeed a ‘credible’ news outlet,' Blankenship’s attorney Eric Early, a failed GOP candidate for California attorney general, said in a statement to Mediaite. 'It’s beyond wrong when they lie about facts that are easily ‘google-ible.’ These news outlets are going to have to decide at some point whether they are actual news or entertainment channels.' For 'injuries Mr. Blankenship has suffered,' he is seeking 'damages in an amount not less than $2 billion dollars,' the suit notes, before adding that he also 'seeks substantial punitive damages in the amount of 10 billion dollars.' Their description of Mr. Early as a 'failed GOP candidate' suggests a certain lack of caution about the financial threat that losing the case might pose to the titans of the 'Mainstream Media.' It may be a very low probability outcome, but it might also be a 'Black Swan' event. Taking Mr. Early’s advice to heart, I read the complaint. Given the present state of affairs, it seems that Mr. Early’s best approach would be to apply Saul Alinsky’s Rule 4, 'Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules.' To that end, I note that one of the defendants is the Associated Press, which conveniently publishes its set of rules in a book, The Associated Press Stylebook and Briefing on Media Law 2018, ISBN 978-1-5416-7238-3. On page 485, they list five things a successful libel plaintiff must prove '-- A defamatory statement was made. The defamatory statement is a matter of fact, not opinion. The defamatory statement is false. The defamatory statement is about ('of and concerning') the plaintiff. The defamatory statement was published with the requisite degree of 'fault.' I am not a lawyer (nor a professional journalist either). But in my opinion, when a press account describes Mr. Blankenship as a 'felon,' even though he was found not guilty on the felony counts filed against him and was convicted only on a misdemeanor charge with a one-year prison term, they may want to ask their own lawyers to negotiate with Mr. Early. When approached with proper respect, he seems to be a nice man in my experience. There is an alternative, which would be to go to trial in Mingo County, West 'By God' Virginia. To get there, they might take one of those 'Country Roads' John Denver sang about. You know the tune, 'Almost Heaven, West Virginia...' Once they get to the courthouse, they might acquaint themselves with the potential jury pool including some Coal Miner’s Wives. You know, women like Loretta Lynn’s mother. 'Daddy loved and raised eight kids on a miner’s pay, Mommy scrubbed our clothes on a washboard very day, Why I’ve seen her fingers bleed, but to complain there was no need, She smiled in Mommy’s understanding way...' Don’t say you haven’t been properly warned. Give Mr. Early a call today!" • Bruce Thompson mentioned the possible Black Swan of a gigantic award to Mr. Blankenship. BUT, Fritz Pettyjohn, of the ReaganProject.com, wrote on American Thinker on Tuesday what may be the ultimate "catharsis" for all of us who love and stuck with President Trump. Pettyjohn wrote : "They shot at the king, but they didn't kill him. And because they didn't destroy him, they only made him stronger. If, a year from now, the economy is robust, Trump will be re-elected in an historic landslide. His enemies have played right into his hands. This is all because of Trump Derangement Syndrome (TDS), an especially virulent form of the psychiatric disorder known as cognitive dissonance. If you know, for absolutely certain -- as an article of faith -- that something is true, and evidence in contradiction of this truth emerges, the psychic toll can be severe. Experts say it stems from the use of degenerate meta-probability. So it is with Donald Trump and his critics. At one time, I was one of those critics myself, and I suffered severely when he won the Republican nomination. I knew that Donald Trump could never win a presidential election for all kinds of reasons. Even though his opponent was one of the worst political candidates in our history, I knew he still couldn't win. What kind of a guy is associated with Trump University, for God's sake? All the smart people, liberal and conservative, agreed, from National Review to the Wall Street Journal, from the New York Times to the Washington Post. And then he won. What happened? How was this possible? How could we explain to our friends, colleagues, and families that we were wrong? Hillary suffered a virtual nervous breakdown and concocted the Russia collusion theory. The media flocked to this fantasy, and the Mueller fiasco began. After two years, this long national nightmare is over. As it turns out, Donald Trump is an authentic political genius, unique, one of a kind, never to be seen again, a political phenomenon. Who knew? God bless America, and God bless President Trump." • If you still want to feel more catharsis, try this -- Fox News reported on Tuesday that : "House Democrats on Tuesday failed to override President Trump’s first veto as part of their battle over border security, representing a victory for the administration that allows the President's declaration of a national emergency at the US-Mexico border to stand....The House voted 248-181 on Tuesday in favor of overriding – but this fell 38 votes short of the two-thirds majority needed. Only 14 Republicans voted in favor of the veto override [hope those 14 Republicans have their new day jobs lined up]. The outcome of the vote, while not surprising, now enables Trump to move forward on an issue that was a hallmark of his 2016 presidential campaign and of his presidency....Representative Tom McClintock, R-Calif., said Trump was acting against the 'radical left in this House that would dissolve our borders entirely if given the chance'...while Representative Paul Mitchell, R-Mich., called the veto override effort 'a partisan whack job' because of its certain defeat....With the House override vote failing, the Senate won't attempt its own override and the veto will stand." • That loss for Speaker Pelosi feels so good that it just has to add to the euphoria and catharsis. • • • DEAR READERS, Peter Barry Chowka received an email from Fox News Media Relations to tell him that “Sean Hannity will present an exclusive interview with President Donald Trump on Wednesday, March 27th at 9 PM ET [with a replay at 10 PM PT]. During the interview, President Trump will react to Attorney General William Barr’s summary of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s report and discuss the latest [news] surrounding his administration, including border security.” • If you are looking for more joyful moments to add to your cathartic release, tune in to Fox later tonight. • AND, then, you may want to write an email to Fox News to tell its management that America does not need or want the lying, conniving, cheater Donna Brazille on its favorite TV outlet. That will be another boost for your catharsis.