{"id":2703563,"date":"2026-11-10T10:32:49","date_gmt":"2026-11-10T15:32:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-media-burns-the-witch-but-the-crops-are-still-dead\/"},"modified":"2026-11-10T10:39:36","modified_gmt":"2026-11-10T15:39:36","slug":"utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-media-burns-the-witch-but-the-crops-are-still-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/utm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-media-burns-the-witch-but-the-crops-are-still-dead\/","title":{"rendered":"The Media Burns The Witch, But The Crops Are Still Dead"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">22<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Futm_sourcerssutm_mediumrssutm_campaignthe-media-burns-the-witch-but-the-crops-are-still-dead%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2703563&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>The media and many politicians portray Trump\/MAGA as the single illness harming America: remove them and the country will heal. They celebrated electoral rebukes as cures, but structural problems-soaring debt, chronic illness, failing institutions, fraud-preexisted and will remain. Blaming individual \u201cfolk devils\u201d (Trump, RFK jr.,etc.) oversimplifies complex failures, merely shifting culpability to the next target. The <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >piece argues scapegoating masks policy shortcomings<\/a> and wastes energy that should go toward <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/secret-service-reform-is-a-literal-life-or-death-necessity\/\" title=\"Secret Service Reform Is A Literal Life-Or-Death Necessity\">fixing systemic problems<\/a>.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<div>\n<p>If you accidentally wander into the fever swamps of CNN or The New York Times, you learn that there\u2019s a disease in America \u2014\u00a0just <em>one<\/em>, a single illness destroying the body of the American republic. It\u2019s Trump. His personality is <em>the sickness<\/em>. <\/p>\n<p>In its more generous moments, the Captain Ahab media pulls back a bit, and the problem is a package: Trump plus everything he carries with him. MAGA is the sickness, and MAHA is part of the medical syndrome.<\/p>\n<p>We see this argument over and over again, all day and every day. Break MAGA, fix America. It\u2019s <em>the problem<\/em>. The dumber fanatics have just the one thought, and they chant it without variation. (This, of course, is a reference to the existence of David French.) In his shockingly dumb Politico <a href=\"https:\/\/www.politico.com\/news\/magazine\/2026\/10\/20\/thom-tillis-trump-2026-on-the-road-01127369\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">exit interview<\/a>, RINO Senator Thom Tillis explicitly said that the task is to dump MAGA and \u201cgo back to traditional Republican platform priorities.\u201d\u00a0See, before Trump, Republicans just did stuff that was smart and good and made America healthy.<\/p>\n<p>Last week, the captured media descended into a kind of collective ecstasy, because voters burned the Mean Orange Witch. Trump was rebuked; the healing begins. Actual post-election <a href=\"https:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2026\/11\/05\/opinion\/maga-trump-midterms.html\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">headline<\/a> in the opinion pages of The New York Times: \u201cMAGA Finally Gets What It Deserves.\u201d We hurt you, so problem solved. Now we can be governed by the healthy people who are good, and they can rewind the clock to the America that worked.<\/p>\n<p>But we\u2019re about to test that theory, first in small doses and then with the full procedure. Trump has lost the Republican Congress, and in two years he\u2019ll leave the White House. So if the theory is correct, and MAGA is everything that\u2019s wrong with America, we\u2019re about to slide into a new golden age. I guess there are people who believe that.<\/p>\n<p>To take an example from the lowest form of paste-eating dullard:<\/p>\n<figure>\n<p><span><\/p>\n<blockquote data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<div lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">\n<p>Time for a healthier America.<\/p>\n<p>Fire RFK Jr.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<p>\u2014 Senator Patty Murray (@PattyMurray) <a href=\"https:\/\/x.com\/PattyMurray\/status\/2119244870187466765?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">November 8, 2026<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/figure>\n<p>Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is Trump\u2019s guy, and he\u2019s making America sick, so when he goes, America will become healthier all of a sudden. He\u2019s <em>the cause<\/em> of sickness. So the country must have been much healthier before Mean Trump made Mean RFK Jr. cause everybody to have to become sick, and we\u2019ll just return to normal when this deviation is terminated. Right?<\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s what the CDC <a href=\"https:\/\/www.cdc.gov\/pcd\/issues\/2025\/24_0539.htm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">says about that<\/a>, and note that Trump and Kennedy weren\u2019t in office this year: \u201cIn 2023, 76.4% (representing 194 million) of US adults reported 1 or more chronic conditions, including 59.5%, 78.4%, and 93.0% of young, midlife, and older adults, respectively.\u201d <\/p>\n<p>So you just terminate the Trump deviation, and America is healthier again. See, easy! Without that monster Kennedy running the Department of Health and Human Services, we can go back to the glorious moment when only 93 percent of older Americans had chronic health conditions. See how much harm that one guy caused?<\/p>\n<p>Pick a topic. The idea that sickness and decline arrive in the form of Mean Orange Man is psychotic, a psychologically profound break with observable reality. <em>When Trump governs, everything is bad. When Trump doesn\u2019t govern, everything is good<\/em>. Test that. National debt, rates of chronic illness, inflation, whatever. Google up some historical charts, and see if the Trump years map as a period of illness in the middle of a bunch of health. Think about it for yourself, and decide if <em>the theme<\/em> in media and politics is correct.<\/p>\n<p>As the media and the Democrats plus Thom Tillis explain that Trump broke a healthy system, the obvious reality is that Trump\u2019s arrival was greeted as a moment when we could confront a sick and broken national politics. Trump, the figure sold as the deviation into sickness, arrived on the scene to offer a deviation from the existing sickness. When he goes, and the great distraction is withdrawn, all of the forms of actual sickness will remain. <\/p>\n<p>See clearly what this moment will look like: <em>The cause<\/em> of all of our sickness will depart, but our sickness will remain. Crushing national debt, expensive institutions that don\u2019t work, chronic illness that we can\u2019t fix no matter how many wonderful pharmaceutical products we consume, fraud everywhere, expensive promises that don\u2019t deliver.<\/p>\n<p>Societies have used a long series of metaphors to describe this moment. Our crops failed, so we found a witch in our village and burned her, but it didn\u2019t bring our crops back to life. We loaded all our sin and failure onto the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.britannica.com\/question\/What-is-the-scapegoat-mechanism-in-Rene-Girards-theory\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">back of a scapegoat<\/a> and drove it into the desert to carry away our sin and failure, but we woke up the same people.<\/p>\n<p>You can love Donald Trump and see this point, or you can hate Donald Trump and see this point. For a decade, our legacy media have told a single story about a person and a political movement: MAGA made America sick. The Great Rug Pull is coming. <em>The cause<\/em> of America\u2019s illness will vanish, but America will not suddenly cure its illness. <\/p>\n<p>They\u2019ll try to transfer it. <em>See, the cause of all our sickness is Donald Tr\u2014\u00a0uh, I mean, the cause of all our illness is J.D. Vance!<\/em> Or Ron DeSantis, or whatever. We\u2019ve evolved a narrative mechanism that exists to cover for failure, and it does that by finding a single figure to blame. It explains nothing, it means nothing, and it consumes most of our time and energy.<\/p>\n<p>What do you do when you spend all your energy on the construction of a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.taylorfrancis.com\/books\/mono\/10.4324\/9780203828250\/folk-devils-moral-panics-stanley-cohen\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">folk devil<\/a> whose existence explains all forms of failure and evil, and then your folk devil <em>retires<\/em>?<\/p>\n<hr>\n<p>      Chris Bray is a senior correspondent at The Federalist and a former infantry sergeant in the U.S. Army. He has a history PhD from the University of California Los Angeles, not that it did him any good. He also posts on Substack, at &#8220;Tell Me How This Ends,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/chrisbray.substack.com\/\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Here&#8217;s a paraphrase of the piece:<\/p>\n<p>Chris Bray argues that major media outlets like CNN and The New York Times push a single-figure narrative: Donald Trump is America\u2019s sole illness, with his personality the sickness itself. At times they broaden this to include MAGA as the package that carries the disease. The recurring message is to \u201cbreak MAGA, fix America,\u201d treating Trump supporters as a monolithic, irrational bloc. Some examples cited include Thom Tillis calling for abandoning MAGA for traditional Republican priorities, and post-election NYT coverage celebrating Trump\u2019s rebuke as a sign of healing and a return to a healthier era.<\/p>\n<p>But Bray says we\u2019re about to test that claim: Trump has lost power in Congress and will eventually leave the White House, so if MAGA is the core problem, should we not enter a golden age afterward? He notes that some people-even in politics and media-believe this, using the case of RFK Jr. as an example of a supposed \u201csickening\u201d figure whose presence supposedly makes the country sicker, and that removing Trump or RFK Jr. would restore health. Bray counters by citing CDC data showing high levels of chronic conditions across all age groups in 2023, arguing that simply removing one figure won\u2019t eliminate broad societal sickness.<\/p>\n<p>He contends that the idea of sickness arriving with Trump is a psychotic simplification, a narrative that contradicts observable reality. When Trump governs, problems are framed as worse; when he doesn\u2019t, they supposedly improve, but objective measures-debt, chronic illness, inflation, fraud, failed promises-would likely persist regardless. He notes that societies have long used scapegoats to bear collective blame, but removing the scapegoat does not cure the underlying issues. Whether one loves or hates Trump, Bray suggests the media has repeated a single story: MAGA makes America sick, and even if the \u201cgreat rug pull\u201d occurs and the cause vanishes, the illness remains. He argues that blame will simply shift to the next figure, and the structural failures will persist. The piece ends with a reflection on how such a folk-evil narrative functions to dodge accountability for real problems. Chris Bray signs as a contributor to The Federalist, with a background in the military and academia.<\/p>\n<p>55-character caption:<br \/>\nTrump is blamed as nation&#8217;s sickness; real woes linger<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2086,"featured_media":2703564,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/nyt-opinion-pages-scaled.jpg","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[546],"tags":[4188,74174,26327],"class_list":["post-2703563","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-federalist","tag-media","tag-sensationalism","tag-witch-hunt"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/thefederalist.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/11\/nyt-opinion-pages-scaled.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703563","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2086"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2703563"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703563\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2703572,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2703563\/revisions\/2703572"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2703564"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2703563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2703563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2703563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}