Miscellaneous Media Musings

1. Dear Media: Despite your hysterical obsession with impeaching President Donald Trump, most voters don't care about Russia. They don't care, because they know you don't really care. If government integrity truly mattered to you, then you'd have been upset about the Obama administration's lies about Obamacare, its lies about Benghazi, its lifting of sanctions against Iran, its release of dangerous Iranian operatives, its laissez-faire attitude about Iran's development of nuclear weapons, its $400 million (cash) payment to Iran, and President Obama's LeFou-esque sidekick Ben Rhodes' braggadocio remarks about having hornswoggled the American public.

But you weren't.

Heck, you might even have cared that the Obama administration spent hundreds of thousands of dollars trying to get Benjamin Netanyahu ousted as prime minister of Israel.

But you didn't. So spare us the faux outrage.

2. Well, OK, statement No. 1 isn't entirely true. Some of us do care about Russia — to the extent that we're glad communism finally collapsed there. Now if it would just die its long-overdue death in China, Cuba, Laos, North Korea, Venezuela, and various American institutions of higher education.

3. Speaking of which, academia continues to hurtle off the rails. In The Washington Post this week, two geographers argued that citing scholars who are "white, male, able-bodied, economically privileged, heterosexual, and cisgendered" perpetuates a "system of oppression." Silly me — 26 years in academia, and here I thought you cited scholarship because of its content. Apparently, we're supposed to be calling authors, asking their preferred gender, what race/ethnicity they identify with, and who/what they have sex with. If anyone wants to know why academics are considered self-absorbed and irrelevant — - this is a good place to start.

4. So the congressional GOP fumbles the ball on Obamacare - again. When will they learn? We didn't send them there to tweak Obamacare; we sent them there to get rid of it. Yet they are more afraid of the outrage from the left than they are of betraying their own constituents: Whatever shall we do? It might affect the 2018 election! Here's a tidbit for you guys: The left will despise you no matter what you do. But if you shortchange your voters, you'll be out of a job.

5. Joe Scarborough left his wife. Is anyone really shocked he could leave the Republican Party?

6. America is in a civil war, but the two sides are fighting on different battlefields. The right is fighting in voting booths and legislative bodies. The left is fighting in academia, the mainstream media and the entertainment industry. The right has masterfully dominated in state and local elections. The left's wheelhouse is national propaganda.

Progressives have assumed all along that this strength would translate to widespread victory (since great propagandists often win). But large swaths of the American public are insulated from their efforts: Nearly 67 percent of Americans don't have a four-year degree, and many don't watch the liberal-dominated media, preferring talk radio, online news aggregators like the Drudge Report, and Fox News. This is one of the main reasons the left was so gobsmacked by Hillary Clinton's defeat.

7. So the left is doubling down. No small amount of effort is being dedicated to silencing the right. Conservative think tanks and advocacy groups are denounced as "hate groups." Commentators like Sean Hannity come under fire. We're seeing mobs, irate protests and riots on college campuses to silence conservative viewpoints — even from "underrepresented" members like female scholars (Christina Hoff Sommers), immigrants (Ayaan Hirsi Ali), African-Americans (Condoleezza Rice) and gays (Milo Yiannopoulos). No one should be surprised at this — look at the lengths to which the left goes to silence those on its own side who don't toe the party line: (Frances Lee, Rebecca Tuvel, Bret Weinstein).

It cannot be emphasized enough: These tactics will not end well. A population that is silenced will find another way to have its voice heard. (Remember November 2016?)

8. And now to close on the same note as my opening. Dear Disgruntled Lefties: If you think you'll achieve a victory by having Trump impeached and removed, I beg you to think again. Nearly 63 million people voted for him. He won 30 states and took 306 electoral votes. Vladimir Putin's coy ploys notwithstanding, Donald Trump won fair and square. It's bad enough having to listen to your nonstop tirades. If you overturn an election, you'll have a war on your hands.

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Laura Hirschfeld Hollis is on the faculty at the University of Notre Dame, where she teaches courses in business law and entrepreneurship. She has received numerous awards for her teaching, research, community service and contributions to entrepreneurship education.