The New York Times is one of the more ridiculous journalistic enterprises in world history.

In some ways, it is worse than the old Soviet Pravda. With Pravda, everybody involved knew that they were a bunch of lying propagandists. The writers knew it and the readers knew it. It was an unspoken agreement between them that nobody would say so out loud.

But with the Times? It’s unclear that the writers always know it. It’s certainly the case that most readers don’t know it. They actually think the Times is the best newspaper in the world.

Reading the Times yesterday my head almost exploded. I could have written every post for today on the execrable articles. Every single post. Everything I read was a lie or distortion.

This was the first piece I read:

Defeated on same-sex marriage, the religious right went searching for an issue that would re-energize supporters and donors.

Now, the pace of the campaign against transgender rights has stunned political leaders across the spectrum. https://t.co/TnBF52b1aj

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 16, 2023

The upshot of the piece is this: “Religious Right” leaders choose to fight on issues solely to motivate voters, ginning up fake controversies in order to guide the sheeple into voting against the good, the true, and the beautiful in order to gain power.

Those meanies. If it weren’t for nasty Religious Right leaders everybody would be lining up to take their kids to pornographic drag shows, chopping their body parts off, and embracing the destruction of capitalism or something.

There is literally no other reason why anybody would organize a movement to stop the sterilization and mutilation of children, which is a manifestly good thing.

No reason at all.

I’m in the New York Times!

Getting yelled at by Antifa boys playing soldier, of course.

Proud to see my buddy @Schilling1776 offering a lot of insight.

The New York Times is wrong in how they frame this issue. The fight against child transition grew out of grassroots efforts.… pic.twitter.com/G4OKnOwaVZ

— Billboard Chris 🇨🇦🇺🇸 (@BillboardChris) April 17, 2023

For decades I have been struck by the magic act that the Left gets away with. They push for some outrageous and unpopular goal with 100% of their resources, and when the opposition mobilizes it gets tarred as starting a “culture war.”

The Left, everywhere and always, is the aggressor in the culture wars. Every single issue arises due to their full-court press to radically change the culture. EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Yet the group that gets tagged as the aggressor is the “Right,” who are defending the status quo, not engaging in a full-scale war against anything.

It’s like blaming the Romans for defending themselves against Atilla the Hun.

If only Rome and Constantinople had surrendered to the Huns there would have been no battles! See! It is the Romans’ fault!

Jonah Goldberg made the same analysis as I on this one:

Just as a chronological fact, the issue didn't start with the GOP opposing trans athletes in sports. The issue started with .. the issue! — pushing trans athletes in sports. You can say that's good, bad, or mixed. But you can't start with the right's *reaction* as the start. 2/ pic.twitter.com/fyUbGLz2xc

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) April 16, 2023

Suddenly the forces pushing change (again, sometimes good, sometimes debatable, change) claim to be victims of conservatives trying to "impose" their values on the *original imposers* 4/

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) April 16, 2023

In this case, I can’t believe that the Times authors actually believe their argument, although I have seen variations on the theme percolating on Left-Twitter regarding drag shows.

With that, the argument is the same: why didn’t conservatives inveigh against drag shows until the past couple of years? It must be a cynical ploy since drag has been around forever.

Uh, yeah, but that ignores the important variable: drag for kids. It isn’t drag shows that we care about. Why would we care if it is just adults having a bit of fun, or even getting racy among themselves?

It’s adult-oriented drag shows for kids that are wrong. Just as we felt sorry for, not angry at transgender individuals. Adult transgender people are harming themselves, and that makes us sad, not angry.

But stay away from the kids. You may not harm kids without pushback.

You can't have it both ways. You can't take pride in being the forces of change and "progress" and then claim to be the victims in the culture war every time you meet resistance. I mean you clearly *can* have it both ways, because this happens all the time. But it shouldn't. 6/6

— Jonah Goldberg (@JonahDispatch) April 16, 2023

Such articles exist not to convince anybody through logic but to create a space to accommodate the cognitive dissonance that liberals experience regarding the rapid advance of the critical theory/transgender ideology. Everybody knows that there is something new and creepy going on, but liberals also know that they are supposed to embrace it wholeheartedly.

In order to square the circle they associate the creepiness with Religious Right objections, not the actual practices we object to. Sure, they know something is deeply wrong here, but it is the fault of Christians, not the people actually engaged in the culture war.

I saw this firsthand when I worked in Minnesota politics. Every time a Republican got up to object to some radical sex ed material they would read it on the floor of the House. Everybody would go crazy because what they were reading was disgusting–and the liberals would attack the Republicans for bringing smut to the House. How dare they do so? It violated decorum!

Of course, the same liberals were pushing the smut they objected to at the kids. The whole point was to defend the smut in schools by making the Republicans shut up.

Nikki Fried did the same thing. When Ron DeSantis defended cleaning out pornography from school libraries by showing what was in those books, Nikki Fried attacked him for distributing pornography. Pornography that she actually WANTS in schools.

Of course this book doesn’t belong in school — but which Republican Education Commissioner or Governor allowed it to be there?

Time to pull the plug on your plan to remove history books and stop tickling your base, @GovRonDeSantis.

— Nikki Fried (@NikkiFried) March 11, 2023

The Times writers are pulling the same trick–attacking conservatives for pointing out what liberals do. It must be political! The “Religious Right” has bad motives for showing you all this evil folks! Blame them, and ignore that we started the whole controversy. You hate the controversy, right? Make the Right shut up.

In other words, give in to the Huns. Then there will be no war!

The sad thing is that this tactic works with a lot of moderates. They literally don’t want to see evil being done to children, so they blame conservatives for shoving it in their faces. They don’t blame the evil people shoving it in kids’ faces.

We need to get better at fighting this. Or else we keep slipping down that slippery slope.