To Tweet or not to Tweet?Should Trump continue to Tweet?By Ric Wasley December 4, 2017Should Trump continue to Tweet? Yes - if for no other reason than it drives the Left-stream Media crazy! If there is one thing that drives Liberal Leftists and their DNC media establishment into a frothing frenzy it is Trump's tweeting. Why? It all boils down to one simple fact. When Trump tweets, they cannot control what he says. As we all know, for the last fifty years, the Left-stream media has been committed to creating the news, not reporting it. They have done a very good job of this by controlling the narrative - primarily by filtering everything through their print and broadcast filters. This allowed them to suppress some stories and blow others out of proportion. They were very successful with this strategy, enabling them to shape public opinion and force the culture further and further to the left. They were able to smear and bully anyone on the right who didn’t jump when they spoke and sadly, most lacked the courage or stomach to take them head-on. After all, their victims would point out, the Left controlled the media and thus all access to public opinion. Then everything changed. Enter the Internet and the rise of social media. (Hummmmm…do you suppose Al Gore is sorry now that he “invented” it?) Suddenly the Left-stream media no longer controlled all access to public opinion. Websites, forums, and bloggers sprang up, and in short order, the Establishment media was scrambling to keep up with all sorts of ideas and narratives that they had no control over. Soon moderate and conservative Americans who had long felt they were being lied to and manipulated, had alternate sources to find unfiltered news and un-spun opinions. That also began to dawn on the Left-stream media as well. Their print outlets began to lose subscribers, causing an advertiser exodus as they turned to spending their ad dollars on the internet. Likewise, their broadcast and cable outlets began to bleed viewers as the news audience realized that they were all singing the same partisan song from the same leftist hymnal, thus negating any point of watching them unless you were predisposed to that slant. The public started to realize they could do something they had never been able to do before - get the news unfiltered and directly from the source. The left and the DNC media became worried. Enter Trump. As he marched towards his primary and then presidential victory, he weaponized a previously frothy piece of whimsical social media and turned it into a direct conduit to millions of voters - Twitter. Now there are many, including members of my own family, who wish he would exercise more control of his tweeting and I will confess that I too find many of them cringe-worthy. "Why," many otherwise moderate or even conservative people say, "is he continuously stirring up controversy with his tweets?” Perhaps that's the point. I may find some of them clumsily phrased and perhaps even ill-conceived, but I have gradually come around to the opinion that that is what makes them so effective. People want to see what his unfiltered thoughts are because often they mirror their own. He says what they are thinking but can’t say. And for those who say they are 'un-presidential’ and should be more carefully crafted, consider this. Suppose all of his tweets were filtered and edited by aids and speech writers. Would they generate the same kind of impact, or would they become just more snoozers from the world of PR flacks? I think that that Trump has now succeeded in doing something that no other politician before him has done. Going directly to the people with no press spin or media filter and this is what drives the Left-stream DNC/Media mad. He is now controlling the narrative, not them. He is forcing them to respond to him, not the other way around. He is able to let the average person know that they are not alone in their feelings and concerns, and that they do not have to accept that their opinions make them the benighted boobs that the media has spent decades trying to convince them they were. That is the true power of Trumps Tweets, however off-the-cuff, inelegant, or spot-on they may be - they cannot be controlled by the media. That is why they hate and fear him so much. They know they have to defeat and discredit his direct access to the news and opinion construct, or totally lose what is left of their waning power. Think about it this way. Consider all of the societies past and present who have wanted to control, limit, or filter direct access of information to the public - are those societies you would like to live in? Me neither. That’s why even though many of Trump's tweets leave me shaking my head, I still smile and say, “Tweet on, Mr. POTUS, tweet on."
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Ric Wasley is a writer and lecturer, as well as the author of the popular McCarthy Mystery Series. Ric has had a 40 year professional career history in advertising, publishing and marketing in Boston, New York and San Francisco. He has degrees in history and psychology and has been trained in debating, public speaking and stage acting. A large part of his 40 year career was spent in numerous professional and business settings as a presenter and featured speaker at seminars and professional meetings. Ric has been a visiting professor at Worcester Polytech Institute. He also teaches a popular course on marketing for authors at prominent venues such as the venerable “Cape Cod Writers Conference.” Wasley has been involved in both print and broadcast media as well as writing for business and commercial markets for over 30 years and continues to consult for a major media company. In addition to his novels and short stories, he has been published in several literary magazines. Wasley currently divides his time between Boston and his home on Cape Cod where he continues to write, lecture and create worlds where the unexpected thrives.
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