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August 31st, 2026

What makes a good podcast

Podcasts are such a hot thing right now, and have been since the 2020 covid plandemic, that even people employed in the mainstream media are trying their hand at it. Part of the draw is cache, like la la I have a podcast, as though it confers personal specialiness and high intelligence, and the other part of it has to do with simple reach and monetary remuneration.

Everyone who thinks they are someone, or who wants to be a someone, “has” a podcast.

Podcasts are a big net benefit to the world, to humans, to public policy debates, to the spread of ideas (good and bad), information (good and bad). Podcasts have democratized the spread and flow of opinions (artful and bluntly foolish), and have drawn a lot of disenfranchised people, people dejected by the low quality of ubiquitous legacy mainstream media, back into the public marketplace of ideas and news information.

American culture and politics are arguably now informed more by podcasts than by corporate establishment outlets.

Since 2020, when the world was largely locked down and stuck inside, podcasts became the latest and greatest information outlet. Doctors sitting in their living rooms, describing in detail how their hospital administration had politicized their treatment of covid patients, covid survivors, parents finally seeing for the first time the utter slop being served up as “public education” by the politicized teachers’ unions, you name it, podcasts became the end-run around the censorship-industrial machine weaponized against We, The People by the legacy media, Big Tech, and the installed Big Brother Biden Admin.

The dam had to break, the river had to find its level, and the podcast world was the most creative way for people with information that countered the brazen lies of Doctor Mengele Fauci to feel heard. And so it was with people sick and tired of the establishment lies and narrative about covid, which was more about controlling people than it was about public health.

And now that a bazillion people have jumped into podcasting since 2020, a Jurassic-level leveling is taking place. No, no metaphoric meteor is streaking towards Podcast World, ready to hit the Yucatan square on its nose and re-assemble all podcast life on our planet. But simple market forces are beginning to play out. Some people, who had made a big name for themselves during the covid plandemic and the Biden years, are now struggling to find their place in podcasting. Others took a few Tucker Carlson punches to the head and fell down, only to climb back up and give Tucker a few in the kisser himself, and now he is fallen.

Point being that actual marketplace dynamics are determining the success or failure of the podcast world. Supply and demand, risk and reward, appear to be the main arbiters of a podcaster’s success.

Unlike the legacy mainstream media, which has long been propped up by one political party and its constellation of funders and, really, political donors. Market forces only lately seem to have become a factor in the staying power and eyeball presence of partisan mainstream media outlets like CNN, CBS, NPR, the Washington Post, the New York Times. Slowly, the water falls into the cracks, freezes, expands, and widens the cracks over at the MSM. But the cracks are becoming more apparent.

So what makes a good podcast? Here are some of my filters, or requirements, that keep me returning to a podcast:

  1. Knowledgeable and experienced hosts. Twenty-something-year-old podcasters may be cute, they may be smart, but honestly, these people have no real life experience that I can look to in order to trust and value their opinions. Alternatively, highly experienced adults who have maybe failed here or there in their adult career, now these people intrigue me the most. They are grounded in reality, and nothing trains like pain. I will spend my precious time listening to someone who has learned some tough life lessons, and is sharing them. Alternatively, I cannot spend my precious time listening to or watching someone who merely represents my own methodology or values. This is where political/ religious/ cultural ideology is least important.
  2. Smart, incisive, witty commentary is a must. Simply reciting a litany of complaints or critiques should be insufficient for every prospective listener who values their own time. Humor goes a long way with this listener.
  3. Understandable, measured cadence in delivery. One famous podcaster is smart and knowledgable, sometimes witty, but he speaks so damned fast I cannot understand what he says half the time. It is almost physically impossible to listen to such a person.
  4. Creative and able to link the mundane to the big picture. A great deal of podcasting is simply evaluating and relating news events through the eye of the podcast host, and their simple blunt reactions / analysis are not (or should not) suffice to get your attention. Looking for the meta-link between small facts on the ground and bigger body politic ripple effect is the sign of a true analyst. Someone who adds real value to our understanding of current events.

So, yeah, I thought we were done with the podcast thing a few days ago, but it is such a big and timely subject that this part of the discussion had to be addressed. Because Google / YouTube so aggressively censored political and cultural ideas that its far left staff did not like, Rumble became the go-to place for intellectual refugees. Give it a shot.

 

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
August 27th, 2026

The last bit about podcasting, honestly, I promise

Different readers provide comments here differently. Some send an email, which is fine, when the comment is substantive and or constructive criticism. I like those. This blog’s spam filters are set pretty tight, so to comment here, a reader has to really, really want to say something. I do not filter for content, unless it is egregiously vile, or dumb. People can disagree with my views, I am fine with that. And I can be persuaded about some issues.

So we got an emailed comment about this podcast business from a reader, in a distant state, who has himself had a couple podcasts. He (“AB”) points out that podcasting can be done with just as much disregard for the business end of it, as this blog has. Podcasting is a simple outlet for many people, just as basic writing here on this simple blog is important for me. His email is below.

And I would add that plenty of financially successful podcasts, now big money makers, many with celebrity authors, started out this way. Like some frustrated observer in a distant city, unable to get through to City Hall about some pedestrian issue, who then launches beautiful broadsides and tirades about the official inadequacies in City Hall. Which then harvests some inside information from disgruntled workers inside City Hall, and then becomes the second and then ongoing subject of subsequent podcasts. With ever growing public attention. And public pressure on City Hall.

This mythical podcaster then finds her- or himself suddenly providing an alternative voice for the other citizens suffering at the hands of City Hall’s corrupt or incompetent or lazy bureaucrats. This “voice” does an end run around the local mainstream media, which is like 98% of establishment media and, therefore, incurious, narrative focused, partisan, and on the side of established power, not with the citizens.

And the rest becomes history, as it is said: Plenty of now famous podcasters got their start in a garage, or in their car, or in a local park, ranting about real issues that the mainstream media outlets refused to touch. They found their voice, found or grew their issues, found and grew their message and audience, and voila, they quit their day job and have a podcast show. Making money from “clicks” on the internet and the rest of that related business churn. Rebel News comes to mind.

The biggest challenge seems to be what to do when it is not an election year, or Donald Trump is not on the ballot, or the news cycle is not on fire. Then the podcaster’s skill is really tested. In the past week I have tried listening to a couple different TimCast IRL, with Tim Pool off the air and on vacation and his gang running the show, and it is unbearable to me. It is like listening to a group of high school boys talk about Big Ideas. Just stupid. Sorry, Tim, sorry guys.

AB: “A few thoughts about your podcast post. I have had a podcast for the past several years and I had one with my wife in the mid 2000s. If you are going ahead and making that your major focus and where you are making it, as Sherlock Holmes once said, your bread and cheese, then you do have to concern yourself with clicks, downloads, sponsors. etc. At that point you also start getting into the audience capture problem where you just perform or take a point of view because that’s what your audience expects.

However, if you are doing the podcast just because you like the medium and don’t care about the stats or getting paid, then it’s a fun hobby. If you do it in the traditional podcast format (no video) then the overhead is almost nothing, just a good microphone and a quiet place to record. Just a few things to think about.”
And there we have it, the last word on this podcasting business, here, anyhow. Thank you, AB.
By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
August 26th, 2026

Podcasting’s dark side

The other reason I do not have a podcast, is that podcasting has a dark side. And while I may have an occasional “dark side” myself, I neither need any new ones nor do I want this particular extra one added to my already cumbersome burden (hello, this is called self-deprecating humor, something the folks in Rio Linda may not always catch).

Here’s the thing about podcasting: To succeed, you must devote yourself brilliantly, daily, and even then chase clicks. Most of us are not brilliant, nor can we afford to quit our day job to fully implement a podcast, and so that leaves just the click chasing. Or, as many podcasters who now have opened up a clear view into their own dark side, as is pretty commonly called, they/ you / the aspiring podcaster becomes a “click whore.”

In other words, to aggregate as many internet “clicks” as possible, a podcaster must throw a pretty wide net. This wide net requires the aspiring click whore to essentially bite the heads off of chickens, live (the podcaster, not the chicken, which becomes dead), on air. Yes, the old freak show stunt of biting a head off of a live chicken is perhaps just a teensy exaggeration here, but it is a sad fact that in order to attract and hold viewers, the successful podcaster must really stand out in a crowd. Daily.

As Jim Seif, the former secretary of PA DEP, said in a hearing back in 1998, after taking the podium from the sixth speaker before him, “I feel like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband. I know what to do, I am just not sure I know how to make it exciting.”

Great line, and I have used it several times myself, including on September 11, 2001, when I had just begun giving testimony in a Pennsylvania House hearing on land conservation. Moments later the 9/11 jihadi terror planes began crashing in NYC and DC and Flight 93 hit in rural PA, and everyone in the room was spared my own attempt to make the same warmed over fare seem appetizing, if not exciting. We were evacuated from the PA Capitol as I was in mid speech. Oh, my fortunate audience…

Anyhow, podcasters who have survived six months at it know that they must make the mundane seem exciting, or they must begin breaking taboos and saying naughty no-no things. All of it exciting, yes, until all those live chicken heads inside their stomach begin pecking away, trying to get out. The pressure to perform well enough to draw an audience every day results in some podcasters making nutty claims, and then doing mental backflips and wild leaps of logic to try and keep the whole dog and pony show going. They go nuts.

This dynamic is what destroyed Tucker Carlson and Candace Owens’ podcast careers, and Nick Fuentes has the rest of the same type of podcast listeners, who must also do hits of meth and huffing spray paint while nodding along with whatever repetitive thing he is saying that day.

As a podcaster, you will always find an audience, and some audiences are made of either really bored or simplistic individuals. Many podcasters have an audience of fifty, some get to fifty thousand. To get beyond that number, and thus begin to get enough clicks to make a living, well, you gotta be like Zsa Zsa Gabor’s seventh husband and perform like a porn star, every night.

Most normal people cannot or will not do this. I am not normal, but neither will I attempt to bend myself into a pretzel shape in order to chase clicks.

Oh, the irony that the ideologically rich and fabulously diverse ecosystem of podcastistan is ruled by such a hard iron rule! Would it not be somewhat of a relief to be a mainstream media personality, and have an incurious audience, or a dumb audience, or, in the case of CNN, almost no audience? So much easier!

This is the life of, say, George Stephanopoulos at ABC. He is an openly politically partisan activist, masquerading as a “news reporter.” He is not a fair-minded arbiter of accuracy or facts, and his audience would fade away were he to become such a person. No chicken head biting or dog and pony show for George Stephanopoulos. Just rote activism, day in and day out. Same boring narrative (“Donald Trump bad, Democrats good“), every day.

But it was this very vacuousness that created podcastistan!

It was the ABC News / mainstream media’s failure to address real substance, or to use accuracy and real facts, and its nonstop political partisanship, that drove thinking Americans away from the legacy media outlets in the first place. And it is this market failure of the mainstream media that is causing parent companies to turn over, say, CBS, to new editors, in the hope of breathing new life into the dead body.

See? There is no easy answer to this podcast thing. To jump into it, you must have something of value to say and the ability to say it in an engaging way. To get an initial audience started and then held, you have to hit the ground running hard. And to then maintain and grow your audience, you must have greatly incisive wit and glowing personality, as well as either a whole roost of chickens or a three ring circus full of dogs and ponies.

Yes, podcasters are better people than the George Stephanopolusususes of the world, but eventually the line between them can become thin, if one is not careful. Or one can become dark, and break taboos, and say naughty no-no things that hurt people, because stimulating a particular audience’s otherwise hidden sadism streak is all ya got left.

So no, no podcasting for ol’ Josh. Nope. None of it is appealing to me, though I do enjoy listening to some podcasts, here and there.

Thanks for being here and listening!

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
August 19th, 2026

Why I do not have a podcast, and won’t

Couple years ago, a longtime older friend, financially successful and politically active, asked me why I do not have a podcast.

“I see all these podcasts online, and I think, Wow, Josh would be great at that You should do it.”

And to me, even though I am not going to be a podcaster or have a podcast, what a great and appreciated compliment that is, for several reasons.

The most important being that discerning thinkers — people who more carefully consider the information they consume —  are increasingly tied into podcasts. Both Left and Right, and a lot of Americans in the middle, are hungry for information that breaks from the worn out, politically partisan, and openly fraudulent mainstream legacy media outlets like the New York Times, ABC-CBS-NBC-CNN-NPR-BBC, Washington Post, LA Times, etc.

These mainstream legacy media organizations are not fair-minded arbiters of accurate information. Rather, they are highly tuned political activism outlets. And it is no “conspiracy theory” to say this; they proudly flaunt their partisanship every single day. At this point, there is no material, substantive difference between the New York Times and Mother Jones magazine, other than the NYT is living off the fumes of its once great reputation and the closed circuit dopamine high that leftists live in (“I only read information sources that align with my values” said an old friend to me several years ago, deliberately not self-aware about how self-defeating such a non-diverse, mono-syllabic approach to information is to those people, especially, who pretend to consume only the very best and purest of information).

The NYT masquerades as a serious place, whereas Mother Jones has been a gleeful juvenile bomb thrower for decades. Both are far-left America-hating Marxist activism proponents who abuse their masochistic audiences.

And yes, I have the hands-on experience with both of these outfits to speak authoritatively about them. Suffice it to say that we all have a family…

And so, in this general vacuum/absence of accurate news i.e.  mainstream media’s deliberate misinformation fake news, podcasts have opened up huge opportunities for people genuinely interested in learning the actual factual truth. And market demand has been met by market supply; podcasts are now such a thing that plenty of Americans run for office or commit public displays of strangeness, just to get enough of a following to launch a podcast.

Today, there are an awful lot of podcasts available. It seems like every would-have-been college professor and wingnut and ex-CIA officer and ex-combat veteran with loads of ink on his arms has started a podcast. A podcast is what serious would-be “influencers” do. The actual “influencers” just seem to post brief TikTok videos of themselves in various stages of undress, or eating messy sandwiches in an expensive car while wearing expensive clothes.

I would say most of the podcasters on the right are pretty careful thinkers, not all, but most. People who kind of defined conservative podcastistan for a long time (long by podcast terms), like Tucker Carlson, Candace Owens, Alex Jones, have largely discredited themselves by abandoning facts and rigorous thinking for nonsense only slightly better packaged than the trash at the New York Times or Mother Jones.

This is the beauty of the podcast world today: Dip your toe in the water and check it out. Jump in for a swim and lap up all the many flavors of individual opinions you like. It is a much richer, more diverse, more interesting, more informative place than all of the monosyllabic legacy media outlets put together.

So given my positive view of podcasts in general, why did I not start a podcast of my own? Several simple reasons: I do not have the time to do it; I am not narcissistic enough; though I am a very strong public speaker, I enjoy writing much more than talking; and I do not know how to do the necessary selfie videos, which feel socially awkward to me.

Too many podcasters really scramble to stay on top of the wave, every day, which can lead to some humorously foolish, or sophomorically high schoolean, dis-believable grasping at straws. Publicly. Which I am old enough and old school enough to feel self-conscious about. So, no thanks. This blog is a satisfying enough outlet for me. And I am not in the information “business” or in this for money, i.e. note the absence of advertising on this website.

I write because I feel compelled to write. It is an undeniable energy that wells up inside me all the time, and it is part of the reason I had at one time aspired to be an academic. If you do a search of “Josh First Harrisburg” outside of Google (which is not an honest broker about accurate information, but rather has made itself highly politicized with inaccurate search results), you will find dozens and dozens of essays and articles I have written over the past 25 years, as well as news reports and interviews on my various land projects and on some of the political races I have run in.

What emerges from that resulting morass of printer’s ink, I think, is the clear image of a guy who has strong opinions about a lot of subjects, who enjoys public speaking and writing, and who has several feet in several different worlds simultaneously.

And I am most happy limiting that all to writing one or two essays a week in my blog here, which fits in with my busy work schedule. No podcast necessary. No podcast desired.

But I will give credit to the conservative podcastistanians, whose overall grand number, high volume, interesting topics, and really wide intellectual diversity shows us just how important the First Amendment is, even as the legacy media try to hog that all to themselves, and to discredit and take it away from anyone who does not march in lockstep with their leftist narrative.

I recommend that anyone with an ounce of interest in starting a podcast do so. Explore it. Be your best self. And if you fail, that is OK. At least you will have checked it off your list. Take comfort from knowing that I will not be able to do that, because I am just too lazy.

 

 

 

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment
November 6th, 2024

Take-aways from Trump’s historic WIN

Some take-aways from President Donald Trump’s historic win last night:

ONE: “Too Big to Rig” turned out not to be only a campaign slogan, but a very real and measurable goal. In swing states, including my own Pennsylvania, registering new Republican voters (hero Scott Presler registered something like 110,000 Amish) and getting them to vote made the difference between winning and losing. Getting regular “super voters” and new voters alike to bank their votes before Election Day via absentee and mail-in ballots also helped hugely. That way, when the Democrat Party tried to cheat, as they did last night with secret ballot dumps in Philly and Detroit, the votes were already in and counted, and …

TWO: Staying on top of the battlefield, so to speak, with hundreds of lawyers and poll watchers everywhere documenting everything across Pennsylvania (and other swing states) prevented the “enemy” from doing sneak attacks. Too many eyes and cameras watching in 2024, something we lacked in 2020.

When Centre County tried to stop vote counting last night, with promises to come back in the morning and pick up again, Republican National Committee lawyers were present and threatened to sue if Centre County violated state law. And so Centre County staffers put on their big boy pants and continued counting votes like every other professional polling place is supposed to do. This prevented Centre County (where I grew up, and which is home to Penn State University’s bazillion communist faculty and spoiled brat students) from sneaking in a bunch more secret ballots hidden somewhere and padding the vote results in favor of their preferred candidates, which happened a lot with the stolen 2020 election.

THREE: Mainstream legacy corporate media e.g. Reuters, ABC CBS NBC NPR PBS NYT CNNLOL WaPo MSNBC etc are now on the losing side of the info wars. No matter what these outlets say now, a majority of Americans do not trust them. Rather, a majority of Americans openly mock them because of their patently false and easily disprovable assertions and narratives. A big indication of how weak MSM sources have become is that they ALL have deleted their comment sections. No way for their readership or viewership to visibly fact-check them real time!

For decades these establishment fake news disseminators of malinformation, disinformation, and misinfornation have been the supposed “go-to” sources for accurate information. But as everyone now sees so clearly, these are not fair-minded arbiters of accuracy and truth. Rather, all of these outlets are plugged into one particular and very politically partisan source, probably Media Matters, from which these giant networks take their daily talking points and narratives. Watch one compilation of all the MSM personalities saying the exact same things on the same day, and you have seen all of the compilations done for decades now.

FOUR: As a result of the MSM’s willful if suicidal media malpractice serving as the open propaganda arm for the Democrat Party (and serving as the Kamala Harris campaign), the rise of the citizen journalist and alternative media is really just beginning. New they may be, these people are really effective, and they gave Trump a pathway to get around the MSM blocks and attacks on him.

Go to Rumble and meet some of the many political refugees kicked out of YouTube or FaceBook for the simple acts of violating leftwing political orthodoxy. Rumble’s political ecosystem is super rich and diverse, and you will hear a hundred or a thousand different opinions about the day’s events from funny people, smart people, scary people, people in their underpants, people wearing their underpants on their head, but frankly, any and all of them far better and much more honest and interesting and accurate than anything you will hear on CNN or ABC or NPR.

And don’t forget all of the bazillion podcasts on Apple, Spotify, etc., and all the talk radio shows, and the new newspapers like Epoch Times. Or Breitbart or Gateway Pundit.

In sum, the rise of the citizen journalist directly correlates with the fall of corporate media. I will bet the R2 of these two axis are probably 99% correlated. By consuming alternative sources of information in a free market place, Americans are showing their belief in the old Thomas Paine adage about the best antidote to bad information is not to shut it down, but to get more information, so that a person can make up their own mind about what is true, and what is false.

People who read and listen to alternative media are naturally curious individuals. People who drink out of the toilet and consume MSM like CNN and NPR are not intellectually curious people. It is a badge of honor to listen to diverse voices.

And for all the MSM lovers out there, if the MSM had simply done their job of reporting just the facts and all the facts, regardless of where they fell, then there would have been no need or demand for talk radio, or citizen journalism, or podcasts. Nature abhors a vacuum, and the New York Times is one gigantic, ridiculous, embarrassingly buck naked vacuum.

Truth is like water, it will keep moving around to find the lowest place, no matter how much you try to dam it up.

FIVE: Working polling places is effective. For many years I have compared the polls that I worked at on Election Day to other polling places, especially those with no one working, to see if my friendly outreach to voters coming in to vote has any real effect. It does, and I encourage everyone of any political party or interest group to participate in Election Day as a poll watcher. Not only does it give more information to prospective voters, it also brings more eyes to the polling place, which is the number one way to prevent vote fraud on Election Day.

SIX: Kamala Harris was not a compelling candidate when she ran in the primary last time, and she was not a compelling candidate yesterday, either. That she was hand-picked by party elites without one vote being cast for her by one citizen indicates a huge problem with American party politics. Do not kid yourself this is only the Democrat Party’s problem, this need for elites’ control is also big among the GOP. I.e. note how Trump was treated by the GOPe right up until a couple days ago, when it became clear he was going to win. They STILL hated him, for being his independent self.

SEVEN: Americans do not trust their government. For good reason. When your own government has abandoned you the lifelong taxpayer, in favor of flying in and letting in tens of millions of unvetted illegal aliens, and telling the truth about this invasion is treated harshly by the government created to protect you, the citizen, your government has become your enemy. Everyone sees it now.

And so, my own decision to abandon the US EPA in 1998, after seven years in Federal service there, becomes even more understandable to me now. Back then, I did not like what I was seeing, hearing, writing, saying, but I could not really put my finger wholly on the problem. Now, we all see the problems in both federal and state governments, and buddy, the meat cleaver must fall hard on the gangrenous parts. This was a big part of yesterday’s vote results.

EIGHT: Never underestimate the strength of well intentioned people determined to correct wrongdoing. When Elon Musk turned Twitter/X into a pretty free market of ideas and information, a huge pathway around the MSM and Silicon Valley tech media chokehold on information flow was disrupted. The rest of that is beautiful Robin Hood history. And when Scott Presler decided that he could not allow the stolen 2020 election to go unanswered, he devoted himself to tirelessly registering Republican voters in Pennsylvania and other swing states. The outcome of his incredible work bore obvious fruit last night.

Moral of this story: Fight, Fight, Fight for what you believe in. Never relent, never stop, never give up, no matter how sad or demoralized you might feel at any point.

America is worth building, and it was worth saving yesterday, whatever the cost.

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation, Government Of the People... • No Comment
June 14th, 2024

a thousand points of light, a thousand glorious small cuts

Watching a boat sinking out on the water because it was deliberately holed by its occupants is a curious thing.

Watching the people in the sinking boat then continue to deliberately punch more holes into the ruptured hull, even as water is being taken on, which expedites the boat’s failure as a floating refuge on water, is more than curious. Now, we are pretty certain that the self-destructive people in the boat either are stupid, suicidal, or do not even realize what they are doing.

They might think that adding more holes in the boat actually lets the water out…?

Thus is the recent statement by political activist George Stephanopoulos that media personalities having live interviews on TV with President Donald Trump is “journalistic malpractice“ perfectly framed.

George Stephanopoulos is the longtime political director for ABC “News.” As a former extremely politically partisan political activist employed by President Bill Clinton, Stephanopulous somehow seamlessly glided into the awkward and disbelievable role of “news reporter” and “journalist” at ABC. You know, as the kind of news reporter and journalist that is supposed to be accurate, fair, balanced, fact-based, truth-seeking no matter where it takes him. Ideally, and probably much more so in America’s distant past, journalism is done by fair-minded arbiters of truth and accuracy, not political activists.

These two roles are mutually exclusive: Political activists are by definition not fair minded arbiters of truth and accuracy, and so they cannot possibly communicate anything but one-sided political propaganda, narrative, and self-serving lies to their viewers and audiences. Which is what George Stephanopoulos does…speaking of journalistic malpractice.

George Stephanopoulos is not a journalist, he is an aggressive political activist masquerading as a journalist. And the reason he wants to prevent President Trump from having live interviews on mainstream media outlets is that George Stephanopoulos wants to deprive American audiences of having an honest and unfiltered view of Trump. Because Americans seeing and hearing Trump in his own words, as his own self, is going to be completely at odds with the lies, propaganda, falsehoods, and partisan political narrative that political activists like George Stephanopoulos try to paint Trump with all the time.

George Stephanopoulos is actually a censor, the opposite of a journalist. He is someone who tries to stop, limit, or blunt the dissemination of inconvenient facts or truths that undermine the political goals of the censor. Censorship runs totally at odds with the spirit and intent of America’s First Amendment, as well as the open and sometimes raucous format for all of our political discourse since our founding.

Recall that American politicians used to give a “stump speech” literally standing on a fresh tree stump surrounded by interested citizens, such was the nature of America’s rapidly expanding frontier and European settlement. So, a so-called “journalist” trying to prevent a politician from giving his live “stump speech” is actually doing the opposite of journalism: He is conducting censorship, at war with America.

All censors will tell you they are blocking you from having access to the truth, the facts, a certain point of view, for your own good. But they are never really doing this for your own good, or for mine. Like George Stephanopoulos, all censors throughout history engage in censorship for their own good. Whether it is personal monetary rewards or a political outcome favorable to a censor’s political views, censorship is conducted purely for the benefit of the censor.

Censorship is evil, and so-called journalists who are actually censors, like ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, are evil people. Censorship is un-American. Don’t be a censor, don’t support censors, don’t engage in censorship.

Here is an interesting very brief little video of President Trump at a small town hall, with an audience of Americans who had not heard him in person before. The audience members are stunned by the difference between President Trump in person, the actual President Trump, versus the false and heavily filtered/censored image of President Trump they had been fed by the mainstream media, like ABC “News” and George Stephanopoulos.

Here is why censorious political activists like George Stephanopoulos are becoming so bold about their political efforts under guise of “journalism,” which in the past would have itself been a headline: Totally partisan and politicized fake news legacy mainstream media outlets like ABC, CBS, NBC, MSDNC, NPR, PBS, New York Times, Washington Post, etc. are being engulfed in a maelstrom of alternative information outlets, and they are becoming desperate.

Hence shameless George Stephanopuslous in effect knocking holes in his own boat in full public view, destroying his own credibility as a “journalist” and as an American, when he openly admits that he has no other defense against President Trump than artificially filtering Trump, censoring him, stopping the public from viewing him as he really is, and outright lying about Trump.

A thousand points of light (to beneficially borrow a phrase from one of the worst, most corrupt establishment politicians in modern history) are shedding unceasing light on the lies of George Stephanopoulos et al. A thousand small, independent alternative information outlets have sprung up across the internet and anywhere else they are not artificially repressed, censored, or suppressed. They exist because of the truth vaccuum left by George Stephanopoulos and his ilk, and the marketplace of ideas abhors a vaccuum.

Sites like www.breitbart.com, www.thegatewaypundit.com, www.zerohedge.com, www.dailycaller.com, www.rebelnews.com, and a million small websites like this one at www.joshfirst.com, not to mention an incredibly diverse, rich, and interesting constellation of independent political commentary and analysis at www.rumble.com, are each making a tiny cut into the corpulant, stagnant, odiferous, and pus-filled rotting meat that is the body of mainstream media.

This thousand points of light alternative news sources is making it impossible for liars like George Stephanopoulos to get away with his lies any longer. And this thousand tiny cuts of alternative information sources is slowly bleeding out the lying mainstream media, exposing them, weakening them.

Of course every information and news outlet has its own flair, its own bend, its own flavor and goals. This goes without saying. But when I read someone actually bragging about getting their news and information from MSNBC, NPR, and CNN, I wonder how anyone could be so incurious about the wider universe or galaxy they live in. If you are addicted to fake news, like NPR, ABC and George Stephanopoulos, you owe it to yourself to at least add a little cream to your coffee, and see what other people are reporting about the same whatever subject that ABC-NBC-CBS-NPR-ProPublica-CNN happens to be talking about at the moment.

Only censors try to blot out the light that other people need to be able to see clearly. Only fearful, close-minded, incurious, purposefully ignorant people steadfastly choose to support censors and remain behind their own artificial curtain.

Let the sun shine in, America.

UPDATE: Goodness gracious, I was in such a rush to get this essay up that I neglected to include all of the amazing podcasts that Amerians are dialing into every day. There are a whole bunch of podcasts and interactive radio/internet shows, too, that are a blend of Libertarian/freedom/ constitutional/ just askin’ that are just smokin‘ the mainstream media. Shows like Joe Rogan (who I disagree with about 45% of the time, and who has occasionally said some racist stuff that leaves me shaking my head, but who nonetheless addresses important issues head-0n), Dan Bongino, whose uncensored balls-to-the-wall New Yawk accented bare knuckle bulldozer of a daily show is one of the highest rated in America for good reason, can be found on Apple and on Rumble. Dinesh D’Souza is my favorite faux felon, who is incredibly smart, quick, witty, and insightful. Ace interviewer Jan Jekeliek has the most incredible people from all walks of life on his American Thought Leaders podcast. Russell Brand has grown on me over the years, and while he is in no way a conservative, he is a witty, quick, and funny advocate for transparency, accountability, and honesty, which are all good and necessary things in any government, and especially in a government of, by, and for The People like ours. Russell Brand’s mocking of the corrupt FBI agents stealing people’s gold watches is hilarious and cutting.

I could go on and on, and in the interest of time, this short list is a “starter pack” for intelligent, curious, open minded, patriotic Americans. Give these folks a whirl or two and see if you aren’t hooked. Each has a different style and really different content, and yet each of these independent-minded people is providing a life-saving end-run around the rotten and corrupt establishment media complex like ABCNPRCNN…this is the thousand points of light exposing the lying mainstream media and the resulting thousand glorious small cuts bleeding out the fake news media.

By Josh • Posted in Fruit of Contemplation • No Comment