The Areopagites & Newcycle Morphs

The title of this post does not refer to some new rock band, new angels, old angels, or feeling all right on a warm San Franciscan night.

No, the title refers to some modern day Areopagites, the talking pundit class and their function.

The particular pundit class being referenced is Morning Joe & The Fish on MSNBC, feeling all things right, and wondering what went wrong with the republican class of power.

In the last election, they (Joe & Buchanan) proclaimed a 50-50 race that was "too close to call" at a time everyone else, including the newbie who nailed it, knew it would be a landslide election rejecting their political views and stances.

In other areas of U.S. civilization they are want to discuss, their "wisdom" is composed of the obvious (Peggy Noonan declaring that one and one and one is three), or as near as they can conform it, mixed in with the occasional lite variation on that theme.

One of their professed mentors from a religious facet of their suasion, the Apostle Paul, visited an ancient incarnation of the essence of their show; which is in Athens, Greece, and is described in "the book oaths are taken on" as:

And they took him, and brought him unto Areopagus, saying, May we know what this new doctrine, whereof thou speakest, is? For thou bringest certain strange things to our ears: we would know therefore what these things mean. (For all the Athenians and strangers which were there spent their time in nothing else, but either to tell, or to hear some new thing.) Then Paul stood in the midst of Mars' hill, and said, Ye men of Athens, I perceive that in all things ye are too superstitious. For as I passed by, and beheld your devotions, I found an altar with this inscription, TO THE UNKNOWN GOD. Whom therefore ye ignorantly worship, him declare I unto you.

(Acts 17:19-23, emphasis added). Learning "some new thing" is the profession we call journalism; the Areopagite class.

At times and in various ways The Areopagus was also the seat of government so that "some new thing" became controlled, morphed, and massaged.

As a general rule, where there is government there will be an Areopagite class calling itself the "free press".

In what we like to think of as an advanced democracy, we have the notion of a "free press" which means that government does not control it; which illustrates the boundary of the free press as that area where "some new thing" is not controlled by or does not come from a government source.

The modern Areopagites continue to seek to use "some new thing", which we now call "news", to form a political persuasion.

The Morning Joe concept of legitimacy is to sprinkle in some news at the top or bottom of the hour as the case may be, then morph it with persuasion.

But the main focus of the program is to morph news into a persuasion to be used to revive the republican party "good conservatives", purge the "bad conservatives", and be done with this painful dearth of power as soon as possible.