Month: January 2022

Submitted by QTR’s Fringe Finance

After finishing up 2021 underperforming her benchmark (the NASDAQ) by more than 40%, then alluding to the idea of potentially returning 40% per annum for the next five years, Cathie Wood’s ARK Fund has had an equally odious start to 2022 over the first three trading days of the year.

Wood’s flagship has already fallen -9.5% in just three sessions since assurances that her “innovation” stock picks were in “deep value territory”. It looks like “deep value” just became “deeper value”.

In addition to horrific returns to start the year, Wood is once again underperforming her benchmark, already -5.92% lower than the NASDAQ is tracking.

In the words of George Costanza: “It really didn’t take very long, either.”

Even more frightening is the fact that ARKK’s biggest weighting, Tesla, is up 0.75% for the year. ARKK is underperforming its top weighted holding by -10.28% already.

Zero Hedge also noted after the closing bell on Wednesday that the fund has started off the year with a record 45% drawdown from highs. That drawdown extended to about 48% on Thursday when ARKK tapped prices in the $83’s. 

Other than Tesla, here’s how the rest of ARKK’s Top 10 holdings have fared in the two trading days since the New Year.

0 of the 9 holdings are in positive territory and all are down between -2.46% and -16.25%.

This brings me back to a point I have been making enough for readers to e-mail and tell me that it’s actually annoying them: Tesla remains the only string Wood is holding onto at this point. If Tesla goeth, so goeth ARKK.

Speaking of returning 40% per year, the Tuttle Capital Short Innovation ETF, which seeks to do the inverse of what ARKK does, has had an incredible 3 months since its inception, already returning 32.49%

“It’s only two trading day into the New Year, Chris, lay off,” you’re probably thinking to yourself right now.

While you’re right, I believe that, as they say in science, “extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence”.

I can’t think of many more extraordinary claims than asserting stocks with Price/Sales ratios routinely over 100x are somehow some type of “deep value” proposition. Actually, I take these “extraordinary” claims personally. You see, I’m one of those pesky old school investors that judges a company by the amount of free cash it generates and how solid its balance sheet is.

There’s simply something about my firmware that won’t allow the syntax “deep value” to register when speaking about companies that consistently burn cash, must sell equity to survive and have little meaningful prospects of generating net income.

Ergo, I intend on making sure that the evidence winds up telling the story this year, and not the talk.

I’m also writing about this again because ARKK’s performance over the last 6 weeks has run parallel to my contentions that:

1. We could be on the cusp of another 1999-style crash for the NASDAQ

2. When it comes to the Fed tapering, for the stock market, there’s no silver lining

3. Markets could be in for a rough ride to start 2022

4. ARKK could plunge disproportionately to the rest of the market in a crash

“Normally, the market would expect the Fed to respond to bad news, but this time, it’s the Fed’s own inaction that is the bad news,” I wrote in December while making the case that the Fed taper would wreck markets . “And so, I forsee a wake up call for those who have adopted this backwards ass strategy over the last decade.”

That means, specifically, a wake up call for any lobotomized market participant who has been conditioned to “buy the dip”, at any time, for any rhyme or reason, without any regard for valuation or the overall market environment.

Do we know anybody like that?

It’s the type of strategy just simple enough to garner praise from cult-like followers who don’t necessarily have tons of experience in the market, but have plenty experience following “influencers” who do their thinking for them.

“I’m not the Messiah!”

“I say you are, Lord, and I should know, I’ve followed a few!”

Hell, Cathie even has her own merch section on ARKK’s website (I highly recommend the “Truth Wins Out” t-shirt), and on Etsy!

Finally, I’m writing today because the action to start the year this is exactly what I would expect to see from a coming tech wreck.

“It would certainly take a special confluence of factors for us to be staring down the barrel of a an unprecedented crash in tech stocks without noticing it’s coming,” I wrote in November 2021.

Then, I argued the bubble could be more dangerous than decades past due to people weaponizing options, I said that the factors were there for a selloff to “surprise” the market and I cited inflation as the catalyst that would change the macroeconomic picture.

“Even the slightest of rate moves and the slightest of tech market selling could catalyze massive aftershocks in equity markets – especially if it catches people bit by surprise and the aforementioned bid under tech stocks rests on the air pocket that I think it does,” I wrote.

One month later, Jerome Powell retired the word “transitory” and put the Fed on a straight-line course toward tapering and rate hikes at accelerated rates.

I have been warning about the potential pitfalls of the ARK Innovation Fund for the last couple of months,

• January 2022: I wrote The Elon Musk Elevator Down, a piece that reiterated how reliant ARKK has been – and may continue to be – on Tesla for positive returns.

• January 2022: In my 22 Stocks to Watch for 2022, I noted that I believed ARKK was “a name that could plunge disproportionately to the rest of the market”.

• December 2021: I wrote Cathie Wood is Playing With Fire, a blog post that was first to break the story of Wood backtracking on language used to set expectations for her fund’s returns in coming years.

• November 2021: In November 2021, I wrote a piece called Cathie Wood’s Sweet Superficial Success that detailed how Tesla was the only string that ARKK was hanging on by.

• September 2021: I spoke to Vanity Fair / Airmail columnist William Cohan on a podcast about Cathie Wood, whom he referred to as a “charlatan”.

—

Special deal for Zero Hedge readers: I am extending a 20% off subscription price that literally never changes for as long as you have your subscription, regardless of inflation: Get 20% off forever

Disclaimer: I own ARKK, QQQ, IWM, TSLA puts and am routinely short all of these names and sometimes other names that Cathie Wood has exposure to. Readers should assume I am short Cathie Wood at any given time. I may add any name mentioned in this article and sell any name mentioned in this piece at any time. None of this is a solicitation to buy or sell securities. These positions can change immediately as soon as I publish this, with or without notice. You are on your own. Do not make decisions based on my blog. I exist on the fringe. The publisher does not guarantee the accuracy or completeness of the information provided in this page. These are not the opinions of any of my employers, partners, or associates. I get shit wrong a lot. 

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via DailyReckoning.com,

It’s been the most astonishing two weeks for American public life. The best way I can describe this is by observation.

In the Northeast of the U.S., and in many other parts of the country, everywhere you go right now, you see sick people milling around.

After two years of work to control the spread, after brutal shutdowns of the whole country — shutdowns that happened two years too early, as judged by actual case trends! — COVID is here.

Not just here. It is everywhere.

The case counts are beyond anything anyone on the planet could have imagined a year or two ago. The spikes make everything that came before look like child’s play.

Sick Is Not Fun

And we are talking really sick. Not so much death. Not even out-of-control hospitalization. We are talking about being sick in bed or walking around with misery. The damn bug lasts maybe two days, maybe two weeks, maybe longer but it is vexing and wicked, not like a cold or flu but something more electric and strange.

The theory that this was a lab leak seems more plausible than ever, just simply based on how strange it all feels.

Which variant? Two weeks ago, the CDC wanted to blame it all on Omicron. That is no longer possible. Perhaps that constitutes 20%; we just do not know for sure. Most of it is evidentially Delta, meaning very sick but with no serious loss of taste and smell.

Most everyone eventually gets well, and that’s what happens here. We get to the stability phase perhaps in a month or so and life will move on.

What’s striking and truly shocking is that all of the efforts, all of the propaganda, all of the astonishing spending and compulsion — the shutdowns, masking, size limits, travel restrictions, vaccination requirements, the track and trace, the endless testing — and what do we have to show for it?

The true pandemic finally arrived. And what is it? It’s a ton of sick people. People are calling in sick because they cannot come to work. Institutions are having to shut down, not because the government closed them, but because people are too sick to come to work.

And it’s not just COVID. The head of an Indiana life insurance company reports that deaths among people aged 18–64 are up 40%, an astonishing increase. A 10% increase would be almost a once-in-a-lifetime outlier. And we’re talking 40%.

It’s suicide, drug overdoses and every other manner of horror. And that’s just death. Many others are just sick from other things.

I personally know dozens and they each know many dozens of more people in the Northeast right now who are down for the count, miserable and pathetic, but still testing negative for COVID. Why would this be?

It’s at least partly because immune systems have been miserably decayed over two years. The lack of vitamin D, the lack of exposure to normal germs in life, the isolation and depression, the overconsumption of liquor and drugs — it’s all been a terrible drain on health.

Giving Up

Meanwhile, the actual pandemic of COVID has certainly arrived. And it is far worse than the data indicated. Look at Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, any of these states, and including some Southern and Midwestern states, and what you find is increases of 500–1,000% in cases.

And keep in mind that these are just cases as discovered by official testing spots.

Go to any CVS or Walgreens and you find long lines of people buying testing kits. If they are available. If they are not, the wait is weeks. They are $23 a kit and people are buying as many as possible. Why?

Partially it’s because employers and schools are demanding negative tests, but it is also just curiosity. People are sick as dogs and want to confirm their illnesses. People are estimating that real cases are 50–100X what the official data say.

But let’s talk now about a real scandal.

When you are sick, you need treatment. Every competent medical professional I know is pretty darn sure that the best hope for dealing with COVID is a combination of zinc, vitamin D and ivermectin.

This is not ideological. This is what experienced doctors are saying right now. I’m on many email lists with serious medical professionals and they are all saying the same thing. We can add hydroxychloroquine to the list if you catch it early enough. There are other therapeutics as well.

Some experts claim that hospitalizations and deaths could have been reduced by perhaps 85% if these treatments were widely available. But the CDC and other public health agencies have suppressed early treatment in order to promote universal vaccination.

But here’s the kicker — and let me be clear that I’m NOT giving ANY medical advice here, merely just reporting the sense of the community out there. What’s remarkable is that people are having a very difficult time getting these basic therapeutics.

Where Are the Meds?

There is a problem getting a prescription because state medical boards are actually barring people and preventing them from serving patients if they prescribe HCQ or ivermectin, as incredible as that sounds. But once you get the prescription — if you have a doctor brave enough to risk it — finding a pharmacy to fill it is another challenge.

Most people in the U.K. today are getting their therapeutics from India! And some are shipping to the U.S. and they are being distributed via gray markets for anyone who is lucky enough to have a contact. It’s a speakeasy nation, but this time for distributing basic therapies.

I’m sorry, I feel like I’ve seen horrible things for two years now, and you feel the same way. But of all the scandals, and there are so many, this one seems to top the list — namely that once the real pandemic has arrived, there are no effective medicines that are widely available.

Doctors are actually being blocked from doing their jobs!

Beyond belief. But you know this. I’m sure you have your own stories. I suspect that many readers have encountered this virus for the first time in the last two weeks and have dealt with the horrors of just getting basic medicines to get through this.

The NIH has funded almost no serious trials of these generic drugs. It is not in the interest of pharmaceutical companies to fund them either. As a result, we are truly at a loss — two years into a pandemic at a time when people need meds more than ever.

Meanwhile, the FTC is spending its time cracking down on pharmacies that advertise that they have therapeutics available for people. They are sending cease and desist letters all over the country as a way of intimidating providers. Again, it’s simply incredible.

No Lockdowns

One merciful upside to all of this is that there is no more talk of lockdowns. That’s not even being considered. The whole country is fed up with the phony-baloney enterprise of virus control. It did not and cannot work.

And the truth of this is all over the data that anyone can see and the stories that anyone can hear. The country is right now sicker than it has ever been in our lifetimes.

What a stunning repudiation of state policy — the worst failing of public health and public policy perhaps in the history of the U.S., if not the entire world. We are right now living in its last days.

Remember these days, my friends. They are legion and mark what is likely the end of the great fiasco.

But there will be decades of hell to pay for what has happened to us.

As discussed extensively earlier, there were some pretty striking disconnects in today’s jobs report: while the headline payrolls number was a huge miss and printed the lowest monthly gain of 2021 (as it did in November), the unemployment rate tumbled (also as it did in November), and the number of employed workers actually surged by 651k according to Household survey, while wages came in red hot, rising at 4.7% Y/Y, half a percent higher than expected. In short, the establishment survey was a disaster for the second month in a row, while the household survey was stellar (also for the second time in a row).

To be sure, Wall Street’s commentariat, which was very wrong for the second month in a row about the payrolls number, glossed over the disappointing establishment survey number and instead focused on the sold wage growth and the drop in the unemployment rate, concluding that both greenlight the Fed’s March rate hike. As Michael Pierce, economist at Capital Economics said “the key takeaway for the Fed is that, with few signs of a recovery in labor supply, the continued decline in the unemployment rate and surge in wage growth looks set to be sustained over 2022.”

As for the actual payrolls miss, as we also showed earlier, a big reason for the confusion was yet another month of a highly aggressive seasonal adjustment factor used by the BLS to “normalize” the December number. Had it used the 10 year average December adjustment factor, payrolls would have increased by 220K, resulting in a payrolls number of 420K, in line with expectations.

In keeping with the history of recent upward revisions, one month from today we expect the BLS to revise today’s 199K print aggressively higher.

And while we wait, here is our traditional breakdown of the components of the establishment survey, looking at which jobs increased and which dropped, with the knowledge that all of these will change dramatically next month.

• Employment in leisure and hospitality continued to trend up in December (+53,000). Leisure and hospitality has added 2.6 million jobs in 2021, but employment in the industry is down by 1.2 million, or 7.2 percent, since February 2020. Employment in food services and drinking places rose by 43,000 in December but is down by 653,000 since February 2020.
• Employment in professional and business services continued its upward trend in December (+43,000). Over the month, job gains occurred in computer systems design and related services (+10,000), in architectural and engineering services (+9,000), and in scientific
• research and development services (+6,000). Employment in professional and business services overall is slightly below (-35,000) its level in February 2020.
• Manufacturing added 26,000 jobs in December, primarily in durable goods industries. A job gain in machinery (+8,000) reflected the return of workers from a strike. Manufacturing employment is down by 219,000 since February 2020.
• Construction employment rose by 22,000 in December, following monthly gains averaging 38,000 over the prior 3 months. In December, job gains occurred in nonresidential specialty trade contractors (+13,000) and in heavy and civil engineering construction (+10,000). Construction employment is 88,000 below its February 2020 level.
• Employment in transportation and warehousing increased by 19,000 in December. Job gains occurred in support activities for transportation (+7,000), in air transportation (+6,000), and in warehousing and storage (+5,000). Employment in couriers and messengers was essentially unchanged. Since February 2020, employment in transportation and warehousing is up by 218,000, reflecting job growth in couriers and messengers (+202,000) and in warehousing and storage (+181,000).
• Employment in wholesale trade increased by 14,000 in December but is 129,000 lower than in February 2020.
• Mining employment rose by 7,000 in December. Employment in the industry is down by 81,000 from a peak in January 2019.

And visually:

While the overall picture was clearly mixed, not to mention the weakest since 2020, the one job sector which has kept on giving since Lehman, namely employees in food services and drinking places (or waiters and bartenders), was back in form adding 42K jobs in December.

Separately, here are the industries with the highest and lowest rates of employment growth for the most recent month.

Finally, one curious point: as we first noted last month, tthe jobs deficit relative to February 2020, which currently stands at 3.6 million jobs, is entirely comprised of workers who lack a college degree. College-educated workers are now about 2% above their February 2020 employment levels and continue to see the strongest job growth, with high-school-educated workers still about 5% below pre-pandemic levels. Employment among workers with less than a high-school diploma actually declined over the last three months.

The good news: all those who spent over $100,000 to major in feminist studies, can take comfort that they will always have a minimum wage job waiting for them in America’s food service industry.

A Czech tennis player joined Novak Djokovic in immigration detention after having her visa canceled, in a sweep by authorities on players entering the country with vaccination exemptions.

Czech Republic doubles specialist Renata Voracova had played in Melbourne earlier this week but was informed by Australian Border Force officials that she had to leave the country. The Czech Foreign Ministry said in a statement that Voracova had decided to leave the country.

Shortly after news of the detention broke, the Australian Border Force (ABF) said an individual had left the country voluntarily while a third had been taken into immigration detention, without naming the Czech player.

“The ABF can confirm that one individual has voluntarily departed Australia following ABF inquiries,” the ABF said.

“We can also confirm that the visa of a third individual has been cancelled. This person has been taken into immigration detention pending their removal from Australia.”

The Czech Foreign Ministry added that it had lodged a formal protest through its embassy in Canberra.

Voracova was a promising junior who won the French Open girls doubles title in 2001. The 38-year-old made her grand slam singles debut in 2002 in New York but has won only one of her 12 matches at the majors and is currently ranked 81. She has fared far better in doubles, winning 11 titles and reaching the Wimbledon semi-finals in 2017. She has career earnings of $1.88 million.

She was being held at the Park Hotel in Carlton, the same hotel where Djokovic, who has won $154,756,726 in prize money along with 20 grand slam titles, is being detained.

In another development, the Herald Sun published an information sheet sent from Tennis Australia to players on Dec. 7 that shows it passed on advice regarding grounds for medical exemptions that differs from the recommendations it received from federal authorities.

The document advises a COVID-19 infection in the last six months could be considered grounds that would enable an unvaccinated player to enter the country, provided it was accompanied by documents certifying the infection.

It contradicts advice the Federal Government sent to TA in November stressing that a prior infection in the past six months did not meet the requirements for quarantine-free entry.

The Victorian Government said on Friday that TA did not advise them of this development. TA has not commented publicly since Australian Open tournament director Craig Tiley defended the exemption granted to Djokovic on Wednesday as the Serbian was on his way to Australia.

Authored by Zachary Stieber via The Epoch Times,

Chicago canceled classes on Friday amid a standoff with the city’s teachers union (CTU), which is refusing to teach in-person.

Parents were told late Thursday that classes were axed for the third straight day as “we continue working to get CTU staff back in our buildings.”

A small number of schools may be able to offer in-person activities because some teachers were bucking the union and have been showing up at schools, Chicago Public Schools CEO Pedro Martinez said.

Parents, though, should not send their children to school unless the principal there confirmed that it would be open on Friday.

CTU members voted earlier this week to shift to virtual learning after a rise in COVID-19 cases in Chicago and among students and staffers.

Members refused to return to the classroom unless the number of cases subsided or the city agreed to a list of demands, including forcing students to test negative for COVID-19 before being allowed back in school.

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Martinez have said the vote amounted to an illegal work stoppage and have urged teachers to return to schools, arguing they are already safe places amid the pandemic.

CTU and the city have filed competing unfair labor practices complaints, neither of which have been ruled on yet.

CTU President Jesse Sharkey told members in an email to “stay the course” and teachers started going door-to-door on Thursday to sign families up for COVID-19 testing.

“With few students signed up for free COVID testing each week in schools, locked out educators are taking matters into their own hands today,” the union said in a statement.

Members of the Chicago Teachers Union and supporters stage a car caravan protest outside City Hall in the Loop in Chicago, Ill., on Jan. 5, 2022. (Ashlee Rezin /Chicago Sun-Times via AP)

The union says attempts to teach virtually were disrupted by Chicago Public Schools, which allegedly locked teachers out of their accounts.

Negotiations are ongoing between the city and the union. Lightfoot and Martinez said in a joint statement that the bargaining sessions on Thursday “were productive from our perspective.”

The Biden administration has backed the city, telling districts across the nation to remain open for in-person instruction.

But the effort has not been entirely successful. Over 5,200 schools nationwide have had in-person instruction disrupted, including the 653 schools in Chicago, according to Burbio.

Studies show that school closures do not cut down on COVID-19 in a community, and many officials who once favored shutting down schools during the pandemic have since backed keeping them open.

Unlike most instances where there’s crisis or conflicts near Russia’s borders, the White House has been slow to respond to fast-moving events in Kazakhstan, only saying that it questions the “legitimacy” of the Kremlin sending troops to the country to help restore order under the Collective Security Treaty Organization (CSTO).

“We are closely monitoring reports that the Collective Security Treaty Organization have dispatched its collective peacekeeping forces to Kazakhstan,” press secretary Jen Psaki said. “We have questions about the nature of this request and whether it has — it was a legitimate invitation or not. We don’t know at this point.”

The day prior she had denounced as “crazy” reports out of Russian media that the US and its allies could be stoking the uprising, unrest and destruction – which has seen a presidential residence and multiple government buildings torched, and widespread looting, after dozens of deaths on both the police and protest side. More recently Beijing has also floated that it believes the likelihood that the US is covertly involved. 

It was during her Wednesday press briefing that Psaki called out the “Russian disinformation playbook” while addressing the Kazakhstan situation: 

“We’re monitoring reports of protests in Kazakhstan. We support calls for calm, for protesters to express themselves peacefully and for authorities to exercise restraint,” Psaki told reporters during her regular briefing. 

“There are some crazy Russian claims about the US being behind this. Let me just use this opportunity to convey that as absolutely false, and clearly a part of the standard Russian disinformation playbook.”

Meanwhile China appears to be backing President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s crackdown on the protests and riots, as well as the deployment of Russian and other foreign peacekeeping troops there. NPR has in its latest cited the presence of at least 3,000 Russian troops on the ground in Kazakhstan at this point. 

“China supports all efforts that help the Kazakh authorities end the chaos as soon as possible and firmly opposes external forces’ acts to deliberately create social unrest and incite violence,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Wang Wenbin said in a Friday press conference. He offered help to Kazakh authorities, calling China ready to act as a “a brotherly neighbor”.

Into last night, firefights continued in the large city of Almaty and other cities:

This is what it is like in #Almaty tonight #Kazakhstan pic.twitter.com/L5KfehIrQf

— Abdujalil A (@abdujalil) January 6, 2022

Further, according to Bloomberg, President Xi Jinping weighed in firmly on the side of Tokayev and Moscow, saying “strong measures” could be required:

China has backed Kazakh President Kassym-Jomart Tokayev’s violent crackdown on protesters, saying it hopes the “strong measures” will bring calm. President Xi Jinping said the country firmly opposes external forces deliberately fostering unrest and instigating a “color revolution” in Kazakhstan. China is willing to provide necessary support and help Kazakhstan through this difficult time, Xi was cited by state broadcaster CCTV as saying in a message to his counterpart in that nation.

As state-run Global Times emphasizes, Beijing has significant oil and gas interests inside the restive country, but which have so far been spared from the mayhem and destruction.

Incredible video from the BBC showing the aftermath of yesterday’s protests in Kazakhstan’s biggest city Almaty. This is the former presidential palace there.

⁦@abdujalil⁩ is in the city. pic.twitter.com/JJq5DYq6jO

— Patrick Reevell (@Reevellp) January 6, 2022

“The protests in Kazakhstan have sparked concerns on oil and gas deliveries to China,” GT writes. “However, Chinese enterprises and industry insiders said that the unrest will not have a big impact as the transportation of oil and gas are technically reliable. Local Chinese companies said that they are prepared, and the Kazakh government will also take corresponding measures to ensure the safety.”

Authored by Jonathan Turley,

In the day long events commemorating the January 6th, Speaker Nancy Pelosi made a telling statement to her fellow members and the public at large. Pelosi declared “It is essential that we preserve the narrative of January 6th.” Part of that narrative is that this was not a riot but an “insurrection,” an actual “rebellion” against our country. Pelosi’s concern over the viability of that narrative is well-based as shown by a recent CBS News poll.

The majority of the public does not believe that this was an “insurrection” despite the mantra-like repetition of members of Congress and the media. The public saw that terrible day unfold a year ago and saw it for what it was: a protest that became a riot. (For full disclosure, I previously worked as a legal analyst for CBS News).

Not surprisingly, the poll received little comparative coverage on a day when reporters and commentators spoke of “the insurrection” as an undeniable fact.

Yet, when CBS  asked Americans, they received an answer that likely did not please many.

Indeed, CBS did not highlight the answer to the question of whether the day was really a “protest that went too far.”   

The answer was overwhelming and nonpartisan.  Some 76% believe that this was a protest that went too far.

That, however, was not one of the four options to the matinee question featured by CBS.

It did not allow the public to call this a riot when it asked them to describe “What happened at the Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021?” Why? There was the ever present “insurrection” and “trying to overthrow government.” However, the other two options were “patriotism” or “defending freedom.” That is perfectly bizarre. The most obvious alternatives to an actual rebellion in a violent clash would be a protest or a riot. However, the public was simply not given those options.

The result was predictable. Some 85% of Democrats dutifully checked “an insurrection” or “trying to overthrow government” while only 21% and 18% of Republicans agreed respectively.  For those who did not see the riot as an act of patriotism or defending freedom, they were simply left without a choice.

The poll perfectly captured the state of our media. There is no choice.

Using the term insurrection is now a litmus test. 

In the age of rage, one’s legitimacy is based on how your volume and fury. After the attack, I wrote that this was not an insurrection, but it was a desecration of our constitutional process. When I have used “riot” in columns, I have received a torrent of emails objecting to the characterization as proof of being an apologist or “Trumper.”

Yet, “insurrection” and “sedition” are legal terms. They have a meaning. The FBI investigated thousands after January 6th and charged hundreds. Not one is charged with insurrection or sedition or conspiracy to overthrow the country. The vast majority are charged with relatively minor offenses of trespass or unlawful entry or property damage. The type of charges that are common in protests and riots.

None of that takes away from the disgraceful conduct of these people or the legitimacy of their prosecution. It is simply not an insurrection. This was a protest fueled by reckless rhetoric that was allowed to become a full riot by a shocking lack of security preparations by the Capitol police and the District of Columbia. A large national guard deployment was rejected and critical intelligence not shared by officials planning for the long-planned protests. Again, the fault still remains with the rioters themselves but this would have remains a protest if Congress had taken obvious steps of fencing and guard deployments. Indeed, those measures were used previously in Lafayette Park when the White House security was almost breached by rioters.

Yet, there remains a determined effort to keep the “insurrection” narrative “preserved.” the New York Times recently declared “Every Day is Now Jan. 6.” This is not simply important for political purposes. Democratic members and groups are again calling for members (and Trump himself) to be disqualified from running for future offices under the 14th Amendment. The “disqualification clause” was created for actual rebels who attempted to overthrow the government in the Civil War. Self-described “pro-democracy” advocates like Marc Elias believe that nothing says democracy like barring people from voting for the candidates of their choice.

If January 6th was an insurrection, then members challenging the electoral votes were little more than Confederate rebels. As with villages in Vietnam, it seems that democracy will be saved by destroying it.

The problem is that the public is not buying it. Even when the public is not given the choice by CBS of calling this a riot rather than an insurrection, the truth emerges like water finding a way out. The poll also shows the limits of not just Speaker Pelosi but the mainstream media in preserving such narratives. Despite the endless drumbeat of coverage referring to the day as an “insurrection,” the media cannot get the public to ignore what they witnessed — any more than getting viewers to accept reporting on largely “peaceful” protests with images of burning buildings in the background.  When the media was instructed to call the violent riots of prior summers “protests,” the effort to “preserve the narrative” failed with almost comical results.  This is why the “Let’s Go Brandon” movement is much as a criticism of the media as a the President.

The failure to “preserve the narrative” is due to the fact that media is now locked into echo chambers of their own making. We have seen the rise of advocacy journalism where the narrative, not the news, controls in reporting. As Stanford journalism professor Ted Glasser explained “journalists need to be overt and candid advocates for social justice, and it’s hard to do that under the constraints of objectivity.”

The media, however, has become less and less relevant to public opinion. Despite the censorship of social media companies and the support of a legion of willing academics and experts, the coverage is largely self-contained. Most networks and newspapers have largely written off half of the country. They are singing to the choir. That is reflected in the CBS poll.  The public was given the same options that viewers are given every night on network and cable programs: either call this an insurrection or join the Proud Boys and call it an act of patriotism.

The disconnect is dangerous. The effort to disqualify Trump or Republican incumbents is unlikely to succeed. That will not diminish the damage. Indeed, it will only further fuel the anger and, yes, the potential for violence on both sides.  Despite the CBS poll, there is a choice for the public. It can still reach its own conclusions . . .  increasingly without the help of the media.