Kudos, marron. You totally nail this issue. Your analytical reasoning on the evidence is IMO faultless.
Would that people would actually take such a brilliant evaluation to heart, and do something to help fix the sociopolitical mess we are all in, no matter how seemingly "small." Just to get one's thoughts straight on acutely vital issues would be an enormous social help, if you were to ask me.
Your last point -- that they [i.e., the elite media class] are incapable of even questioning their own manipulation [e.g., by ideologically-driven and largely self-selected elites] is truly chilling.
Yet I suppose the fact remains both have been to the same elite schools. Elite schools which, in embracing the blandishments of Left Progressive ideologies of all stripes, from fascism to communism and all stops in between, have separated themselves from their own historical foundations; not to mention from Western Culture itself, whose transmission down the generations was the founding principle of their own establishments.
Why would the American people want to continue to pay salaries to people like this? If they are so clueless and so faithless, then they can't possibly be serving our interests in the first place, let alone be responsible or accountable to us for their actions in office -- whether in academic chairs, in the media, or in public office.
Yikes!!!
Thank you for yet another beautiful essay, marron. As usual, it is lapidary.