And it is in dealing with the fact that nobody cares that David Freddoso makes a big mistake. “I don’t have a fix for liberal media bias,” he writes near the end of Spin Masters. “But even if it can’t be fixed — so what? No amount of slanted coverage — whether it comes in the form of subtle bias or the overt propaganda from 2012 that was designed to drive fear and resentment — can forever overcome the soundness of a truly good idea.”

I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. Propaganda, lies, slander, and derision of an opponent can indeed overcome the soundness of a good idea, and if not forever, than at least long enough to see the long, slow deterioration of a country and a culture.

Recently Senator John McCain was on Meet the Press talking about his fight to discover the facts about Benghazi. In what was one of the most bizarre examples of role-reversal I’ve ever seen, McCain fired off several unanswered questions about the massacre to the Meet the Press moderator, award-winning and establishment journalist David Gregory.

Forty years after the fact, we had a complete mirror image of the Watergate hearings. In 2013, it was a U.S. government official who was hunting for facts, and a reporter who was trying to hide them. “Do you care, David?” Senator McCain plaintively asked. “Do you care?” Gregory, like Nixon before him, had no answer.