Carrier Survives Iran, Exhaustion and Endless Marxist Media Attacks—Then Encounters Moronic Democrats Who Believe Nothing Except Their Own Posts
Left-wing media reports seven sailors dead; Navy responds with the dirty journalistic trick of checking
ARABIAN SEA — The USS Abraham Lincoln has survived hostile waters, 260 days at sea, thousands of aircraft movements and the expenditure of 1.5 million pounds of ordnance. Then it encountered something for which no modern carrier group is adequately armed: excitable left-wing commentators sitting safely ashore with smartphones, strong opinions and absolutely nowhere to be in the morning.
According to an official statement issued by United States Central Command, reports alleging that seven sailors died in a brawl aboard the aircraft carrier are false. CENTCOM says that no service members aboard the vessel have died and that the sailor who fell overboard on 3 August was recovered quickly and safely.
This was rotten luck for those newsrooms that had already selected a suitably gloomy photograph of the ship, ordered several thousand words of solemn indignation, and found an academic prepared to explain how the imaginary deaths proved the inevitable collapse of Western civilisation.
The Navy then made matters worse by producing roughly 5,000 living witnesses.
Media representatives condemned this as an outrageous attempt to impose evidence upon a story that had already acquired momentum.
"You cannot simply interrupt a narrative with people who were actually there," said Professor Felicity Woolly-Minded, deputy chairwoman of Post-Factual Maritime Studies at the University of Islington Above a Vape Shop. "That privileges eyewitness experience over the emotional truth of somebody's repost."
USS Abraham Lincoln Survives 260 Days at Sea, Nearly Sunk by Journalists on Dry Land
The Abraham Lincoln has reportedly completed approximately 10,000 aircraft flights during its deployment. By comparison, several journalists covering the vessel have been unable to get a single verified fact off the ground.
The carrier has also expended some 1.5 million pounds of ordnance, marginally less ammunition than was fired at CENTCOM by anonymous social-media accounts over Thursday tea.
Conditions aboard the carrier are undeniably demanding. Sailors work long hours in confined spaces, far from their families, surrounded by machinery capable of launching a jet aircraft from nought to terrifying before a Guardian columnist has found the correct pronouns for the catapult.
Yet the loudest assessments of life aboard the ship came from commentators experiencing the deployment from sofas in Brooklyn, Washington and north London.
One correspondent described the situation as "unsustainable" after spending nearly eleven minutes examining a cropped screenshot. Another said the crew was "obviously at breaking point", although he had never served aboard an aircraft carrier and became seasick during a Thames river cruise between Westminster and Greenwich.
A third journalist was reportedly invalided home from Pret after discovering there was no oat milk.
"I now understand what these sailors are going through," he said, staring into an Americano with the haunted expression of a man who had seen two different sandwich prices for eating in and taking away.
Meanwhile, the crew continued operating a nuclear-powered warship in a combat theatre, apparently unaware that an online committee had already declared them psychologically finished.
Media Declares Carrier Crew in Collapse; 84.4 Percent Reenlist Just to Be Awkward
CENTCOM says the Abraham Lincoln has maintained an 84.4 per cent crew re-enlistment rate, among the highest for American aircraft carriers.
This figure caused considerable embarrassment because the media had already established that every sailor aboard was either mutinous, suicidal, deceased or writing an anonymous memoir for publication next Tuesday.
An 84.4 per cent re-enlistment rate does not mean that every sailor is delighted, that every family is unconcerned, or that a deployment of such length raises no legitimate questions. It does, however, make it rather difficult to portray the entire vessel as a floating lunatic asylum governed by Captain Bligh with poor Wi-Fi.
The statistic was therefore submitted to the Department of Inconvenient Numbers, where it was swiftly reclassified as propaganda.
Modern political mathematics is wonderfully straightforward. If 84 per cent of the crew refused to re-enlist, it would prove a catastrophic collapse in morale. If 84 per cent choose to remain, it proves they have been intimidated, brainwashed or offered unusually persuasive dental coverage.
"The conclusion cannot be permitted to depend upon the evidence," explained Dr Oliver Backwards, senior fellow at the Fabian Institute for Deciding First. "Otherwise, research becomes terribly unpredictable."
One sailor, represented here by the traditional satirical seaman who exists purely to deliver the next joke, said the crew was shocked to learn of its own collapse.
"We were conducting flight operations when the report arrived," he said. "We immediately checked the deck, the hangars and the engine room for symptoms of complete institutional failure. Unfortunately, everything was working."
CENTCOM Says Nobody Died; Reporters Ask Why the Pentagon Keeps Fact-Checking Their Sources
When CENTCOM denied that seven sailors had died in a brawl, critics accused the military of calling sailors' families liars.
This was an impressive rhetorical manoeuvre. A correction of one specific allegation was instantly transformed into a personal attack upon every worried military relative in America.
It was rather like accusing the Met Office of insulting gardeners because it corrected a Facebook report that seven pensioners had been carried away by a tornado in Surrey.
Military families may have entirely legitimate concerns about the deployment's length, operational strain, morale and mental health. Those concerns deserve to be heard and investigated. They do not, however, cause seven people to become dead merely because a sufficiently furious account placed the allegation in capital letters.
But social media is no place for such tedious distinctions. It offers only two positions: believe every alarming post immediately or announce that you personally despise every military family since the Battle of Yorktown.
Requesting evidence is now considered suspicious. Asking whether the story has been corroborated means one has "chosen a side". Not reposting it within four minutes indicates complicity in the cover-up.
"This is how authoritarian regimes operate," said an imaginary BBC expert who had not yet decided whether the American military was fascist or merely insufficiently accountable to his podcast. "They deny events simply because the events did not occur."
Navy Recovers Sailor Who Fell Overboard; Media Returns Obituary to Draft Folder
CENTCOM also reports that the sailor who fell overboard on 3 August was recovered quickly and safely.
The rescue was excellent news for the sailor, the crew and the sailor's family. It was less convenient for the opinion desk, where an obituary entitled "Lost at Sea: How Trump, Capitalism and Israel Pushed One Sailor Overboard" was already undergoing its fourth diversity edit.
The proposed feature included an animated map, six unnamed sources, a photograph of the wrong aircraft carrier and a paragraph linking the incident to cuts imposed by Margaret Thatcher.
Editors reluctantly returned the obituary to the draft folder, where it joined articles prepared for twelve constitutional crises, four fascist coups and the permanent extinction of democracy expected before Christmas.
There was brief consideration of reporting the successful recovery as evidence of training, professionalism and a swift emergency response. This was dismissed on the grounds that competence lacked the necessary emotional voltage.
Instead, commentators demanded to know why the sea was still allowed so close to sailors.
A Democrat called for a congressional inquiry into gravity. A British columnist asked whether falling overboard disproportionately affected marginalised deck positions. An activist suggested replacing the ship's rails with a facilitated conversation about boundaries.
The Royal Navy declined to comment, having spent several centuries operating under the old-fashioned assumption that oceans contain water and ships occasionally encounter it.
Verification Becomes the First Casualty
The affair demonstrates the grand miracle of contemporary journalism: ten accounts may repeat the same unsupported allegation and suddenly become ten independent sources.
Each account cites another account, which cites a family friend, who cites somebody who knows a sailor, who may have heard something from a mess attendant's cousin while queueing for petrol in San Diego.
The information travels in a perfect circle. No new evidence enters, but the allegation becomes stronger with every lap, rather like a rumour being tumble-dried.
Eventually, a journalist reports that "questions are being raised". The questions were raised by the journalist, but this small detail is omitted because it would spoil the impression of a national uprising.
When officials issue a denial, the denial becomes further evidence of the cover-up. If officials provide figures, the figures are propaganda. If they produce witnesses, the witnesses have been pressured. If the ship sails into port carrying a living crew, commentators announce that the bodies were removed somewhere near Bahrain.
This is not scepticism. Scepticism checks both the official statement and the allegation. Automatic disbelief is merely gullibility in a Che Guevara T-shirt.
A genuine sceptic says, "Show me the evidence."
A partisan says, "I refuse to believe anything the government says, except when the government says something dreadful about the politician I dislike."
Iran Fails to Sink Carrier; Opinion Section Remains Hopeful
At last report, the USS Abraham Lincoln remained afloat and operational. Its sailors remained inconveniently alive. Aircraft continued to fly. The sailor recovered from the sea remained recovered. The re-enlistment rate remained stubbornly high.
These facts do not demonstrate that the deployment has been easy. Nor do they place military leadership beyond criticism. They merely suggest that criticism should be based upon events that occurred, a standard now considered dangerously reactionary.
The carrier will eventually return home. Sailors will embrace their families, disembark from the vessel and provide thousands of visible examples of not being dead.
The media will cover the reunion under the headline: "Traumatised Crew Finally Escapes Trump's Floating Prison."
Until then, the ship must defend itself on two fronts. Overseas, it faces genuine enemies with missiles, drones and military objectives. At home, it faces partisan accounts armed with cropped screenshots, second-hand gossip and the absolute certainty that not trusting CENTCOM makes every alternative claim true.
Iran could not sink it. Exhaustion could not stop it. Ten thousand flights did not break it.
But somewhere in a London newsroom, a junior reporter has just received a direct message beginning, "My girlfriend's brother knows a bloke whose cousin serves aboard…"
The splash page is being cleared as we speak.
Humorous Observations
- A carrier that survived Iran was nearly finished off by a Thames river cruise casualty.
- An academic's title got longer the flimsier her argument became.
- A reporter needed eleven minutes and a cropped screenshot to declare a warship "unsustainable".
- Pret running out of oat milk was treated as roughly equivalent to 260 days at sea.
- An 84.4 percent reenlistment rate was read as proof of both contentment and brainwashing, depending on who was asked.
- The Royal Navy's official response amounted to confirming that oceans do, in fact, contain water.
Disclaimer: This article is satire. The operational figures and denials cited above come from the referenced CENTCOM statement. The absurd experts, institutions, journalists and quotations are satirical creations. Legitimate concerns raised by sailors and military families deserve serious examination, but serious examination includes verifying specific allegations before publishing them.
SOURCE: https://m.x.com/CENTCOM/status/2088049195080880337 https://bohiney.com/us-carrier-survives-endless-marxist-media-attacks/
Comments
Post a Comment