If the press doesn't like being called "FAKE NEWS," they could maybe stop doing this...

Almost every gun nut in the U.S. of freakin' A knows what the Knob Creek Gun Range in Bullitt County Kentucky is. They all know what it's famous for.  A lot of'em have been there just for the opportunity to "oooh" and "ahh" at awesome displays of firepower like that displayed in the video that appeared and went viral Sunday night. Unfortunately for ABC, it went viral for the wrong reasons.

So why did ABC News think they could get away with hijacking a video of a Knob Creek show finale and pawn it off as footage of an attack half the world away from Knob Creek?

I have a theory that makes perfect sense. The producers, technical staff and copy editors at ABC have never been to Knob Creek, or any gun range anywhere in the country. They've never held a gun, much less fired one. Because they live, work and recreate in their little concrete bubble of the urban echo chamber, they think everyone living out here in the real world is just like them.

They all live in the same kind of apartments. They all ride the same trains, stop at the same Starbucks, eat at the same Chipotle, yack on the same phones, listen to the same music and hit the same websites and use the same apps. They all like the same pictures, downvote the same posts and block the same trolls. They're automatons.

So when they went to Youtube or Vimeo for some footage they could use in a story about how bad orange man was getting people killed in Syria, they ran across the Knob Creek Gun Shoot from 2017 and said "wow... I've never seen anything like this before. It only has a few thousand(!) views so no one we know will know what this really is!"

By doing so, they played right into the "FAKE NEWS!" narrative, thereby reinforcing everything Donald Trump and smart Republicans have been talking about since the media stopped worrying about objectivity during the Clintonista Regime of the 1990's.

The news media really, really dislike being called out with  the "FAKE NEWS!" rant. They are their own worst enemies when they make unforced errors like this. They're incapable of helping themselves. Their echo chamber is so tight that when Beto O'Rourke talks about confiscating semi-automatic rifles, all of the millennials in the room are shocked when the hunters and ranchers in Arizona, Iowa and Pennsylvania go berserk and turn red. When Pocahontas says "Medicare for All!" the retirees in Florida go red with rage at the prospect of a youngster jumping to the front of a line they worked decades to be the head of.

ABC has apologized online for running the segment, but not on the air, or during prime time. Even if they did an on-the-air mea culpa, they can't un-ring the bell. This will be coming to a small city/small town/farm community near you. It will live for a very long time.

FAKE NEWS! pic.twitter.com/ta8ii8yetP

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 16, 2019

As you may know, President Trump decided last weekend to pull U.S. Special Forces out of a hotly disputed area between Turkey and Syria that had also been fought over by Kurds. This group has long sought an independent homeland and have been willing to fight for it for a very long time. From time to time, they have been U.S. allies in the fight against Al Qaeda, ISIS and Syrian forces backed by Russia and Iran. Turkey, Syria and Iraq have all had their issues with the Kurds. Turkey in particular has had a long and violent history with ethnic Kurds--they were a major part of the old Ottoman Empire before and during World War I. The Ottomans used Kurds extensively as part of their irregular forces called the Bashi Bazouks. Modern Turkey emerged from that war as an independent state, and the Turkish people have long memories of atrocities committed by the Bash Bazouk "terrorists" during the centuries of Ottoman rule.

Asia Minor is a seething hotbed of conflict and has been that way for centuries. Peace has traditionally been maintained from the Levant up through The Dardanelles and over through the Caucasus region by brutal force. It's a mix of ethnic friction, tribal feuds and turmoil. It's the main corridor of commerce between western Europe and Asia proper since antiquity. And... there's lots of petroleum in the area. "Regime change" conflicts are not new. They're baked into the area's daily bread.

Was Trump right or wrong to get U.S. Special operators out of there? We don't know, but the area of concern was going to be fought over sooner or later, whether our guys were there or not. Keeping them as a buffer between people who have hated each other since before this country was even a good idea... maybe not a smart bet. The issues are much too complicated for a bunch of young, pampered and insulated American urbanites to even understand. No wonder this "FAKE NEWS!" video popped up.