I have Star Trek on my mind. There’s a lot of hype surrounding the second JJ Abrams prequel/reboot/whatever in addition to Matt Yglesias’ amusing exegesis of the franchise at Slate. It’s got me thinking about the Star Trek super villains, the Borg. You know, the cyborgs who assimilate their victims into a hive-like collective. You know, just like the American political media.

It was inevitable that the MSM would revive the Second Term jinx meme. It’s inevitable in the same way that 2016 election stories are: they’re lazy and focused only on the horse race or scandal aspects of politics.Here’s a quick sound (word?) bite from one of the avatars of the Beltway Borg Collective, the WaPo’s Dana Milbank:

Well, that didn’t take long.

Four months into a fresh four years, President Obama is already assuming the familiar crouch of a scandal-struck second-termer.

There it is, y’all. There’s a second term curse/jinx/hex/spell or a combination thereof. What’s really going on is that the news cycle has churned out a bunch of stories that the Beltway Borg Collective is lumping together. I remain convinced that the Benghazi story is phonier than a 3 dollar bill. The IRS story seems localized and undirected by the administration but it does play neatly into the mega-wingnut narrative, which is why it will have legs. I don’t personally approve of what happened with the AP but GOPers are now denouncing Holder for doing something that they demanded he do last year.Of course, hypocrisy is as American as Mom, apple pie and Chevrolet.

The main point of this post, if there is one, is that our political press remains afflicted with group think and, as always, resistance is futile.