The answer to the question in the sub-headline - "Is our press corps up for this moment?" - is clearly no. What are we getting from the paper of record? Stories such as the one about YouTube as a platform for Trump allies to court the "tech bro" vote. And the one about Black voters in Georgia who have their doubts about Kamala. I guess i…
The answer to the question in the sub-headline - "Is our press corps up for this moment?" - is clearly no. What are we getting from the paper of record? Stories such as the one about YouTube as a platform for Trump allies to court the "tech bro" vote. And the one about Black voters in Georgia who have their doubts about Kamala. I guess in an effort to look "balanced" - which has come to mean merely counter to expectations - The Times looks for stories about voters who are supporting Trump when you might not expect them to and voters who are not supporting Kamala when you might expect them to. Apparently they do not see their job as reporting about anything Trump actually says, including things he actually says about what he would actually do if elected. It's all purely meta bullshit now, stories about "narratives" of the election, not the reality of the election itself. Even the characterization of what, for anyone else, is merely a bald-faced lie is repurposed, apparently, as "willing something into existence," implying some mystical power Trump has to make things happen, another favorite trope of the current media. Lying about the existence of something is not the same as "willing it into existence." As far as optimism is concerned, in the best characterization of the current situation, about half of American voters want the guy who would be the worst possible choice to be President among the entire US population who are natural born citizens who will have attained the age of 35 by inauguration day. At some point we all have to grapple with the fact that many tens of millions of Americans like him because of who he is, not despite it. The puzzling thing to me is that so many on the not-quite-anti-Trump right look at this phenomenon as the inevitable result of the decadence and turning away from institutions like religion on the part of the left (yes, I'm looking at you, Ross Douthat, and your buddy David Brooks), when the decadence and outright blasphemy of Trump world is kind of at "Golden Calf" level on the end-of-an-ordered-society scale. Trump's message is that you can do or say anything you want or have anything you want (an overturned Roe but with free IVF and blah-blah-blah maybe abortion in your state, a balanced budget due to 100% tariffs that you won't have to pay for, etc.). The decadence of the left was that maybe women could have their own lives, which would include having sex with men of their choosing every once in a while (which, these days, is not very often) without worrying about getting pregnant with a kid society had zero interest in helping her raise, and that maybe Black people could start getting a fair shake after 400+ years of slavery and Jim Crow. That's definitely so much more decadent than worshiping the Orange God King.
I got into an argument with a group of friends a couple months back about how I thought that newspapers should be running headlines every day, until the election, detailing the danger that Trump poses to our democracy. And my friends argued that the newspapers wouldn't be impartial if they did that. Like it's some regular presidential race like Bush vs. Mondale (I miss boring people)!
This. is. not. a. normal. race.
It's so far beyond politics, issues, the economy, etc. and it's so f**king disappointing to see how few people in the mainstream media are willing to take a stand and tell the truth. What is journalism for? Apparently it's to make the toxin go down a bit smoother.
It's been astonishing to watch moral anomie being placed at the heart of what now passes for "conservatism" - starting with the weird notion that the most valiant defender of "conservative values" should not be expected to exemplify them himself, followed by attacks on anyone who says that character should still matter.
The answer to the question in the sub-headline - "Is our press corps up for this moment?" - is clearly no. What are we getting from the paper of record? Stories such as the one about YouTube as a platform for Trump allies to court the "tech bro" vote. And the one about Black voters in Georgia who have their doubts about Kamala. I guess in an effort to look "balanced" - which has come to mean merely counter to expectations - The Times looks for stories about voters who are supporting Trump when you might not expect them to and voters who are not supporting Kamala when you might expect them to. Apparently they do not see their job as reporting about anything Trump actually says, including things he actually says about what he would actually do if elected. It's all purely meta bullshit now, stories about "narratives" of the election, not the reality of the election itself. Even the characterization of what, for anyone else, is merely a bald-faced lie is repurposed, apparently, as "willing something into existence," implying some mystical power Trump has to make things happen, another favorite trope of the current media. Lying about the existence of something is not the same as "willing it into existence." As far as optimism is concerned, in the best characterization of the current situation, about half of American voters want the guy who would be the worst possible choice to be President among the entire US population who are natural born citizens who will have attained the age of 35 by inauguration day. At some point we all have to grapple with the fact that many tens of millions of Americans like him because of who he is, not despite it. The puzzling thing to me is that so many on the not-quite-anti-Trump right look at this phenomenon as the inevitable result of the decadence and turning away from institutions like religion on the part of the left (yes, I'm looking at you, Ross Douthat, and your buddy David Brooks), when the decadence and outright blasphemy of Trump world is kind of at "Golden Calf" level on the end-of-an-ordered-society scale. Trump's message is that you can do or say anything you want or have anything you want (an overturned Roe but with free IVF and blah-blah-blah maybe abortion in your state, a balanced budget due to 100% tariffs that you won't have to pay for, etc.). The decadence of the left was that maybe women could have their own lives, which would include having sex with men of their choosing every once in a while (which, these days, is not very often) without worrying about getting pregnant with a kid society had zero interest in helping her raise, and that maybe Black people could start getting a fair shake after 400+ years of slavery and Jim Crow. That's definitely so much more decadent than worshiping the Orange God King.
I got into an argument with a group of friends a couple months back about how I thought that newspapers should be running headlines every day, until the election, detailing the danger that Trump poses to our democracy. And my friends argued that the newspapers wouldn't be impartial if they did that. Like it's some regular presidential race like Bush vs. Mondale (I miss boring people)!
This. is. not. a. normal. race.
It's so far beyond politics, issues, the economy, etc. and it's so f**king disappointing to see how few people in the mainstream media are willing to take a stand and tell the truth. What is journalism for? Apparently it's to make the toxin go down a bit smoother.
It's been astonishing to watch moral anomie being placed at the heart of what now passes for "conservatism" - starting with the weird notion that the most valiant defender of "conservative values" should not be expected to exemplify them himself, followed by attacks on anyone who says that character should still matter.
Hear! Hear! Very powerful, sir.