Kansas Crimson

Shirley wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 7:32 pm Is it just me, or does a Trump cultist get arrested every day for threatening or committing violence as a result of believing the republican lie that Trump won the 2020 election? It's so frequent, it begins to feel normal, because thanks to the cowards in the republican party, it is. The republican cultists are so devoid of even a passing association with reality, like Mike Pence on Jan 6th, they're coming after their own.

Shirley wrote: ↑Wed Aug 23, 2023 10:23 pm

If you watched the hours of TV news coverage during an especially momentous week in August, there was little sense of that reality, and for long stretches of pundit blather, none at all — as talking heads gave earnest high school debating marks to candidates who are all but ignored by the GOP voter base. The disconnect deepened the next night as Trump turned what would surely be his comeuppance — his surrender at Atlanta’s bug-infested county jail for fingerprinting and a mugshot ― into an outlaw display of authoritarian force.

It was a remarkable night of imagery over substance, yet there was little discussion of why this accused felon was getting a phalanx of dozens of motorcycle cops, comprising police who are drawn to Trump’s authoritarian bluster like moths to the light. Trump’s glowering mugshot instantly became the most-talked-about picture in American history — yet not one pundit was able to explain why tens of millions of everyday voters are so eager to return to the White House this man who attempted a coup on Jan. 6, 2021, or why his poll numbers rise with each indictment. I guess the 20th-century author and socialist Upton Sinclair really nailed it when he wrote, ‘It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends on his not understanding it.”

America is entering its most important, pivotal year since 1860, and the U.S. media is doing a terrible job explaining what is actually happening. Too many of us — with our highfalutin poly-sci degrees and our dog-eared copies of the late Richard Ben Cramer’s What It Takes — are still covering elections like it was the 20th century, as if the old touchstones like debates or a 30-second spot still matter.

What we are building toward on Nov. 5, 2024, might have the outward trappings of an election but it is really a show of force. What we call the Republican Party is barely a political party in any sense of the word but a dangerous antisocial movement that has embraced many of the tenets of fascism, from calls for violence to its dehumanizing of “others” — from desperate refugees at the border to transgender youth.

There is, in reality, no 2024 primary because this movement embraced its infallible stongman in Trump eight years ago. And there is no “Trump scandal” because — for them — each new crime or sexual assault is merely another indictment of the messenger, the arrogrant elites from whom their contempt is the No. 1 issue. These foot soldiers stopped believing in “democracy” a long time ago — no matter how big an Orwellian sign Fox News erects.

[…]

It was so revealing Wednesday night when Fox News launched its debate coverage by playing a snippet of Oliver Anthony’s No. 1 hit, the blue-collar populist rant “Rich Men North of Richmond,” with its mix of anti-government-elitism and a downward punch at welfare recipients. It felt like the Fox message was, “We’re not comfortable talking about what’s really happening with the white working class in America, so we’re just going to turn it over to this angry singer with the big beard.”

The news media better get comfortable talking about what is really happening in places like Anthony’s Farmville, Va. They ought to be explaining both the legitimate anger voiced by the singer’s lament over “working overtime hours for {BS] pay,” the manipulation of that anger by demagogues like Trump, and the uncomfortable questions about how much of the rage is over threats to outdated and detestable hierarchies of white supremacy and the patriarchy.

Oliver Anthony isn’t the only one doing a better job discussing this than our journalists. On Saturday, Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders went to New Hampshire to both endorse the reelection of President Joe Biden as a defense against authoritarianism — but also to warn his fellow Democrats they need to do a much better job addressing the discontents of the American middle class. Said Sanders: “In the United States, and in fact around the world, support for the establishment and their institutions is in decline. People want change. And change will come. The question is: What kind of change will it be?” Not surprisingly, Sanders’ important speech was barely mentioned in the media.

Almost on cue, the GOP’s Ramaswamy went on CNN Sunday morning with a dark, right-wing appeal that is the change that far too many people are seeking, in a stunning riff that blamed this weekend’s racist mass shooting in Jacksonville by a white gunman who targeted Black people not on racism but on antiracism and the media. Ramaswamy insisted that the media, universities and certain politicians have rekindled racism and that “I can think of no better way to fuel racism in this country than by taking something away from people based on their skin color.” Meaning white people.

These are the stakes: dueling visions for America — not Democratic or Republican, with parades and red, white, and blue balloons, but brutal fascism or flawed democracy. The news media needs to stop with the horse-race coverage of this modern-day March on Rome, stop digging incessantly for proof that both sides are guilty of the same sins, and stop thinking that a war for the imperiled survival of the American Experiment is some kind of inexplicable “tribalism.”

We need to hear from more experts on authoritarian movements, and fewer pollsters and political strategists. We need journalists who’ll talk a lot less about who’s up or down and a lot more about the stakes — including Trump’s plans to dismantle the democratic norms that he calls “the administrative state,” to weaponize the criminal justice system, and to surrender the war against climate change — if the 45th president becomes the 47th. We need the media to see 2024 not as a traditional election but as an effort to mobilize a mass movement that would undo democracy and splatter America with more blood like what was shed Saturday in Jacksonville. We need to understand that if the next 15 months remain the worst covered election in U.S. history, that it might also be the last.

Sparko wrote: ↑Mon Aug 28, 2023 12:31 pm Yes. Tremendous take, Fish.