I find it hilarious that anyone who is a serious newspaperman could state that the Mueller Report was an accomplishment for the mainstream media is mind-boggling. It was one of the most horrifying journalistic travesties in all of our lifetimes. "The Mueller report documented dozens and dozens of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives." NO, actually the Mueller Report clearly stated in 4 PLACES that the report could not establish ANY IMPROPER CONTACTS BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND ANY RUSSIANS. It literally says that FOUR TIMES!
The Clintons and Bidens take home tens of millions from Russia and the media ignores it. Meanwhile any Russian even speaking to someone in the Trump campaign, who may not even know who they are, is considered having committed a crime.
Is is all so stupid. Anyone that takes it seriously needs their head examined.
Yep. Reading 'Clinton Cash' was revelatory. There is an indictment on every other page. Of course, that implies that someone with the ability to prosecute had any inclination to do so.
Not sure if he was really 'on it' or if that was all just optics so someone at the DOJ could then say 'Hey, we investigated all of this, but gee, nothing here folks.' Sort of like Hillary's missing email 'investigation'.
...did you mean Chelsea, too? I don't give Bill a lot longer. He looks like Skeletor from the old He-Man cartoon. But he has the best health care money can buy, so who knows.
[imagines Slick Willie evolving into 103-year-old Kirk Douglas, has brain seizure, dies]
There is also the corruption of the intel agencies( there are so many now that it's hard to single out one for blame). The false premise of the Mueller Report was never addressed.
It's all the same multi-dimensional ouroboros. "Unnamed Sources,' 'off-the-record, 'anonymous sources.' These are the neural networks that feed the beast. Do yourself (anyone) a favor and sit down with all the known facts about the Steele Dossier and try to convince yourself that this was anything but a cabal of fraud, forgery and conspiracy dressed up in malevolent intent! All the actors were present: FBI, CIA, MI6, Media, McCain, Hillary and DNC, Perkins Coie.
Great list, but you left out perhaps the most egregious version of this in my local paper:
"According to Police" and "According to Prosecutors."
Given their respective qualified and absolute immunity, that phrase means I should disregard as fabrication anything in the sentence that comes after that lawyered up "well they said it, not me!" phrase.
They flip flop between "experts" and "anonymous" depending upon the subject matter but I'm pretty sure that they are always using John Brennan as the source.
yeah, because what the incest media refused to report to their hordes of morons was that each and every administration would have contacts with any country that we have diplomacy with. it was an obscene exercise in agitation of idiots.
I did notice Bradlee's comment. The way he tried to still give the Mueller report some legitimacy despite also acknowledging that it had failed only shows you how beholden he is to his class. He reminds of certain aristocrats of old who knew their ruling class had failed badly (like the French aristocracy in the late 18th century) but couldn't bring themselves to completely disavow their class either. The tragedy of a good and honest man who is trapped by the same code that gave him so much legitimacy at the same time.
But it revealed the SHOCKING REVELATION that Russia tried to disrupt/influence our election!! So glad the good old USA NEVER tries to interfere with other countries!!
They spent over $16,000 dollars!! Good thing our media donated a few billions in free party advocacy to the Dems, eh? At least they're Americans. Sort of.
«The Mueller report documented dozens and dozens of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives." NO, actually the Mueller Report clearly stated in 4 PLACES that the report could not establish ANY IMPROPER CONTACTS»
But Ben Bradlee is an experienced wordsmith and knows how to word smears: he did not claim that the "dozens and dozens of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives" were *improper*, or were between Trump and russian state agents. It was just "some people who were campaigning for Trump at some point occasionally were contacted by some russian people".
Mainstream media makes it all about Democrats vs. Republicans. The reality is that the electorate is over 40% Independents, and "leaners" doesn't really cover it. Democrats have a bigger problem i think in that they assume that if we're not Republicans, we have nowhere else to go. The tried their best to shove Hillary Clinton down our throats, and it turned out that we actually did have somewhere else to go. Whether it was third party, write in, Trump, or the couch.
The Democratic media seems to have the same problem. If we're not interested in Fox News, we have no alternative than to read the Wapo or the NYT or the other Dem mags, and swallow their biases and viewpoints and agendas whole. Well, Substack gives us somewhere to go, no wonder they're crapping bricks. And what should make them crap even more is that we're a range from Bernie supporters disgusted with the Dems over to conservatives disgusted with the Republicans. And we have common ground. Never stop, Matt, and thank you.
Substack being a place to go is why the mainstream media figures have been trashing it lately. Substack has been denigrated and its political writers, Matt, Greenwald and the bunch, have been smeared for their refusal to bow to the dictates of the self-appointed guardians of the mainstream gate. It's been ugly at times. This for reporting pesky facts in opposition to fantasy scenarios spread relentlessly by the pampered stenographers serving power.
That's the most amazing thing. For years, the DNC and the WaPo and NYT have been "Fuck the GOP!" and finally someone does just that... and they decided that he was even worse?
There's too much trust, if not worship, of the DNC as an institution by mainstream dems for the party to ever be blown up. Their most educated voters should know better by now, but they also happen to be the most gullible and least skeptical people in general.
It is all about class. Think about the typical upper middle class professional (we will exclude the truly wealthy, who in fact run everything, but the UMC sets the cultural table and tilts the elections).
A typical UMC person deals with smart, nice people all day, is pulling down hundreds of thousands of dollars each year (and more, if he lives in an expensive urban center), his kids are going to good schools (either pocketed public schools in wealthy neighborhoods or private schools), crime is low where he lives and on and on. His sense making has always been provided by the received wisdom in those good schools growing up and by the usual media suspects: NYT, WAPO, the Atlantic, PBS, NBC, etc.
He goes from good job to good neighborhood and there is nary a discouraging word to break up that rosy picture of things. And if then the NYT tells you that something is amiss, you instinctively believe them since they have been your faithful media companion all along life's journey. And it is, after all, what the smart folks read.
In short it is this closeted and very pleasant endogamy that proves so resistant to self awareness and change.
Their retirement accounts and kids' college funds depend on the stability of the current system, regardless of its systematic negative effects on their societal inferiors. They delude themselves into believing they are virtuous by shitting out the faux empathetic language of "allyship" while giving up nothing materially and voting to maintain their wealth and status. It's a simple equation for simple people.
Zero love here for the DNC and RNC, but, how does all the buffoonery cum criminality translate into Trump as a positive force? When, besieged on all sides with decent folks looking for a savior…how does that become Trump as a force for “good”? The guy is a complete shyster. If he hadn’t started out with Daddy’s half billion dollar fortune, he’d have been deep frying chicken somewhere. It’s kinda like “having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts”.
"how does all the buffoonery cum criminality translate into Trump as a positive force?"
Please see Scott's comment below.
He was a bull in a china shop full of low-quality overpriced china. Just because you don't liked getting ripped off doesn't necessarily mean you endorse bulls.
Actually, scratch that. I do endorse bulls. Ferdinand The Bull 4 Prez 2024!
The issue isn't Trump's many faults. It's that there was no one else saying what he was saying. The other Republicans were mouthing the same BS of the past. Trump, for all his psychological issues, and under impressive intellect was saying things that were true that no one else was saying. Perhaps he was too self involved or naive to understand how radical it was to say anything that reeked of common sense--like outsourcing everything to the Chinese. Fundamentally, Trump did blow up the uniparty--masquarading as an opposition GOP. All the narratives changed and MAGA was born--including new alliances. Whether intentional or not, he did the greatest service to this country by exposing the corruption of too many institutions. Unfortunately, he put too many establishment Republicans in his administration and was feckless as a CEO. Worst of all, he let corrupt Mitch McConnell influence him. A Mueller would never have been appointed for the Biden corruption--something very real. We have a laptop. With Trump, the Republicans, in control of all 3 branches of government, agreed to Mueller and the Russia collusion lie. I am also upset about Mike Pompeo, who did a great job as Secretary of State. But what did he do at CIA??? No one has questioned his first year as CIA head.
The DNC is - according Dan McCarthy in my latest SECTATOR is blowing itself up - maybe you don't notice because it has a pretty large and unfortunately successful PR department - discussed at length in this MONK debate (luv em on audio just as much as the C-Span version with audience participation/voting) -
The demise of the 'MSM' and the 'its ok' - is more to my view like the old Hollywood system - lots of behind the sense machiavellianism - making it so difficult for ordinary people to even find out what the hell is happening...
The movie LA CONFIDENTIAL comes to mind...Rolo Tamassi - is all over most of what Ben Bradley Jr tries to pan of as excuses for abhorrent and just out right corrupt practices that are a hallmark of his and his colleagues entire careers...
His use - and misuse of the Muller Report is enough to barf and literally choke on it....it is the encapsulazation of the mindset of the successful - in his case - son of the Giant...and of course one reads in his bio what is Ben Jr doing now that he is in comfy semi-retirement?
Working on a book about DANIEL ELLSBERG - YET ANOTHER HAGOGRAPHY ABOUT one of THE A SEMINAL 'FOUNDING FATHER'S' OF THE majical mystery tour that kicked off why journalism is floundering in the wasteland of for profit lying and stealing and war-mongering...
Contrast that with MT bemoaning the conformist mentality (again an 'accomplishment' of the Bradly era - from him and his esteemed colleagues) in newsrooms - with he kind of lone wolf personality disorder independent journo's of the golden era - like Sy Hersh - who were pricks extraordinaire - who did not festoon their wall with Pulitzers - (although they earned some) to ensure bigger and bigger advances on more and more book contracts...
And is it any wonder 1/4 to 1/3 of the country is a news desert?
This is why MT and Glenn Greenwald are such stalwarts - because of the fucking Ben Bradley Jr effect - and like hollywood in that post depression 'golden era' it was incestuously inbred....at the top...and thus more easily managed and controlled...
I'm only trying to convey the idea that whatever the GOP had been doing up to the point of DJT winning the primary in '16 clearly was no longer satisfying the majority of its base.
I don't think I really need 'em (yet); I'm just being mildly sarcastic.
Some dude (or lady) (handle: "Science Does Not Care") got chastised by MT a short while ago for "wishing" Rachel Maddow would get hit in a drone strike, in what was obviously an ironic and not sincere remark.
I don't know where the tripwire is, given MT's longtime advocacy of free speech. I just feel like the guy who knows he's stepped on a landmine and can't get off until it's disarmed. Being a total dumbass, I choose to dance a jig on the landmine.
While not a Republican by any means, I would certainly be considered on the right by most of the people here, and live amongst the Trumpers. Also, important to note I live in an area that features a heavy population of those sorts of Republicans, so take it with a grain of salt, but...
Having engaged quite a bit with Marx (and disagreeing pretty sustainedly on a lot of things), I respect on some level that his political project was about freedom, but worry about the people who run such systems.
The blue collar alliance, I think, exists because those right-leaners who like Bernie feel intuitively about him the way I do about Marx, and in this case, they agree with him on enough things that his personality (his personality!) is the thing that wins them over.
They trust the old socialist to speak his mind, if nothing else, which goes a very long way with them.
Two things can be true at the same time. It is possible for blue collar Republicans to understand why workers unionize and to inherently distrust those who run the unions.
Remember when Hillary started to run in '16, Obama was still trying to die on the TPP hill on his way out. I'm convinced that it was that trade deal that went a long way toward helping both Bernie and Trump, and explained a lot of that 10% crossover of Bernie primary voters who went for Trump in November. That and Hillary's campaign itself, surely the flat out dumbest and most incomptent i've seen in my voting lifetime.
Yes, but Bernie merged his fortunes with Hillary shortly after, ..and then again, with Biden in 2020, leaving him a wimpy, hopeless prospect in the margins of history. Trump started out as loose cannon, but never had the savvy to expand his leadership beyond his enraged base. In the end he didn't even pardon Julien Assange! He left the country more polarized than ever. Yet, I'm convinced that he was right about voter fraud, but unable to express it in non-partisan terms despite the evidence from those on the left that it existed beyond his farcical accusations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcQ5x_LFkDA
Check out any and all you can find on Walter Reuther, and Henry Wallace. Every time we get close to some level of genuine class progress it gets co-opted by the
Dr. Pfisterer...what a disappointment - THE REUTHER'S WERE THE ABSOLUTE RUNIATION OF TRADE UNIONISM. From the moment Jimmy Hoffa went to jail for - what actually - the crap version of process crime today - tax evastion - the virutal end of the working class worker representation became an abstract practice for the parasitical 'company union' birthed by the receivership maned as it has been over many decades starting in the 1970.
Bobby the saint Kennedy started this all with his racketeering crusade - and why did Hoffa hate him so much for these efforts - besides the mob connections - BECAUSE HIS FATHER WAS F'ING JOE KENNEDY SENIOR...
in the first 20 years the Feds developed the infrastructor to dismantle Big Labor - and then - recreate it in the Great Society Dem moldy mold - and what do we see?
A 70 direct line of declining standards of living and a unionism that is dominated by Government goons....
This is the Reuther Wallace legacy /// hell on earth - and tyranny.
Give me the Mob any day ...at least you could drive a milk truck and feed you're family...
Now like at the 15 Criminal Crime Families of Washington DC - most have D next to their names - but plenty have R as well...
There are a series of wonderful interviews on Matt and Katie's Useful Idiot podcasts with Thomas Franks. Free-flowing, heartfelt, funny. Some of their best work IMO.
"You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both."
- Tom Watson
Naturally, they are still using this tactic to great effect to this day. Racial animus is the wedge of power for our bettors. The introductory paragraph says it all.
"In his new history of anti-populism, Thomas Frank’s most stunning insight is this: In the 1890s, in the states of the Old Confederacy, the threat of “a political union” between poor black Republicans and poor white Populists so panicked the ruling post-Reconstruction Bourbon Democrats that their official, narcotizing lie of white solidarity was weaponized into the inhumanly degrading dogma of white supremacy."
Wow....just took a glance ....been dusting off some of my Richard Hofstadter's work on populism from this era and now see Frank's been on to the same thing I 've had in mind - there are so many parallels - particularly the domination of captial over - as then - the destruction of 'labor' in our implicit enumerable rights...
Franks work looks quite promising - and an understandable follow up to his book on how the Dems have abandoned the working and middle class American for the grandee billionaire globalists seeking to destroy representative democracy in favor of the rule of international tribunials....everything from the UN to the WTO and IMF and everything in between...
Any thing and everything except freely elected self governing pols...
Well, it was starting to happen in congress too - Bernie and Josh Hawley teaming up to get cash stim payments to the poor proles while Pelosi was getting a blow dry. Or Ro Khanna and Matt Gaetz teaming up until Gaetz imploded. Even now, maybe watch this space to see if Ted Cruz and Rubio team up with Bernie against big tech and biz.
It sort of cracks me up to see all of the flaming hissy fits by the Dems on Matt or Greenwald's Twitter threads from posters who think they're right wingers now. Um, not quite, they were Bernie supporters.
Good analysis of the current voter mood in the country. Fwiw, I get my national news feeds from Reason and the NY Post-they both do a good job of being gimlet eyed to both sides, and Reason suits me editorially as a libertarian.
The MSM problem is really much bigger on television than on the web-as mentioned I can find outlets on the web that don’t annoy me, on TV it’s Kennedy and Gutfeld on Fox and that’s about it-no real independent gadflies. Frontline and Independent Lens are still good.
Yep, the NY Post is the star now. When I was a kid, it was a bottom feeding tabloid. I’ve been reading it every day now for about two years. It has a conservative working class edge where they tell it like it is. If you understand the slant, you can ignore some of the nonsense that it dwells on. Hard to believe I read it to see what the real score is, but that’s our world now. I don’t watch any tv news. I can read much faster than people can talk and I don’t like wasting my time, especially on people who I don’t want in my living room.
Agreed. I read a lot of different media perspectives, yet I always come back to the NYP as the anchor. Yeah, they push a little too hard now and then, but they cover stuff the left-leaning MSM simply refuse to cover. Latest one was Sara Lind's awful campaign manager Quinn Mootz saying the UWS was "too white and Jewish" then literally flamethrowing everyone on her Twitter feed. Crickets from all major news sources, but the NYP correctly reported what happened.
Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, but have you no hesitation over the fact that the NYPost is *still a Rupert Murdock production ? For some people that fact is probably a "feature", not a "bug" ! ;-D
One corporate mogul is as good, or bad, as another. I read everything critically and I like the class view of the writing when they take down the pretensions of the rich and famous. I discount the shilling for the Republicans just as I discount the shilling for the Democratics in other publications. Tweedle dee and tweedle dum.
Politico isn't half bad for news and analysis. They're becoming more Deomcratic, but they're still a lot more balanced than the mainstream rags. And they're newsletters can be quite good, especially the Transition nighttime one.
I enjoy RealClear. A lot of other areas of the site are great reading too. RealClearInvestigations does a lot of long-form. I try to choke down articles I know are propaganda or simply contrary to my opinion, just to be sure I am at least trying to avoid my own blind spots. Reading so many sources also exposes an interesting characteristic: which news sources allow comments. I think those more confident in their accuracy and truthful in their reporting allow comments. Not a solid "rule," but a willingness to expose your reporting to criticism and reader opinion says something. I know it often devolves into an obscure fish-tank scum of discussion, but is usually very revealing. I enjoy substack comments nearly as much as the articles I read here (I subscribe to several).
When The New Yorker killed their comments section it was a real tell. It's not even a "news" publication, more of an "arts, culture, and opinion" publication. Another formerly decent publication sinking to the bottom because the party line is more important than letting diverse voices be heard...
If you were to have told me 25 years ago that in the future I would hold the NY Post in greater esteem than The New Yorker, I would have scoffed. Today is the future. Here we are.
A gimlet is vodka and lime juice, or lime syrup for those wanting sweet and a desire to vomit. A gimlet is also a sharp pointed tool, i.e., gimlet eyed means someone looking sharply or pointedly at someone/something.
I've gone to English papers, from the Times to some of the tabloids, both to find out what is really going on here and to simply get away from dogmatic news. So have many others. Some are pretty risqué and gloriously outspoken. But you've got to wend your way through blimpy Kardashian bums and bazooms. What's with that?
I'm not impressed by the English papers in terms of finding out what's really going on here. They see us through their own filter which is very distorted. As bad as our papers are, theirs are worse for that. I read their papers to see what's going on over there.
Matt's closing statement about the need for local journalists is a laser--I think Mike Royko (Chicago), Herb Caen (SF) , John Ralston (LV), Steve Otto (Tampa). They were all white males who knew politics and government. Diversification of voices was needed, of course, but it didn't happen. These fellows retired or died and they were not replaced with anyone.
It wasn’t just white males-I recently read a bio of HL Mencken, and it seemed that his favorite newspaperman was Robert L Vann, the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the legendary African American paper. Black community newspapers have gotten whacked as hard as anyone else-and a lot of regular black voices have been silenced.
As far as I could tell they just weren't replaced.That kind of voice wasn't seen as impt. by the newspapers. Or maybe there weren't writers who thought these were important beats.
Yes! During research for something pond- related I went through microfiched local newspapers from the early 1930s. So-and-so found a her lost dog. Articles about the original property owners, ice stating parties9n the pond-- who went to the party. John Smith was building a house based on a boat... personal things that connected people, plus serious subjects of course but so much was simply daily human events -- happy, sad, or interesting things, extremely local, that had nothing to do with ideology or grievance.
"of interesting things, extremely local. that had nothing to do with ideology or grievance..." Has a sadder epitaph ever been written for what once was?
They were also *unique voices. We do not see another Mark Twain, another Molly Ivins, et al. I join you in mourning the losses mentioned above, but when a voice IS that unique, I never even expect to see it "replaced." I also join you in wishing that we *could replace them !
Molly Ivins! yes. And of course not replace their style but be a person people looked to each day/ Is there anyone like that writing today? I guess some might say Maureen Dowd?
You know, Steinbeck saw the beginnings of that loss of localness, of regional dialects, customs, foods, manners, as early as the 60s. This grounding and rootedness would have held the US together, resisted this farcical but dangerous BS.
Does Jimmie Breslin fall into that category? I honestly don't know much about him, but everything of his I have ever read was just amazing. I get the impression controversy colored his later career. Prolly cranky old white guy stuff.
Jim Hightower and the late Molly Ivins represented an excellent example of "diversification of voices" in Texas journalism. Mr. Hightower still publishes his "HIGHTOWER LOWDOWN" newsletter for subscribers. (www.hightowerlowdown.org)
Ben Bradlee says, "I think that the key thing is how do we come together on defining facts, so that there is less of a chasm between left and right on this? " But he's unwilling to concede the most obvious thing, that the media vastly overpromised and underdelivered on the so-called Russia collusion. He's part of the problem.
Exactly. The anticipated results of the Mueller Report were said to show Trump as a literal Russian asset and traitor. I have close friends who expected to see transcripts of Putin giving direct orders to Trump and for Trump to be literally dragged out of the White House in an orange jumpsuit. The bountygate story was even more pathetic but also more dangerous. You had morons like Ben Sasse calling for Russian soldiers to be brought back in body bags as retaliation. It's incredible how people like Ben Bradlee can brush this insanity off as minor mistakes.
I just find that "fact" is a dishonest term when used by media, for example, statements from "former intelligence sources". The media can say it's fact that "former intelligence agents say x". However, without knowing the source credentials, analyzing their bias, having an understanding of whether it's 1st, 2nd. 3rd, 4th hand info, and any other number of things, it's hard for the reader to have confidence in a statement. You also have no idea whether any scrutiny was made, or whether it's "I've got a juicy headline...just need to construct facts around it, and then stop."
The proof that is was a lie is that the Black Death, Eric Weismann, who wrote the second part of the report to try and get Trump impeached, never mentioned Fusion GPS once. The smear merchant at the heart of everything was not even mentioned once. Weismann should be rotting in GITMO. May his family name forever be cursed.
Yes. The man that destroyed 80,000 Arthur Anderson jobs and then was overruled by SCOTUS 9-0. But that didn’t help the 80,000 who lost their jobs, some never to recover. The man is pure evil and should punished by society.
And the sentence that followed: "And that despite mistakes that are always made, that means trying to make those more and more rare, so that one side can't more easily scoff at the other, and more diligent fact-checking."
Thank you so much for your concluding comments. The people inside the Washington “bubble” are an incestuous, arrogant gentry who have no interest in how people in middle America live or think. The preppy elites on both coasts are mainly ignorant about blue collar America. They ignorantly ignore the fact that two thirds of US voters are non-college educated working people who are smarter than they know.
Other than some people on the right being the target of our disreputable media, there's really nothing new in any of this, and you then limit their lack of interest to only the working class people "in middle America", as though none exist along the coasts of this country, in a familiar refrain from the pity party snowflakes in flyover America. You're not the only ones getting shafted, if you look around. It is just this sort of tribalist thinking that those on the very top, both libs and cons, stoke to play their con, and it works.
In the 2003 WH correspondents' dinner, George W. Bush showed a video to the assembled that showed him looking, in a cute and clever way, for WMD in the Oval Office, and failing to find any, which, coincidentally, matched the reality in Iraq, because by that time, it had been admitted that none existed. Not that any of this mattered to those assembled, because they found it rip roaringly hilarious, perhaps because they, like W., had never been within 8,000 miles of combat, nor had any of their circle. Imagine being the president, who like his VP, not only lied us into war but were themselves both draft dodgers and still getting away with such behavior, not only getting away with it, but being the focus of admiring laughter.
Yes, they are the elite, they are out of touch, because they want to be, but the con is played by both the right and left media; to pretend otherwise is to prolong their undeserved position in society. See the problem in its entirety if fixing it is the objective.
I remember W. doing that, and Obama joking about sending predator drones to destroy some musical group that Sasha and Malia were infatuated with. Then there was the comedienne who ridiculed Sarah Sanders for her looks; Sanders sat and took it.
W. joked about WMD, Obama joked about predator drones, some comic made fun of Sarah Sanders' appearance. The correspondent's dinner used to be a venue for people to lay off the partisanship for an evening and laugh with each other, no more, there's been a complete collapse of manners in DC. I respected Trump for refusing to attend.
you said, "that they're going to be devoted to pursuing the same ideological framework. "
It seems to me, it's more like the mainstream media aren't all just devoted to pursuing the same ideological framework-- they are all devoted to pursuing the same ideological outcome. Their goal has ceased being 'reporting the news'. Their goal now is 'social change'. And that goals has become so important to them, they have completely sacrificed honesty and objectivity in reporting to try to achieve it. Which means what the mainstream media is peddling now isn't 'news'-- it is 'propaganda'. No thanks. As far as I can see, the sooner mainstream media dies, the better off we will all be. Better to be ignorant than to rely on professional liars.
Excellent point. It is both the perception of change and the maintenance of order. This is the most galling aspect of the use of identity politics, and the cultivation of crt as the stand alone boobie prize (elevated and divisive individual "marginal" storytellers equalling meaningful redress of poverty and all of its outcomes) instead of actual resources that could threaten the internal economic hegemony. Its the ordination of neocolonialist power structure internally. That intersectional humans of the cia video is the epitome of this.
Excellent substantive comment; I'm glad that the flippant garbage I throw out can lead to something like this.
"Its the ordination of neocolonialist power structure internally"
The neocolonialist power structure requires The Enemy. The collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War was the worst thing that ever happened to its business model.
The Cycle of Official Enemies is telling:
In the '90s it was "domestic white supremacists" (Tim McVeigh, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, Ted Kaczynski). In the '00s it was "Islamofascist terrorists" (a.k.a. poor Muslim people in faraway countries). When Trump won in '16 it was Russia (which makes a great second-stage villain when it isn't collapsing and can't be looted by international finance).
I think it's going to be "white supremacists -- domestic terrorists -- insurrectionists" again.
Agree with your points. Also, hasn’t the definition of “white supremacists” expanded exponentially since the 90’s? Where even our UN ambassador is calling the U.S. a white supremacist country in front of the entire United Nations. Which is convenient for the national security state, they have all kinds of permission to spy on all of us since we may all be a white supremacist terrorist.
"When Trump won in '16 it was Russia (which makes a great second-stage villain when it isn't collapsing and can't be looted by international finance)."
...prompted my recollection of Naomi Klein's excellent book, "THE SHOCK DOCTRINE--The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".
No doubt, the fabrication and public propagandizing of Official Enemy constructs is, indeed, a required ingredient of said "neocolonialist power structures". It's a large scale modern day hybrid of a "bait & switch" scheme, designed, of course, to distract the attention of and manipulate the reasoning of public opinion.
You close forecasting...
"I think it's going to be "white supremacists -- domestic terrorists -- insurrectionists" again."
..and I think you may be on to something, especially if these particular fringe elements are all armed with 5g cell-phones in addition to their already amassed collections of military-grade weapons.
Will the majority of our citizens actually be able to make a distinction between such a future Official Enemy, and one that may actually socially 'evolve'?
I refer to M.'s point above -- I think all the culture war "woke" stuff is now being actively exploited (even if it was not originally engineered) by vested financial interests.
If you can make someone hate someone who has a different skin color, it's easier to pick his pocket while he's glaring at them.
Ben: “We can't have the thought police intervening to that extent.”
Not. “We can’t have the Thought Police.” or “The Thought Police is an Orwellian nightmare come true we must fight against to our dying breath.”. Not even “Policing thought is the most anti-American concept imaginable.”
No. Nothing like that. We can have Thought Police. Just not to the extent a NYTimes editor gets fired by them. One can only hope Ben knows this was a very poorly worded statement. If he supports Thought Police then he can share the media’s fate and I won’t lose any sleep over it.
"To that extent..." It's all parsing of words. Coded in his every comment was a 'keep-the-line-drawn' where enlightened seers --such as Ben-- can provide the last word. Give the libertarian an atta boy every now and then. Nurture real Progressives with an 'inclusive stance' on their...'platform.' God, I wish George Carlin was alive to riff on this utter shit-show.
Being tornado season in the Midwest, I was thinking today about how Carlin would have gotten nailed for his meteorological musings-“Do you ever notice that Jews never get affected by tornadoes?!?!”
I have a great deal of respect for the work Mr. Bradlee has done over his career, but you have a good point here.
I remember during the protests over the Summer when some reporters were attacked as part of a larger group doing nothing illegal, their response was not "we have a 1st amendment right to be here, but "hey, you can't do that. I'm with the press!"
That implicit privilege due to their position is perhaps more infuriating to me than even the accuracy of their reporting.
We see it in their version of the 1st amendment:
"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech of the press" FULL STOP
Meanwhile, they have no problem accusing someone like Julian Assange of "hiding behind the Constitution."
I think it’s because the majority of msm journalists all go to similar prep schools then to the same universities. Back in HL Mencken’s day there was no degree necessary to become a journalist. They were hard scrabble working people, they got down and dirty. The post credentialism era sees these schools pumping out the same stepford journalist clones.
Strongly agree that the classism of the modern media is a problem, and you should be commended for your self-awareness, Matt.
An uncomfortable corollary: I suspect it's also driven by the class backgrounds of media consumers. This dynamic of rich people preaching to other rich people about how aggrieved they are leads to absurd situations.
For example, there is a huge volume of written material describing capitalism as sexist because this or that product is marketed to women in a differential manner. However, this is primarily a function of the fact that women control something like three-quarters of consumer spending. If it were the inverse, they would also cry sexism as well. It's all sexism, all the time.
Meanwhile, you have a guy with the qualifications of Paris Hilton (heir, real estate fortune, reality tv star, fake tan), and no one thinks to make the comparison. However, doing exactly that would be a blatant admission that they and their entire social class are an utter joke.
I can't even read anything when it is colored so fundamentally by "identity politics," a term I hate but there is no better term at the moment. If it's examined through that prism it is worthless because there is only one potential message that comes out of it: that perspective is ALL that matters. Really? Is that the only way you can get the story is if a woman writes about it from a female perspective? My whole adult life was about trying to be as good as or better than my male counterparts. Sexism was just another obstacle among many. You just have to be that much better. But if you start grading on a curve to allow more women to become prominent voices just because they're women, where is the worth in that.
It's also just so boring. I've stopped subscribing to any news sources other than various substacks and I've pretty much stopped watching any new TV or movies over the past year. I understand that some of the goals of identity politics are noble but it is such a genuinely boring lens through which to view the world that when you make that your only mode of telling a story everything becomes unreadable/unwatchable. People can only take so much moralizing before they simply tune out!
Sasha, funny you say that- this is reminiscent of a conversation I had with a friend awhile ago when I expressed fears about being a father to girls these days (he has three awesome ones). He was taken aback that preferential hiring policies would make me concerned.
Not only do such policies devalue female achievement, I genuinely believe such policies exacerbate rather than mitigate sexism (depending on one’s definition of a sticky term). If you want to give people an excuse to distrust a female pilot, say you’re going to deliberately lower standards so as to hire female pilots. The end result, I fear, would be a world where one side infantilizes women and the other utterly distrusts them (if that’s not a false prophecy for its already having happened).
You allude to the salient point- is it fair that a woman needs to struggle against sexism? No, but the flip side is that it makes her achievements legitimately wayyy more impressive.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t things can’t be improved far further, or justification for anything. I just feel the modern left is interested in political power at the cost of retrogression on such social matters.
I have two daughters...I don't think this is limited to hiring and achievement. Simple dating is a nightmare. My eldest was asked out by one of the Arab kids in one of her college courses (Saudi, if I remember correctly). He was nice enough, she just had no interest in dating him. She worried she was racist for declining. A few years later, my youngest was asked out by a black kid who was absolutely obnoxious in one of her college classes. She settled on a cup of coffee for fear of seeming racist, but hated every moment. She was terrified he'd ask her on a real date and she'd be racist for declining. I asked her if she accepted based on perceived racism, what would be her response if her date wanted to "do things" and she didn't? I told her this has to do with basic human attraction and interaction, nothing to do with race. She got the point and declined when he did ask. Tough world for them to navigate among such silliness.
I am *so grateful to have raised my daughter *before all of this current madness began ! What women ask for is AGENCY. Then, they are *robbed of agency by all of this present day "woke" bilge water.
How can we teach a young woman to think for herself, chose for herself, and, *respect herself when social media madness is ripping at and destroying her self-confidence faster than she *can make up her mind ! There is no REAL reason that simple choices should now be so "fraught" for these teenagers. But it IS their world, and, for better or worse, it IS their "reality" !
I reiterate, I am endlessly grateful that my daughter narrowly *missed it all before becoming an adult. I am happy for *her, but I am *just as ecstatic for myself ! DAMN !
" I suspect it's also driven by the class backgrounds of media consumers. "
Or the assumption of it anyway. NYT, which i no longer suscribe to, has a popup survey that they ask you to take. It asks for your profession and gives you choices. I couldn't finish the survey because there was nothing even remotely close to gig worker. And i wasn't going to lie and say i was managerial class.
I happen to be female. The sexism hook doesn't usually work on me. Neither does the likes of, say, Michelle Goldberg whining about how hard her life is either.
Haha, thank you for sharing this. The chutzpah is amazing... the newspaper that runs such gems as “ American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation” has minted an absolute fortune in the last four years, all while apparently tacitly admitting they’re only interested in the readership of the bourgeoise.
There was this list before the election by the Ed Board there something like 50 Reasons to Vote for Joe Biden. I looked it over and commented something like, hmm, nothing about jobs, wages, or housing. Nothing about healthcare. But these are the issues i vote on. Why am I unsurprised. (I voted Green).
Thank you for voting Green. Have you looked for a local chapter to join? We need more people to grow the party. The Dembot media machine and the Dem party are using smears and bought off judges to keep us off the ballot.
No better plantation than the Ochs plantation. Has anyone at the Times ever uncovered how much money the current publisher of the Times inherited from his father?
Congratulations on dropping the subscription. I voted with my feet about four years ago when the craziness became too much for me. Have not looked back.
«However, this is primarily a function of the fact that women control something like three-quarters of consumer spending.»
I think that women also own 70-80% of all wealth, in part through their own savings but also much through inheritance and divorce. But the daughter or the wife or ex-wife or widow of a CEO is a victim of discrimination by white male deplorables working in warehouses.
Are you talking about Anderson Cooper? So many of them fit that description that I literally don't know who you mean, which is kind of funny and telling.
"This dynamic of rich people preaching to other rich people about how aggrieved they are leads to absurd situations" I would add "dynamic of rich people preaching to other rich people about how aggrieved their lessers are."
Or Meghan Markle as the media darling of racist oppression while we run the biggest prison system in the world with wide ranging disparities in sentencing, but not much worth covering.
"We've lost thousands of local newspapers since the early 2000s. "
sounds like anti-competitive monopoly behavior was at play. multi-national corporations have basically bought up national media outlets as their very own agit-prop arms. they operate them at a loss, just like a monopoly to drive competition to the ground and don't really care if they even make a profit. like a cost of doing business for their other operations.
we need to bust trusts and cartels. they are running our country. health care, news, even politics.
why is it that Americans can't recognize ant-competitive behavior that is endorsed by government?
I was the editor for a small weekly community newspaper and we covered the the city council, park district, school board, local elections, etc. Our reporting was far better than the corporate regional paper based in our town (owned by Lee Enterprises). We were highly motivated to "out report" the larger, better-funded paper, which helped improve our coverage. All that stands to reason, yet our coverage forced the regional paper to do a better on covering our town since it was a bad look to get continually owned by a small independent weekly. Such competition, even at such a micro level, made a big difference in the overall quality of how local politics were covered in the region.
Thanks. It has a new publisher and is still going ... online at least. My run was about 15 years ago and I've since moved out of the area. Subsistence reporting and editing wasn't the worst gig ever. Local politics was actually blast to cover. Believe it or not, a race with a park district board president up for re-election can be just as electrifying as almost anything that happens nationally. It's a shame that all of that local color gets lost in the drive for profits.
My local newspaper is part of a group of newspapers currently being bought by a hedge fund. These papers will have the life sucked out of them until they don’t exist. It makes me so sad because my paper does actual investigative reporting on state and county government issues. Who will do this important work when they are gone?
Mr. Bradlee lost my respect with his knee-jerk response "Well, it wasn't a witch-hunt. I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that the Mueller report came up with the overarching finding of systematic Russian interference in the 2016 election and cited about 10 specific examples of obstruction of justice." The partisan Democrats just can't let go of it. It was a witch-hunt, there was a finding of attempted interference, and the bulk of the obstruction charges were process crimes triggered by the fact of the investigation.
This is great. Your voice should be the most influential and prominent right now, Matt. Instead you get chased around on Twitter by people who say you are no longer "pure" enough for the new Left. It's disgusting what has happened to journalism. The thing is, it DOES still exist. But the channels for it - social media - are corrupt beyond repair. If it doesn't happen on Twitter it doesn't happen. It has to go viral and all of that nonsense. We need, I think, more trustworthy aggregators. We need a Drudge Report for honest objective journalism people can check every day.
Reading Matt's Twitter feed is both funny and sad. It's amazing how many different ways people find to say, "What happened to you, man?" And not one of them seems to consider, maybe the dude is just trying to tell the truth.
Matt briefly alluded to this at the very end, but a key issue missing from almost all of the debate is emergence of a strong wave of anti-elitism or "populism" on both the right and the left over the last 30 to 40 years. This has come about not due to the rise of the internet or the collapse of the mainstream media's business model but due to the collapse of the middle and working class, and their communities, and the destabilizing levels of wealth and income inequality that have destroyed the nation's sense common purpose and faith in its institutions, not just in the mainstream media, but in federal and state governments, labor unions, corporations, universities, the health care system, both political parties, elections and "experts" of all kinds. They are no longer trusted - in fact are widely hated and resented - so why would journalists whose stock in trade is quoting them and citing them somehow escape. The system is not working for the great majority of Americans and they (correctly) see the mainstream media as agents of the system that is failing, even actively screwing, them. At the same time, the elite mainstream media is increasingly run by and for the "educated" elites who run these failing institutions. I went to an Ivy League journalism school, reported for mainstream newspapers for 30 years, was on the board of a national journalism organization, taught investigative reporting and have watched this sad decline accelerate since I got out of the business in 2006. Traditional media has some serious problems specific to itself that have made it more vulnerable to the larger trends and less able to play a remedial role in the larger decline of the society, but the overall decline of the society - it's failure and dysfunction for the large majority (while enriching the rich) - is the overarching problem. Many mainstream journalists, including myself, hoped to be part of the solution. Obviously things have not turned out as we'd hoped. In retrospect, we failed to clearly understand what was going around us. Ultimately, mainstream journalism as it now exists needs to crash and burn, which it is doing now and will not be a loss because it (including, especially, the "woke' careerists at the elite media) has fully signed on as defender of the elites against the internet rabble wherever privatized censorship and cancellation can be imposed. How this will all turn out I cannot say, but "Follow the money," is still as good a guide as any. Mass journalism is a powerful force in society, but not an independent one. It always, in the end, follows the larger forces, especially the money and the interests of the people with money.
Your excellent comment goes to the core of the Hobbesian deal we are all born into with the rise of the nation state primarily from the early 19th century along language, religious, cultural and in many cases ethnic lines.
The Nation State presumes that people with a shared identity will do better at looking after their own. In exchange for protection, functional institutions and infrastructure, people give the State a monopoly on the currency, the use of force, a portion of your productivity and an agreement to fight on the States behalf.
What happens, however, when a growing plurality comes to believe they are getting the raw end of this deal? Those who continue to benefit from that system, which typically includes the experts and elites, can't understand why those who no longer benefit as much as they lose are willing to blow the system up.
The elite tell them "Well you don't want anarchy, do you?" without realizing that as people become desperate, plenty of nutt'in begins to seem like a pretty good deal.
I purposely did not choose the word majority, I chose "growing plurality."
The American Revolution was fought and won by one-third of America. One-third where loyalists and one-third didn't give a damn and stayed neutral, yet here we are with a the majority retconing a story about how the majority of American's fought and won the Revolution.
To your point, I wear a mask, but go ahead and keep telling the 25% who don't to go fuck themselves because under our democracy the 51% decide everything.
Then you can act shocked when they turn their back on democracy.
«Mass journalism is a powerful force in society, but not an independent one. It always, in the end, follows the larger forces, especially the money and the interests of the people with money.»
American (and not just american) media and politics are largely "pay per play", and your story has a background: there used to be a greater diversity of "sponsors", in particular the labor unions were also buyers of political and media influence. Since the labor unions have been cut down to size the only significant "sponsors" for politicians and media have been factions of the hard right, whether the tradcon (largely Republican) hard right, or the neoliberal (both Democratic and Republican) hard right. My usual quote from an interview with Ralph Nader:
“in 1979. Tony Coelho, who was a congressman from California, and who ran the House Democratic Campaign treasure chest, convinced the Democrats that they should bid for corporate money, corporate PACs, that they could raise a lot of money. Why leave it up to Republicans and simply rely on the dwindling labor union base for money, when you had a huge honeypot in the corporate area? And they did.”
Your astute and experientially informed thoughts, bolstered so insightfully by Areslent's cogent response, combine to clearly inform our beloved society of the underlying circumstances that have caused the wanton betrayal of the public trust by those who have profited most by its founding tenets. The public good must come before private advantage.
The "findings" of the Mueller rept. are as consequential as the finding of WMDs in Iraq. Yes, there was something there, but so little and what was there was of such inconsequence as to be worthless. That Bradlee cannot see that, indeed is still hanging on what was truly a witch-hunt, is frankly pathetic.
I comment here at Taibi's joint because I am willing to put the money for what he generally writes. I am not always interested in the subject, but I overall trust Matt to put up good writing that is solidly researched. And I am well aware that it might not comport with what I want to hear, and that is more than OK, it is a huge chunk of why I trust him.
Newspapers screwed up when they let advertising and classified become the primary source of income, as that was easy money at the time, and now, when it really seems to matter they have lost the focus of why people will pay for real news and not fluff.
Matt’s closing reminded me of this quote, “History has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world... I am arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather that the memory of history has been reconstructed by the elite, because the overwhelming majority of ordinary people rarely leave sufficient primary documents; they do not have others recording their lives in real time." -Min Jin Lee. The loss of local papers only exacerbates this problem.
«Remember the “working people”? They are the ones who went to work every day during Covid so that preppy elites could hide in their houses.»
The most outrageous aspect of the COVID story is that the countries that adopted a mass test-trace and isolate approach had both tiny sickness and death rates, and negligible to none hit on jobs and businesses, and yet the governments of the USA and UK did not adopt that approach because:
* Ideologically, it is "collectivist", because it means that the government has to fund and organize a test-trace-isolate system. That is incompatible with reaganism and the sacred principle that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help’”. Besides the approach of doing half-baked lock-downs and vaccinations gives the opportunity for a massive "big pharma saviours of humanity" propaganda campaign.
* Practically, as your write, the biggest risks and losses with the half-baked lock-down approach have been taken by lower income workers and small businesses, people like delivery drivers and bar owners, while the financial sector, investors, and upper-middle class professionals have done pretty well.
I find it hilarious that anyone who is a serious newspaperman could state that the Mueller Report was an accomplishment for the mainstream media is mind-boggling. It was one of the most horrifying journalistic travesties in all of our lifetimes. "The Mueller report documented dozens and dozens of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives." NO, actually the Mueller Report clearly stated in 4 PLACES that the report could not establish ANY IMPROPER CONTACTS BETWEEN THE TRUMP CAMPAIGN AND ANY RUSSIANS. It literally says that FOUR TIMES!
The Clintons and Bidens take home tens of millions from Russia and the media ignores it. Meanwhile any Russian even speaking to someone in the Trump campaign, who may not even know who they are, is considered having committed a crime.
Is is all so stupid. Anyone that takes it seriously needs their head examined.
Exactly, NYT does a “gazillion” word story on Trump but not one, significant” word about Clinton. That’s why nobody pays attention to the rags!
Absolutely!!
Yep. Reading 'Clinton Cash' was revelatory. There is an indictment on every other page. Of course, that implies that someone with the ability to prosecute had any inclination to do so.
Think i remember Preet was on it at one point there. But he was never going to be allowed to.
Not sure if he was really 'on it' or if that was all just optics so someone at the DOJ could then say 'Hey, we investigated all of this, but gee, nothing here folks.' Sort of like Hillary's missing email 'investigation'.
Truly!! That Clinton fund, greatest shakedown in history!! That organization is due some journalistic scrutiny!!
Won't happen until they're dead.
May not happen after they're dead.
...did you mean Chelsea, too? I don't give Bill a lot longer. He looks like Skeletor from the old He-Man cartoon. But he has the best health care money can buy, so who knows.
[imagines Slick Willie evolving into 103-year-old Kirk Douglas, has brain seizure, dies]
There is also the corruption of the intel agencies( there are so many now that it's hard to single out one for blame). The false premise of the Mueller Report was never addressed.
It's all the same multi-dimensional ouroboros. "Unnamed Sources,' 'off-the-record, 'anonymous sources.' These are the neural networks that feed the beast. Do yourself (anyone) a favor and sit down with all the known facts about the Steele Dossier and try to convince yourself that this was anything but a cabal of fraud, forgery and conspiracy dressed up in malevolent intent! All the actors were present: FBI, CIA, MI6, Media, McCain, Hillary and DNC, Perkins Coie.
Very sad and dangerous that they got away with it.
Great list, but you left out perhaps the most egregious version of this in my local paper:
"According to Police" and "According to Prosecutors."
Given their respective qualified and absolute immunity, that phrase means I should disregard as fabrication anything in the sentence that comes after that lawyered up "well they said it, not me!" phrase.
And, compared to a couple hundred MAGA hats wandering through the Capitol Building, it REALLY WAS an "attempted coup".
I prefer to get my information from “experts” , they seem so much more reliable than “anonymous” sources
They flip flop between "experts" and "anonymous" depending upon the subject matter but I'm pretty sure that they are always using John Brennan as the source.
yeah, because what the incest media refused to report to their hordes of morons was that each and every administration would have contacts with any country that we have diplomacy with. it was an obscene exercise in agitation of idiots.
It was the Qanon of the who's who at cocktail parties.
I did notice Bradlee's comment. The way he tried to still give the Mueller report some legitimacy despite also acknowledging that it had failed only shows you how beholden he is to his class. He reminds of certain aristocrats of old who knew their ruling class had failed badly (like the French aristocracy in the late 18th century) but couldn't bring themselves to completely disavow their class either. The tragedy of a good and honest man who is trapped by the same code that gave him so much legitimacy at the same time.
Nicely put. We all get “trapped” at times
But it revealed the SHOCKING REVELATION that Russia tried to disrupt/influence our election!! So glad the good old USA NEVER tries to interfere with other countries!!
They spent over $16,000 dollars!! Good thing our media donated a few billions in free party advocacy to the Dems, eh? At least they're Americans. Sort of.
We would never do that. The intelligence agencies are above such tactics.
Well, except for Iran ... and Vietnam ... and Chile ... Let's talk about something else.
And that's before you get to South and Central America.
«The Mueller report documented dozens and dozens of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives." NO, actually the Mueller Report clearly stated in 4 PLACES that the report could not establish ANY IMPROPER CONTACTS»
But Ben Bradlee is an experienced wordsmith and knows how to word smears: he did not claim that the "dozens and dozens of interactions between the Trump campaign and Russian operatives" were *improper*, or were between Trump and russian state agents. It was just "some people who were campaigning for Trump at some point occasionally were contacted by some russian people".
It is extremely difficult to live in a city like NYC, work in the real estate industry, and not have contacts with Russian people.
Completely agree. It was a witch hunt.
Actually a “witch hunt” would be an investigation of Hillary😎
Thanks for saying that in capital letters!
YOU'RE WELCOME
Mainstream media makes it all about Democrats vs. Republicans. The reality is that the electorate is over 40% Independents, and "leaners" doesn't really cover it. Democrats have a bigger problem i think in that they assume that if we're not Republicans, we have nowhere else to go. The tried their best to shove Hillary Clinton down our throats, and it turned out that we actually did have somewhere else to go. Whether it was third party, write in, Trump, or the couch.
The Democratic media seems to have the same problem. If we're not interested in Fox News, we have no alternative than to read the Wapo or the NYT or the other Dem mags, and swallow their biases and viewpoints and agendas whole. Well, Substack gives us somewhere to go, no wonder they're crapping bricks. And what should make them crap even more is that we're a range from Bernie supporters disgusted with the Dems over to conservatives disgusted with the Republicans. And we have common ground. Never stop, Matt, and thank you.
Substack being a place to go is why the mainstream media figures have been trashing it lately. Substack has been denigrated and its political writers, Matt, Greenwald and the bunch, have been smeared for their refusal to bow to the dictates of the self-appointed guardians of the mainstream gate. It's been ugly at times. This for reporting pesky facts in opposition to fantasy scenarios spread relentlessly by the pampered stenographers serving power.
The blue collar alliance between Bernie voters and Republicans is endlessly fascinating to me.
Think what you may about Trump, the guy really blew up the GOP. I, for one, view this as a net positive.
Now will someone pretty please blow up the DNC? (legal disclaimer for this sentence: ironic intent, not actual terrorist threat, not "hate speech")
That's the most amazing thing. For years, the DNC and the WaPo and NYT have been "Fuck the GOP!" and finally someone does just that... and they decided that he was even worse?
Maybe they secretly liked the GOP they way it was? Like the girl in 8th grade who pretends to scorn you but then covertly passes you love notes?
There's too much trust, if not worship, of the DNC as an institution by mainstream dems for the party to ever be blown up. Their most educated voters should know better by now, but they also happen to be the most gullible and least skeptical people in general.
It is all about class. Think about the typical upper middle class professional (we will exclude the truly wealthy, who in fact run everything, but the UMC sets the cultural table and tilts the elections).
A typical UMC person deals with smart, nice people all day, is pulling down hundreds of thousands of dollars each year (and more, if he lives in an expensive urban center), his kids are going to good schools (either pocketed public schools in wealthy neighborhoods or private schools), crime is low where he lives and on and on. His sense making has always been provided by the received wisdom in those good schools growing up and by the usual media suspects: NYT, WAPO, the Atlantic, PBS, NBC, etc.
He goes from good job to good neighborhood and there is nary a discouraging word to break up that rosy picture of things. And if then the NYT tells you that something is amiss, you instinctively believe them since they have been your faithful media companion all along life's journey. And it is, after all, what the smart folks read.
In short it is this closeted and very pleasant endogamy that proves so resistant to self awareness and change.
It's wild, isn't it? Wealthy, highly educated liberal Boomers are objectively not stupid people, yet they buy into the DNC's shit.
...maybe the key parts here are not "educated," but "wealthy" and "buy into." Hoist by my own petard once again!
Their retirement accounts and kids' college funds depend on the stability of the current system, regardless of its systematic negative effects on their societal inferiors. They delude themselves into believing they are virtuous by shitting out the faux empathetic language of "allyship" while giving up nothing materially and voting to maintain their wealth and status. It's a simple equation for simple people.
Zero love here for the DNC and RNC, but, how does all the buffoonery cum criminality translate into Trump as a positive force? When, besieged on all sides with decent folks looking for a savior…how does that become Trump as a force for “good”? The guy is a complete shyster. If he hadn’t started out with Daddy’s half billion dollar fortune, he’d have been deep frying chicken somewhere. It’s kinda like “having lost sight of our objectives, we redoubled our efforts”.
"how does all the buffoonery cum criminality translate into Trump as a positive force?"
Please see Scott's comment below.
He was a bull in a china shop full of low-quality overpriced china. Just because you don't liked getting ripped off doesn't necessarily mean you endorse bulls.
Actually, scratch that. I do endorse bulls. Ferdinand The Bull 4 Prez 2024!
I think Pete Buttigieg got it right - Trump voters wanted to blow the place up. I would have never voted for him, but i get it.
The issue isn't Trump's many faults. It's that there was no one else saying what he was saying. The other Republicans were mouthing the same BS of the past. Trump, for all his psychological issues, and under impressive intellect was saying things that were true that no one else was saying. Perhaps he was too self involved or naive to understand how radical it was to say anything that reeked of common sense--like outsourcing everything to the Chinese. Fundamentally, Trump did blow up the uniparty--masquarading as an opposition GOP. All the narratives changed and MAGA was born--including new alliances. Whether intentional or not, he did the greatest service to this country by exposing the corruption of too many institutions. Unfortunately, he put too many establishment Republicans in his administration and was feckless as a CEO. Worst of all, he let corrupt Mitch McConnell influence him. A Mueller would never have been appointed for the Biden corruption--something very real. We have a laptop. With Trump, the Republicans, in control of all 3 branches of government, agreed to Mueller and the Russia collusion lie. I am also upset about Mike Pompeo, who did a great job as Secretary of State. But what did he do at CIA??? No one has questioned his first year as CIA head.
He blew it up but we need to insure it stays dead. I hate the Republicans just a little less then the DEMS. uniparty is destroying our country.
He exposed everything on both sides of the aisle and throughout the media and the MIC. It is all quite remarkable.
The DNC is - according Dan McCarthy in my latest SECTATOR is blowing itself up - maybe you don't notice because it has a pretty large and unfortunately successful PR department - discussed at length in this MONK debate (luv em on audio just as much as the C-Span version with audience participation/voting) -
The demise of the 'MSM' and the 'its ok' - is more to my view like the old Hollywood system - lots of behind the sense machiavellianism - making it so difficult for ordinary people to even find out what the hell is happening...
The movie LA CONFIDENTIAL comes to mind...Rolo Tamassi - is all over most of what Ben Bradley Jr tries to pan of as excuses for abhorrent and just out right corrupt practices that are a hallmark of his and his colleagues entire careers...
His use - and misuse of the Muller Report is enough to barf and literally choke on it....it is the encapsulazation of the mindset of the successful - in his case - son of the Giant...and of course one reads in his bio what is Ben Jr doing now that he is in comfy semi-retirement?
Working on a book about DANIEL ELLSBERG - YET ANOTHER HAGOGRAPHY ABOUT one of THE A SEMINAL 'FOUNDING FATHER'S' OF THE majical mystery tour that kicked off why journalism is floundering in the wasteland of for profit lying and stealing and war-mongering...
Contrast that with MT bemoaning the conformist mentality (again an 'accomplishment' of the Bradly era - from him and his esteemed colleagues) in newsrooms - with he kind of lone wolf personality disorder independent journo's of the golden era - like Sy Hersh - who were pricks extraordinaire - who did not festoon their wall with Pulitzers - (although they earned some) to ensure bigger and bigger advances on more and more book contracts...
And is it any wonder 1/4 to 1/3 of the country is a news desert?
This is why MT and Glenn Greenwald are such stalwarts - because of the fucking Ben Bradley Jr effect - and like hollywood in that post depression 'golden era' it was incestuously inbred....at the top...and thus more easily managed and controlled...
1) If you think Curtis Hanson's L. A. CONFIDENTIAL is a good movie (and it is!), James Ellroy's novel will blow your mind.
2) MT and KH did an interview with Ellsberg on Useful Idiots a few weeks back. If you haven't seen it yet, it's worth looking up.
What does “blow it up” mean after the slogan part? Is the idea to strip the bones, and a functional system will osmotically form into place?
It's more of a "it couldn't be any worse than it is now, and I can stick it to the man" mentality.
That's up to GOP and Dem voters.
I'm only trying to convey the idea that whatever the GOP had been doing up to the point of DJT winning the primary in '16 clearly was no longer satisfying the majority of its base.
I don't think I really need 'em (yet); I'm just being mildly sarcastic.
Some dude (or lady) (handle: "Science Does Not Care") got chastised by MT a short while ago for "wishing" Rachel Maddow would get hit in a drone strike, in what was obviously an ironic and not sincere remark.
I don't know where the tripwire is, given MT's longtime advocacy of free speech. I just feel like the guy who knows he's stepped on a landmine and can't get off until it's disarmed. Being a total dumbass, I choose to dance a jig on the landmine.
While not a Republican by any means, I would certainly be considered on the right by most of the people here, and live amongst the Trumpers. Also, important to note I live in an area that features a heavy population of those sorts of Republicans, so take it with a grain of salt, but...
Having engaged quite a bit with Marx (and disagreeing pretty sustainedly on a lot of things), I respect on some level that his political project was about freedom, but worry about the people who run such systems.
The blue collar alliance, I think, exists because those right-leaners who like Bernie feel intuitively about him the way I do about Marx, and in this case, they agree with him on enough things that his personality (his personality!) is the thing that wins them over.
They trust the old socialist to speak his mind, if nothing else, which goes a very long way with them.
Two things can be true at the same time. It is possible for blue collar Republicans to understand why workers unionize and to inherently distrust those who run the unions.
Remember when Hillary started to run in '16, Obama was still trying to die on the TPP hill on his way out. I'm convinced that it was that trade deal that went a long way toward helping both Bernie and Trump, and explained a lot of that 10% crossover of Bernie primary voters who went for Trump in November. That and Hillary's campaign itself, surely the flat out dumbest and most incomptent i've seen in my voting lifetime.
Yes, but Bernie merged his fortunes with Hillary shortly after, ..and then again, with Biden in 2020, leaving him a wimpy, hopeless prospect in the margins of history. Trump started out as loose cannon, but never had the savvy to expand his leadership beyond his enraged base. In the end he didn't even pardon Julien Assange! He left the country more polarized than ever. Yet, I'm convinced that he was right about voter fraud, but unable to express it in non-partisan terms despite the evidence from those on the left that it existed beyond his farcical accusations. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcQ5x_LFkDA
Check out any and all you can find on Walter Reuther, and Henry Wallace. Every time we get close to some level of genuine class progress it gets co-opted by the
Republocrat powers that be.
Dr. Pfisterer...what a disappointment - THE REUTHER'S WERE THE ABSOLUTE RUNIATION OF TRADE UNIONISM. From the moment Jimmy Hoffa went to jail for - what actually - the crap version of process crime today - tax evastion - the virutal end of the working class worker representation became an abstract practice for the parasitical 'company union' birthed by the receivership maned as it has been over many decades starting in the 1970.
Bobby the saint Kennedy started this all with his racketeering crusade - and why did Hoffa hate him so much for these efforts - besides the mob connections - BECAUSE HIS FATHER WAS F'ING JOE KENNEDY SENIOR...
in the first 20 years the Feds developed the infrastructor to dismantle Big Labor - and then - recreate it in the Great Society Dem moldy mold - and what do we see?
A 70 direct line of declining standards of living and a unionism that is dominated by Government goons....
This is the Reuther Wallace legacy /// hell on earth - and tyranny.
Give me the Mob any day ...at least you could drive a milk truck and feed you're family...
Now like at the 15 Criminal Crime Families of Washington DC - most have D next to their names - but plenty have R as well...
Bernie is authentic and consistent. Anti corporate. I disagree with him.
True populism is trans-racial.
https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/10/thomas-franks-essential-insight-true-populism-is-transracial-an-interview-review-of-the-people-no-a-brief-history-of-anti-populism-by-thomas-fra.html
Do you know who made that same argument 51 years ago before being murdered by a collaboration between the FBI and the Chicago Police?
Fred Hampton, leader of the Black Panthers.
It's A Class Struggle Goddammit!, November, 1969
https://lfks.net/en/content/fred-hampton-its-class-struggle-goddammit-november-1969
Fred Hampton would get "canceled" today if he hadn't gotten canceled for real in 1969.
I wish Thomas Frank would get a Substack. Maybe Matt can put in a word.
There are a series of wonderful interviews on Matt and Katie's Useful Idiot podcasts with Thomas Franks. Free-flowing, heartfelt, funny. Some of their best work IMO.
"You are deceived and blinded that you may not see how this race antagonism perpetuates a monetary system which beggars both."
- Tom Watson
Naturally, they are still using this tactic to great effect to this day. Racial animus is the wedge of power for our bettors. The introductory paragraph says it all.
"In his new history of anti-populism, Thomas Frank’s most stunning insight is this: In the 1890s, in the states of the Old Confederacy, the threat of “a political union” between poor black Republicans and poor white Populists so panicked the ruling post-Reconstruction Bourbon Democrats that their official, narcotizing lie of white solidarity was weaponized into the inhumanly degrading dogma of white supremacy."
please give title to link!
It's there. If you press on the link. But you have to scroll down a little to get to the article on 'true populism is transracial.'
Wow....just took a glance ....been dusting off some of my Richard Hofstadter's work on populism from this era and now see Frank's been on to the same thing I 've had in mind - there are so many parallels - particularly the domination of captial over - as then - the destruction of 'labor' in our implicit enumerable rights...
Franks work looks quite promising - and an understandable follow up to his book on how the Dems have abandoned the working and middle class American for the grandee billionaire globalists seeking to destroy representative democracy in favor of the rule of international tribunials....everything from the UN to the WTO and IMF and everything in between...
Any thing and everything except freely elected self governing pols...
Well, it was starting to happen in congress too - Bernie and Josh Hawley teaming up to get cash stim payments to the poor proles while Pelosi was getting a blow dry. Or Ro Khanna and Matt Gaetz teaming up until Gaetz imploded. Even now, maybe watch this space to see if Ted Cruz and Rubio team up with Bernie against big tech and biz.
It sort of cracks me up to see all of the flaming hissy fits by the Dems on Matt or Greenwald's Twitter threads from posters who think they're right wingers now. Um, not quite, they were Bernie supporters.
Good analysis of the current voter mood in the country. Fwiw, I get my national news feeds from Reason and the NY Post-they both do a good job of being gimlet eyed to both sides, and Reason suits me editorially as a libertarian.
The MSM problem is really much bigger on television than on the web-as mentioned I can find outlets on the web that don’t annoy me, on TV it’s Kennedy and Gutfeld on Fox and that’s about it-no real independent gadflies. Frontline and Independent Lens are still good.
Yep, the NY Post is the star now. When I was a kid, it was a bottom feeding tabloid. I’ve been reading it every day now for about two years. It has a conservative working class edge where they tell it like it is. If you understand the slant, you can ignore some of the nonsense that it dwells on. Hard to believe I read it to see what the real score is, but that’s our world now. I don’t watch any tv news. I can read much faster than people can talk and I don’t like wasting my time, especially on people who I don’t want in my living room.
The Post has always been a sneaky good newspaper. NYC old-school journalism. Great sports, metro biz and real estate sections (certainly better than the decrepit Grey Lady) And the headlines actually are part of the greatness. To be able to condense many facts into a three-word headline that is shorter than the subject's name, well, that's brilliant: https://external-content.duckduckgo.com/iu/?u=https%3A%2F%2Ftse2.mm.bing.net%2Fth%3Fid%3DOIP.vesuNsTNKDsKCjhb3uGuDwAAAA%26pid%3DApi&f=1
Headless Body in Topless Bar. Gold standard.
Agreed. I read a lot of different media perspectives, yet I always come back to the NYP as the anchor. Yeah, they push a little too hard now and then, but they cover stuff the left-leaning MSM simply refuse to cover. Latest one was Sara Lind's awful campaign manager Quinn Mootz saying the UWS was "too white and Jewish" then literally flamethrowing everyone on her Twitter feed. Crickets from all major news sources, but the NYP correctly reported what happened.
@ Wally,
Diff'rent strokes for diff'rent folks, but have you no hesitation over the fact that the NYPost is *still a Rupert Murdock production ? For some people that fact is probably a "feature", not a "bug" ! ;-D
One corporate mogul is as good, or bad, as another. I read everything critically and I like the class view of the writing when they take down the pretensions of the rich and famous. I discount the shilling for the Republicans just as I discount the shilling for the Democratics in other publications. Tweedle dee and tweedle dum.
Rupert Murdoch, AJ Sulzberger, Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs' Wife... who gives a shit. Someone has to pay the bank when the ad sales unit fucks up.
Politico isn't half bad for news and analysis. They're becoming more Deomcratic, but they're still a lot more balanced than the mainstream rags. And they're newsletters can be quite good, especially the Transition nighttime one.
Realclearpolitics is a good site which features both sides of a story.
I enjoy RealClear. A lot of other areas of the site are great reading too. RealClearInvestigations does a lot of long-form. I try to choke down articles I know are propaganda or simply contrary to my opinion, just to be sure I am at least trying to avoid my own blind spots. Reading so many sources also exposes an interesting characteristic: which news sources allow comments. I think those more confident in their accuracy and truthful in their reporting allow comments. Not a solid "rule," but a willingness to expose your reporting to criticism and reader opinion says something. I know it often devolves into an obscure fish-tank scum of discussion, but is usually very revealing. I enjoy substack comments nearly as much as the articles I read here (I subscribe to several).
When The New Yorker killed their comments section it was a real tell. It's not even a "news" publication, more of an "arts, culture, and opinion" publication. Another formerly decent publication sinking to the bottom because the party line is more important than letting diverse voices be heard...
If you were to have told me 25 years ago that in the future I would hold the NY Post in greater esteem than The New Yorker, I would have scoffed. Today is the future. Here we are.
Gimlet-eyed into the future, Good Sir! I shall tarry along with you until my last breath. *gimlet in hand and one in holster*
Is that the one with the pearl onion? Gibson maybe? Oh, whatever, carry on. Because...Vodka!
I think a gimlet has lime juice......as you say, Vodka!!!!!
A gimlet is vodka and lime juice, or lime syrup for those wanting sweet and a desire to vomit. A gimlet is also a sharp pointed tool, i.e., gimlet eyed means someone looking sharply or pointedly at someone/something.
I've gone to English papers, from the Times to some of the tabloids, both to find out what is really going on here and to simply get away from dogmatic news. So have many others. Some are pretty risqué and gloriously outspoken. But you've got to wend your way through blimpy Kardashian bums and bazooms. What's with that?
@Susan Russell
Standard in tabloids: "Sex Sells" ! And, in the case of tabloids, it is also usually ALL they have to offer !
I'm not impressed by the English papers in terms of finding out what's really going on here. They see us through their own filter which is very distorted. As bad as our papers are, theirs are worse for that. I read their papers to see what's going on over there.
Distorted by what? This story is one of many that ever saw the light of day in the U.S. press
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/woke-wars-at-new-yorks-elite-schools-fees-50-000-z8pr36cs6?eType=EmailBlastContent&eId=8fd7cf60-d9ef-4bcf-9651-5365bcb51c75k
I can no longer tolerate U.S. "news." I guess I'm pretending I don't live here.
NY Post had stuff out that school
Sure it did. NYT, The Atlantic, Bari Weiss, etc.
According to the 2020 census, there are 330 million Americans.
Approximately 75 million of whom are under 18 and ineligible to vote. That leaves 255 million.
According to some, the number of "undocumented" aliens is around 15 million. That leaves 240 million.
The turnout of Biden and Trump voters was unprecedented - the MOST EVER! at 155 Million total votes. That leaves 85 Million.
WHICH IS MORE THAN THE TOTAL NUMBER OF PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR JOE BIDEN, ostensibly the "most popular" candidate ever.
More people choose none of the above.
@ rtj
Just *SO ! Great comment, cogent analysis !
Matt's closing statement about the need for local journalists is a laser--I think Mike Royko (Chicago), Herb Caen (SF) , John Ralston (LV), Steve Otto (Tampa). They were all white males who knew politics and government. Diversification of voices was needed, of course, but it didn't happen. These fellows retired or died and they were not replaced with anyone.
It wasn’t just white males-I recently read a bio of HL Mencken, and it seemed that his favorite newspaperman was Robert L Vann, the editor of the Pittsburgh Courier, the legendary African American paper. Black community newspapers have gotten whacked as hard as anyone else-and a lot of regular black voices have been silenced.
or they were replaced by some unqualified individual that met some quota check-off box.
As far as I could tell they just weren't replaced.That kind of voice wasn't seen as impt. by the newspapers. Or maybe there weren't writers who thought these were important beats.
Yes! During research for something pond- related I went through microfiched local newspapers from the early 1930s. So-and-so found a her lost dog. Articles about the original property owners, ice stating parties9n the pond-- who went to the party. John Smith was building a house based on a boat... personal things that connected people, plus serious subjects of course but so much was simply daily human events -- happy, sad, or interesting things, extremely local, that had nothing to do with ideology or grievance.
"of interesting things, extremely local. that had nothing to do with ideology or grievance..." Has a sadder epitaph ever been written for what once was?
They were also *unique voices. We do not see another Mark Twain, another Molly Ivins, et al. I join you in mourning the losses mentioned above, but when a voice IS that unique, I never even expect to see it "replaced." I also join you in wishing that we *could replace them !
Molly Ivins! yes. And of course not replace their style but be a person people looked to each day/ Is there anyone like that writing today? I guess some might say Maureen Dowd?
You know, Steinbeck saw the beginnings of that loss of localness, of regional dialects, customs, foods, manners, as early as the 60s. This grounding and rootedness would have held the US together, resisted this farcical but dangerous BS.
Does Jimmie Breslin fall into that category? I honestly don't know much about him, but everything of his I have ever read was just amazing. I get the impression controversy colored his later career. Prolly cranky old white guy stuff.
Breslin was the person Matt used as an example!
Whoops! How mortifying . . .
It was maybe the last sentence.
Jim Hightower and the late Molly Ivins represented an excellent example of "diversification of voices" in Texas journalism. Mr. Hightower still publishes his "HIGHTOWER LOWDOWN" newsletter for subscribers. (www.hightowerlowdown.org)
As Usual,
EA
Ben Bradlee says, "I think that the key thing is how do we come together on defining facts, so that there is less of a chasm between left and right on this? " But he's unwilling to concede the most obvious thing, that the media vastly overpromised and underdelivered on the so-called Russia collusion. He's part of the problem.
Exactly. The anticipated results of the Mueller Report were said to show Trump as a literal Russian asset and traitor. I have close friends who expected to see transcripts of Putin giving direct orders to Trump and for Trump to be literally dragged out of the White House in an orange jumpsuit. The bountygate story was even more pathetic but also more dangerous. You had morons like Ben Sasse calling for Russian soldiers to be brought back in body bags as retaliation. It's incredible how people like Ben Bradlee can brush this insanity off as minor mistakes.
Very dangerous misinformation campaigns.
I just find that "fact" is a dishonest term when used by media, for example, statements from "former intelligence sources". The media can say it's fact that "former intelligence agents say x". However, without knowing the source credentials, analyzing their bias, having an understanding of whether it's 1st, 2nd. 3rd, 4th hand info, and any other number of things, it's hard for the reader to have confidence in a statement. You also have no idea whether any scrutiny was made, or whether it's "I've got a juicy headline...just need to construct facts around it, and then stop."
The proof that is was a lie is that the Black Death, Eric Weismann, who wrote the second part of the report to try and get Trump impeached, never mentioned Fusion GPS once. The smear merchant at the heart of everything was not even mentioned once. Weismann should be rotting in GITMO. May his family name forever be cursed.
Believe you mean Andrew Weissmann, who had a bromance relationship with Mueller going back to Enron, where he obligingly took the heat off Dick Cheney and transferred the blame to Arthur Anderson accting. firm.https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2017/oct/22/christopher-wray-robert-muellers-top-prosecutor-kn/?utm_source=GOOGLE&utm_medium=cpc&utm_id=chacka&utm_campaign=TWT+-+DSA&gclid=EAIaIQobChMI8I6X24-x8AIV4R-tBh3ZpgutEAAYAiAAEgI7_PD_BwE
Yes. The man that destroyed 80,000 Arthur Anderson jobs and then was overruled by SCOTUS 9-0. But that didn’t help the 80,000 who lost their jobs, some never to recover. The man is pure evil and should punished by society.
He is evil
There is nothing more "former" than a former intelligence source.
Unless you're John Brennan, who STILL retains his security clearance. Why? To assist him in his gig at CNN?
Yes, a great source of misleading innuendo.
And the sentence that followed: "And that despite mistakes that are always made, that means trying to make those more and more rare, so that one side can't more easily scoff at the other, and more diligent fact-checking."
"Mistakes." That was cute.
Agreed
Thank you so much for your concluding comments. The people inside the Washington “bubble” are an incestuous, arrogant gentry who have no interest in how people in middle America live or think. The preppy elites on both coasts are mainly ignorant about blue collar America. They ignorantly ignore the fact that two thirds of US voters are non-college educated working people who are smarter than they know.
Other than some people on the right being the target of our disreputable media, there's really nothing new in any of this, and you then limit their lack of interest to only the working class people "in middle America", as though none exist along the coasts of this country, in a familiar refrain from the pity party snowflakes in flyover America. You're not the only ones getting shafted, if you look around. It is just this sort of tribalist thinking that those on the very top, both libs and cons, stoke to play their con, and it works.
In the 2003 WH correspondents' dinner, George W. Bush showed a video to the assembled that showed him looking, in a cute and clever way, for WMD in the Oval Office, and failing to find any, which, coincidentally, matched the reality in Iraq, because by that time, it had been admitted that none existed. Not that any of this mattered to those assembled, because they found it rip roaringly hilarious, perhaps because they, like W., had never been within 8,000 miles of combat, nor had any of their circle. Imagine being the president, who like his VP, not only lied us into war but were themselves both draft dodgers and still getting away with such behavior, not only getting away with it, but being the focus of admiring laughter.
Yes, they are the elite, they are out of touch, because they want to be, but the con is played by both the right and left media; to pretend otherwise is to prolong their undeserved position in society. See the problem in its entirety if fixing it is the objective.
I remember W. doing that, and Obama joking about sending predator drones to destroy some musical group that Sasha and Malia were infatuated with. Then there was the comedienne who ridiculed Sarah Sanders for her looks; Sanders sat and took it.
W. joked about WMD, Obama joked about predator drones, some comic made fun of Sarah Sanders' appearance. The correspondent's dinner used to be a venue for people to lay off the partisanship for an evening and laugh with each other, no more, there's been a complete collapse of manners in DC. I respected Trump for refusing to attend.
you said, "that they're going to be devoted to pursuing the same ideological framework. "
It seems to me, it's more like the mainstream media aren't all just devoted to pursuing the same ideological framework-- they are all devoted to pursuing the same ideological outcome. Their goal has ceased being 'reporting the news'. Their goal now is 'social change'. And that goals has become so important to them, they have completely sacrificed honesty and objectivity in reporting to try to achieve it. Which means what the mainstream media is peddling now isn't 'news'-- it is 'propaganda'. No thanks. As far as I can see, the sooner mainstream media dies, the better off we will all be. Better to be ignorant than to rely on professional liars.
I disagree with your comment only on this point: "Their goal now is 'social change'."
I think the goal is "social stay the same."
Excellent point. It is both the perception of change and the maintenance of order. This is the most galling aspect of the use of identity politics, and the cultivation of crt as the stand alone boobie prize (elevated and divisive individual "marginal" storytellers equalling meaningful redress of poverty and all of its outcomes) instead of actual resources that could threaten the internal economic hegemony. Its the ordination of neocolonialist power structure internally. That intersectional humans of the cia video is the epitome of this.
Excellent substantive comment; I'm glad that the flippant garbage I throw out can lead to something like this.
"Its the ordination of neocolonialist power structure internally"
The neocolonialist power structure requires The Enemy. The collapse of the USSR and the end of the Cold War was the worst thing that ever happened to its business model.
The Cycle of Official Enemies is telling:
In the '90s it was "domestic white supremacists" (Tim McVeigh, Randy Weaver, David Koresh, Ted Kaczynski). In the '00s it was "Islamofascist terrorists" (a.k.a. poor Muslim people in faraway countries). When Trump won in '16 it was Russia (which makes a great second-stage villain when it isn't collapsing and can't be looted by international finance).
I think it's going to be "white supremacists -- domestic terrorists -- insurrectionists" again.
Agree with your points. Also, hasn’t the definition of “white supremacists” expanded exponentially since the 90’s? Where even our UN ambassador is calling the U.S. a white supremacist country in front of the entire United Nations. Which is convenient for the national security state, they have all kinds of permission to spy on all of us since we may all be a white supremacist terrorist.
What could possibly go wrong?
Re: grisha koshmarov Apr 5 @~1PM PCT
One of your latter observations....
"When Trump won in '16 it was Russia (which makes a great second-stage villain when it isn't collapsing and can't be looted by international finance)."
...prompted my recollection of Naomi Klein's excellent book, "THE SHOCK DOCTRINE--The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".
No doubt, the fabrication and public propagandizing of Official Enemy constructs is, indeed, a required ingredient of said "neocolonialist power structures". It's a large scale modern day hybrid of a "bait & switch" scheme, designed, of course, to distract the attention of and manipulate the reasoning of public opinion.
You close forecasting...
"I think it's going to be "white supremacists -- domestic terrorists -- insurrectionists" again."
..and I think you may be on to something, especially if these particular fringe elements are all armed with 5g cell-phones in addition to their already amassed collections of military-grade weapons.
Will the majority of our citizens actually be able to make a distinction between such a future Official Enemy, and one that may actually socially 'evolve'?
As Usual,
EA
Even a blind squirrel finds a nut sometimes.
They are assiduously trying to change our culture and society.
I refer to M.'s point above -- I think all the culture war "woke" stuff is now being actively exploited (even if it was not originally engineered) by vested financial interests.
If you can make someone hate someone who has a different skin color, it's easier to pick his pocket while he's glaring at them.
Ben: “We can't have the thought police intervening to that extent.”
Not. “We can’t have the Thought Police.” or “The Thought Police is an Orwellian nightmare come true we must fight against to our dying breath.”. Not even “Policing thought is the most anti-American concept imaginable.”
No. Nothing like that. We can have Thought Police. Just not to the extent a NYTimes editor gets fired by them. One can only hope Ben knows this was a very poorly worded statement. If he supports Thought Police then he can share the media’s fate and I won’t lose any sleep over it.
"To that extent..." It's all parsing of words. Coded in his every comment was a 'keep-the-line-drawn' where enlightened seers --such as Ben-- can provide the last word. Give the libertarian an atta boy every now and then. Nurture real Progressives with an 'inclusive stance' on their...'platform.' God, I wish George Carlin was alive to riff on this utter shit-show.
Being tornado season in the Midwest, I was thinking today about how Carlin would have gotten nailed for his meteorological musings-“Do you ever notice that Jews never get affected by tornadoes?!?!”
We are “lucky” that The NY Times/legacy media version of the Thought Police are also Keystone Kops in their practice, if not in their intent.....
And yet they are given the weight of "authority."
I have a great deal of respect for the work Mr. Bradlee has done over his career, but you have a good point here.
I remember during the protests over the Summer when some reporters were attacked as part of a larger group doing nothing illegal, their response was not "we have a 1st amendment right to be here, but "hey, you can't do that. I'm with the press!"
That implicit privilege due to their position is perhaps more infuriating to me than even the accuracy of their reporting.
We see it in their version of the 1st amendment:
"Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech of the press" FULL STOP
Meanwhile, they have no problem accusing someone like Julian Assange of "hiding behind the Constitution."
I think it’s because the majority of msm journalists all go to similar prep schools then to the same universities. Back in HL Mencken’s day there was no degree necessary to become a journalist. They were hard scrabble working people, they got down and dirty. The post credentialism era sees these schools pumping out the same stepford journalist clones.
Strongly agree that the classism of the modern media is a problem, and you should be commended for your self-awareness, Matt.
An uncomfortable corollary: I suspect it's also driven by the class backgrounds of media consumers. This dynamic of rich people preaching to other rich people about how aggrieved they are leads to absurd situations.
For example, there is a huge volume of written material describing capitalism as sexist because this or that product is marketed to women in a differential manner. However, this is primarily a function of the fact that women control something like three-quarters of consumer spending. If it were the inverse, they would also cry sexism as well. It's all sexism, all the time.
Meanwhile, you have a guy with the qualifications of Paris Hilton (heir, real estate fortune, reality tv star, fake tan), and no one thinks to make the comparison. However, doing exactly that would be a blatant admission that they and their entire social class are an utter joke.
I can't even read anything when it is colored so fundamentally by "identity politics," a term I hate but there is no better term at the moment. If it's examined through that prism it is worthless because there is only one potential message that comes out of it: that perspective is ALL that matters. Really? Is that the only way you can get the story is if a woman writes about it from a female perspective? My whole adult life was about trying to be as good as or better than my male counterparts. Sexism was just another obstacle among many. You just have to be that much better. But if you start grading on a curve to allow more women to become prominent voices just because they're women, where is the worth in that.
It's also just so boring. I've stopped subscribing to any news sources other than various substacks and I've pretty much stopped watching any new TV or movies over the past year. I understand that some of the goals of identity politics are noble but it is such a genuinely boring lens through which to view the world that when you make that your only mode of telling a story everything becomes unreadable/unwatchable. People can only take so much moralizing before they simply tune out!
Agree but I do follow NewsNation which seems to be facts and not identity politics.
Thanks for the recommendation.
Sasha, funny you say that- this is reminiscent of a conversation I had with a friend awhile ago when I expressed fears about being a father to girls these days (he has three awesome ones). He was taken aback that preferential hiring policies would make me concerned.
Not only do such policies devalue female achievement, I genuinely believe such policies exacerbate rather than mitigate sexism (depending on one’s definition of a sticky term). If you want to give people an excuse to distrust a female pilot, say you’re going to deliberately lower standards so as to hire female pilots. The end result, I fear, would be a world where one side infantilizes women and the other utterly distrusts them (if that’s not a false prophecy for its already having happened).
You allude to the salient point- is it fair that a woman needs to struggle against sexism? No, but the flip side is that it makes her achievements legitimately wayyy more impressive.
Which isn’t to say that there aren’t things can’t be improved far further, or justification for anything. I just feel the modern left is interested in political power at the cost of retrogression on such social matters.
I have two daughters...I don't think this is limited to hiring and achievement. Simple dating is a nightmare. My eldest was asked out by one of the Arab kids in one of her college courses (Saudi, if I remember correctly). He was nice enough, she just had no interest in dating him. She worried she was racist for declining. A few years later, my youngest was asked out by a black kid who was absolutely obnoxious in one of her college classes. She settled on a cup of coffee for fear of seeming racist, but hated every moment. She was terrified he'd ask her on a real date and she'd be racist for declining. I asked her if she accepted based on perceived racism, what would be her response if her date wanted to "do things" and she didn't? I told her this has to do with basic human attraction and interaction, nothing to do with race. She got the point and declined when he did ask. Tough world for them to navigate among such silliness.
@ Ph8drus
Well SAID ! (very cool online handle, BTW)
I am *so grateful to have raised my daughter *before all of this current madness began ! What women ask for is AGENCY. Then, they are *robbed of agency by all of this present day "woke" bilge water.
How can we teach a young woman to think for herself, chose for herself, and, *respect herself when social media madness is ripping at and destroying her self-confidence faster than she *can make up her mind ! There is no REAL reason that simple choices should now be so "fraught" for these teenagers. But it IS their world, and, for better or worse, it IS their "reality" !
I reiterate, I am endlessly grateful that my daughter narrowly *missed it all before becoming an adult. I am happy for *her, but I am *just as ecstatic for myself ! DAMN !
@ Sasha Stone .....
.... *PREcisely ! Well and trenchantly said !
" I suspect it's also driven by the class backgrounds of media consumers. "
Or the assumption of it anyway. NYT, which i no longer suscribe to, has a popup survey that they ask you to take. It asks for your profession and gives you choices. I couldn't finish the survey because there was nothing even remotely close to gig worker. And i wasn't going to lie and say i was managerial class.
I happen to be female. The sexism hook doesn't usually work on me. Neither does the likes of, say, Michelle Goldberg whining about how hard her life is either.
Haha, thank you for sharing this. The chutzpah is amazing... the newspaper that runs such gems as “ American Capitalism Is Brutal. You Can Trace That to the Plantation” has minted an absolute fortune in the last four years, all while apparently tacitly admitting they’re only interested in the readership of the bourgeoise.
There was this list before the election by the Ed Board there something like 50 Reasons to Vote for Joe Biden. I looked it over and commented something like, hmm, nothing about jobs, wages, or housing. Nothing about healthcare. But these are the issues i vote on. Why am I unsurprised. (I voted Green).
Thank you for voting Green. Have you looked for a local chapter to join? We need more people to grow the party. The Dembot media machine and the Dem party are using smears and bought off judges to keep us off the ballot.
No better plantation than the Ochs plantation. Has anyone at the Times ever uncovered how much money the current publisher of the Times inherited from his father?
Michelle Goldberg's life would be easier to navigate with a better haircut. /sexistsnark
Congratulations on dropping the subscription. I voted with my feet about four years ago when the craziness became too much for me. Have not looked back.
«However, this is primarily a function of the fact that women control something like three-quarters of consumer spending.»
I think that women also own 70-80% of all wealth, in part through their own savings but also much through inheritance and divorce. But the daughter or the wife or ex-wife or widow of a CEO is a victim of discrimination by white male deplorables working in warehouses.
Are you talking about Anderson Cooper? So many of them fit that description that I literally don't know who you mean, which is kind of funny and telling.
they're all the same kind of specimen. you can't get the job if you think for yourself.
"This dynamic of rich people preaching to other rich people about how aggrieved they are leads to absurd situations" I would add "dynamic of rich people preaching to other rich people about how aggrieved their lessers are."
He has rosacea, that's why he wears that heavy cover. Takes medication for it.
Or Meghan Markle as the media darling of racist oppression while we run the biggest prison system in the world with wide ranging disparities in sentencing, but not much worth covering.
Excellent insight
"We've lost thousands of local newspapers since the early 2000s. "
sounds like anti-competitive monopoly behavior was at play. multi-national corporations have basically bought up national media outlets as their very own agit-prop arms. they operate them at a loss, just like a monopoly to drive competition to the ground and don't really care if they even make a profit. like a cost of doing business for their other operations.
we need to bust trusts and cartels. they are running our country. health care, news, even politics.
why is it that Americans can't recognize ant-competitive behavior that is endorsed by government?
I was the editor for a small weekly community newspaper and we covered the the city council, park district, school board, local elections, etc. Our reporting was far better than the corporate regional paper based in our town (owned by Lee Enterprises). We were highly motivated to "out report" the larger, better-funded paper, which helped improve our coverage. All that stands to reason, yet our coverage forced the regional paper to do a better on covering our town since it was a bad look to get continually owned by a small independent weekly. Such competition, even at such a micro level, made a big difference in the overall quality of how local politics were covered in the region.
Bravo!
Great comment, but what happened to your little paper (and when)?
Thanks. It has a new publisher and is still going ... online at least. My run was about 15 years ago and I've since moved out of the area. Subsistence reporting and editing wasn't the worst gig ever. Local politics was actually blast to cover. Believe it or not, a race with a park district board president up for re-election can be just as electrifying as almost anything that happens nationally. It's a shame that all of that local color gets lost in the drive for profits.
Thanks for the reply.
My local newspaper is part of a group of newspapers currently being bought by a hedge fund. These papers will have the life sucked out of them until they don’t exist. It makes me so sad because my paper does actual investigative reporting on state and county government issues. Who will do this important work when they are gone?
"We can't have the thought police intervening to that extent."
this statement should have ended directly after the word police
Mr. Bradlee lost my respect with his knee-jerk response "Well, it wasn't a witch-hunt. I don't think we should lose sight of the fact that the Mueller report came up with the overarching finding of systematic Russian interference in the 2016 election and cited about 10 specific examples of obstruction of justice." The partisan Democrats just can't let go of it. It was a witch-hunt, there was a finding of attempted interference, and the bulk of the obstruction charges were process crimes triggered by the fact of the investigation.
This is great. Your voice should be the most influential and prominent right now, Matt. Instead you get chased around on Twitter by people who say you are no longer "pure" enough for the new Left. It's disgusting what has happened to journalism. The thing is, it DOES still exist. But the channels for it - social media - are corrupt beyond repair. If it doesn't happen on Twitter it doesn't happen. It has to go viral and all of that nonsense. We need, I think, more trustworthy aggregators. We need a Drudge Report for honest objective journalism people can check every day.
Reading Matt's Twitter feed is both funny and sad. It's amazing how many different ways people find to say, "What happened to you, man?" And not one of them seems to consider, maybe the dude is just trying to tell the truth.
What they mean is how dare you not agree with our collective mind, that tells you all you need to know.
"Collective mind" is an interesting concept. Maybe future cognitive scientists will smile at our ignorance about the dynamics of collective opinions.
There is a good book called the Smart Swarm that shows various beneficial actions of groups of different animals. Humans not so much.
Matt briefly alluded to this at the very end, but a key issue missing from almost all of the debate is emergence of a strong wave of anti-elitism or "populism" on both the right and the left over the last 30 to 40 years. This has come about not due to the rise of the internet or the collapse of the mainstream media's business model but due to the collapse of the middle and working class, and their communities, and the destabilizing levels of wealth and income inequality that have destroyed the nation's sense common purpose and faith in its institutions, not just in the mainstream media, but in federal and state governments, labor unions, corporations, universities, the health care system, both political parties, elections and "experts" of all kinds. They are no longer trusted - in fact are widely hated and resented - so why would journalists whose stock in trade is quoting them and citing them somehow escape. The system is not working for the great majority of Americans and they (correctly) see the mainstream media as agents of the system that is failing, even actively screwing, them. At the same time, the elite mainstream media is increasingly run by and for the "educated" elites who run these failing institutions. I went to an Ivy League journalism school, reported for mainstream newspapers for 30 years, was on the board of a national journalism organization, taught investigative reporting and have watched this sad decline accelerate since I got out of the business in 2006. Traditional media has some serious problems specific to itself that have made it more vulnerable to the larger trends and less able to play a remedial role in the larger decline of the society, but the overall decline of the society - it's failure and dysfunction for the large majority (while enriching the rich) - is the overarching problem. Many mainstream journalists, including myself, hoped to be part of the solution. Obviously things have not turned out as we'd hoped. In retrospect, we failed to clearly understand what was going around us. Ultimately, mainstream journalism as it now exists needs to crash and burn, which it is doing now and will not be a loss because it (including, especially, the "woke' careerists at the elite media) has fully signed on as defender of the elites against the internet rabble wherever privatized censorship and cancellation can be imposed. How this will all turn out I cannot say, but "Follow the money," is still as good a guide as any. Mass journalism is a powerful force in society, but not an independent one. It always, in the end, follows the larger forces, especially the money and the interests of the people with money.
Your excellent comment goes to the core of the Hobbesian deal we are all born into with the rise of the nation state primarily from the early 19th century along language, religious, cultural and in many cases ethnic lines.
The Nation State presumes that people with a shared identity will do better at looking after their own. In exchange for protection, functional institutions and infrastructure, people give the State a monopoly on the currency, the use of force, a portion of your productivity and an agreement to fight on the States behalf.
What happens, however, when a growing plurality comes to believe they are getting the raw end of this deal? Those who continue to benefit from that system, which typically includes the experts and elites, can't understand why those who no longer benefit as much as they lose are willing to blow the system up.
The elite tell them "Well you don't want anarchy, do you?" without realizing that as people become desperate, plenty of nutt'in begins to seem like a pretty good deal.
75 % of Americans want a national mask mandate. I doubt they will be rolling the dice on anarchy.
I purposely did not choose the word majority, I chose "growing plurality."
The American Revolution was fought and won by one-third of America. One-third where loyalists and one-third didn't give a damn and stayed neutral, yet here we are with a the majority retconing a story about how the majority of American's fought and won the Revolution.
To your point, I wear a mask, but go ahead and keep telling the 25% who don't to go fuck themselves because under our democracy the 51% decide everything.
Then you can act shocked when they turn their back on democracy.
@Arslent
*Stellar Comment !
KUDOS !
«Mass journalism is a powerful force in society, but not an independent one. It always, in the end, follows the larger forces, especially the money and the interests of the people with money.»
American (and not just american) media and politics are largely "pay per play", and your story has a background: there used to be a greater diversity of "sponsors", in particular the labor unions were also buyers of political and media influence. Since the labor unions have been cut down to size the only significant "sponsors" for politicians and media have been factions of the hard right, whether the tradcon (largely Republican) hard right, or the neoliberal (both Democratic and Republican) hard right. My usual quote from an interview with Ralph Nader:
“in 1979. Tony Coelho, who was a congressman from California, and who ran the House Democratic Campaign treasure chest, convinced the Democrats that they should bid for corporate money, corporate PACs, that they could raise a lot of money. Why leave it up to Republicans and simply rely on the dwindling labor union base for money, when you had a huge honeypot in the corporate area? And they did.”
Re: Guy on Apr 6 @~ 11 AM PCT
Your astute and experientially informed thoughts, bolstered so insightfully by Areslent's cogent response, combine to clearly inform our beloved society of the underlying circumstances that have caused the wanton betrayal of the public trust by those who have profited most by its founding tenets. The public good must come before private advantage.
As Usual,
EA
Great comment.
The fact that Bradlee still clings to the Mueller report completely explains the demise of the MSM.
The "findings" of the Mueller rept. are as consequential as the finding of WMDs in Iraq. Yes, there was something there, but so little and what was there was of such inconsequence as to be worthless. That Bradlee cannot see that, indeed is still hanging on what was truly a witch-hunt, is frankly pathetic.
I comment here at Taibi's joint because I am willing to put the money for what he generally writes. I am not always interested in the subject, but I overall trust Matt to put up good writing that is solidly researched. And I am well aware that it might not comport with what I want to hear, and that is more than OK, it is a huge chunk of why I trust him.
Newspapers screwed up when they let advertising and classified become the primary source of income, as that was easy money at the time, and now, when it really seems to matter they have lost the focus of why people will pay for real news and not fluff.
Matt’s closing reminded me of this quote, “History has failed almost everybody who is ordinary in the world... I am arguing that the discipline of history has failed. It is not that historians aren’t doing their jobs but rather that the memory of history has been reconstructed by the elite, because the overwhelming majority of ordinary people rarely leave sufficient primary documents; they do not have others recording their lives in real time." -Min Jin Lee. The loss of local papers only exacerbates this problem.
Remember the “working people”? They are the ones who went to work every day during Covid so that preppy elites could hide in their houses.
«Remember the “working people”? They are the ones who went to work every day during Covid so that preppy elites could hide in their houses.»
The most outrageous aspect of the COVID story is that the countries that adopted a mass test-trace and isolate approach had both tiny sickness and death rates, and negligible to none hit on jobs and businesses, and yet the governments of the USA and UK did not adopt that approach because:
* Ideologically, it is "collectivist", because it means that the government has to fund and organize a test-trace-isolate system. That is incompatible with reaganism and the sacred principle that “The nine most terrifying words in the English language are ‘I'm from the government, and I'm here to help’”. Besides the approach of doing half-baked lock-downs and vaccinations gives the opportunity for a massive "big pharma saviours of humanity" propaganda campaign.
* Practically, as your write, the biggest risks and losses with the half-baked lock-down approach have been taken by lower income workers and small businesses, people like delivery drivers and bar owners, while the financial sector, investors, and upper-middle class professionals have done pretty well.
They’re also the ones still addicted to lockdowns as a lifestyle.