This really was an excellent piece. I think the problem is more aggressively exacerbated by two facts: 1) both parties facilitate the interests of the oligarchy by different means, but at different points in history, for whatever reason, one party does so more effectively (and it goes in cycles) and 2) the eradication of the middle class and the associated economic problems enhances the polarization, and by extension, determines allegiances to particular media outlets and perspectives much more aggressively.
Regarding the first point, there is no longer a meaningful political party dedicated to working people, and both parties are contributing to the annihilation of meaningful economic opportunities for the working class. Generally speaking, the Democrats support globalization, immigration, and the growth of a captured regulatory state that has annihilated the value of labor throughout the country, and Republicans support taxing economic rents less than income derived by work and ridiculous and expensive foreign boondoggles (at least until Trump).
However, for whatever reason, the mantle of who is going to hammer the middle harder switches every decade or so. For example, there’s no question in my mind that George Bush’s Republican Party of 2000-2008 was the far greater evil of the two parties at that time. The Iraq War, bailouts for the super rich, etc did more meaningful harm to working people than the Democratic alternatives of the day (even though they also would have served the interests of the oligarchy if they came to power, but I can’t imagine Al Gore, John Kerry or Obama (first term) wrecking things as badly).
In contrast, today, the Democratic Party is more dangerous because what is really crippling the country is the diminished value of labor, and education isn’t the answer. There is no way for you to specialize out of the problem when everything is open to insourcing and outsourcing, and there are only so many jobs in finance and consulting. Obviously, the Republican tax policy is absurd, especially in light of the recent bailouts, but what are increased taxes going to do if Bezos is the only employer (exaggerating obviously, but you get the point). The tax dollars are going to fund a larger bureaucracy staffed by people that want to eventually work for the entities they regulate, and by extension, assist in the gutter concentration of wealth and power?
Of course, a cynical view is that there is no longer any meaningful choice and the two parties are just one apparatus, with puppet masters pulling the strings. (People laugh at conspiracy theorists, but the older I get, the more plausible this theory becomes). Nevertheless, even if this is true, even if there is no real substantive difference, when the population votes for the guy or gal at least paying lip service to their concerns at a particular time, it at least serves as a vehicle of expressing frustration or protest.
The cyclical nature of when the population feels the pain of the poor decisions of one of the two parties likely determines permanent allegiances. If you watched Sean Hannity lie through his teeth about the Iraq War and you experienced the financial devastation associated with (or at least catalyzed by) the Iraq War, you are likely going to be MSNBC for life. In contrast, if during the Obama years you began to really feel the accelerated impact of globalization and immigration on the labor market, whether you are an engineer for an American tech company or a blue collar worker, and the Democrats call you a racist because you are voicing a legitimate economic concern, well now you are a Tucker Carlson guy, and aren’t going to be interested in what MSNBC has to say.
This leads into my second point that the economic condition is leading to the polarization because both sides are contributing to it, but people feel differently depending on where they are on the economic ladder. Democratic trade and labor policy and Republican tax policy have jointly resulted in the end of opportunity in this country, and depending on which team you owe your allegiance to (which is largely determined by where you got hit big in the cycle) is going to result on what information exclusively reenforces your view on why the country is in the toilet. If you listen to MSNBC, you will focus on Republican tax policy. If you listen to Tucker Carlson, you’ll likely focus on trade and labor policy.
A penultimate point, I may be getting conned on my end or it may be where my bias falls because of how the cycle impacted me, but I feel as if there is genuine populist reform on the right and nothing of the sort on the left. Tucker Carlson has repeatedly stated it’s absurd that billionaires pay less taxes than working people, and there was even a spat between him and Hannity on the point (with Hannity having to back down on social media). He did a ten minute segment on how Republicans should primary seven Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham, because they support H1B1 visas as the pandemic rages on and workers are having a difficult time finding work as it stands. I see no acknowledgement of any kind by prominent leftist media people about these problems. If you are against illegal immigration or globalization, you are a racist. Period and end of story. There are people on the left in the media that discuss these issues with great nuance, but nothing in the main stream.
Finally, economic issues are more important than anything else in keeping a society united. The polarization of media tastes and the surrounding economic model related therewith is a symptom, not the disease. The elites of both parties made a really, really bad bet. They bet that globalization would force societies like China to become more open and democratic, but the opposite happened. Why? Because no one gives a shit about freedom, people care about prosperity. This is why China is unified and growing, and as the country grows stronger, it is imposing more draconian political repression. No one wants to come to the United States because of “freedom,” all peoples of different races, creeds and religions want (or wanted) to come here because this was the land of opportunity and it’s still running on that reputation (whether it still is, is another matter). As the economic conditions worsen, so will the polarization.
I think this is outstanding, really great analysis, thank you. Not sure that the right is ahead of the left on populism. I think there’s currently a race to see who can get there, but populism will lose on both sides. Look at Sander, Warren, even Gabbard in the Democratic primary: where is the Republican equivalent? Look at what Trump “ran on”; then as soon as he wins, you see the same tax cut that any Republican would pass.
I think Republicans will do a better job adopting these ideas rhetorically, Carlson-style, because they’re better at winning elections than Democrats. Then they’ll do the things they always do, while espousing these ideas at the same time. Look at the Tea Party; they win, their ideas win, then they behave like Republicans always have. Republicans are very, very comfortable saying one thing and doing its opposite. And their base will fight for them based on their rhetoric, even while they screw that base.
As I said, I think there will be a race to see who can take over their party, populists in each fighting that fight. Republicans may win that race, but once they do, they will nakedly please their contributors, regardless of what they said to get elected. It’s what they always do; they’re better at winning elections. And their base will fight tooth and nail for them, as if they were actually implementing populist policy.
There is genuine populist reform mounting on the left, it’s just not represented in corporate media like MSNBC or CNN. Bernie Sanders was the only legitimate populist running on issues like raising the minimum wage and M4A, and MSNBC ignored him completely until his campaign gained real momentum...then they set their sights on torpedoing him with absurd innuendo (the “body language expert”) or outright lies and character assassination. Most repugnant was their propagation of the “Bernie bro” myth and pearl clutching over online bullies. If you want to hear populists on the *actual* left, allow me to introduce you to Chapo Trap House. These are young socialists with no interest in liberals’ policies or dehumanization of Trump voters. Taibbi was on their podcast just a couple months ago, discussing the very topic of this article (along with the woke left and “cancel culture”).
Brett Weinstein, Eric Weinstein, Andrew Yang, to a lesser extent Sanders, yes, these people understand the problems. As I said though, they have no power, the mainstream left successfully represses them and, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, they bend the knee. They don’t fight back.
As I’ve commented in other articles, what does it mean to be rich? What is money? Money is a claim on labor and rich people-really rich people- want to increase the supply of labor to reduce the capacity of labor to negotiate for better terms.
The most important thing for these guys and gals right now is globalization and immigration. This is the vehicle for destroying the middle as they take us to neo-feudalism. I’ll give you proof positive of this objective: the mainstream left has been telling me that climate change is the biggest threat to humanity for 30 years. Why would they support policies that industrialize India and China to such an extent that their carbon footprint dwarfs that of the United States? It’s a con to eliminate the Western middle class. Why is the only serious solution proposed with respect to climate change not technical in nature, but political and financial, namely carbon taxes, which is just going to be another avenue for financial elites to pillage. These folks envision a world where we are a bee hive and they are the queen bees.
There was and is (at least on its face and what is presented to the public) a real rebellion on the right. You can see it in the very different narrative presented by Tucker Carlson on his show, which discusses inequality, trade, regulatory capture, the disaster of higher education, etc and compare it to Sean Hannity still touting neoconservative drivel and trickle down economics (to the extreme).
It may all be a con. I’m becoming more and more of a conspiracy theorist as I see Western policies genuinely don’t change anymore, and more importantly, when I see that the Davos crowd is acknowledging it has made some serious mistakes, and I don’t mean from the population’s perspective, I mean from their own selfish interests. George Soros wrote a scathing critique not only of Trump but of Xi. These people believed that as China became industrialized that the Chinese people would rebel, and it would allow Western elites a capacity to plunder more effectively. The opposite is happening, and while they would love to introduce the technical and social repressions of the Chinese regime to the West, they really don’t like an independent hegemon (of their creation) emerging.
I’ll leave you with this note on why I think the left is a more serious problem and why I think they are bigger hypocrites. Imagine for a moment we have a full blown socialist revolution in the United States, I’m talking about more aggressive than even the USSR. Let’s say you transitioned the economy to worker cooperatives, which is what is being suggested by the country’s leading marxist (Richard Wolff). What is that going to do if we allow unlimited globalization? Here’s worker cooperative: I’m going to have a worker cooperative (everyone gets paid the same) of lawyers, engineers, logistics people, transportation workers and warehouse workers. I’ll find which products are successfully produced by other worker cooperatives, and my worker cooperative will outsource production to China. I’ll bankrupt the other cooperatives and my cooperative will split the enormous gains equally. All of these leftists- every single one (except the Weinstein brothers and Gabbard)- tell me we can’t have tariffs or any kind of protection of domestic industry. I fail to see how you can have any meaningful pro-labor economy without that. And that’s why I think they are more dangerous than the right, the bullshit is just thicker and is layered with fake idealism
Overall, brilliant comments. I have differences on a few of your points, however.
"Brett Weinstein, Eric Weinstein, Andrew Yang, to a lesser extent Sanders, yes, these people understand the problems. As I said though, they have no power, the mainstream left successfully represses them and, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, they bend the knee. They don’t fight back."
The thing that needs to be kept in mind is that given the status quo of the system, "Democrat or Republican?" is the only game in town in electoral politics. The lynchpin of that system is not the influence of wealthy donors on campaigns, or gatekeeper media- it's the absence of ranked-choice voting.
The other factors constitute serious impediments to achieving ideals of truly representative democracy, but the crucial factor is structural: a ballot election process that enables two hidebound parties to entrench and reinforce their power, The system is intended to provide the appearance of majoritarian rule: the winning side in a given national election ostensibly serves the wishes of the prevailing majority of voters. But in reality, given a single-pick, first-past-the-post ballot, nothing more is required for victory than a plurality of voters. De facto, this reduces the ballot to a choice between the two political parties most likely to gain the plurality. Given the structural conditions of the ballot and the advantage of what I'd term "the inertial status quo", the chance of a "third party" movement supplanting the two heavyweights is practically nil. There's a Catch-22 embedded in the ballot process: as a practical matter, voting for a third party in an American elections incurs a heavy risk that the only practical effect of that ballot will be to reduce the voting total for the status quo party that aligns more closely with one's own political leanings. Which thereby works to the benefit of the opposing major party.
There's no way out of this bind, given the ballot structure. No third party has ever supplanted one of the two parties of the inertial status quo, and the prospect that it will ever happen grows dimmer with each election. Ideologues and third party cheerleaders may find reason to celebrate when a third party manages to triple its appeal- say, from 1% to 3%- but the deck remains stacked. Teddy Roosevelt couldn't crack the system with 24% of the vote. Ross Perot couldn't do it with 17%. For that matter, third-party voter appeal in a Presidential election that relies on one charismatic candidate and/or massive amounts of self-funding from private wealth cannot be confused with an authentic issues-based political movement that serves the interests of representative democracy. Even absent the risk of demagoguery and personalist rule, the result of a third party candidate's victory would most likely entail a President elected with around 34% of the vote, and almost no coattails.
As I said, that scenario is highly improbable. Which means that we're stuck with a status quo that not only enables and empowers mediocrity, it makes it practically inevitable. Because under a status quo two party Duopoly system, the most reliable path to assuring victory is to present oneself to the voters as slightly less undesirable than the opposing major party candidate. Seriously. The bar is ridiculously low. This situation practically guarantees that a large number of voters will simply decline to vote, not out of apathy but out of disgust. Although the practical value of third-party voters to the two major parties is well-recognized, by both of them: third party votes are useful spoiler votes. The two parties know this well enough to cynically encourage third party votes in some electoral contests, and even to fund some third-party campaigns.
The status quo presents an intractable dilemma. But there's a practical, workable answer.
Implementing ranked-choice voting in national elections (even with as few as two ballot ranks) is a simple reform to accomplish, in comparison to challenging Citizens United on campaign funding, or getting rid of the Electoral College. It's such an easily understandable reform that it almost seems too good to be true, as a solution. But ranked-choice voting is not snake oil. It's real therapy, for a broken system. The issue is so important that in my opinion all third party efforts should form a coalition and make the issue their sole priority. Why not? Without it, there's practically no way that any of them will achieve the success required to implement any of the policy innovations found on their platform.
Don't misunderstand me: no way am I under the mistaken impression that a ranked-choice ballot system would lead to the overthrow of either of the two major parties in the next election after its implemented. But dynamism would be restored to this stagnant democracy. The first ranked-choice election would provide the most accurate picture ever of the true spectrum of the political leanings of Americans. And while I find it improbable that a third party candidate would win either the Presidency or most Congressional contests in the short run, I'd expect that non-lunatic fringe (mostly) alternative parties like the Greens and Libertarians would see substantial leaps in support. Once a political movement benefits from a rising tide of popular appeal, they might actually begin to act like a movement capable of governing, instead of LARPing, and their platform might begin to resemble something capable of reasoned compromise, instead of purist posturing. Under the current system, voting totals of third parties are practically irrelevant. To be real about it, it's a given that neither the Greens or the Libertarians will ever crack 5%. That's how intractable the status quo is. But if the obstacle to voters citing their actual preference is removed- and they get to actually vote FOR the best choice, instead of AGAINST the worse choice- the earth could shake, possibly enough to topple the Duopoly. Although my intuition is that both major parties would try to adapt by appropriating the best and most achievable ideas of the insurgent outsider parties for their own platforms. Whereas they'd never feel compelled to do that under the current system, because they both laugh at third parties. I'd be fine if a major party felt compelled to revamp itself that way, even to the point of seeking to merge with the insurgent outsiders. (Beware of sell-out!) The important thing is to restore dynamism to representative democracy, to get a hearing for new and better ideas, and to provide real majoritarian rule.
Ranked choice voting would certainly help. The two major parties both oppose it because their donors don’t want to have more than two pseudo-parties to buy.
The two party system has been sold in the past as a stabilizing influence. The extremes were expected to be absorbed within one party or the other and neutralized. That no longer appears to be the case.
Both parties are, and have been for a while, corporate parties. They do the bidding of sometimes separate corporate interests, but neither is interested in the economic condition of the average citizen. During the Cold War the elites restrained themselves so they could maintain domestic order while fighting communism. After that ended, the parties went to war over the economic spoils.
We now have a Republican Party that represents extractive industries and a Democratic Party that represents finance and insurance, with some tech thrown in. On the government side, Republicans represent the military industrial complex and Democrats represent government bureaucracies.
What is new these days is that the oligarchies are in open warfare with each other and are unable to maintain support for the “rules” of their game. It has become a big wrestling match. The population is herded into each camp by telling them that the other side is evil and will eat their children - or sexually abuse them. That’s some comedown from arguing about Medicare.
This election may be quite a shock for the average middle class citizen. The two elite parties will throw chairs at each other and thoroughly trash what’s left of the political system for the privilege of being the ones to loot for their corporate backers. This is how once great countries become failed states.
v«Of course, a cynical view is that there is no longer any meaningful choice and the two parties are just one apparatus»
A similar but better observation was made by George Mikes in a humour book (but only as to style, the observations he made are quite insightful) in the 1950s on american culture: that the two parties don't have significant ideological differences, and are both broadly about a consensus "business and property friendly" ideology, in different flavours.
«with puppet masters pulling the strings. People laugh at conspiracy theorists, but the older I get, the more plausible this theory becomes).»
Well, many conspiracies do exist, and have been well documented; some are overt (the Business Roundtable, the Chambers of Commerce), some are discreet or secret (most price fixing, most security service work, ...), and some eventually get found out (the tip of the iceberg for example the campaign in the 50s to suppress keynesian political economy textbooks in USA universities).
Even Adam Smith wisely and realistically said, hundreds of years ago, that “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public”. I mean, duh.
That does not mean that all or even most conspiracies are well run or successful or that there is a single puppeteer; it means that a lot of conspiracies are cock-ups or at cross purposes which each other. That is the fatal flaw of silly conspiracy theories: they are based on the assumptions that complex conspiracies work flawlessly.
The TV paradigm provided us with a canon that offered us a relatively balanced structure comprised of four non-submersible narrative voices: Ads, News, Arts Entertainment and Sports. Thus, we could inject any subject into that structure and be assured of a diverse perspective. For example, steroids:
Ads - you should buy steroids
News - This is what Steroids are, these are the pros and cons of steroids, here is a study.
Sports - Don't do steroids
Arts Entertainment - Here is a story about some guy who gets 'roid rage and punches people
When the Internet arrived, it dissolved those boundaries and raised television up to the status of being an art form for the first time in its history (with all the accompanying wide-screens, high definition and mega-films). Marshall McLuhan would have noted here that TV had suddenly evolved from being a low definition or "cool" medium into a HD "hot" medium. A hot medium is home to despots and shouters, so where Joe McCrathy quickly burnt out on TV in the 1960's, he would be very much at home with the Hitler types on todays television.
As a consequence, we can no longer use the TV canon or structure and hope to find any perspective. It's all theatre now. Adsportsnewsartsentertainment. The sports is ads and news, News anchors are entertainers and comedians are doing the news. And it's all riddled with the copywriters from Madison Avenue.
The WWF of the early 1980's was a herald of the future. This is Hulk Hogan's world now - just ask Peter Thiel.
Well what do you want him to do? He is a journalist and getting his words out an it is to be hoped paid is his job, for Christ’s sake. Even though my family thinks I am a fascist, I am always glad to hear Matt’s opinion and news; he like Greewald is an honest person.
What’s your issue with Greenwald? Just curious. I’ve gotta say, I think it’s funny how much shit people give Glenn for going on Tucker Carlson, but they’ll freely praise and share a clip of Cornel West on Tucker’s show all over Twitter. I guess it’s okay to go on Carlson’s show if you’re saying things that people like, a la Cornel West. But if you go on there and say things that so-called liberals don’t wanna hear, you’re all of a sudden some kind of “disingenuous” fraud who’s doing Putin’s bidding. Or something....
I note that you enjoy trolling pretty much everyone's comments. I'm not really interested in anything Internet trolls have to say, other than to occasionally shame them. Knock yourself out with your mental masturbation.
Yeah, Dan Rather’s the problem. He’s always been the problem, that asshole..... Way to latch on to, like, the most inconsequential statement in this entire article and make that your thing. I’d expect nothing less from internet people.....
Haha, you’re all clowns. As soon as somebody says something you don’t like, you immediately go,”Paid troll! Algorithms!” You realize that you don’t sound any different than right-wingers saying that protesters are paid by George Soros, right?
It's hard to have a consensus on anything like a national agenda after fifty years of virtually unrestricted immigration. So, as much as I'd like to blame the media for polarization, that's a little too pat. A "national agenda" today would be just as fraudulent as the heylookasquirrel we have now.
Matt repeats this refrain, almost word-for-word, in the span of three paragraphs, but does not actually support the contention with any basis in fact. Certainly, some conservatives were looking for affirmation that there were such villains, but as one of the early Fox viewers - less than half the age of the "target" audience - I can tell you why I started watching. It was because I thought Bill Clinton was a scoundrel, and I liked hearing other people with the same opinion. I didn't care at all about Hillary - not at first - not until she started to lead the campaign to destroy the lives of anyone who dared to speak against the President. Good article, Matt, but you completely miss on this element.
Hate, Inc. is contaminated with this trope that somehow it was Fox that first started sorting viewers, as if that had not already been in process for decades but without right-leaning competition by the three broadcast networks. Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather were died-in-the-wool liberals thinly veiled as straight-shooting newscasters. The Reagan-right was hungry for alternative perspective. Fox merely satisfied and audience that already existed thanks to the liberally-biased media.
No edit function. The refrain I refer to is, "hunted these viewers by feeding them stories that reinforced their idea that America was being overrun by immigrants and minorities and criminals."
I just want to get this out here, publicly: I’d never, ever watched MSNBC before. Never watched Fox. Never watched CNN. I had no idea who Rachel Maddow was and only knew who Hannity was because I watched Jon Stewart. But after the election, I started watching all three channels obsessively. Literally, the morning after the election, I turned on MSNBC. And I’d switch from MSNBC to Fox to CNN during commercial breaks. I did that for two-and-a-half years before I couldn’t take it anymore.
I don’t really know what my point is, except that Matt’s right. Trump is definitely good business for these “news” channels. He worked on me.
Also, I just wanted to admit that I watched that garbage for almost three years. I feel better having admitted this. Cleaner.
I thought the same thing. There were two emails sent. But they both had the same sub-heading of "Summary of "Hate Inc: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another". I had actually deleted the full one because it looked exactly like the true summary one. Still I would have thought that being logged in would have shown the full article. This link should bring you to the full article. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era
I'm being told by support that they're hearing a few reports of this and meeting on it now -- in the meantime if you log in and go to this page you should be able to see it, if you;'re a subscriber: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era
I’m very sorry to hear you are having trouble getting in - if you subscribe you should have received the full article by email. Are you sure you did not receive that version?
I joined months ago with a $40/year subscription. Has it always been the case that $50/year is required for reading articles? Trying to figure out why I joined at the rate I did and if I need to change it.
This would be the template for news for about fifty years. Anchors from Thomas through Dan Rather and Jessica Savitch delivered information in a reserved monotone. Print journalism was written in an even, unemotional, third-person voice.
Beginning in the early nineties, several major changes altered the business forever:
As always, thank you, Matt, this time for an historical perspective on the business model for news. What do you make of the fact that the Assange trial continues and one has to search to find those in the tiny, exclusive club of non-mainstream journalists and supporters who have at least video access to the trial? The prosecution is now arguing that possession or distribution of national security info (journalism) is a crime. Where are the MEDIA? Do they care? At all?
The media doesn’t care because Assange made Obama “look bad.” It’s that simple. Their short-sightedness is astounding. But maybe not surprising? I dunno. But the Assange story should be much, much bigger than it is, you’re right about that.
I would like to respond to this segment in the piece: "It’s become difficult to have an argument in the traditional sense. People with differing opinions are often no longer even working from the same commonly-accepted set of facts."
Over 30 years ago, I received an insight from Thomas Gilbert ("Human Competence") that applies to this. He received it from observing an argument among six of his relatives on a Southern front porch many years prior regarding "Robert E. Lee." Being a very keen observer, he started to realize that an argument could be framed from at least six different levels: tactical, logistics, strategy, policy, culture and philosophy. Yes, "facts" apply to all the levels and often the reason why a fact at the strategic level doesn't get accepted is because of something that's hidden in the cultural or philosophical level.
I used the levels when processing the interview with Mark Crispin Miller. A really interesting exercise is applying them to the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of a communicable disease.
Somewhere, Matt said that regarding media, people are looking for something different. I believe there is still a very powerful motivation by people to make sense out of the world we're living in. I believe we have to the tools to do that. I still have an original Whole Earth Catalog ... "Access to Tools." what a great subtitle.
I don’t get the resentment of the focus on the media when it, in lockstep with academe, provoked and cemented animosities that brought us to the present crack-up.
The media drilled down on existing animosities. Like Montaigne’s travelogue of 16th Century Europe – how different regions behaved, ate and slept, Travels with Charley is full of insights, astoundingly prescient premonitions and benchmarks regarding the U.S. circa 1960. Steinbeck was a Democrat, his sisters Republican: “We ended each session panting and spent with rage. On no point was there any compromise. No quarter was asked or given.” Long discussions with reporter friends, who felt that “guts” and “champions” were becoming hard to find in what America had become – you “can’t defend a country from a boardroom.”
Steinbeck left Sag Harbor on his 6-week drive across the country after a hurricane, in September.
When not re-educating, the media thrive on omission. Witness the inexcusable failure to describe what was going on in Seattle’s occupied zone until after the fact. Didn’t want to offend the new religious icons, armed and looting, or present in a poor light. Or describing as mostly “peaceful” protests that by any five-year-old’s lights are nightly putsches. Eight years ago, either fudge would have merited a firing and earned widespread opprobrium. Reporting standards are in the gutter. The awful little Brown Shirts invading restaurants, shouting in people’s faces and demanding raised fists elude the painfully obvious historical comparisions, They accost and shout in small crowds because they are cowards. If one happens to be arrested, pepper sprayed, or shoved back, the mob will make short and gleeful work of the assailed. We’re getting to some basic human instincts here, and it isn’t pretty
I subscribed, received an email with a link to the article, but still can’t read the article. Clicked on the link and it took me to the same short version of the article with the subscribe link at the end.
Well, might as cuddle down with something good to read in these deeply dystopic times in which we live. RBG’s loss is crushing to reasonable-minded jurisprudence for decades to come. Sigh. The smoke has cleared a little in my town. Went for a walk in the rain yesterday and the air smelled sweet for the first time since the Oregon fires began. Small pleasures...
Spend some time reading Matt's book and you might come to understand why the subject of media divisiveness and siloing is important and just how large a role it's played in the various issues we're currently plagued with as a society.
This really was an excellent piece. I think the problem is more aggressively exacerbated by two facts: 1) both parties facilitate the interests of the oligarchy by different means, but at different points in history, for whatever reason, one party does so more effectively (and it goes in cycles) and 2) the eradication of the middle class and the associated economic problems enhances the polarization, and by extension, determines allegiances to particular media outlets and perspectives much more aggressively.
Regarding the first point, there is no longer a meaningful political party dedicated to working people, and both parties are contributing to the annihilation of meaningful economic opportunities for the working class. Generally speaking, the Democrats support globalization, immigration, and the growth of a captured regulatory state that has annihilated the value of labor throughout the country, and Republicans support taxing economic rents less than income derived by work and ridiculous and expensive foreign boondoggles (at least until Trump).
However, for whatever reason, the mantle of who is going to hammer the middle harder switches every decade or so. For example, there’s no question in my mind that George Bush’s Republican Party of 2000-2008 was the far greater evil of the two parties at that time. The Iraq War, bailouts for the super rich, etc did more meaningful harm to working people than the Democratic alternatives of the day (even though they also would have served the interests of the oligarchy if they came to power, but I can’t imagine Al Gore, John Kerry or Obama (first term) wrecking things as badly).
In contrast, today, the Democratic Party is more dangerous because what is really crippling the country is the diminished value of labor, and education isn’t the answer. There is no way for you to specialize out of the problem when everything is open to insourcing and outsourcing, and there are only so many jobs in finance and consulting. Obviously, the Republican tax policy is absurd, especially in light of the recent bailouts, but what are increased taxes going to do if Bezos is the only employer (exaggerating obviously, but you get the point). The tax dollars are going to fund a larger bureaucracy staffed by people that want to eventually work for the entities they regulate, and by extension, assist in the gutter concentration of wealth and power?
Of course, a cynical view is that there is no longer any meaningful choice and the two parties are just one apparatus, with puppet masters pulling the strings. (People laugh at conspiracy theorists, but the older I get, the more plausible this theory becomes). Nevertheless, even if this is true, even if there is no real substantive difference, when the population votes for the guy or gal at least paying lip service to their concerns at a particular time, it at least serves as a vehicle of expressing frustration or protest.
The cyclical nature of when the population feels the pain of the poor decisions of one of the two parties likely determines permanent allegiances. If you watched Sean Hannity lie through his teeth about the Iraq War and you experienced the financial devastation associated with (or at least catalyzed by) the Iraq War, you are likely going to be MSNBC for life. In contrast, if during the Obama years you began to really feel the accelerated impact of globalization and immigration on the labor market, whether you are an engineer for an American tech company or a blue collar worker, and the Democrats call you a racist because you are voicing a legitimate economic concern, well now you are a Tucker Carlson guy, and aren’t going to be interested in what MSNBC has to say.
This leads into my second point that the economic condition is leading to the polarization because both sides are contributing to it, but people feel differently depending on where they are on the economic ladder. Democratic trade and labor policy and Republican tax policy have jointly resulted in the end of opportunity in this country, and depending on which team you owe your allegiance to (which is largely determined by where you got hit big in the cycle) is going to result on what information exclusively reenforces your view on why the country is in the toilet. If you listen to MSNBC, you will focus on Republican tax policy. If you listen to Tucker Carlson, you’ll likely focus on trade and labor policy.
A penultimate point, I may be getting conned on my end or it may be where my bias falls because of how the cycle impacted me, but I feel as if there is genuine populist reform on the right and nothing of the sort on the left. Tucker Carlson has repeatedly stated it’s absurd that billionaires pay less taxes than working people, and there was even a spat between him and Hannity on the point (with Hannity having to back down on social media). He did a ten minute segment on how Republicans should primary seven Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham, because they support H1B1 visas as the pandemic rages on and workers are having a difficult time finding work as it stands. I see no acknowledgement of any kind by prominent leftist media people about these problems. If you are against illegal immigration or globalization, you are a racist. Period and end of story. There are people on the left in the media that discuss these issues with great nuance, but nothing in the main stream.
Finally, economic issues are more important than anything else in keeping a society united. The polarization of media tastes and the surrounding economic model related therewith is a symptom, not the disease. The elites of both parties made a really, really bad bet. They bet that globalization would force societies like China to become more open and democratic, but the opposite happened. Why? Because no one gives a shit about freedom, people care about prosperity. This is why China is unified and growing, and as the country grows stronger, it is imposing more draconian political repression. No one wants to come to the United States because of “freedom,” all peoples of different races, creeds and religions want (or wanted) to come here because this was the land of opportunity and it’s still running on that reputation (whether it still is, is another matter). As the economic conditions worsen, so will the polarization.
I think this is outstanding, really great analysis, thank you. Not sure that the right is ahead of the left on populism. I think there’s currently a race to see who can get there, but populism will lose on both sides. Look at Sander, Warren, even Gabbard in the Democratic primary: where is the Republican equivalent? Look at what Trump “ran on”; then as soon as he wins, you see the same tax cut that any Republican would pass.
I think Republicans will do a better job adopting these ideas rhetorically, Carlson-style, because they’re better at winning elections than Democrats. Then they’ll do the things they always do, while espousing these ideas at the same time. Look at the Tea Party; they win, their ideas win, then they behave like Republicans always have. Republicans are very, very comfortable saying one thing and doing its opposite. And their base will fight for them based on their rhetoric, even while they screw that base.
As I said, I think there will be a race to see who can take over their party, populists in each fighting that fight. Republicans may win that race, but once they do, they will nakedly please their contributors, regardless of what they said to get elected. It’s what they always do; they’re better at winning elections. And their base will fight tooth and nail for them, as if they were actually implementing populist policy.
That commentary is brilliant and a perfect 'book end' to this article. Thanks
There is genuine populist reform mounting on the left, it’s just not represented in corporate media like MSNBC or CNN. Bernie Sanders was the only legitimate populist running on issues like raising the minimum wage and M4A, and MSNBC ignored him completely until his campaign gained real momentum...then they set their sights on torpedoing him with absurd innuendo (the “body language expert”) or outright lies and character assassination. Most repugnant was their propagation of the “Bernie bro” myth and pearl clutching over online bullies. If you want to hear populists on the *actual* left, allow me to introduce you to Chapo Trap House. These are young socialists with no interest in liberals’ policies or dehumanization of Trump voters. Taibbi was on their podcast just a couple months ago, discussing the very topic of this article (along with the woke left and “cancel culture”).
Brett Weinstein, Eric Weinstein, Andrew Yang, to a lesser extent Sanders, yes, these people understand the problems. As I said though, they have no power, the mainstream left successfully represses them and, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, they bend the knee. They don’t fight back.
As I’ve commented in other articles, what does it mean to be rich? What is money? Money is a claim on labor and rich people-really rich people- want to increase the supply of labor to reduce the capacity of labor to negotiate for better terms.
The most important thing for these guys and gals right now is globalization and immigration. This is the vehicle for destroying the middle as they take us to neo-feudalism. I’ll give you proof positive of this objective: the mainstream left has been telling me that climate change is the biggest threat to humanity for 30 years. Why would they support policies that industrialize India and China to such an extent that their carbon footprint dwarfs that of the United States? It’s a con to eliminate the Western middle class. Why is the only serious solution proposed with respect to climate change not technical in nature, but political and financial, namely carbon taxes, which is just going to be another avenue for financial elites to pillage. These folks envision a world where we are a bee hive and they are the queen bees.
There was and is (at least on its face and what is presented to the public) a real rebellion on the right. You can see it in the very different narrative presented by Tucker Carlson on his show, which discusses inequality, trade, regulatory capture, the disaster of higher education, etc and compare it to Sean Hannity still touting neoconservative drivel and trickle down economics (to the extreme).
It may all be a con. I’m becoming more and more of a conspiracy theorist as I see Western policies genuinely don’t change anymore, and more importantly, when I see that the Davos crowd is acknowledging it has made some serious mistakes, and I don’t mean from the population’s perspective, I mean from their own selfish interests. George Soros wrote a scathing critique not only of Trump but of Xi. These people believed that as China became industrialized that the Chinese people would rebel, and it would allow Western elites a capacity to plunder more effectively. The opposite is happening, and while they would love to introduce the technical and social repressions of the Chinese regime to the West, they really don’t like an independent hegemon (of their creation) emerging.
I’ll leave you with this note on why I think the left is a more serious problem and why I think they are bigger hypocrites. Imagine for a moment we have a full blown socialist revolution in the United States, I’m talking about more aggressive than even the USSR. Let’s say you transitioned the economy to worker cooperatives, which is what is being suggested by the country’s leading marxist (Richard Wolff). What is that going to do if we allow unlimited globalization? Here’s worker cooperative: I’m going to have a worker cooperative (everyone gets paid the same) of lawyers, engineers, logistics people, transportation workers and warehouse workers. I’ll find which products are successfully produced by other worker cooperatives, and my worker cooperative will outsource production to China. I’ll bankrupt the other cooperatives and my cooperative will split the enormous gains equally. All of these leftists- every single one (except the Weinstein brothers and Gabbard)- tell me we can’t have tariffs or any kind of protection of domestic industry. I fail to see how you can have any meaningful pro-labor economy without that. And that’s why I think they are more dangerous than the right, the bullshit is just thicker and is layered with fake idealism
Overall, brilliant comments. I have differences on a few of your points, however.
"Brett Weinstein, Eric Weinstein, Andrew Yang, to a lesser extent Sanders, yes, these people understand the problems. As I said though, they have no power, the mainstream left successfully represses them and, with the exception of Tulsi Gabbard, they bend the knee. They don’t fight back."
The thing that needs to be kept in mind is that given the status quo of the system, "Democrat or Republican?" is the only game in town in electoral politics. The lynchpin of that system is not the influence of wealthy donors on campaigns, or gatekeeper media- it's the absence of ranked-choice voting.
The other factors constitute serious impediments to achieving ideals of truly representative democracy, but the crucial factor is structural: a ballot election process that enables two hidebound parties to entrench and reinforce their power, The system is intended to provide the appearance of majoritarian rule: the winning side in a given national election ostensibly serves the wishes of the prevailing majority of voters. But in reality, given a single-pick, first-past-the-post ballot, nothing more is required for victory than a plurality of voters. De facto, this reduces the ballot to a choice between the two political parties most likely to gain the plurality. Given the structural conditions of the ballot and the advantage of what I'd term "the inertial status quo", the chance of a "third party" movement supplanting the two heavyweights is practically nil. There's a Catch-22 embedded in the ballot process: as a practical matter, voting for a third party in an American elections incurs a heavy risk that the only practical effect of that ballot will be to reduce the voting total for the status quo party that aligns more closely with one's own political leanings. Which thereby works to the benefit of the opposing major party.
There's no way out of this bind, given the ballot structure. No third party has ever supplanted one of the two parties of the inertial status quo, and the prospect that it will ever happen grows dimmer with each election. Ideologues and third party cheerleaders may find reason to celebrate when a third party manages to triple its appeal- say, from 1% to 3%- but the deck remains stacked. Teddy Roosevelt couldn't crack the system with 24% of the vote. Ross Perot couldn't do it with 17%. For that matter, third-party voter appeal in a Presidential election that relies on one charismatic candidate and/or massive amounts of self-funding from private wealth cannot be confused with an authentic issues-based political movement that serves the interests of representative democracy. Even absent the risk of demagoguery and personalist rule, the result of a third party candidate's victory would most likely entail a President elected with around 34% of the vote, and almost no coattails.
As I said, that scenario is highly improbable. Which means that we're stuck with a status quo that not only enables and empowers mediocrity, it makes it practically inevitable. Because under a status quo two party Duopoly system, the most reliable path to assuring victory is to present oneself to the voters as slightly less undesirable than the opposing major party candidate. Seriously. The bar is ridiculously low. This situation practically guarantees that a large number of voters will simply decline to vote, not out of apathy but out of disgust. Although the practical value of third-party voters to the two major parties is well-recognized, by both of them: third party votes are useful spoiler votes. The two parties know this well enough to cynically encourage third party votes in some electoral contests, and even to fund some third-party campaigns.
The status quo presents an intractable dilemma. But there's a practical, workable answer.
Implementing ranked-choice voting in national elections (even with as few as two ballot ranks) is a simple reform to accomplish, in comparison to challenging Citizens United on campaign funding, or getting rid of the Electoral College. It's such an easily understandable reform that it almost seems too good to be true, as a solution. But ranked-choice voting is not snake oil. It's real therapy, for a broken system. The issue is so important that in my opinion all third party efforts should form a coalition and make the issue their sole priority. Why not? Without it, there's practically no way that any of them will achieve the success required to implement any of the policy innovations found on their platform.
Don't misunderstand me: no way am I under the mistaken impression that a ranked-choice ballot system would lead to the overthrow of either of the two major parties in the next election after its implemented. But dynamism would be restored to this stagnant democracy. The first ranked-choice election would provide the most accurate picture ever of the true spectrum of the political leanings of Americans. And while I find it improbable that a third party candidate would win either the Presidency or most Congressional contests in the short run, I'd expect that non-lunatic fringe (mostly) alternative parties like the Greens and Libertarians would see substantial leaps in support. Once a political movement benefits from a rising tide of popular appeal, they might actually begin to act like a movement capable of governing, instead of LARPing, and their platform might begin to resemble something capable of reasoned compromise, instead of purist posturing. Under the current system, voting totals of third parties are practically irrelevant. To be real about it, it's a given that neither the Greens or the Libertarians will ever crack 5%. That's how intractable the status quo is. But if the obstacle to voters citing their actual preference is removed- and they get to actually vote FOR the best choice, instead of AGAINST the worse choice- the earth could shake, possibly enough to topple the Duopoly. Although my intuition is that both major parties would try to adapt by appropriating the best and most achievable ideas of the insurgent outsider parties for their own platforms. Whereas they'd never feel compelled to do that under the current system, because they both laugh at third parties. I'd be fine if a major party felt compelled to revamp itself that way, even to the point of seeking to merge with the insurgent outsiders. (Beware of sell-out!) The important thing is to restore dynamism to representative democracy, to get a hearing for new and better ideas, and to provide real majoritarian rule.
Ranked choice voting would certainly help. The two major parties both oppose it because their donors don’t want to have more than two pseudo-parties to buy.
The two party system has been sold in the past as a stabilizing influence. The extremes were expected to be absorbed within one party or the other and neutralized. That no longer appears to be the case.
Both parties are, and have been for a while, corporate parties. They do the bidding of sometimes separate corporate interests, but neither is interested in the economic condition of the average citizen. During the Cold War the elites restrained themselves so they could maintain domestic order while fighting communism. After that ended, the parties went to war over the economic spoils.
We now have a Republican Party that represents extractive industries and a Democratic Party that represents finance and insurance, with some tech thrown in. On the government side, Republicans represent the military industrial complex and Democrats represent government bureaucracies.
What is new these days is that the oligarchies are in open warfare with each other and are unable to maintain support for the “rules” of their game. It has become a big wrestling match. The population is herded into each camp by telling them that the other side is evil and will eat their children - or sexually abuse them. That’s some comedown from arguing about Medicare.
This election may be quite a shock for the average middle class citizen. The two elite parties will throw chairs at each other and thoroughly trash what’s left of the political system for the privilege of being the ones to loot for their corporate backers. This is how once great countries become failed states.
v«Of course, a cynical view is that there is no longer any meaningful choice and the two parties are just one apparatus»
A similar but better observation was made by George Mikes in a humour book (but only as to style, the observations he made are quite insightful) in the 1950s on american culture: that the two parties don't have significant ideological differences, and are both broadly about a consensus "business and property friendly" ideology, in different flavours.
«with puppet masters pulling the strings. People laugh at conspiracy theorists, but the older I get, the more plausible this theory becomes).»
Well, many conspiracies do exist, and have been well documented; some are overt (the Business Roundtable, the Chambers of Commerce), some are discreet or secret (most price fixing, most security service work, ...), and some eventually get found out (the tip of the iceberg for example the campaign in the 50s to suppress keynesian political economy textbooks in USA universities).
Even Adam Smith wisely and realistically said, hundreds of years ago, that “people of the same trade seldom meet together, even for merriment and diversion, but the conversation ends in a conspiracy against the public”. I mean, duh.
That does not mean that all or even most conspiracies are well run or successful or that there is a single puppeteer; it means that a lot of conspiracies are cock-ups or at cross purposes which each other. That is the fatal flaw of silly conspiracy theories: they are based on the assumptions that complex conspiracies work flawlessly.
The TV paradigm provided us with a canon that offered us a relatively balanced structure comprised of four non-submersible narrative voices: Ads, News, Arts Entertainment and Sports. Thus, we could inject any subject into that structure and be assured of a diverse perspective. For example, steroids:
Ads - you should buy steroids
News - This is what Steroids are, these are the pros and cons of steroids, here is a study.
Sports - Don't do steroids
Arts Entertainment - Here is a story about some guy who gets 'roid rage and punches people
When the Internet arrived, it dissolved those boundaries and raised television up to the status of being an art form for the first time in its history (with all the accompanying wide-screens, high definition and mega-films). Marshall McLuhan would have noted here that TV had suddenly evolved from being a low definition or "cool" medium into a HD "hot" medium. A hot medium is home to despots and shouters, so where Joe McCrathy quickly burnt out on TV in the 1960's, he would be very much at home with the Hitler types on todays television.
As a consequence, we can no longer use the TV canon or structure and hope to find any perspective. It's all theatre now. Adsportsnewsartsentertainment. The sports is ads and news, News anchors are entertainers and comedians are doing the news. And it's all riddled with the copywriters from Madison Avenue.
The WWF of the early 1980's was a herald of the future. This is Hulk Hogan's world now - just ask Peter Thiel.
This is insightful and on the money.
The “Internet” lifted television into a form of art? Really? What channel are you watching? I wanna watch the “Art tv” channel, too....
He didn't say GOOD art.
He's right, though.
Well what do you want him to do? He is a journalist and getting his words out an it is to be hoped paid is his job, for Christ’s sake. Even though my family thinks I am a fascist, I am always glad to hear Matt’s opinion and news; he like Greewald is an honest person.
"Greenwald is an honest person" tells me all I need to know about you.
What’s your issue with Greenwald? Just curious. I’ve gotta say, I think it’s funny how much shit people give Glenn for going on Tucker Carlson, but they’ll freely praise and share a clip of Cornel West on Tucker’s show all over Twitter. I guess it’s okay to go on Carlson’s show if you’re saying things that people like, a la Cornel West. But if you go on there and say things that so-called liberals don’t wanna hear, you’re all of a sudden some kind of “disingenuous” fraud who’s doing Putin’s bidding. Or something....
I note that you enjoy trolling pretty much everyone's comments. I'm not really interested in anything Internet trolls have to say, other than to occasionally shame them. Knock yourself out with your mental masturbation.
I’m not trolling, I’m asking a legitimate question: What’s your issue with Glenn Greenwald?
He’s virulently, viciously anti-Israel. (Don’t ask me to cite examples; look it up for yourself.) I’m not.
Yeah, and? What’s the problem? I’m familiar with Greenwald’s position on Israel. He’s right.
Dan Rather 'objective, 'neutral'? Surely you jest.
Yeah, Dan Rather’s the problem. He’s always been the problem, that asshole..... Way to latch on to, like, the most inconsequential statement in this entire article and make that your thing. I’d expect nothing less from internet people.....
I love DNC trolls. I recently read it has now automated the process via algorithm.
Haha, you’re all clowns. As soon as somebody says something you don’t like, you immediately go,”Paid troll! Algorithms!” You realize that you don’t sound any different than right-wingers saying that protesters are paid by George Soros, right?
Well.....Dan Rather isn't anything close to objective, the point stands.
It's hard to have a consensus on anything like a national agenda after fifty years of virtually unrestricted immigration. So, as much as I'd like to blame the media for polarization, that's a little too pat. A "national agenda" today would be just as fraudulent as the heylookasquirrel we have now.
Matt repeats this refrain, almost word-for-word, in the span of three paragraphs, but does not actually support the contention with any basis in fact. Certainly, some conservatives were looking for affirmation that there were such villains, but as one of the early Fox viewers - less than half the age of the "target" audience - I can tell you why I started watching. It was because I thought Bill Clinton was a scoundrel, and I liked hearing other people with the same opinion. I didn't care at all about Hillary - not at first - not until she started to lead the campaign to destroy the lives of anyone who dared to speak against the President. Good article, Matt, but you completely miss on this element.
Hate, Inc. is contaminated with this trope that somehow it was Fox that first started sorting viewers, as if that had not already been in process for decades but without right-leaning competition by the three broadcast networks. Brokaw, Jennings, and Rather were died-in-the-wool liberals thinly veiled as straight-shooting newscasters. The Reagan-right was hungry for alternative perspective. Fox merely satisfied and audience that already existed thanks to the liberally-biased media.
No edit function. The refrain I refer to is, "hunted these viewers by feeding them stories that reinforced their idea that America was being overrun by immigrants and minorities and criminals."
I just want to get this out here, publicly: I’d never, ever watched MSNBC before. Never watched Fox. Never watched CNN. I had no idea who Rachel Maddow was and only knew who Hannity was because I watched Jon Stewart. But after the election, I started watching all three channels obsessively. Literally, the morning after the election, I turned on MSNBC. And I’d switch from MSNBC to Fox to CNN during commercial breaks. I did that for two-and-a-half years before I couldn’t take it anymore.
I don’t really know what my point is, except that Matt’s right. Trump is definitely good business for these “news” channels. He worked on me.
Also, I just wanted to admit that I watched that garbage for almost three years. I feel better having admitted this. Cleaner.
WTH....I cant get to the full article but my account is current?
What am I missing?
I got two emails. Read first one which was summary; read the second and got all of article. Ah, technology.
I thought the same thing. There were two emails sent. But they both had the same sub-heading of "Summary of "Hate Inc: Why Today's Media Makes Us Despise One Another". I had actually deleted the full one because it looked exactly like the true summary one. Still I would have thought that being logged in would have shown the full article. This link should bring you to the full article. https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era
That is if you are a subscriber
Me too
Me, too, I can't get to the full "Hate Inc" article. And I want to, too! Help!
WTF. I can't get to the entire article either and my account is current too
I'm being told by support that they're hearing a few reports of this and meeting on it now -- in the meantime if you log in and go to this page you should be able to see it, if you;'re a subscriber: https://taibbi.substack.com/p/the-post-objectivity-era
Me too. Is there a solution that you know of?
I followed the link to "Reporting by Matt T" then scrolled down to article and went in that way.
Seemed to take me to a different link.
Gotta be something in the logic in the link
Cannot get to article even though subscriber. “Summary” is all that is available. Frustrating.
I’m very sorry to hear you are having trouble getting in - if you subscribe you should have received the full article by email. Are you sure you did not receive that version?
Yes, I am sure. “Summary “ was delivered via email. I received email with full article after my comment on Sunday as a reply to the comment.
I'm having same problem: did not get full article by email or at link. Subscription is current. Thanks
I joined months ago with a $40/year subscription. Has it always been the case that $50/year is required for reading articles? Trying to figure out why I joined at the rate I did and if I need to change it.
Same problem here.
When I get the email, I just go to my saved bookmark for TAIBBI Substack and go in that way. I will be a subscriber to Matt til I am six ft under.
And.....I would rather not give Google Gmail the pleasure of being my intermediary. Spies.
This would be the template for news for about fifty years. Anchors from Thomas through Dan Rather and Jessica Savitch delivered information in a reserved monotone. Print journalism was written in an even, unemotional, third-person voice.
Beginning in the early nineties, several major changes altered the business forever:
--------------------------------------------------------
This is what I can get to via email or the website. Subscriptions auto-renew, correct? Hope this helps-I appreciate all your work. Thank You!
As always, thank you, Matt, this time for an historical perspective on the business model for news. What do you make of the fact that the Assange trial continues and one has to search to find those in the tiny, exclusive club of non-mainstream journalists and supporters who have at least video access to the trial? The prosecution is now arguing that possession or distribution of national security info (journalism) is a crime. Where are the MEDIA? Do they care? At all?
The media doesn’t care because Assange made Obama “look bad.” It’s that simple. Their short-sightedness is astounding. But maybe not surprising? I dunno. But the Assange story should be much, much bigger than it is, you’re right about that.
I would like to respond to this segment in the piece: "It’s become difficult to have an argument in the traditional sense. People with differing opinions are often no longer even working from the same commonly-accepted set of facts."
Over 30 years ago, I received an insight from Thomas Gilbert ("Human Competence") that applies to this. He received it from observing an argument among six of his relatives on a Southern front porch many years prior regarding "Robert E. Lee." Being a very keen observer, he started to realize that an argument could be framed from at least six different levels: tactical, logistics, strategy, policy, culture and philosophy. Yes, "facts" apply to all the levels and often the reason why a fact at the strategic level doesn't get accepted is because of something that's hidden in the cultural or philosophical level.
I'll leave that there for now.
I used the levels when processing the interview with Mark Crispin Miller. A really interesting exercise is applying them to the wearing of masks to prevent the spread of a communicable disease.
Somewhere, Matt said that regarding media, people are looking for something different. I believe there is still a very powerful motivation by people to make sense out of the world we're living in. I believe we have to the tools to do that. I still have an original Whole Earth Catalog ... "Access to Tools." what a great subtitle.
Is there a search function on this site? I am unable to locate a post I made recently. Can anyone help?
Random note: those of us who are hungry for good journalism are starving out here, Matt! Lay something on us!
I kid! (Mostly)
I don’t get the resentment of the focus on the media when it, in lockstep with academe, provoked and cemented animosities that brought us to the present crack-up.
The media drilled down on existing animosities. Like Montaigne’s travelogue of 16th Century Europe – how different regions behaved, ate and slept, Travels with Charley is full of insights, astoundingly prescient premonitions and benchmarks regarding the U.S. circa 1960. Steinbeck was a Democrat, his sisters Republican: “We ended each session panting and spent with rage. On no point was there any compromise. No quarter was asked or given.” Long discussions with reporter friends, who felt that “guts” and “champions” were becoming hard to find in what America had become – you “can’t defend a country from a boardroom.”
Steinbeck left Sag Harbor on his 6-week drive across the country after a hurricane, in September.
When not re-educating, the media thrive on omission. Witness the inexcusable failure to describe what was going on in Seattle’s occupied zone until after the fact. Didn’t want to offend the new religious icons, armed and looting, or present in a poor light. Or describing as mostly “peaceful” protests that by any five-year-old’s lights are nightly putsches. Eight years ago, either fudge would have merited a firing and earned widespread opprobrium. Reporting standards are in the gutter. The awful little Brown Shirts invading restaurants, shouting in people’s faces and demanding raised fists elude the painfully obvious historical comparisions, They accost and shout in small crowds because they are cowards. If one happens to be arrested, pepper sprayed, or shoved back, the mob will make short and gleeful work of the assailed. We’re getting to some basic human instincts here, and it isn’t pretty
Dear news media, stop covering the US as if it’s a democracy
https://thecorrespondent.com/698/dear-news-media-stop-covering-the-us-as-if-its-a-democracy/865024387194-da02d6f7
Built on slavery? Abolish the Electoral College? C'mon, Ralph. Do you really think anyone aside from the choir would take that trash seriously?
But I guess you are in the choir so it appeals to you?
I subscribed, received an email with a link to the article, but still can’t read the article. Clicked on the link and it took me to the same short version of the article with the subscribe link at the end.
RBG dies, Covid reigns, cities are on fire and we get an advertisement for his latest book. Terrific.
Best advertisement you’ll see out of the thousand or so you’ll get, today 🤣
Well, might as cuddle down with something good to read in these deeply dystopic times in which we live. RBG’s loss is crushing to reasonable-minded jurisprudence for decades to come. Sigh. The smoke has cleared a little in my town. Went for a walk in the rain yesterday and the air smelled sweet for the first time since the Oregon fires began. Small pleasures...
Sorry that Matt isn’t fulfilling your media needs. The only thing your post is lacking is,”What happened to you, Matt?”
Spend some time reading Matt's book and you might come to understand why the subject of media divisiveness and siloing is important and just how large a role it's played in the various issues we're currently plagued with as a society.
I've been reading the book (Hate Inc) for the past few days. It's insightful and fun to read.
Not to mention assange trial and this piece sounding so 2 years ago ... what happened to you Matt?