Trump's Death Cult Explained

[Jon Miller]

Despite Vox trying to present itself as a challenger for CNN, I actually include it as part of the Liberal media (with Jacobin et al.).

Fivethirtyeight (ABC) does a much better job.

I used traditional instead of unbiased, liberal, conservative, or so on. For sure the traditional media is not liberal, however. You can see in their response to Bernie et al.

JM

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Trump smilie --- >

[Elok]

Fivethirtyeight does a pretty good job of staying neutral--by mostly covering sports and statistical analysis of elections, with an occasional dive into contemporary points of interest like COVID. I've never encountered a conservative who did not view CNN as an enemy, albeit of course a less aggressive enemy than the likes of Vox. Who else is traditional, the Washington "Democracy Dies in Darkness" Post or the New York Times? Both have positioned themselves as aggressively anti-Trump--which at this point is the same as anti-GOP--and the move to squish Bernie seems rooted in the fear that he might not be able to beat Trump.

I grant you that at this stage of the game the polarization has become simply stupid and Trump fans view everyone who is not actively with them as against them. But it's been a long time coming to this point. It wasn't that long ago that everybody was wringing their knickers about George W. Bush, who was a wretchedly inept but basically well-meaning plutocrat spawn. Then McCain, who had inexplicably anchored himself to Palin but had a few tatters of principles left. Then about Romney, who was an actually fairly competent plutocrat with good manners and no personality. Nobody who wanted to be respectable could ever be associated, however faintly, with the Right. Now everybody's jacking it up to eleven for Trump, who yes, is genuinely awful, but the constant yelling that conservatism is the devil has turned into a self-fulfilling prophecy. Similar things have happened to the religious right; even Falwell was a far better Christian than Falwell Junior.

That's Scott's point, which I broadly agree with: marginalization observably does not work as a strategy for dealing with cultural enemies. At best--worst--you peel off the moderates, leaving you with a hard and implacable core of everything you hate. Kill them or learn to live with them. Shaming doesn't do ****.

[ZEE]

Elok is a nerd.

[Jon Miller]

I've never encountered a conservative who did not view CNN as an enemy, albeit of course a less aggressive enemy than the likes of Vox. Who else is traditional, the Washington "Democracy Dies in Darkness" Post or the New York Times? Both have positioned themselves as aggressively anti-Trump--which at this point is the same as anti-GOP--and the move to squish Bernie seems rooted in the fear that he might not be able to beat Trump.

I have The Washington Post. They regularly have pro-Trump writers. They are legitimately anti-Bernie (because they are centrist) as is much of the traditional media.

But the factual point is that Trump is a danger to democracy and anything pro-democracy, which includes the traditional media, will oppose him. Media requires democracy to thrive.

Traditional media includes the following: ABC, CBS, NBC (note that NBC has become a liberal response to Fox News), Fox News (not the entertainment component), NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NPR, PBS Newshour, CNN, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Economist, The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker. New media I would include Bloomberg and Fivethirtyeight.

Non-traditional media is Hannity, Brietbert, Infowars, Jacobin, Vox etc. I know very few people who are Democrats who regularly consume non-traditional progressive or left media. Almost all of the people who are Republicans seem to consume large amounts of reactionary non-traditional media and the only traditional media they consume is Fox News.

JM

[-Jrabbit]

Non-traditional includes HuffPo, I assume.

[Jon Miller]

Fivethirtyeight does a pretty good job of staying neutral--by mostly covering sports and statistical analysis of elections, with an occasional dive into contemporary points of interest like COVID. I've never encountered a conservative who did not view CNN as an enemy, albeit of course a less aggressive enemy than the likes of Vox. Who else is traditional, the Washington "Democracy Dies in Darkness" Post or the New York Times? Both have positioned themselves as aggressively anti-Trump--which at this point is the same as anti-GOP--and the move to squish Bernie seems rooted in the fear that he might not be able to beat Trump..

I have The Washington Post. They regularly have pro-Trump writers. They are legitimately anti-Bernie (because they are centrist) as is much of the traditional media.

But the factual point is that Trump is a danger to democracy and anything pro-democracy, which includes the traditional media, will oppose him. Media requires democracy to thrive.

Traditional media includes the following: ABC, CBS, NBC (note that NBC has become a liberal response to Fox News), Fox News (not the entertainment component), NY Times, Washington Post, Chicago Tribune, NPR, PBS Newshour, CNN, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, The Economist, The Atlantic, Time, Newsweek, The New Yorker. New media I would include Bloomberg and Fivethirtyeight.

Non-traditional media is Hannity, Brietbert, Infowars, Jacobin, Vox etc. I know very few people who are Democrats who regularly consume non-traditional progressive or left media. Almost all of the people who are Republicans seem to consume large amounts of reactionary non-traditional media and the only traditional media they consume is Fox News.

JM

[Jon Miller]

There were plenty of Romney 2012/Obama 2008 endorsers (hhttps://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/decision2012/newspaper-endorsements-for-president-romney-or-obama/2012/10/23/85d9a948-1d62-11e2-9cd5-b55c38388962_gallery.html).

The Economist endorsed Bush in 2000 and Dole in 1996 before endorsing Democrats in 2004, 2008, 2012 and 2016.

JM

[Elok]

Went through the whole show, and the only switcher whose name I recognized was the NY Daily News and (vaguely) the Orlando Sentinel. Granted, I was never a newshound, but everybody else seemed like the Podunk Times.

[Elok]

Trump is an incompetent senile lout and is not, in himself, a threat to much of anything except civility. His sole talents are petty corruption, drawing attention to himself, and having no functioning sense of shame. He's had three years to become a scary dictator and accomplished nothing of consequence beyond a tax cut, harassment of Mexicans, indecisive bombings and a lot of grifting. The media is against him because calling out his inflammatory behavior is a great way to get clicks. Since he never does anything but spout offensive/ridiculous drivel, this more or less traps us in a neverending outrage-and-shame cycle, and they'd be better off, from the safeguarding-democracy perspective, burying the day's dumb Trump tweets on page C8 and headlining the relatively rare instances when he does something actually significant and/or dangerous. However, a lot of what his administration does that's significant is less good at getting attention than Trumpyak, and news outlets are a branch of the entertainment industry, so Trumpyak it is.

WSJ, last I checked, was Trump-skeptic. But it's not like I have a subscription. The rest are "centrist" at most, and centrist means anti-Trump (who does WaPo have that's pro-Trump? Anybody regular, or the odd token? I know George Will loathes him, and he and Krauthammer used to be their token conservatives). I've more or less tuned out of the news since it got dominated by Agent Orange, TBH. It's too damned stupid and irritating to bother with now that his face is in everything. I check Reason and Reuters, they get the highlights. 538 from time to time. I used to do BBC but they do too much clickbait fluff.

EDIT: Also I'm totally going to read Taibbi's substack now.

[-Jrabbit]

I also recommend Heather Cox Richardson. She's a historian and does an excellent daily summary on Facebook.

[Ted Striker]

There's a top down (trickle-down) moral leadership factor there too that can't be underestimated though.

What he represents isn't new, but it sure does push the envelope of what we as a society consider civilized or not.

It's kinda like China was moving in the right direction for two decades, now has reverted back to oppression and snitching as a policy, and that all comes directly from the top.

Here his boys are, I am sure he will be denouncing them soon just like that idiot in the Dodge that murdered protesters by running them over.

[-Jrabbit]

I see shadows that seem to go in opposite directions, so it's very likely that's a photoshopped image.

[Ted Striker]

Apparently this guy was a counterprotestor. I stand corrected, unless we get more info on what actually happened.

[Elok]

I don't follow China closely--I'm aware Xi Jinping would benefit from a one-way ticket to a shallow ditch, but I haven't tracked the rise and fall of individual liberties there. But as for here, I don't get the impression Trump's actual Nazi followers represent a very large share of the total. There were maybe 500 people at Charlottesville, outnumbered something like two or three to one, and C-ville was a massive effort. They're much more noisy and jubilant than they used to be, but the coarsening of dialogue thing ... (sigh). Trump is essentially an unblockable internet troll with a real-life megaphone. Nobody has ever beaten a troll by telling them their behavior is unacceptable, or that they're lowering the discourse, or even that they're wrong and dumb and ugly. People told Kid and BK they were stupid and evil for years and years and neither one budged. They're only gone now because one got permabanned and the other got a life. Trump is the troll-in-chief and you can't ban him. But there's no reason you have to pay attention every time he says something stupid, ugly, or evil. Or every time he pays off a porn star with slush. And as for trying to impeach him, don't be ridiculous. That was never going to get the GOP to turn against him, it was just an asinine grandstanding waste of time.

Whenever Trump acts Trumpy and the media react with fact-checking outrage, Trump wins, and all his stupid ugly troll supporters get bolder and more excited because LOL the n00bs got pwned and [consult zee for whatever else useless internet people say under these circumstances]. Look past the trolling tweets for the little glints of bad policy, and focus on those, and don't bother factually correcting the man who recently used a press conference to entertain a question about pardoning some dude from Tiger King. And as for making fun of him, you cannot satirize a self-parody. When you make fun of Trump, you're not telling a joke, only explaining a joke. Explaining a joke doesn't make it funnier.

(and by "you" I mean "a vast body of liberal/progressive types on the internet and IRL, none of whom will read this")

[Aeson]

Trump is an incompetent senile lout and is not, in himself, a threat to much of anything except civility. His sole talents are petty corruption, drawing attention to himself, and having no functioning sense of shame. He's had three years to become a scary dictator and accomplished nothing of consequence beyond a tax cut, harassment of Mexicans, indecisive bombings and a lot of grifting. The media is against him because calling out his inflammatory behavior is a great way to get clicks. Since he never does anything but spout offensive/ridiculous drivel, this more or less traps us in a neverending outrage-and-shame cycle, and they'd be better off, from the safeguarding-democracy perspective, burying the day's dumb Trump tweets on page C8 and headlining the relatively rare instances when he does something actually significant and/or dangerous. However, a lot of what his administration does that's significant is less good at getting attention than Trumpyak, and news outlets are a branch of the entertainment industry, so Trumpyak it is.

WSJ, last I checked, was Trump-skeptic. But it's not like I have a subscription. The rest are "centrist" at most, and centrist means anti-Trump (who does WaPo have that's pro-Trump? Anybody regular, or the odd token? I know George Will loathes him, and he and Krauthammer used to be their token conservatives). I've more or less tuned out of the news since it got dominated by Agent Orange, TBH. It's too damned stupid and irritating to bother with now that his face is in everything. I check Reason and Reuters, they get the highlights. 538 from time to time. I used to do BBC but they do too much clickbait fluff.

EDIT: Also I'm totally going to read Taibbi's substack now.

Trump is a danger to the environment and by extension all life on the planet, though not significantly more/less than the GOP in general. Biden is more a danger to the environment than Bernie, but less so than Trump.

[Elok]

I can see that POV, but Trump isn't especially bad in that respect, no? Also Climate Change is a 200-person version of Prisoner's Dilemma so I just hope we find a half-ass fix.

[Jon Miller]

Yeah, HuffPo is definitely non-traditional media.

In some sense by traditional media I mean media that many Americans went to for their news before 2000. Non-traditional is newer media (which I would even include Bloomberg in, because before 2000 it was not a major news source for America) or media that was/is nitch before 2000.

It might make sense to only call media before 1980 as traditional.

JM

[Jon Miller]

WSJ, last I checked, was Trump-skeptic. But it's not like I have a subscription. The rest are "centrist" at most, and centrist means anti-Trump (who does WaPo have that's pro-Trump? Anybody regular, or the odd token? I know George Will loathes him, and he and Krauthammer used to be their token conservatives). I've more or less tuned out of the news since it got dominated by Agent Orange, TBH. It's too damned stupid and irritating to bother with now that his face is in everything. I check Reason and Reuters, they get the highlights. 538 from time to time. I used to do BBC but they do too much clickbait fluff.

Hewitt is still strongly pro-Trump. Thiessen and Abernathy are not as strongly pro-Trump, but I expect to still vote for Trump in November and to endorse him. Many of the other right wing authors (Will, Rubin, etc) are strongly in the anti-Trump camp. I would probably list a lot more, but you might call them centrists and not right wing.

But shouldn't the media be anti-Trump? Look at what he has done.

JM

[Elok]

Opposing Trump is one thing. It would even be sensible IF you could plausibly do so while appealing to the genuine interests (ie, what they themselves actually want and like and not what their ostensible betters think they should) of the people who support him. But I hardly ever see that. Most of the time it's either "these hateful people support a hateful man" or "look at the bad man these supposed Christians endorse," which is useless and marginally counterproductive. It's just wank-fodder for superior bluetribers who don't need to be persuaded to oppose Trump, while deliberately flipping the bird at that hard forty percent that never stops approving of his job performance. Insulting both of them in tandem adds another layer of glue.

Yes, you don't like these people, but they're not going anywhere and you can't stop them from voting, so if you can't figure out what makes them tick and budge at least some of them, you're going to have Trumpism long after Trump is dead and gone. They believe the things they believe for a reason, and it's not something as simplistic and self-congratulating as Obama's clinging to guns and religion because they're bitter. Which is not to say I agree with everything they believe in--far from it. But those beliefs were not concocted to spite liberals. You don't have to agree with them but FFS stop showing absolutely no curiosity or willingness to admit error.

[Elok]

Take, for example, guns. My personal opinion is that, ideally, the second amendment would be phased out or reinterpreted in favor of a licensing system like we use for driving. Which isn't going to happen. But people arguing against gun rights often make egregiously silly errors, omit crucial facts, or focus on irrelevant details. And gun culture does exist for a reason; aside from recreation, hunting is crucially important for depressing the populations of otherwise dangerous animals. If you don't think a deer is dangerous, you've never driven down a rural road in the twilight. As for feral pigs, they've overrun several states, they're utterly vicious, and we literally can't kill them fast enough. The widely mocked "25-30 feral hogs" meme actually kinda had a point. And, if you live in the country, sometimes law enforcement is awful far away. Not saying guns don't create problems too, but ... can I just say that sometimes things get scary out here? Don't want to get into the gory details.