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Migs's avatar

JVL’s rant at the end of YouTube stream yesterday was epic. He boils all the chum in our media ecosystem down to the most basic components.

1. If Trump wins it won’t be because “the people” didn’t know what they were voting for but because they did know and wanted it.

2. The system to choose the president is now, blatantly, anti-majoritarian now. It isn’t just once in a 100 year phenomenon but it is now a “feature” (bug) of the system.

3. We aren’t on the verge of authoritarianism, we were walking down the ramp to more authoritarianism.

4. Here is the most important point for center right people like me (also to center left): the Biden presidency was an absolute failure. It isn’t a failure because of Biden but because of us, the voters. I don’t want to argue about the actual facts of the Biden presidency (in my mind he has been the best president of my lifetime), but the THEORY of his presidency. I thought and I think the Biden admin thought, that if they went back to “normal” and Biden stayed out of the culture wars he could bring back sanity. By being the opposite of Trump he could show the voters that you can have a government that “mostly” worked. He, and I were wrong.

5. The system is going to need radical change. This is what is going to be tough for people like me who want to resist it but it is needed and it was needed yesterday.

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The Silver Symposium's avatar

So, my hope was that today you'd talk about the Klan rally yesterday, and why our journalists predictably failed to cover it appropriately in many cases (looking at you, USA today). And more to the point, the fact that it's probably going to be the reason that Harris wins by a comfortable margin. There's a lot of chatter in spaces that there wasn't before that I'm picking up. And I also think that we need to stop talking about 'fascism' and 'nazism' not because it's wrong but because A. for better or worse, nazis to Americans feel like distant and foreign concepts and B. it doesn't really fit what that rally was. American style fascism is something we've had for a while: the Klan.

I wrote about this in my own newsletter after watching, but I'll put the tldr here: Nazis were in many ways uniquely German. You'd have never seen Hulk Hogan and Dr. Phil and standup comics at a nazi rally, because they were all about presenting themselves as a well shined boot. The Klan are equal parts absurd and terrifying; they both burn crosses and wear costumes and also call themselves 'grand wizards' while being openly hateful. But it's very American; bombast and absurdity and near parody.

I've driven through the south and seen Klan rallies. That was a Klan rally, all it was missing was it also being a barbecue cookout. And Americans have a long history with the Klan; from the government passing a law against them to Superman fighting them. Trump gets a pass because he's absurdist; when he said 'they're eating the cats' the chatter was mostly amusement, not seriousness. Boy, I've seen so much talk about the 'Puerto Rico is a trash dump' and 'black people carve watermelons' in circles that two days ago were 'undecided' about which was worse.

That's community. That's information sharing. And that's important to resist American style fascism, you're right. So let's talk about the WaPo.

Let's begin with this: no institution has a right to exist indefinitely. The WaPo is not some church or pillar of humanity like the Pyramids of Giza that must be protected at all costs. When you believe that 'we need institutional journalism like this' you give authoritarians power. Why? Because it means that you're still giving them money that they will then use to keep being authoritarians.

The other, more practical argument is this: we talk about the marketplace of ideas. For that to be true, people must be willing to make value judgements about where they spend their money. Many would not say 'sure Chik-Fil-A's owners are bigots, but you HAVE to support them because of the poor workers!' Similarly, 'we have to support the WaPo because the poor journalists' is wrong. It's bleeds into the 'can I be a good liberal, I work at Lockheed Martin' argument.

If we suppose that the WaPo has a 'duty' to provide value to its readers, then what it has revealed is that A. it is not fulfilling this duty and thus B. the reporters working for them are not fulfilling this duty, so C. they should not be given money.

The second that Bezos quashed the endorsement, the situation changed. Now we must ask 'what other stories would he quash, or has quashed?' And if you work for that company, you have to ask, 'am I comfortable supporting and working for an institution whose journalistic integrity is secondary to what the owner desires?' You might do good work, you might be a good person, but if you say 'I am willing to work here and support this even though I know I will be edited...'

Well, a few days ago you talked about how we have to ask whether the editor at Pravda has any culpability or responsibility for being the editor there and what it stands for. The answer is yes. You might not personally support fascism or oligarchy, but if you work for them, you are in fact culpable in proping them up.

Institutions that cannot fail, that are seen as 'too big to fail' become a danger to everyone. That's as true for journalism as it is for banks.

If people believe 'I cannot trust the WaPo' then they should not give money to the WaPo. The journalists there are no more deserving or entitled to our money than Newsmax journalists are. We are not required to give money to National Review to save conservative journalism. That's just enabling the bad behavior.

At some point, one of three things will happen: either A. they will change course or B. they will collapse or C. They will become National Review/Fox News. But regardless, they are not entitled to money when they provide bad reporting and they do not satisfy their customers.

And, indeed, if for example the editors at the Bulwark crushed a story because it made one of them look bad, I would indeed cancel my subscription. Because the question is about journalistic integrity; a reader should know that a supposed news org is actually being honest, especially if they're so haughty that they print 'democracy dies in darkness' on their front page.

No, Democracy dies in full view while Bezos overrules his employees so he can get contracts with Trump. He caved, so if the WaPo dies, it dies. Others can and should overtake it. We should not be propping up a zombie institution on the basis that it used to be good anymore than we should throw money at McDonalds because people might not want to eat their burgers due to the disease outbreak.

We burn more coal to keep coal miners employed. We shouldn't be rewarding Bezos' behavior. The journalists who do not resign, I'll consider suspect, simply because it means that Bezos acting isn't a dealbreaker for them, and that they would accept him doing this for their stories. Either way, it can't be trusted any more than we'd trust Fox News, because now the WaPo is no different than Fox, in that Murdoch can and does decide what they run.

The reason why there is such blowback is that legacy journalism takes this haughty attitude that they can do anything and that they can't be replaced, or shouldn't be. They're the 'fourth estate.' No, you're a business. If you can't prove you're not catering to a billionaire who caters to a fascist, why should we take your words about democracy seriously? And if you keep working for them, why should we assume you're not willing to bend your own morals and standards?

Again, you might be an okay person who works for Lockheed Martin or Marlboro. But that also means that their reputations aren't enough to dissuade you from taking their money. That should have consequences.

No institution should be too important or too big to fail, period.

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