Thousands of criminals, terrorists, drug dealers and rapists are right at our doorstep... NOT. Would you know that from press coverage? Trump and GOP trafficking in fear and rage politics is now manifesting as bombs. What's next - and will the media get it right?
Jack Holmes at Esquire has an analysis of how the media is once more being played like a rube by the GOP outrage machine. *note: the first version of this post mistakenly attributed it to Charles P. Pierce. My apologies.
...Never mind that The Caravan is incredibly far away, and that surely only some slice of the few thousand marching in it will make it to the U.S.-Mexico border, and that many will likely apply for an asylum hearing—a legal right under international law and treaties to which the U.S. is a signatory—based on the claim they are fleeing gang and domestic violence in their home countries. Never mind that only the tiniest percentage are likely to gain entrance to America...
...This is all part of what Yglesias calls "the hack gap," where conservatives can successfully set the agenda for the entire media by performing outrage and alarm on issues they believe will be damaging to Democrats, or that will get The Base out to vote. President Trump, for instance, cooked up an outrageous lie about how "unknown Middle Easterners" were embedded in The Caravan this week—and was at first rewarded with uncritical headlines in the mainstream press. It took a day or two for reporters to nail Trump down on the falsehood, at which point the damage was likely done. The press, it appears, has learned little from the last few years, and is struggling to adapt to an era of complete bad-faith politics.
emphasis added
(Kevin Drum is also taking note of the “Hack Gap”.)
By now it should be perfectly clear that nothing coming from Trump or the GOP should be taken at face value. He will say anything — just as long as he keeps setting the media narrative. (As Charles P. Pierce notes, his own people scramble to keep up.) He’s building on all the years the GOP has spent conditioning the press to be “fair and balanced.” Lies — truth? They’re just words, right? One hand, other hand, lather, rinse, repeat.
Holmes calls the Caravan story a story of no great importance to America — once the election is over, it will fade away. Holmes has a list of stories the press is NOT giving the attention they deserve.
In the meantime, we could discuss, say:
- that the president is part of a multi-generational criminal enterprise where tax fraud was a core business strategy;
- that the president still refuses to release his tax returns in the wake of this revelation;
- that the White House is working with the Saudi royal family to obscure the crown prince's role in the atrocity murder of a dissident U.S.-resident journalist;
- that the president, and his son-in-law's, obvious conflicts of interest present the possibility, in this and many other cases, that he is not acting in the best interests of the country when he makes decisions;
- that we could determine whether those conflicts-of-interest with Saudi Arabia—or anyone else—exist if the president would release his tax returns;
- that the president has explicitly embraced political violence from the podium;
- that the president has declared himself a "nationalist," a term that does not mean "patriot" and actually carries horrifying historical baggage and authoritarian connotations;
- that the Trump administration's deregulation frenzy is endangering the health of ordinary Americans, particularly in the industrial midwest;
- that the Republican tax cut will overwhelmingly benefit corporations and the rich, so that Trump is now making up fantasies about another 10-percent cut before the election—despite the fact that Congress is in recess for that entire period;
- that the president's staff, who ostensibly work on behalf of the American people, are scrambling to come up with phony explanations for his many lies;
- that Republicans have openly stated their intention to cut Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid if they retain power;
- that Republicans are running on protecting pre-existing coverage while, in many cases, either suing to gut those protections in the Affordable Care Act or having voted for various Repeal and Go Fuck Yourself bills that would have gutted those protections.
Repeat:
...conservatives can successfully set the agenda for the entire media by performing outrage and alarm on issues they believe will be damaging to Democrats, or that will get The Base out to vote.
Read the whole thing.
Assuming we make it past November 6 and retake the House, it already appears Trump and the GOP will be declaring the election invalid, the Democratic majority illegitimate…. and the press will likely repeat and amplify the message.
Democrats really REALLY need to grasp how badly they need to address this. One of the failures of Obama was his reluctance to confront Republicans. Kevin Drum is not pleased with Obama’s latest efforts. The party seems to lack that “fire in the belly” that these times call for. Brian Carroll at Two Party Opera captured the dynamics back in August… (Full size version at link.)
The Fourth Estate has been failing us for years. Any future history of this era will not be complete if it doesn’t include a scathing critique of how the press enabled the GOP and Trump.
UPDATE: Pierce has a commentary on the bombs that are being sent to prominent Democratic targets. He has a history of bombings in America (they go way back), but he points out what’s different this time.
In the 1970s, there were no national politicians encouraging the Weathermen to involve themselves in the political process. Bernadine Dohrn didn’t get to visit the White House. Of course, in the 1950s and the 1960s, there were southern state politicians a’plenty who knew the people who were setting off the bombs, but the national government was pretty much on the other side; even though it was often dilatory in that regard, it got there eventually. (In 2002 and 2003, the last two culprits in the Birmingham church bombing were finally convicted by Doug Jones, now a senator from Alabama.)
The current president* of the United States trafficks in imaginary threats and encourages, by word and deed, feelings of dread and isolation and deep, familiar paranoia, the entire Hofstadter buffet. And there is an entire media infrastructure dedicated to reinforcing those feelings, 24-7, on all platforms of the modern communications industry. The Weathermen didn’t have their own TV network.
emphasis added
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