This is a compendium of the reporting and commentary that best explains the America's political, economic, and social conditions – and, most important, how we can find a way back from the dark days ahead. You will rarely find anything here from the New York Times or Washington Post or any of the other Big Journalism companies that failed us so completely during the 2024 elections and are now sucking up – even more than usual – to Donald Trump, his cult, and corporate oligarchs. My focus will be on smaller, more honorable outlets (and individuals). I hope you'll support them with your attention and your money.
QUOTE: To those feeling despair: I understand. But remember, every step toward progress in American history came after the darkness of defeat. Abolitionists, suffragettes, Dreamers, and marchers for civil rights and marriage equality all faced impossible odds, but they persisted. Now it is our turn to pull up our socks and get back in the fight.
Yes, we are in for the fight of our lifetimes in the months and years ahead. And yes, this Time magazine commentary by Warren, who would have made a great president, may be too optimistic. But it resonates with hope, not just advice. We must retain hope or we will lose everything.
Extremists' lies filled the void in "mainstream" media's collapse
QUOTE: Perhaps out of fear of insulting their audiences, the pundits, journalists, and political consultants engaged in the lengthy post-mortem about Donald Trump's horrific victory Tuesday are avoiding the most obvious cause: ignorance. Millions of people who desperately want more progressive policies cast their ballots for a man whose agenda is exactly the opposite of what they want.
QUOTE: [M]illions in opposition to Trump and his MAGA movement are desperately seeking ways to connect. The current crisis may actually cause this to happen. The worst part is that this has to happen not in a healthy environment but when America is led by an authoritarian and his billionaire allies who have an arsenal of tools — lawsuits, licensing fights, public pressure, maybe even arrests — to stop this reinvention from happening. We will have to save a free press in America in the mode of Ginger Rogers — backwards, in high heels — but also while getting whacked by a baseball bat. But we have to try, because history has shown there is only one place where democracy can survive. In a place called Reality.
Bunch's Philadelphia Inquirer commentary – which cites Marcotte's Salon piece – is a trenchant reminder of traditional journalism's collapse in the face of its owners' cowardice and the barrage of right-wing propaganda. Yes, Trump cultists bathe in lies and fantasy to justify Dear Leader's stated intention to run an American dictatorship. But millions upon millions of voters didn't realize – and this is on them, too – that they were voting for an outcome that will prove disastrous for them and their communities. And while the failure of traditional journalism has been profound – and in many ways self-inflicted – the lies and fantasy are much more a product of the unholy combination of the Murdoch family's Fox "News" and its online allies, the Elon Musks and Steve Bannons and Russian/Chinese governments and so many others. Bunch's closing lines, quoted above, are a call to action that would be difficult in ordinary times. We have to try.
QUOTE: Residents in the Southwest District Health in Idaho are no longer able to get COVID-19 vaccines from public health clinics after the district's board of directors voted 4–3 recently to stop administering the shot. The vote came during a hearing swamped by misinformation and conspiracy theories about the lifesaving vaccines. It's a chilling reminder of how dangerous anti-vaccine sentiment and misinformation have infested communities nationwide, causing vaccination rates to slip across the country and making way for deadly outbreaks of preventable diseases.
This scary situation, which predated Election Day, is a direct result of extremism and its media-fueled ecosystem of bullshit. Idaho is already a haven for misinformed parents who are refusing to have their children vaccinated against common – and completely preventable – childhood diseases. People will get sick, and some of them will die, as a result of this attack on public health. And the incoming Trump regime has already made it clear that it intends to give the enemies of public health lots of help. Truly, America's enemies must be thrilled by the wounds our nation is inflicting on itself.
Which is to say, it’s not just the election. It’s broader than that. It’s that a permanent propaganda campaign has been supercharged in the last two years, in ways that weren’t even true when Fox News relentlessly tried to take down Hillary and her spouse in the 1990s. And that propaganda campaign has played a key role in leading people to distrust and eschew “reality,” including the reality that Joe Biden was better for the economy and Trump is unashamedly corrupt.
One of the most worrisome aspects of the Trump world control in Washington is the way the Republicans have completely weaponized bad-faith "investigations" that a) drain resources from the targets of these bogus probes; and b) floods the zone with political propaganda that (sigh) Big Journalism feels compelled to regurgitate wholesale. As March Wheeler (also known by her "emptywheel" screen name) notes in this commentary, the Republicans are talented at this – and they are now well-positioned to make it many, many times worse.
letterstime.com
Will Bunch
Beth Mole
emptywheel
