News and commentary for understanding and coping with the years ahead...
Turning universities into right-wing propaganda factories
The authoritarian parallels
A compendium of the best reporting and commentary surrounding the pivotal 2024 elections in the United States. You will rarely find horse race coverage here, or the standard "both sides" BS that passes so often for political journalism. What you will find are links, with brief commentary, to work that I believe advances the conversation we should be having about America's – and the world's – future. Remember: Everything is at stake this year. (Unfortunately, some of the work I point to is behind paywalls.)
Extremist oligarch pours it on for the wannabe dictator
It may be impossible to capture the financial value of all the support Mr. Musk is providing to Mr. Trump. This is in part because of his role on X, where he amplifies so much of the former president’s message. Mr. Trump has privately used grand — and unverified — terms to describe what Mr. Musk is donating to the super PAC, telling one associate recently that the figure is $500 million. But friends and colleagues say Mr. Musk is adopting the same strategy that he has used during other crises he has considered existential. Just as Mr. Musk worked late into the night as his companies teetered on the verge of catastrophe, tinkering with rocket designs at SpaceX, sleeping on a couch in the Tesla factory or making staff cuts at Twitter, Mr. Musk has deemed this an all-hands-on-deck moment.
This NY Times piece is useful in many ways, as it gives you some idea of the lengths to which Musk is going to install Trump in the White House. But it's also missing some vital context, which is a shame given that four reporters worked on the article. For one thing, it doesn't begin to describe how corrupt and malignant Musk has become in every way. For example, as Marcy Wheeler notes in her blog, Emptywheel, the Times "chooses not to mention Musk’s personal role in stoking far right anti-migrant violence in the UK, including his Tweet asserting that Civil War is inevitable....Musk has become a transnational vector for far right political violence." Moreover, there's barely a mention of the extent to which Musk is intertwined with the federal government at this point – nor that his companies exist (and thrive) in significant part due to generous federal contracts, tax-code handouts, and regulatory indifference to constant rule-breaking. The Times deserves praise for doing this story at all, but it reads more like one political insider admiring the brass of a former outsider who's gone deep into the "game". Musk is one of the most dangerous people on the planet, and he's made common cause with someone who could easily become the most dangerous person on the planet, soon.
What is clear is that a new framework is needed to describe this fracturing. Misinformation is too technical, too freighted, and, after almost a decade of Trump, too political. Nor does it explain what is really happening, which is nothing less than a cultural assault on any person or institution that operates in reality. If you are a weatherperson, you’re a target. The same goes for journalists, election workers, scientists, doctors, and first responders. These jobs are different, but the thing they share is that they all must attend to and describe the world as it is. This makes them dangerous to people who cannot abide by the agonizing constraints of reality, as well as those who have financial and political interests in keeping up the charade.
Warzel's Atlantic essay, examining the right wing's relentless attacks on reality, is superb. It brings to mind this quote from Hannah Arendt's essential book, "The Origins of Totalitarianism" – words that help explain the tactics of these extremists who seek to turn democracy into dictatorship: “The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (i.e., the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (i.e., the standards of thought) no longer exist.”
For much the past eight years, and especially in the last several months, the long-running debates that form a through line for American democracy have been sidelined by the existential threat posed by Trump and Trumpism. So while there is honor in linking arms with former foes to unite in defense of the very democracy that allows us to argue these finer points with each other, there is much to mourn in what we have already lost: years of some the most pressing issues we face relegated to secondary or tertiary significance; vibrant and essential public debates left to molder while we confront the more immediate threat; time, energy, and resources diverted from supporting the best of who we are to fend off the worst of who we can be.
The former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff under then President Donald Trump, Mark Milley, pulled no punches in sounding the alarm about what it would mean if Trump returns to power, according to Bob Woodward’s new book, “War.” ... “He is the most dangerous person ever. I had suspicions when I talked to you about his mental decline and so forth, but now I realize he’s a total fascist. He is now the most dangerous person to this country,” Milley told Woodward, who he had spoken to in the past for his previous work on the Trump administration.
Today, our American fascists blame the hurricanes on the meteorologists and disrupt the government response. Tomorrow they will blame climate change on the climate scientists and deport their enemies of choice. And the day after tomorrow there will be no democracy and no country, just a politics of impotence and a fascist catastrophe.
What I didn’t say to Wendy was that I believe Trump is the man the Founding Fathers feared most when they were drafting the constitution, a tyrant for whom they designed many checks and balances. But these would only work, as George Washington wrote, “so long as there shall remain any virtue in the body of the people”. I saw no evidence of that democratic virtue in the crowd at Butler, and that, ultimately, is what scares me.
The four pieces above, from Talking Points Memo, Mediaite, Timothy Snyder, and Prospect, sound a common theme – one that I've made a core element of this newsletter. Please read them all.
I want to add this thought to the authors' warnings: If fascism comes to America in the near future, among the most culpable people will be journalists.
With a few honorable exceptions, Big Journalism has refused to acknowledge, much less attempt to do something about, the imminent threat. Even if Harris wins, the fascists will try to tear us apart, to destroy the nation so they can, later on, pick up the pieces. Most journalism ignores that, too.
I want to blame the bosses, but regrettably the people who work for them are collaborators to one degree or another. For shame, all who are part of this media machine that is deliberately downplaying this slow-motion (until it goes into high gear) catastrophe.
If fascism comes to America soon, journalists will have two options: Be quislings for the regime, or join the resistance. I'm sad to say that I suspect most will choose the former.
Voting is just part of democracy, but it's the essential place to start. Make sure you're registered. Doublecheck in the fall, well before Election Day, because in some states Republican officials are removing people, mostly those who tend to vote for Democrats, from voting rolls.
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Charlie Warzel
David Kurtz
Alex Griffing
Timothy Snyder
Henry Porter
