Two preliminary matters:
(1) this is all political, but not full of vitriol toward DJT;
(2) I am in a “family situation” and may be silent for a while. Or I may not; I’ve not been through something like this before.
Bias versus propaganda
Trying to convince Fox watchers that they’re being misled is like trying to convince fish that they’re wet … Tell them that they’re more likely to find the truth about the election in the New York Times than on Fox and they’ll look at you cockeyed and say, “But the New York Times is biased!”
And they’re right …
The Times is biased. But there’s a difference between bias and propaganda.
Bias is having a rooting interest in a dispute. Propaganda is allowing your rooting interest to define your understanding of reality.
If Trump wins, the Times will overflow with thoughtful analysis about how he did it—turning out low-propensity voters, winning over union members, mobilizing young men, making inroads with working-class blacks and Latinos. There’ll be endless doomsaying about the outcome in the paper’s opinion section and many ominous (and justified) “news” pieces wondering how dark the next four years might get, but the reality of what happened won’t be challenged.
If Harris wins, right-wing media will overflow with conspiracy theories about how she did it—ballot stuffing, vote-machine tinkering, turning out illegal immigrants by the millions to vote fraudulently and, somehow, undetectably. The daytime hosts at Fox will engage seriously with the exit polls, as will legacy conservative publications like National Review. But across the broader industry, denying the reality of what happened will be treated as a supreme litmus test of tribal loyalty.
Most mainstream media is biased; most right-wing media is propaganda.
Conservative media began as a check on left-wing bias in mainstream outlets …
… It went from draining the media swamp of bias to “flooding the zone with sh-t.”
I hope you know Catoggio is right.
Ass-backward “policing”
[L]et’s go back to 2015, the year Trump announced his run for the presidency. At that time, traditional evangelical elites were steadfastly against Trump. For example, the Christian newsmagazine World polled 103 evangelical leaders and influencers throughout the 2016 primary season (I was one of the people polled), and we resolutely and consistently rejected Trump. Marco Rubio won the poll month after month.
And yet, grass-roots evangelical voters preferred Trump. Even as early as August 2015, when a dozen other Republican challengers were still in the race, he enjoyed plurality support from evangelicals, and there was one category of Christian leaders that seemed more drawn to him than others: Pentecostals and charismatics.
…
Trump’s victory created an “entirely new incentive structure.” Hundreds of prophets and hundreds of prophecies began to flood Christian media outlets, not just the Victory Channel but also networks like Daystar, Trinity Broadcasting Network, and the Christian Broadcasting Network.
“The chorus of prophets,” Taylor said, “create a sense of certainty and irrefutability.” In other words, as the 2020 election approached, countless Christians were not only certain that Trump would win, they were certain that Trump was divinely appointed to save the United States of America, either as King Cyrus figure (a pagan ruler who helped save the people of Israel) or as a King David figure (a flawed king, but still God’s anointed ruler).
Any dissent from that idea was met with ruthless opposition. While there is relatively little theological policing within Pentecostal America, political policing has become rampant. Taylor compared it to a “mafia dynamic.” If you “get out of line on politics,” Taylor said, “you’ll feel it.”
David French (emphasis added).
Part of JD Vance’s assignment is to suck up to the followers of Lance Wallnau and his fellow theocrat wannabes. Mercifully, he has not been required to profess their twisted faith.
Exhaustion
Before Trump took his golden escalator ride, life was different. Then, even if I thought a candidate would make a terrible office holder, I rarely thought he or she was objectively a bad person. Even LBJ, and he was pretty bad on a personal level, or Nixon, who was pretty bad as a leader. One consequence was that was, while I might have considered the folks who supported “the other guy” naive or misguided, I didn’t think of them as bad. But Trump by any measure is actually a bad, bad man. And he’s bad in many, many ways. So, that makes my response to his supporters quite a problem. In my life, there are folks I love who definitely will vote for that bad, bad man. I know those folks are not themselves irredeemably bad. But I cannot help but wonder, “What is wrong with them?”
And that is one important reason this is all so exhausting.
Benign Old Lizard (a social medium acquaintance)
I suffer more from the humiliations inflicted by my country than from those inflicted on her.
Simone Weil, from a letter to Georges Bernanos.
I don’t do any of the major social media, but I have two sub-domains of the domain you’re currently reading: (a) You can read most of my reflexive stuff, especially political here. (b) I also post some things on the only social medium I frequent, because people there are quirky, pleasant and real.
Tipsy Teetotaler ن 