America is having fun to die for – and the media still can’t face the truth
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America remains in the throes of an existential democratic crisis: Donald Trump’s Republicans-fascists and their movement are on the march, winning victory after victory while Democrats and the “resistance” crouch, doing little or nothing to retaliate.
Still, U.S. media gatekeepers seem more interested in stories about the possibly imaginary friend of Nicki Minaj’s cousin, who allegedly suffered from swollen testicles from the coronavirus vaccine – believed to harm her marital outlook – than ‘ to do the hard work of advocating for democracy and reality. responsibility.
America is literally having fun to die for, even as we learn more details about how Donald Trump and his agents attempted a coup to overthrow American democracy following its defeat in the 2020 election. The most recent ‘Revelation’: Step-by-step plans for this coup were outlined in a memo written by right-wing lawyer John Eastman, who became a key adviser to Trump in the final days of his presidency.
Some of the most influential voices in America’s mainstream media – with the notable exceptions of CNN and The Washington Post – have largely ignored this story. At Mother Jones, Tim Murphy offers these details about Eastman’s memo and media non-response:
In six concise points, the memo describes a process by which Vice President Mike Pence could use his powers on Jan.6 to kick voters from the seven states President Joe Biden won in the 2020 election. The plan counted on. Republicans in those states to subdue competing groups of voters, based on the false and fabricated premise that Trump somehow won those statesâ¦.
Not knowing for sure what happens when you decouple “peaceful transfer of power” from “a society based entirely on it”, I kind of think that’s a big deal. This is a breaking glass moment, as some have said, only someone else has ever broken the glass and grabbed the ax and run with it.
But it’s not that bad, apparently, if you watch the network’s TV news. Media Matters’ Matt Gertz reported on Wednesday that the total number of minutes spent on the story in the morning or evening editions of ABC, NBC or CBS News in the first two days after the memo was posted was zero. . “In fact,” Gertz wrote, “the only shows on the National Network to mention Trump’s coup memo were the late-night variety shows hosted by Jimmy Kimmel, Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers.”
In a new essay for the Washington Post, Margaret Sullivan warns of what the media silence surrounding this new “revelation” reveals about the crisis of democracy in the United States:
In a normal world, the “Eastman Memo” would by now be infamous, how “Access Hollywood” became popular shorthand in 2016 for the damning recording of Donald Trump’s bragging about groped women.
But odds are most people haven’t even heard of the Eastman memo.
That says something disturbing how jaded the mainstream press has become about the attempted coup in the aftermath of the 2020 election – and how easily a coup could succeed next time around.
Custodians of the news media would likely defend their choice to focus on the great Nicki Minaj story by claiming that celebrity stories offer a way to turn to larger issues of public interest. In essence, the uninformed comments of vaccine pop star Nicki provide a “teachable moment.”
But the most basic and plausible explanation is that the American people are drawn to youthful and immature distractions, and these impulses are the source of mainstream media ad revenue. These concerns should allay in the face of an unprecedented crisis in democracy. Of course, this is unlikely to happen.
The news media perform an important agenda-setting function in a society, and this is especially true in a democracy where freedom of the press is fundamental. In practice, the fourth estate tells the public what to pay attention to and how to think about it. In this context, bringing up a story about a possibly celebrity vaccine anecdote about the details of a coup plot offers another accusation from an American news outlet that continues to normalize neofascism.
Moreover, the news media’s evasion of any sustained conversation about the Republican-Fascist coup attempt reflects the pathologies of an emotionally immature society, unable to cope with the crises it is currently going through. Given this, how will American society be able to face or overcome enormous challenges such as the global climate catastrophe, the continuing pandemic, mass shootings and gun violence, inequalities in wealth and income, profound technological disruption of work and the economy, racism and white supremacy, right wing terrorism and other violence, serious threats to the rule of law and constitutional order and much more ?
The crisis of democracy in the United States reveals another chilling truth about our culture of distraction and immaturity: Some in the media actually yearn for Donald Trump’s return to national office. For many in the media elites – who believe themselves largely immune to the day-to-day consequences of fascism, white supremacy, and other anti-social and anti-human behavior – Trump was a source of huge profits and heightened prestige.
Media critic Eric Boehlert explored this in a recent newsletter, writing that while “American democracy is ever closer to the abyss”, the media “continues to play a dangerous game in refusing to recognize the danger ” :
Even following the latest revelations of how Trump and his team aggressively attempted to mount a coup by invalidating millions of votes last year, he’s still being normalized in daily coverage, as the press eagerly awaits his return to the country trail. (âWhen will Trump answer the big question of 2024?â The New York Times asked.)
There is nothing Trump can do at this point that would invalidate him in the eyes of the political press, and that includes shooting someone in the middle of Fifth Avenueâ¦.
It remains an engrossing subject that offers endless plot angles and is treated like an impending star in American politics. Forget about that banging stuff; Trump’s violent and lawless mob that rampaged inside the United States Capitol for hours, beating officers unconscious and destroy the offices of Democratic members. Whatever the shock, the murderous Trump insurgency initially generated among Beltway journalists has since faded.
Annoyed by President Joe Biden’s “boring” administration, reporters seem eager for the chaos and clicks created by Trump – no defeated candidate has ever received as much attention as him.
Boehlert goes on to observe that “the DC press can barely contain their excitement that the 2020 loser is showing up again,” adding that “everyone knows that if he wins a second term, every minute of every White House press briefing would be broadcast live and in its entirety, as they were for his first term.⦠A dangerous autocrat dedicated to destroying the US electoral process waits behind the scenes to become the GOP candidate in 2024, and the Beltway press cannot wait. “
In other words, too much of the media refuses to focus on the serious threats to American democracy and society embodied by Donald Trump and the neofascist movement, in large part because they find the spectacle so enthralling.
I keep wondering what kind of movie this is. What version of the simulation are we stuck in as America continues to sink deeper into fascist unreality?
It is perhaps as simple and complex as Mike Judge’s 2006 film “Idiocracy”, where the ignorant masses live in a full-fledged corporate dictatorship, where the country’s most popular film consists of a bare ass farting on the screen. Or maybe America gave in to the premonitory warnings of the 2018 movie “Sorry to Bother You”, where the most popular reality show on television features contestants who allow themselves to be physically assaulted and otherwise humiliated. .
As the country succumbs to fascism, the American people, for the most part, resemble the moviegoers on the cover of Guy Debord’s classic edition of “Société du spectacle”, sitting transfixed in 3D glasses, enamored by the images on the screen and numb to the outside world. Trump’s agents, allies and supporters set the theater on fire, but so far the public hasn’t noticed and probably wouldn’t even care if they did.
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