“Reconsider Any Belief In Innate American Goodness,” Ken White advises at the Popehat Report. “A country that votes for Trump is broken in very complicated and daunting ways,” informs the attorney and podcaster.
“Fuck Civility,” he declares, and for good measure, “Stay Tuned For Violence.”
They do sorta go together, eh?
“Debate is preferable,” he notes for the record, “[b]ut most Americans would agree with what Thomas Jefferson said about the blood of patriots and tyrants. At some point violence is morally justified and even necessary. Americans will disagree on when.”
Though, let’s all agree, not now.
My thinking the day after takes a different route.
First, the lawfare unleashed on Mr. Trump helped him more than it hurt. A majority of the public did not suddenly become enamored with the idea of 34 felony convictions but stuck by the former president, now president-elect, because of their contempt for the New York Attorney General and the U.S. Department of Justice, seen as rogue players in partisan politics.
America had come to look like Egypt.
Second, the establishment media’s years-long campaign against Trump, hyperbolic and often dishonest (see Charlottesville narrative) failed miserably. Arguably, like lawfare, it was counterproductive.
“Americans don’t trust the news media,” asserted Washington Post owner Jeff Bezos, explaining his paper’s 2024 A.D. non-endorsement for president.
In the aftermath of Mr. Trump being declared the winner, Matt Walsh offered on X: “Legacy media is officially dead.”
Not dead. Just in need of rebirth. Like Democratic Party leaders, news media professionals face a choice, either (a) blame the public for not being more appreciative or (b) reflect upon its own principles and performance.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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5 replies on “Not Now”
Legacy media was never as honest as some people with poor memories or long-standing obliviousness now think; but, in any case, there is no going back to þe Old Pretences. The current batch of journalists will not be reformed, and would fatally disrupt operations if an attempt is made to replace them. Moreover, schools of journalism are quite corrupt, so that any would-be employer of a large number of honest and competent journalists faces incredible search costs.
Perhaps some day new institutions will arise to cultivate a large pool of trustworthy, professional journalists. But they’ll work for new outlets. In the mean time, people will increasingly look to news entrepreneurs.
I agree — not now. Someone winning or losing an election just isn’t a good reason.
But if Trump keeps his promises, many people will think they have good reasons, and some of those people will act.
I will probably not be among the latter, but I will at least be APPROVING if 1) Trump keeps his promise to attempt mass deportations and 2) the response involves a lot of ICE and Border Patrol employees finishing their shifts in bags with tags on their toes.
What would follow upon that would be that the overwhelming majority of those who had cried “We* have to be nice to these people!” would switch to crying “OMG! This is an invasion!” Methods for removal would become far more brutal.
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* Operationally, of course, those who use “we” in this manner believe that the wealth of a nation is One Great Pie, commonly owned, so that the resources of other people are somehow really “ours”.
I agree: mass deportations of people innocent of anything but living and working in America resonates with the darkest days of mid-twentieth-century Europe, and anyone who participates in such a process is a criminal deserving of whatever reaction outraged normal citizens feel compelled to take to stop them.
In the 1930s, during the Administrations both of Herbert Clark Hoover and of Franklin Delano Roosevelt about 400,000 people, both Mexicans and Mexican-American citizens, were rounded-up and expelled to Mexico. Some in the latter group had been born in America.