Do Not Forget About the Potemkin Presidency
Or the mainstream media's role.
I’ve recently found myself thinking more and more about the Feiler Faster Thesis.
Introduced into the lexicon twenty-five years ago by former Slate blogger Mickey Kaus, the idea is that the pace of society is largely determined by the rate at which news breaks. The digital era has afforded us greater access to the wider world thanks to the internet, social media, and mobile technology, but there are significant trade-offs, including the ruthless monetization of our attention, the anaesthetised consumption of algorithmically-optimized content, and constant, arbitrary stimulation. The result is that we’re suffocating in information to the point where our cognitive capacity is often overwhelmed. This, combined with a pervasive 24/7 news cycle, makes it difficult for people to keep up with everything that’s going on, so that events and scandals receive ever less consideration.
I could sooner count the stars than list all the examples from the past four years of how mainstream media institutions, which are predominantly run by progressive votaries who see it as their civic duty to protect Team Blue rather than ensure the country is properly informed, sought to capitalize on the public’s malleable attention span under these hyper-distracting conditions. Chanting from the same psalter, outlets have used reach, synchronization, repetition, and distribution to minimize certain stories while magnifying others, nudging people toward a socially constructed consensus reality in order to run cover for Democrats during an administration that wasn’t just defined by scandals, but was itself arguably the greatest political scandal in American history.
Joe Biden was not actually in charge of his own presidency. Staff meetings, including the rare cabinet meetings (there were only seven), were staged to make it appear as if the president were making decisions. Biden had to ask his staff for permission to take questions at public appearances, and often wasn’t permitted to play-act as president on “bad days.” Meetings with world leaders were cancelled so that our babbling Lear could go to bed early. Donor questions were scripted. Teleprompters were required for small events in private homes. Aides hid information from him.
This was a Potemkin administration, George Orwell’s version of Weekend at Bernie’s in which a shadowy cabal of scheming progressive technocrats teamed up with Democratic activists, loyalists, politicos, and legislators to use a frail old man as a political marionette and replace our pre-existing civic compact with a neo-totalitarian progressive theocracy justified in the name of safety and equity that increasingly relied on government censorship to cure a public deemed insufficiently anoetic. In effect, we’ve been living under a managerial regime wrapped in woke politics, one run by credentialed class social engineers and Svengalis focused not on good governance but the top-down transformation of America. Controlling Biden like a puppet allowed these people to do crazy things they would have never otherwise dared. All the power, none of the responsibility.
Compact’s Nathan Pinkoski described Biden’s time in office as “a simulacrum of a functioning progressive presidency” that required “keeping tight control of the informational space, and—critically—assuming that supporters and voters would simply trust those wielding that control.” In other words, this widespread conspiracy of deception wouldn’t have been possible were it not for the left-tinged blob of media movers and shakers who decided that the truth was not in the best interests of the Democratic Party. These shameless poltroons collectively fabricated a false reality while punishing those who failed to attest to its veracity, claiming that Biden was “sharp and focused” and “energetic,”1 branding suggestions to the contrary as “cheap fakes,” “caustic and unfair,” and a “right-wing, tin-foil-hat talking point,” and insisting that those who dared to acknowledge what was manifestly obvious were part of “a conspiracy-oriented constituency with little regard for truth.”
Why would our press wordcels and cable news emoticons team up with an opaque inner-circle of party administrators to form a Praetorian Guard of deceivers and perpetrate such a fraud on the American people?
Political clout. Power. Cultural hegemony. Reflexive partisan and professional self-interest. And a shared belief, sincerely held by far too many Democrats, that there’s nothing wrong with the president essentially functioning as the King of England — someone with ceremonial status, a figurehead for autonomous independent agencies who must ultimately defer to deputized, unelected, unaccountable bureaucrats behind the scenes — so long as the aristocratic impositions of authoritative “experts” reign supreme over the wayward, uneducated masses.
Biden left office “dropping one lawless, norm-defying, justly impeachable un-democratic transgression after another,” as even Jonah Goldberg admits. On Friday, the puppet-in-chief unilaterally declared, via tweet, that the Constitution had been amended, basically trying to meme the Equal Rights Amendment into existence, a longstanding flagship cause for AWFL Valkyries. He then used his last day in office to preemptively pardon Anthony Fauci, retired Gen. Mark Milley, the entire House committee that “investigated” the Jan. 6 riot, and four other members of his own family who were involved in the same influence peddling as Hunter.
Regardless of your political preferences, this post-election nihilism should be infuriating. These are bad precedents. That’s beyond argument. And bad precedents beget worse precedents.
The president can recognize or not recognize however many constitutional amendments he pleases, and do so by tweet? The president can use the pardon power to immunize his subordinates, meaning administration officials no longer have to fear congressional subpoenas and investigations or the prospect that federal law enforcement will be looking over their shoulders? The president can shield his family from the scales of justice?
The thing is, though, I’m not even sure that directing anger at Joe Biden makes sense at this point. There’s reason to believe that our now former president was so non compos mentis over the last few months that he didn’t even know what executive orders he was signing. And Politico’s Jonathan Martin revealed in December that Biden’s senior aides were engaged in a “vigorous internal debate” over whether to “issue preemptive pardons to a range of current and former public officials,” and that the president wasn’t involved in those conversations.
Seems like there’s a real possibility that the power-mad ventriloquists pulling the strings might ultimately be the ones responsible for the dangerous, potentially irreversible erosion of norms. Perhaps the sacred Fourth Estate should look into this.
Fat chance.
Our sentinels of the republic tied their political rectitude to this administration, holding up Biden and his coterie as proof that those who identify with the Democratic Party belong to a better moral breed than Trump and his pleb supporters. The last thing they want to do is acknowledge all the guardrails that the Left has mangled since 2020, for that would shatter their moral pretensions.
Which is why the entire mainstream media is working to ensure that the legacy of ashes left in the wake of Progress™ will register on the seismographs of as few Americans as possible. Outlets have shifted their klieg lights onto more important stories, like insinuating that Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute…
…and Trump’s unconscionable decision to pardon January 6 rioters…
…and yet another smear story about Pete Hegseth, easily the most disgusting one yet.
The Biden presidency was an extinction level event for the credibility of the journalist and pundit class, and just 33% of all Americans now express a favorable view of the Democratic Party—an all-time low in CNN’s polling dating back to 1992. Yet, it appears that little has been learned by our out-of-touch Brahmins. All signs point toward the continuation of resistance-style “state-of-emergency liberalism,” in which Donald Trump as existential-threat-to-Our-Democracy™ and the scourge of populism are constantly invoked to excuse all manner of corruption, abuse of power, and malfeasance.
Regardless of what a second Trump term brings, his reelection stands as a sharp rebuke to elite hubris and a specific class of affluents who’ve used fake, moralizing pseudo-politics to conceal their self-interest. My hope is that as time goes on and people are afforded the clarity of retrospect, the magnitude of this Potemkin presidency scandal will sink in and strengthen the appeal of sensible conservatism.
Franklin Foer and Bob Woodward even wrote books based on access to the White House that celebrated Biden as an able executive.
The great delicious irony here is that when the MSM and DNC married each other, they guaranteed that when their ships sunk they would both sink to the bottom chained together.
If the Dems weren't able to fall asleep every night without knowing that, much like having an excellent maid or butler, whatever messes they may have made would be all cleaned up by their press lackeys first thing next morning, then maybe—
they wouldn't have pumped that last trillion into the economy and been able to level off inflation, instead of prices getting jacked up by at least 20%, which not even Pravda could have covered for;
they wouldn't have opened wide the border and flooded the country with tens of thousands of "migrants" every month, which they denied—"the border is secure" is this decade's Saddam had WMDs—until no one could walk around any major city and not see the truth for themselves (mostly thanks to Govs Abbot and DeSantis);
and, most blatantly, maybe they would have sat down with the boss of the Biden family in 2023 and explained to him that no matter how much Jill and Hunter were enjoying their royal lifestyles, there was no way he could be Prez from 2025-2029 and thus needed to step aside asap so they could have a primary, instead of getting stuck with his lamebrained understudy.
But instead they pledged omerta to the Big Lie that hid their little lies and thought they could keep the con going just into November—and they got close! If only Joe could have held it together for one debate!
Ooops! Couldn't have happened to a lamer bunch of aspiring totalitarians...
(Great job, and extra credit for "anoetic"—I hadda look that up.)
Nice summary of the final days of the shit show presidency. It is infuriating that Biden was just a front man, while the roadies behind the stacks were doing the actual singing.. That's not the case today. Love him or hate him, Trump's large and in charge! It's way better than what we had.