2. The irony here is that no one needs Trump more than these pack of jackals, at least half of whom will be jobless ten minutes after the Trump circus leaves town.
3. How many lawsuits has Elon been hit with since he bought Twitter and became an official enemy of the Dems? I guess all this mass hysteria about an Admin pursuing its enemies through lawfare doesn't count when they do it?
The lawfare part is wild. There's that recent NYT chart that Brad shared about all the ways the federal government is going after Elon through investigations and fines. How much is that because he's not censoring the right people and because he supports Trump?
Also tells us that the country is absolutely over-regulated, so that in the normal course of business you always end up breaking some arcane rule or regulation that is often subject to interpretation. There is no rule of law if those regulations are then selectively enforced, it's the same as corrupt cops in third world countries making rules up on the fly to collect bribes just on a larger scale with legal cover. It gives the bureaucrats an excuse to come after anyone. Europe does a similar thing with GDPR and now DSA, e.g. most countries require you by law to keep accounting records for 10+ years while you also need to delete all personal information on request, you always have to pick which regulation you break.
The Washington Post won't do the ritual. That's what this is about. And that's got this collection of elite beltway journos and influence peddlers, pundits, public officials, and actors all apoplectic.
Because everything up to now has been about ritual, about signaling to the tribe that they're part of the Resistance, that they cheer on the Blue Wave, that Hate Has No Home Here and No Human Is Illegal, and We're Not Going Back.
It's been about constructing a fortress of maximalist accusations and hyperbolic assessments. And the bad-faith analyses and irrational conclusions that have been a mainstay of the media complex. Men are in crisis, don't you know, and that's why they won't vote for the Kween.
The ritual is everything because these people have little else through which to display and confirm their status in ways that are socially acceptable. They are here to Defend Democracy because it is on brand with being a right-thinking Democrat that abides by the idea that oligarchies are bad, but technocracies run by Ivy League-educated elites is among the best of all possible worlds. It's the one where lines like "the most qualified candidate in history" persuades tens of millions to make the right choice. Or else.
Especially now, at the unique moment in history, which has presented an existential challenge to which they must rise as the noble protagonists they are.
For the Washington Post to not endorse Harris is tantamount to saying, "This really doesn't matter all that much." And that won't do for those who have constructed a fantasy world of disaster porn in which their fixation on Trump as Hitler/Fascist 2.0 is core to their self-image as relentless Protectors of Democracy.
And so now they undertake a ritual of their own: being performatively self-righteous -- or, I admit, possibly just delusional on a grand public scale -- in their excommunication of Bezos's broadsheet.
They affirm to one another "We are still the Good Ones, fighting the good fight." You know, with their catastrophizing screeds filtered through a kind of arrogance that dare not get its hands dirty with the business of actually listening and understanding.
The ritual has captured them, and they can't stop dancing. Too much is at stake. People will die. Enemies arrested. Only the MAGAs will be spared the camps they have been set aside for the dazzling intellects like Keith Olbermann, who once did a photo shoot of himself cowering while draped with the U.S. flag.
Maybe the funniest line in that entire compendium of righteous tweets was "The 'West Wing' Star Called It Quits on the Washington Post." You mean Bradley Whitford, the guy who, back in July, encouraged people to donate to the Biden/Harris campaign, and is now campaigning for Harris/Walz?
Who should be more offended, Daily Beast: me, for you thinking I can be influenced by news of an NPC Hollywood actor dropping their newspaper subscription, or Martin Sheen, who was the only "star" on that show?
For some politics seems to have an almost religious dimension, a struggle of good vs. evil even, along with all the rituals, incantations and catechisms you mention with perhaps a difference to classic religion being the regular upgrades of the vocabulary and belief system that also helps weed out the heretics. While the whole idea of a savior in the form of a politician is also present on the right they seem to be more realistic in their expectations. Most of this stuff probably doesn't matter that much, a lot of the things politicians take credit for wasn't their doing. Some believe that if we just vote for the right people the next time they're going to fix everything they failed to fix since time eternal - the definition of insanity. And it's always totalitarian, everyone must go along with their politics like a jealous god.
The religious belief in politics also explains why the left (and the greens, but I repeat myself) don't understand their opponents and just see them as evil. Ask a left winger to steelman or just explain the other side of an argument and they are usually unable, either the people on the other side are evil or corrupted by evil. The same is usually not true of people on the right with perhaps the exception of the extremists, they can at least articulate the other sides position usually without calling them evil.
The belief that you can fix everything if you just have the right people in place is analogous to “real communism/socialism has never been tried.
No matter the failures, no matter the wisdom that says accept the limitations of what you can — or should — do in a republic, the answer is always more control. We just need more experts pulling the levers and pushing the buttons.
And as you said, the systems become more totalitarian because that’s the only way to do the things the true believers with a technocratic processing system think absolutely must be done.
The communists also always blamed their failures on the capitalists, fascist and other wreckers in their midst, which lead to mass arrests and murders. The reason that communism or managerialism is so appealing to academics is because they live in the world of the theoretical often with no concern of what's practical. They also then get to blame the workers (and engineers) if their schemes fail because they work perfectly in theory.
The totalitarian approach is also required because any alternative based on the principles of voluntary cooperation, free markets and liberty usually proves itself to be superior.
You nailed it. To me these people are modern flagellants; the people who wandered Europe whipping themselves bloody as a sign of penance.They feel deep guilt and will turn on others who disagree.
It’s not even the unthinking partisanship of these people that really gets to me, it’s the sheer bloated sense of entitlement. There are plenty of other places to go for their fix and now they are acting as if the Washington Post has secretly been The Blaze all along even though every article is hating Trump? Give me a break!
For me it’s their language. Everyone is a fascist if they disagree with them. Meanwhile their party are acting like fascist. They partner with corporations just like the fascist did. Citizen United made this a reality yet no one talks about that anymore. Where y’all think all this money is coming from? And what about the Zuck bucks? Why is that legal?
LMAO Bezos loses $77 million and pulls the plug out of the wall on the DC megaphone used to justify elitist tyranny. It is as if someone let a crack of light into a dark cave and a rush of screeching bats have come flying out in a panic. I love it, just too funny 😂
I don't think Bezos is in it for the money when he bought the WaPo, at least not directly, although those losses are pretty spectacular and a bad look for him. It's honestly surprising to me that they even have a budget that allows for such a loss.
Who cares what any newspaper thinks about anything. They should report news, current events, etc. and leave their opinions for their private lives. We don't want to hear the lies and complaints of these self righteous newspapers.
The “audience” requires it as “proof” to look at the “credentials” of their superior intelligence to justify them dictating to all the “deplorables” who disagree with them.
I was a newspaper reporter in a very small town in flyover country almost 20 years ago, and even back then (when actual journalism still existed) I thought it was insane for any newspaper to endorse any candidate for any political position - even local races.
These are journalists, right? Shouldn’t their perspective of reality be more grounded in fact than ours? Do they know how tiny these newspapers real circulations are? That’s how tiny the impact an endorsement will have.
What on earth is their fear based on? Is it their interactions with real people on X (who don’t read their articles) now that management isn’t filtering/censoring responses to their posts?
Their perspective has nothing to do with reality. Let’s get rid of the “journalist” term that these elitists like to call themselves & go back to “reporters” who report the news….no bs indoctrination degree needed.
The role of the “4th estate” (aka journalism) was to make sense of the noise created by the other 3: governors, clerics, and commoners. In today’s world of way too much information, and business has replaced the clerics, we, the “commoners” need journalists to make sense of the noise, to keep the governors and clerics honest. The problem is the money. There used to be a wall between publisher (the money) and journalist (the editorial). These publishers have just proven that the wall is gone.
The non thinking lemurs groupthink statement: “You defied us and now we’re mad!. You’ll see! We’re going to cancel you! Hey everyone, look at ME!, I’m righteous! I’m virtuous! I am mad at the WP for daring to not be one of us!, and I’m going to cancel them!!!”
I love your work, but, just like every other legacy media outlet, the Post abandoned any remaining vestige of impartiality and credibility long before fawning over the Cackler. Their credibility was destroyed when they conflated Hydroxychloroquine with Trump-worship, and Ivermectin with horse de-wormer.
Then again, they lied plenty before that. But lying about legit treatments for the disease they were fearmongering about 24/7 is a special sort of evil, I think.
Simple way to tell if any media outlet, legacy or "grassroots", should never be trusted - put in Google the name of the outlet (Washingtonpost.com) with "Hydroxychloroquine" "Trump". And with "Ivermectin" "horse".
Impartiality was never really something that was present on the level of the individual journalists, especially when reporting on domestic politics. It's more honest I believe to just point out your bias instead of trying and failing to look neutral. Credibility on the other hand requires that you go after the problems on your own political side just as hard, very few journalists do this. Their main problem is either a lack of honesty or a lack of curiosity.
The funniest thing is the person they are whining about not getting the endorsement, is the stupidest, most vapid candidate in memory. How about
Bezos just doesn’t (like lots of folks) like either candidate. If he was really a “coward” etc., he would have endorsed Trump. But he didn’t. What he did seems eminently reasonable.
Complaining about white billionaires.... on Twitter. Parody is dead at this point.
In other news, I didn't realize Keith Olbermann had gone so far off the deep end. Putting people in camps?? He and Robert DeNiro should be padded-cell mates.
The comment often made by real Resistance members in France after the war about people who claimed to be in the Resistance. "The Resistance gets larger every year."
Yeah it's the same in Germany with somehow no one having voted for the Nazis, I guess they all died (in actuality many people slid right back into their roles in administration with many scientists being recruited by the USA).
Talk about Stolen Valor, it's from "We've risked and lost our lives fighting an overwhelming enemy" to "I tweeted something 99% of my bubble agrees with". For people who always talk about cultural appropriation that's really rich.
All the performative cancellations are pretty funny. However, they seem to have stopped short of sending a strongly worded letter, the next level of disapproval escalation.
I for one think media publications endorsing one candidate or another is kind of…counter-journalistic.
As long as we're speculating, might it be that they don't want to be associated with Harris when she loses decisively? The reasons they give sound pretty contrived - we're returning to our tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates (except for all the times we did because it was just so important). Would be far more reasonable to give every member of the editorial board a chance to endorse or not endorse, why don't they just do that? Why did they feel the need to announce they won't endorse anyone instead of just not mentioning it like they do with so many other things?
This article was a pleasure to read. It was the sweet taste of liberal tears, with the exception of Olberman; we don't drink his tears! And I read someplace, probably a meme on X, that most of this same group was going to leave X when Elon became the owner, but were all tweeting on X that they left the WaPo. The irony!
1. LOL
2. The irony here is that no one needs Trump more than these pack of jackals, at least half of whom will be jobless ten minutes after the Trump circus leaves town.
3. How many lawsuits has Elon been hit with since he bought Twitter and became an official enemy of the Dems? I guess all this mass hysteria about an Admin pursuing its enemies through lawfare doesn't count when they do it?
4. People still read the Washington Post?
5. LOL
The lawfare part is wild. There's that recent NYT chart that Brad shared about all the ways the federal government is going after Elon through investigations and fines. How much is that because he's not censoring the right people and because he supports Trump?
"How much is that because he's not censoring the right people and because he supports Trump?"
all of it
Also tells us that the country is absolutely over-regulated, so that in the normal course of business you always end up breaking some arcane rule or regulation that is often subject to interpretation. There is no rule of law if those regulations are then selectively enforced, it's the same as corrupt cops in third world countries making rules up on the fly to collect bribes just on a larger scale with legal cover. It gives the bureaucrats an excuse to come after anyone. Europe does a similar thing with GDPR and now DSA, e.g. most countries require you by law to keep accounting records for 10+ years while you also need to delete all personal information on request, you always have to pick which regulation you break.
110%
what is the "washington Post" everyone is talking about?
The Washington Post won't do the ritual. That's what this is about. And that's got this collection of elite beltway journos and influence peddlers, pundits, public officials, and actors all apoplectic.
Because everything up to now has been about ritual, about signaling to the tribe that they're part of the Resistance, that they cheer on the Blue Wave, that Hate Has No Home Here and No Human Is Illegal, and We're Not Going Back.
It's been about constructing a fortress of maximalist accusations and hyperbolic assessments. And the bad-faith analyses and irrational conclusions that have been a mainstay of the media complex. Men are in crisis, don't you know, and that's why they won't vote for the Kween.
The ritual is everything because these people have little else through which to display and confirm their status in ways that are socially acceptable. They are here to Defend Democracy because it is on brand with being a right-thinking Democrat that abides by the idea that oligarchies are bad, but technocracies run by Ivy League-educated elites is among the best of all possible worlds. It's the one where lines like "the most qualified candidate in history" persuades tens of millions to make the right choice. Or else.
Especially now, at the unique moment in history, which has presented an existential challenge to which they must rise as the noble protagonists they are.
For the Washington Post to not endorse Harris is tantamount to saying, "This really doesn't matter all that much." And that won't do for those who have constructed a fantasy world of disaster porn in which their fixation on Trump as Hitler/Fascist 2.0 is core to their self-image as relentless Protectors of Democracy.
And so now they undertake a ritual of their own: being performatively self-righteous -- or, I admit, possibly just delusional on a grand public scale -- in their excommunication of Bezos's broadsheet.
They affirm to one another "We are still the Good Ones, fighting the good fight." You know, with their catastrophizing screeds filtered through a kind of arrogance that dare not get its hands dirty with the business of actually listening and understanding.
The ritual has captured them, and they can't stop dancing. Too much is at stake. People will die. Enemies arrested. Only the MAGAs will be spared the camps they have been set aside for the dazzling intellects like Keith Olbermann, who once did a photo shoot of himself cowering while draped with the U.S. flag.
Maybe the funniest line in that entire compendium of righteous tweets was "The 'West Wing' Star Called It Quits on the Washington Post." You mean Bradley Whitford, the guy who, back in July, encouraged people to donate to the Biden/Harris campaign, and is now campaigning for Harris/Walz?
Who should be more offended, Daily Beast: me, for you thinking I can be influenced by news of an NPC Hollywood actor dropping their newspaper subscription, or Martin Sheen, who was the only "star" on that show?
For some politics seems to have an almost religious dimension, a struggle of good vs. evil even, along with all the rituals, incantations and catechisms you mention with perhaps a difference to classic religion being the regular upgrades of the vocabulary and belief system that also helps weed out the heretics. While the whole idea of a savior in the form of a politician is also present on the right they seem to be more realistic in their expectations. Most of this stuff probably doesn't matter that much, a lot of the things politicians take credit for wasn't their doing. Some believe that if we just vote for the right people the next time they're going to fix everything they failed to fix since time eternal - the definition of insanity. And it's always totalitarian, everyone must go along with their politics like a jealous god.
The religious belief in politics also explains why the left (and the greens, but I repeat myself) don't understand their opponents and just see them as evil. Ask a left winger to steelman or just explain the other side of an argument and they are usually unable, either the people on the other side are evil or corrupted by evil. The same is usually not true of people on the right with perhaps the exception of the extremists, they can at least articulate the other sides position usually without calling them evil.
The belief that you can fix everything if you just have the right people in place is analogous to “real communism/socialism has never been tried.
No matter the failures, no matter the wisdom that says accept the limitations of what you can — or should — do in a republic, the answer is always more control. We just need more experts pulling the levers and pushing the buttons.
And as you said, the systems become more totalitarian because that’s the only way to do the things the true believers with a technocratic processing system think absolutely must be done.
The communists also always blamed their failures on the capitalists, fascist and other wreckers in their midst, which lead to mass arrests and murders. The reason that communism or managerialism is so appealing to academics is because they live in the world of the theoretical often with no concern of what's practical. They also then get to blame the workers (and engineers) if their schemes fail because they work perfectly in theory.
The totalitarian approach is also required because any alternative based on the principles of voluntary cooperation, free markets and liberty usually proves itself to be superior.
Excellent post. Very insightful regarding the "ritual". I think you nailed it.
Bravo
You nailed it. To me these people are modern flagellants; the people who wandered Europe whipping themselves bloody as a sign of penance.They feel deep guilt and will turn on others who disagree.
It’s not even the unthinking partisanship of these people that really gets to me, it’s the sheer bloated sense of entitlement. There are plenty of other places to go for their fix and now they are acting as if the Washington Post has secretly been The Blaze all along even though every article is hating Trump? Give me a break!
They're the ones in the "cult". They drove me to Conservatism and I'm a punk rocker.
We gotta bring Sheena over to our side.
For me it’s their language. Everyone is a fascist if they disagree with them. Meanwhile their party are acting like fascist. They partner with corporations just like the fascist did. Citizen United made this a reality yet no one talks about that anymore. Where y’all think all this money is coming from? And what about the Zuck bucks? Why is that legal?
🙌 Zuck sucks!
LMAO Bezos loses $77 million and pulls the plug out of the wall on the DC megaphone used to justify elitist tyranny. It is as if someone let a crack of light into a dark cave and a rush of screeching bats have come flying out in a panic. I love it, just too funny 😂
I don't think Bezos is in it for the money when he bought the WaPo, at least not directly, although those losses are pretty spectacular and a bad look for him. It's honestly surprising to me that they even have a budget that allows for such a loss.
"screeching bats have come flying out in a panic" ...........perfect!!!!!!
Who cares what any newspaper thinks about anything. They should report news, current events, etc. and leave their opinions for their private lives. We don't want to hear the lies and complaints of these self righteous newspapers.
The “audience” requires it as “proof” to look at the “credentials” of their superior intelligence to justify them dictating to all the “deplorables” who disagree with them.
I was a newspaper reporter in a very small town in flyover country almost 20 years ago, and even back then (when actual journalism still existed) I thought it was insane for any newspaper to endorse any candidate for any political position - even local races.
It’s like yelling “we really aren’t objective in our reporting”.
These are journalists, right? Shouldn’t their perspective of reality be more grounded in fact than ours? Do they know how tiny these newspapers real circulations are? That’s how tiny the impact an endorsement will have.
What on earth is their fear based on? Is it their interactions with real people on X (who don’t read their articles) now that management isn’t filtering/censoring responses to their posts?
Welcome to reality folks!
Their perspective has nothing to do with reality. Let’s get rid of the “journalist” term that these elitists like to call themselves & go back to “reporters” who report the news….no bs indoctrination degree needed.
The role of the “4th estate” (aka journalism) was to make sense of the noise created by the other 3: governors, clerics, and commoners. In today’s world of way too much information, and business has replaced the clerics, we, the “commoners” need journalists to make sense of the noise, to keep the governors and clerics honest. The problem is the money. There used to be a wall between publisher (the money) and journalist (the editorial). These publishers have just proven that the wall is gone.
The fact that all these self-important folks flocked to Elon Musk's X to announce their dismay/departures is rich 😄
The non thinking lemurs groupthink statement: “You defied us and now we’re mad!. You’ll see! We’re going to cancel you! Hey everyone, look at ME!, I’m righteous! I’m virtuous! I am mad at the WP for daring to not be one of us!, and I’m going to cancel them!!!”
I love your work, but, just like every other legacy media outlet, the Post abandoned any remaining vestige of impartiality and credibility long before fawning over the Cackler. Their credibility was destroyed when they conflated Hydroxychloroquine with Trump-worship, and Ivermectin with horse de-wormer.
Then again, they lied plenty before that. But lying about legit treatments for the disease they were fearmongering about 24/7 is a special sort of evil, I think.
Simple way to tell if any media outlet, legacy or "grassroots", should never be trusted - put in Google the name of the outlet (Washingtonpost.com) with "Hydroxychloroquine" "Trump". And with "Ivermectin" "horse".
Impartiality was never really something that was present on the level of the individual journalists, especially when reporting on domestic politics. It's more honest I believe to just point out your bias instead of trying and failing to look neutral. Credibility on the other hand requires that you go after the problems on your own political side just as hard, very few journalists do this. Their main problem is either a lack of honesty or a lack of curiosity.
Lack of curiosity explains a lot about the culture and professional practice of beltway journalists.
No need to be curious about anything if you think you understand everything.
one woul dthink they were held at bay by emotionally mature editors. that group was broomed a long time ago,
The funniest thing is the person they are whining about not getting the endorsement, is the stupidest, most vapid candidate in memory. How about
Bezos just doesn’t (like lots of folks) like either candidate. If he was really a “coward” etc., he would have endorsed Trump. But he didn’t. What he did seems eminently reasonable.
Complaining about white billionaires.... on Twitter. Parody is dead at this point.
In other news, I didn't realize Keith Olbermann had gone so far off the deep end. Putting people in camps?? He and Robert DeNiro should be padded-cell mates.
The comment often made by real Resistance members in France after the war about people who claimed to be in the Resistance. "The Resistance gets larger every year."
Somehow, they got the Resistance thing backwards.
Yeah it's the same in Germany with somehow no one having voted for the Nazis, I guess they all died (in actuality many people slid right back into their roles in administration with many scientists being recruited by the USA).
Talk about Stolen Valor, it's from "We've risked and lost our lives fighting an overwhelming enemy" to "I tweeted something 99% of my bubble agrees with". For people who always talk about cultural appropriation that's really rich.
All the performative cancellations are pretty funny. However, they seem to have stopped short of sending a strongly worded letter, the next level of disapproval escalation.
I for one think media publications endorsing one candidate or another is kind of…counter-journalistic.
gradually…then all at once.
As long as we're speculating, might it be that they don't want to be associated with Harris when she loses decisively? The reasons they give sound pretty contrived - we're returning to our tradition of not endorsing presidential candidates (except for all the times we did because it was just so important). Would be far more reasonable to give every member of the editorial board a chance to endorse or not endorse, why don't they just do that? Why did they feel the need to announce they won't endorse anyone instead of just not mentioning it like they do with so many other things?
This article was a pleasure to read. It was the sweet taste of liberal tears, with the exception of Olberman; we don't drink his tears! And I read someplace, probably a meme on X, that most of this same group was going to leave X when Elon became the owner, but were all tweeting on X that they left the WaPo. The irony!