Pull Up the Roots
I have a good time when I go out of my mind..
You're right that there are plenty of journalists who see Trump for what he is and call him out. But the structure they're in often undermines their efforts. Even if individual reporters and editors hate him, their work gets funneled through a filter more interested in "balance" than serving the public good. You can have a reporter saying, "This is dangerous" over the air, but if it's surrounded by panels treating Trump's authoritarianism as debate fodder or if it's followed by wall-to-wall rally coverage without context, the seriousness gets lost in all the noise.Look, if you think the mainstream media has "only occasionally found the courage to criticize Trump" or pretended he's just "business as usual" we are operating in different realities and there isn't going to be much value in having this discussion. Granted, I do not watch or listen to right wing media like Fox. So if that's who you're talking about, that would account for our difference in opinion. But I'm talking about the NYT, CNN, MSNBC, Atlantic, the Big Three Networks, etc. If you think there has been a lack of opprobrium towards Trump coming out of these media organs, especially after January 6th...I don't know what you're watching.
I think you're perhaps confusing the capitalism-driven media corporations for the content being produced by their liberal workers. I don't disagree that the corporation loves the fukkery because it's good for business, but that doesn't mean they're sane-washing Trump. The journalist and content producers hate him because he represents a b*stardization of their worldview diminishes the prestige of their jobs, so they use their platform to cosplay Will McAvoy and make speeches about "this is not who we are". The corporation is indifferent to Trump, it only care about profit maximization through eyeballs. If anything, the push from the corporation has been to highlighting Trump's car crash fukkery because it keeps people watching. Neither entity has an incentive to ignore Trump or treat him passively or with kid gloves. This is a good thread about this very issue:
ok I see what's going on, have a nice one.
You're completely missing the point. The media's capitalism-driven nature and need for "fukkery" doesn't just incidentally shape coverage of Trump, it's the very reason his rhetoric gets "sane-washed." When journalists and networks package his authoritarian tendencies as controversial statements or reduce his disregard for democratic norms to mere chaos, they aren't simply putting on a show for ratings; they're actively enabling his normalization. The corporation may love the eyeballs, but by sanitizing his words and framing his extremism as a sideshow, they give millions permission to see his actions as trivial or even acceptable. That's not just treating Trump with indifference; it's paving the way for him to be seen as just another political choice rather than an existential threat.
I agree with a lot of what you've been saying here and elsewhere, especially wrt foreign policy, but you have a blind spot for Trump, which leads you to downplay and diminish his threat and how he is treated. And that's ahrd to ignore.
guess I better cop that Pro at launch
y’all are high. Come back to reality.
