It’s so easy to snooker the “objective” media. It’s as if they can’t not take the bait. And of all the candidates and voices who understand this, I think Beto really called it out best. I’ll get there in a second but let’s understand first how the non-Fox world of the True Fake Media plays rope a dope with itself. In the process they fail America miserably.
The news that’s fit to print is supposed to be honest and so look to create a non-partisan representation of points of view. They are there to report different opinions. However, the press is also supposed to declare what it understands to be the facts. This creates a self-destructive stupidity that gives Republicans exactly what they want.
Because Republicans are shameless liars frauds and liars, they understand perfectly how to wind this first idea around the second. First, they make their declarations—sometimes willfully ignorant, sometimes dissimulating purposefully, and always with an eye on their audience so they will nod, wink, and grasp their real intention. Enter racist white supremacy politics, including efforts to suppress and gerrymander the vote, intimidate people of color, and pass every kind of law that puts non-white men at some disadvantage.
The establishment racist Republicans don’t want the violence to interrupt their policy objectives, which are overtly racist. The list goes on. The evidence that Trump has emboldened, encouraged, and _fed_ the racist delusions of his white nationalist followers is indisputable. Shall we add to that the entire ecosphere of Fox, particularly Carlson and Hannity who have repeatedly asserted that immigrants make the country “dirtier” and express their own anxieties about “multiculturalism”?
The Party of White People is rallied to “conservative” causes that legitimize their bigotries using whatever cover-ups and dog whistles they need. Trump just feeds them the red meat. The press takes the bait because there are so many racists, so many pathological Republicans that they have to “normalize” their views. It’s like talking about Mormon theology _as if_ it weren’t insane. Have you read the Book of Mormon? Even a little? But because they own the State of Utah and act like Romney, we don’t say to them What the Actual Fuck?! Legitimacy is the facade that disallows honest questions.
And then no less than Anderson Cooper will ask with a straight face if the president is a racist and then _follow up_ with “Why do you believe that?”—to satisfy his own (and the network’s need) for the objective performance media bias. The right wing has so cowed, so intimidated the mainstream with accusations of being biased that matters of _fact_ must be treated _as opinion_. Cooper knows, he’s not stupid. But he gives the “both sides” nod _in spite of the facts_ and just to hear it out. This is a serious mistake.
It is a _fact_ that Trump has demonstrated in his long history of racist behaviors that he has passed the test. It waddles, it quacks, it’s got the right feathers and looks like all the rest of them: it’s a duck. So asking if the racist is a racist is either a kind of professional self-soothing so as to meet their own emotional standards of professional objectivity or it’s just being used by those who know that the reporters and their networks are stupid enough and effectively bullied and brow-beaten to do their bidding.
So on Saturday a reporter asked Beto O’Rourke as he was walking to his car Sunday: “Is there anything in your mind that the president can do now to make this any better?” Really. This was a question. Beto replied, “Members of the press, what the fuck? It’s these questions that you know the answers to.” Yes, what the actual fuck: can we instead ask questions about how to respond Republican complicity in racism, or just anything a little more honest? Does this reporter believe that after three years and a lifetime of racism that Trump, who owes his entire career to these vile sentiments and uses them everyday to create discord, to fear-monger, and inspire hate, is somehow going to change?
These reporters are smart people, well some of them, and so it’s more interesting to ask why they act in these reprehensible ways that pander to the needs of their misinterpreted professional “responsibilities.” Such horseshit but in fact it’s actually worse than that. You see, most Americans have no attention span, don’t read, and have been taught for more than a generation to distrust and hate their government, especially “Washington.” No one gets elected as an insider professional, that being a sure way to lose. Notwithstanding, the press by failing to _start_ with the facts does the Average American a very serious disservice.
You see, all Average American will hear is “both sides do it,” “it’s ALL just partisan the SAME partisan bullshit,” and that there are NO facts. They have been taught and deeply encouraged by the Right to deny ALL facts but the propaganda because the Right can count on the press to “report”, “ask fair questions” for both “points of view,” and NOT go to the facts first. Average American thinks it’s a food fight when it’s really the press giving the Goebbels-Fox Team the win. The same thing happens with guns. As if the idea that weapons suited for _war_ can be brought OPENLY into Walmart LEGALLY so long as they are not used—and this IS the law, normal then for America. We are okay with that?
One side wants to question that, the other wants to make sure this remains exactly the way it is. There are not two sides. There is a right side and a wrong side. Of course, NOTHING will happen in Congress because one side will make sure nothing will happen. But the press will report that “Congress has done nothing” and Average American hears that it’s just partisan bickering. The press participates wholly in the delusion and the Right laughs all the way to the gun show.