Just because Republicans choose unreality doesn’t mean the media should ignore the facts of January 6.
On January 6, 2021, I watched CNN as thousands of Donald Trump supporters stormed the US Capitol. As someone well-versed in watching tragedy on television, I was struck by just how indisputable the facts were at the time: violent, red-hat-clad MAGA rioters, followed by Republicans in Congress, tried to stop democracy in its tracks. Trump had told his followers that the protest in Washington, DC, “will be wild,” and in the assault that followed his speech, some rioters smeared feces on the walls of the Capitol. Hundreds of them have since been convicted on charges ranging from assault on federal officers to seditious conspiracy. These are stubborn facts, the kind that do not care about your feelings. These facts include the inalienable truth that Trump is the first president in American history to reject the peaceful transfer of power.
It never occurred to me that these facts could somehow be perverted by partisanship. But three years later, we are seeing just that, as Republicans cling to the lie that the 2020 election was “stolen” by Joe Biden and are poised to make Trump their 2024 nominee. And perhaps even more dangerous than the GOP ditching reality is the news media’s inability to cover Trumpism as the threat to democracy that it very much is.
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But the problem is, when all you have is conventional political framing, everything looks like politics as usual. One candidate makes a claim; the other disputes it. Two sides are divided, etc. This framing only works if both parties operate within the frameworks of a shared reality. But Trumpism doesn’t allow for the reality the rest of us inhabit. Trump’s supporters believe their leader’s reality and not, say, the reality the rest of us see with our eyes. As Trump once told a crowd: “Don’t believe the crap you see from these people, the fake news. What you’re seeing and what you’re reading is not what’s happening.”
Journalists may be well-intentioned in trying to be “objective,” or they’re simply afraid of being labeled partisan. Either way, coverage of January 6 that gives equal weight to both sides—one based in reality, one not—is helping pave the road for authoritarianism.
Try telling this to the “gEnOciDE jOe” clowns, because they are the ones that need to understand this- not the trumpers. Trumpers are too far gone. They won’t listen to reason.
But these ‘single issue’ kids that are grassrooting the ideology that not voting is better than a vote for “genocide” are going to fuck around and find out the hard way when they get Trump installed as a permanent fixture in the White House.
Ok, let me preface this by OF COURSE Biden is by far the lesser evil compared to Trump, OF COURSE single issue voting is some Republican style bullshit and OF COURSE Trump would be even more supportive of a fascist government committing genocide, being a fascist war crime fanboy himself.
That being said, people who are outraged by Biden’s continued support of and thus enabling of genocide DO have a point. He’s supposed to represent the interests of every American who’s not a fascist, not those of a fascist apartheid regime currently committing the worst genocide since the Balkan wars in the 90s.
Just because the other guy is a much greater evil doesn’t mean that you can’t hold your own guy accountable for supporting evil. With Trump the only alternative, voting for him is a given, but giving him a free pass shouldn’t be.
Criticizing Biden’s handling of the war is not just allowed, but encouraged. His handling of it is dog shit.
What’s naive and stupid to do is refuse to vote for him because of it, when the threat is a person who bragged about becoming a dictator and retaliating against anyone he dislikes.
Uh, what we are talking about is people who are already saying they won’t vote for Biden. I run into this a lot. It’s terrifying to know a significant part of the electorate are so myopic they would install Trump forever to “make a point”.
It truly doesn’t matter if they have a point, if the only end result is not voting or throwing their vote away on a third party. If Trump wins, they will be a big part of how.
“voting is the only way to create change” is the mentality that got us here.
You know why George Floyd’s murderer was the only one who got the sentence he deserved? Because the people demanded it by threatening capital.
It’s terrifying to know a significant part of the electorate are so myopic they would install Trump forever to “make a point”.
People don’t like being manipulated to vote a certain way, they get angry when that is done to them. They realize that other citizens had died for their right to vote, and they hold it sacred.
And when you’re angry, you tend to make dumb mistakes.
How many of us know the stance of the people they’re going to vote for, when it comes to ranked choice voting?
As long as we are drawing the line in the sand as “reality” the truth is much more stark. We already live in a nation controlled by oligarchs and the vote has already been robbed of what little power it ever had. In a sense accelerationism isn’t so much accelerating the decline of US democracy but accelerating its suspended funeral.
It’s not just ‘throwing the baby away with the bath water ‘, it’s burning down the whole fucking country just because mommy didn’t give you candy.
can’t hold your own guy accountable for supporting evil.
How? The DNC doesn’t listen to us, writing our reps is basically a waste of time and paper unless you like collecting robosigned form letter replies from political offices.
Fuck trump in every way and if there is any justice left in this world cheetolini will rot in a cell for the rest of his life, to be clear.
That said, we have 40 years of congressional voting patterns that PROVE they only listen to ‘the people’ about 20% of the time.
So how? How do we hold him accountable? By making meme posts and tiktoks?
Yes I am MUCH happier that Biden won and I will be voting for him again, but let’s not pretend we aren’t in an oligarchy controlled by wealthy families.
Yes the Dems do a bit better of a job helping the citizens, but not nearly enough and not in the ways needed most.
We NEED to get rid of first past the post voting, we NEED to get money out of politics.
Until that happens, we will ALWAYS be stuck choosing the lesser evil and our wealth will continue to be shuffled up to the already disgustingly rich.
I don’t know how the US could change it’s voting system. It’s so carved into the national identity with the constitution. It’s a big change. I see us in the UK more likely to change our voting system before the US.
writing our reps is basically a waste of time and paper unless you like collecting robosigned form letter replies from political offices.
It’s actually not, they track it. It’s important to know voter sentiment so the competent members of Congress actually keep track of the issues people write about and their positions on them. In terns of response, I’m not sure if you know how many people an average Congressmember has and how much mail they get, but if everyone including the Congressmember spent all day individually responding to every letter they got (most of which are form complaints), they would get even less done. The form response is (again, if the member is at all competent) usually slightly modified from a form response because, frankly, why would you have a different response to the same question every time? The response reads all political because it has to, they’re writing for a broad audience and they don’t know you.
They probably are listening to the people who write them, who tend to skew older and have more time on their hands to do so, so are likely more conservative or status quo. There are issues the Dems will shift on if they see that’s where the wind is blowing. Also, if you have a specific local issue, don’t write to DC, write to the local office. They actually have people dedicated to helping with state and local concerns.
All well and good, but these idiot kids are actually refusing to vote for him over this single issue. I agree that It’s fine to be bothered how he’s handling things- even if they’re a bit misunderstood on how things actually work- I mean, sure…it’s bothering.
But this is the biggest “I’m cutting off my nose to spite my face” America will EVER see.
Single issue lmao. “Yeah Hitler did genocide but that’s just a single issue”
OK dude.
Right, how could someone not want to vote for someone because they support genocide? How ludicrous.
I’ll still vote for Biden because I’ll already be in the booth, but sitting back and acting like this is our only option is nonsense.
Voting alone does not create change. Labor Movement, Women’s Suffrage, Civil Rights, all were accomplished by active resistance and here you are spouting nonsense about how we should all just participate in the system that’s circling the drain instead of disrupting it.
The longer you all take to come around the worse it will get, no matter which major party is in the Oval Office.
no one calls me a kid any more, and this single issue is the straw that broke the camel’s back.
The people who can find a way to excuse, minimize or ignore Biden’s military and political support for genocide could probably find a way to excuse, minimize or ignore just about anything. There is no bottom, only partisanship and convenience.
If we want to win, we need to appeal to people who disagree with your support for genocide, no matter how much you hate them.
I strongly suspect that these one issue kids have no idea of what is going on in the Mideast
Israel was attacked by Hamas and Hezbollah. The over the top response by Netanyahu is much like you would get from the orange wanna-be dictator. Israel is under threat by Iran too. The arms sent were a show of force least any other hostile countries decide to pile on. Biden has been forceful with Israel behind the scenes, placing conditions on the use of the arms and pushing Israel to back off. He can’t do so publicly because it would let the hostile countries sense a weakness. Kids are triggered by emotions and fail to dig for news contrary to their biases because it doesn’t reinforce their need for an anger dopamine rush - much like MAGAs.
It is so much easier to sit on ones ass rather than to do the hard work of being intelligently informed and to create change
“I look with commiseration over the great body of my fellow citizens who, reading newspapers, live and die in the belief they have known something of what has been passing in the world around them” - Harry Truman
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Well put. But right now, folks who agree are missing the nuance and going to stay home. So not the time for intellectualizing to the choir. Let’s just stop saying the quiet part aloud already. We all fucking know what the DNC is. Enough is enough. Can we have a fucking conversation about Trump and autocracy and Nazis without a fucking comment about Biden? You’re just regurgitating the both sides bullshit with an asterisk that you’ll vote, but the people reading are just doubling down not voting. Stop giving this oxygen. It’s enough.
Ok, let me preface this by OF COURSE Biden is by far the lesser evil compared to Trump, OF COURSE single issue voting is some Republican style bullshit and OF COURSE Trump would be even more supportive of a fascist government committing genocide, being a fascist war crime fanboy himself.
If you hadn’t prefixed your comment with this, centrists who can’t defend their enthusiastic support for genocide for its own sake would be calling you a trumpist.
Nothing about understanding the danger Trump poses makes you a “centrist” or “enthusiastic support” for genocide. Please grow up.
This is correct. I despise Trump. When I voted for Biden, I understood I was voting for a 1 term president to allow Democrats 4 years to get their house in order. They haven’t and they don’t intend to.
The truth is that a vote for shit or slightly less shit is still shit. We’ve allowed two mega corporations in the DNC and RNC to monopolize our politics.
The only solution is a 3rd party. Voting for Biden or Trump just keeps the shit rolling. Sucks that Democrats might have a Ross Perot moment with Trump on the ballot, but they had time to bring up anyone else to fill the role, and they didn’t. I have the luxury of living in Tennessee, so my vote doesn’t matter, something else they promised to fix and didn’t. But anyone who wants to call me an idealist or pearl clutcher needs to wake up.
Yep. If donnie gets back in there, do these purity ponies think unquestioning support of Israel will stop?
Maybe go fuck yourselves and go third party or arrange your own special assassination attempt. I’m not jumping on your party bandwagon for the fear mongering.
So you admit he’s complicit in aiding a genocide, yet refuse to be principled enough to hold him accountable?
I would rather not vote than vote for someone whose first response to a genocide is rushing as many American military assets and weapons as possible to enable it.
You do realize that not everyone in your country has fully assimilated to your extremely chauvinist worldview right?
It’s the orientation that enabling a genocide is somehow excusable when it’s “your guy”, combined with the implicit understanding that something to do with foreign policy (itself a chauvinist term) shouldn’t affect how people vote when bad things at home are at stake. Like it’s sports or something.
I’m sensitive to this because I just don’t have the luxury of disregarding what happens to brown and brown-adjacent people as a result of US “foreign policy”. The bad situation we’re in is directly the result of decisions made (and being refused to get made) by our harm reduction president and his administration.
The “gEnOcIDe JoE” clowns see a Republican fascist and a Democrat skirting our political system to fund fascists, backed by a party doing nothing to stop fascists from taking over every system in the country cause all the broken shit being used is broken shit the dems use too.
As long as dems tell anyone left of Biden to eat shit regardless of what their “voters” say, voting blue “no matter who” doesn’t stop the march to fascism, it just delays it by 4 years.
As a trans person, another four years is probably another four years of being allowed to be alive. I fucking hate dems but I love being not being murdered. It sucks that my options are vote for the folks who will let brown kids die, or vote for the folks who will let brown kids die AND kill me. My vote doesn’t actually matter because my state will be redder than Zhang Yufang’s tampons, admittedly.
If every person who cries about how the two options sucked voted for a third party we’d have a viable flourishing third party. Maybe a fourth by now.
You keep furiously masturbating to this quick easy textual “sound bite” but nobody can actually refute the point that a vote for dems is just a vote for fascists to continue amassing power in the background to do the thing next time.
It’s weird how y’all want the fascism but just harp about democrats in a bid to avoid the label. Any vote for either established party is a vote for Trump or the next faschie, full stop.
Hunter S. Thompson reflected on the problems with Objective Journalism throughout his career: summarized well in a section of his obituary for Nixon.
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.
That doesn’t mean much. It took centuries for Rome to fall, and all the while they spoke as if they were the greatest civilization to ever exist.
I see it clearly in this country too. The performative fealty to patriotism - God Bless America, USA! USA! USA!, Greatest Country on Earth, and so on… it’s the same as the Romans who thought their empire would carry on into eternity as the columns crumbled around them.
We are all frogs in a pot of tepid water, slowly being brought to a boil.
Why sober, thoughtful conversation like this is not happening is beyond insane to me. Like I just do not know how to deal with a reality that treats this as normal.
Well said, I agree with every word.
The downfall of American democracy, like all democracies is lack of protection for its principles. If democracy becomes so radical about the principle of freedom of expression that there is no utterance that isn’'t worthy debating, no matter how debased it is while at the same time anything and everything is up for debate and nothing enshrined in principle democracy becomes its own worst enemy. Freedom of expression becomes the tool with which it destroys itself.
The crux however lies in the fact that if institutions exist that protect democracy from itself, like the Austrian “Verfassungsschutz” , that watch the radical ends of the political spectrum and hamper their political efforts, sometimes trying and convicting individuals as members of a criminal organisation they could easily be accused as stifling democracy.
Ultimately the democratic principle rests upon its subjects willingness to practise it and to participate in it. If enough people are unhappy or uneducated enough to believe in the statements of demagogues and radicals its downfall cannot be stopped by institutionalized violence, political will, or anything else. Democracy cannot defend itself against its own worst enemy: People that for some reason or other have given up on that idea. Democracy therefore will always come with its own 5th column.
What makes a working democracy is that everyone is actively participating in the dicourse and does what they can to stop the 5th column from rising to the top. A working democracy depends on a working educational system that produces strong critical minds. It relies on making sure everyone gets their share and that each and every subject has a stake in a system. Then the 5th Column is small enough to not really damage democracy and there is no instituion necessary to protect it.
These days however the world is far beyond that tipping point. There are enough people unhappy enough with democracy that collective supression no longer works. And its troublesome to watch. I am terrified that someone like Donald Trump could even get to the point where he is the presidential candidate for a major party, let alone serve a term as president of the United States.
Usually these sentiments are met with endless barrages of whataboutism… Literally no one, no matter what they have done with their emails or how many lobal conflicts they started in their term could be a worse president then someone whose aim is to just aimlessly wield power like a European monarch whose mind is impaired by the hereditary conditions that come with generations of incest.
To demonstrate the inability of conventional media to cover an extremist like Trump, this article points out that the New York Times once ran an article titled “Hitler Tamed By Prison”. The article, published in 1924, starts off with a disturbing parallel to recent events:
Adolph Hitler, once the demi-god of the reactionary extremists, was released on parole from imprisonment at Fortress Landsberg, Bavaria, today and immediately left in an auto for Munich.
Look no further than the New York Times falsifying an entire article about Hamas raping women to manufacture consent for israel’s Genocide.
So I’m unfamiliar with mondoweiss.net. The Media Bias Factcheck page on this source rates it as questionable. Is there another credible source for these claims?
You will need a different source. That one is dodgy as fuck. We don’t fight right wing disinformation by trotting out disinformation of our own, so unless you can come up with a better source, no one should take your claim seriously.
The source has plenty of evidence inside of the article and is fully backed up by evidence of TV interviews, Haaretz articles, links to the family members whose interviews were falsified speaking out on social media. Even the IDF investigations evidence of the state of the bodies have shown to contradict these statements. No women were found beheaded or with their breasts cut off either.
I don’t care about what you perceive “dodgy as fuck”. The only thing that is dodgy as fuck is NYT publishing a Hamas rape fanfic as an article, that now has confirmed lies while providing exactly zero evidence except witness statements, which have now being debunked by multiple of the quotes people they supposedly “interviewed”.
