The Great Smear

Starting to come up for air, after an extended holiday season that began when the election results made my brain melt and run out of my ears and onto the floor, where my cats licked it up, to now, when I finally began to feel bored.

In the aftermath of a disastrous election, as the Blame Machine came fully online, I have distilled my response into a single piece of personal advice, to myself: Speak Up.

When BLM happened, we marched; but when progressives started chanting "Defund the Police," or the even more idiotic, "Abolish the Police," I thought it was among the dumbest possible slogans to which they could give voice. Did I, as a progressive, take anyone to task for this stupidity? No, I basically held my tongue.

The problem with such a slogan, is that no one who was chanting it would actually want such a thing to occur. We need police and to suggest otherwise—because progressives need to know they were taken seriously—is a truly stupid idea. Does policing need to be reformed? Of course it does. Police departments are a well-known haven for violent, racist sociopaths. "Reform the police" is an excellent slogan, but it's not as righteously angry-sounding.

The "anti-racist" ideology emerged into the mainstream at the same time. Educating people about the generational legacy of slavery for African Americans and the ways in which it persists in causing poor outcomes for that community (and others that suffer from poverty and racial discrimination) is crucial; ensuring that white Americans see themselves as naturally racist white supremacists, was a poorly thought-through strategy.

When some activists decided that, after decades of success in improving the lives and civil rights of African Americans, women and gay people, that it was time for trans people to push for their civil rights, it only made sense. But then pronoun declarations, some including brand new individual-specific pronouns, began; demands for underage access to transition medicine grew; demands that transwomen be allowed on women's sports teams grew; and any skepticism at all about any of the changes being pushed was rewarded with swift cancellation and job loss, in some cases. Everyone else with questions were simply "transphobic."

That this aggressive approach to trans rights had its heart in the right place means nothing. It was an extremely foolish overreach for activists who squandered the general good will of a nation by insisting that they get EVERYTHING, NOW. It set their cause back years, and they need to hear that.

I failed to Speak Up, many times, out of my own pure cowardice. I grumbled. That was about it.

Well, I don't want to do that anymore. I am furious with progressives for failing to see the forest for the trees over the last couple of cycles. I believe in reforming the police, in working to unravel systemic racism and that trans rights are human rights. But I will no longer be quiet about the pure stupidity of the modern left.

But none of those cultural issues matter as much as what I'm thinking about right now.

One of the biggest problems we have in our country right now is the attitude—on the right AND the left—that despises the news media.

For much of the 21st century so far, we have witnessed the rise of right-wing partisan "news" media. We have been told, by these outlets, that they are needed to combat the "far-left bias" of the "mainstream media." By "mainstream media" they meant CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post, NPR and similar outlets that make a concerted effort to balance their reporting by following the journalistic best practices established over a century of mass media.

It wouldn't seem like the kind of thing one would have to say, but these listed outlets do NOT have a "far-left bias." That's nonsensical. Some would describe them as center-left. Some would describe them as center-right. Both are defensible. But those outlets are only "far-left" if you are a dyed-in-the-wool National Socialist.

Thankfully, the result of this smearing of the news media has been that thoughtful progressives have leapt to the defense of the profession and shown overwhelming support for quality journalism.

JK. The result has been that progressives have abandoned the mainstream media for being right-wing. They have bemoaned the so-called "sane-washing" of Donald Trump, which means a news outlet reporting on Trump in a "normal" way instead of a partisan way. They have cancelled subscriptions and called for a "left-wing Joe Rogan," meaning, I suppose, a profoundly ignorant personality cult bro hack, but for the left?

The attitude seems to be, "If the New York Times will not publish news articles that reflect MY personal political biases, I will NOT read the Times or any other traditional news source. Then, I will complain bitterly about the lack of skeptical coverage of Trump—which I will never see, because I no longer read the Times."

The attitude seems to be, "I DEMAND that the news media cater to me and my politics. This was awful, absurd, and hugely destructive when right-wingers did it. Now, left-wingers should do it."

Combine the rejection of real journalism with the apparent inability to understand the difference between News and Opinion, and multiply that by social media, which has turned us all into enshitted infants in just a few years, and we are in putrescence up to our eyeballs.

A human institution, the Press can be irritating. It can be wrong. It can miss things, distort things. But we need it desperately. Good journalism—and there is SO MUCH of it—is our best hope against Trump. Smear journalism at our peril.