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.

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[–] 75 points 2 years ago* (199 children)

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.

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  • [–] 53 points 2 years ago (172 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 29 points 2 years ago (72 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago*

    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?

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  • [–] 16 points 2 years ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago (84 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 3 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    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.

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    [–] 64 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago (5 children)

    Oh God.. even back then it was called out jfc we're doomed

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  • [–] 7 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    On the other hand, that was a while ago, and we are still going…

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  • [–] 6 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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  • [+] 50 points 2 years ago
    [–] 43 points 2 years ago (2 children)

    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.

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    [–] 30 points 2 years ago (6 children)

    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.

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  • [–] 5 points 2 years ago (4 children)

    Look no further than the New York Times falsifying an entire article about Hamas raping women to manufacture consent for israel's Genocide.

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    [–] 23 points 2 years ago

    Damn right! It's about time a publication in (the outskirts of) the main stream points this out!

    The establishment media and the Dem politicians insisting on pretending that the GOP is a legitimate party of regular conservatives rather than a fascist movement is how it was allowed to get this far in the first place!

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  • [–] 11 points 2 years ago* (2 children)

    It's not a both sides thing. In my opinion, everyone needs to stop thinking this is a knowledge or coverage problem. It's not a media influence problem.

    It's a fuck you problem. And the worse they are, the more appalling their actions, the bigger the fuck you. You can't argue your way out of this.

    People need to deal with the fact that roughly half of all voters in this country don't give a fuck about you, and every time you get upset about a new rule broken, a new law violated, or a new constitutional principle ignored, the fun is in the fact that you get upset about it.

    That's the fun. You're mad. They like to make you mad. Because this isn't about political discourse.

    They're way more mad, they're way more organized, they're way more revolutionary, and they are way more armed. You can be as smart and knowledgeable as you want. They will put you up against a very smart and knowledgeable wall and put a very smart and knowledgeable bullet into your very smart and knowledgeable head.

    You ever wonder how, during revolutions of the past, the people that were overthrown always seemed to have been surprised? This is how. Arrogance and a belief in a system that the others aren't playing by or within. Revolution exceeds the system. Leftists think they have a monopoly on revolution, but they don't.

    You don't have to agree with it. Your agreement or disagreement Does. Not. Matter. It's watching worms on a hook trying to explain how soil works. Who cares?

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    [–] 11 points 2 years ago

    But facism gets such great short turn proffits before we blow ourselves and the rest of nature to shit. /s

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  • [–] 10 points 2 years ago

    Calling out the false "both sides" thing (h/t to The Professional Left, by the way!) is something that should be common currency in the "liberal media".

    Thanks to the silliness of false "objectivity" and, let's be honest, corporatism, it is hardly ever discussed. But thank goodness Vanity Fair did here...however, they still called these treasonous insurrectionists (really: terrorists) "rioters", FFS.

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