Fear Fear Fear Anger Anger Fear, They Explained

so be very angry and afraid and lonely

It’s like a magic act where the door to the secret compartment moves slowly and has a spotlight pointed at it, and the audience sees the illusion every time, because it’s literally not an illusion, being right out there in the open, but the magician still pretends that everyone watching is shocked and baffled by the trick.

So. Via Nellie Bowles, writing at Common Sense, this summary of findings from a recent study of the American news media:

Today’s Standard-Issue Explanatory Line™ on Paul Pelosi being attacked in his home is that TRUMP TRUMP TRUMP, toxic far-right rhetoric!!!!! Ten minutes after the shabby break-in at the Katie Hobbs for Governor office was omfg literally Watergate before it evaporated into nothing much, a uniquely strange Berkeley nudist is a far-right puppet with an opening at the bottom for Donald Trump’s hand, steered by hateful rhetoric that incites violence:

Surprising no one, the news media promptly went along with the script:

Wouldn’t it be refreshing if the news media focused on a clear description of what happened before they got to the blame and politicization?

There are a dozen obvious things to say about all of this, even if you aren’t Steve Scalise — the double standard, the depiction of ordinary political criticism as “demonization,” the discarding of contradictory evidence to make round pegs fit square holes — and I’m mostly not going to bother saying them in any detail.

But the thing that has to be said is that the people who increasingly hold the attention of their audiences with hyperemotional clickbait, with the obvious manipulation of negative emotions, are warning us about the dangerous effects of hyperemotional rhetorical manipulation in the public sphere.

Ohhhhh, we’re about to LOSE OUR VERY DEMOCRACY! We tremble on the edge of a FASCIST TAKEOVER! And also, toxic rhetoric is bad.

American establishment politics, and the American news media, live by trying to manipulate people through the use of fear and anger, even to the point of shaking and trembling and warning you that the people who oppose them are very dangerous because they’re trying to manipulate people through the use fear and anger. The people warning you against toxicity are off-the-charts toxic.

But wow are they not subtle at this, and the increasingly pathetic obviousness of the maneuver is hard to exaggerate. We’ve moved to the heavy sighing and eye-rolling phase. OHHHHH BE VERY AFRAID OF THIS HORRIB— wait, where are you going?