The News is a Scam and a Diversion, Cont.

Here’s the political journalist Mara Gay — currently of the New York Times, formerly of the Wall Street Journal and The Atlantic — explaining what the twenty Republican holdouts were up to in their maneuvering over the selection of a Speaker of the House:

Tom Elliott @tomselliott

NYT’s @MaraGay: “Some” of the anti-McCarthy holdouts were elected to “stop the tide of diversity in the country, the browning of America, the fears that surround that”

It’s leftie Twitter in human form, with all of the slogans. Angry, hateful voters, disturbed by “diversity,” sent some dumb atavists to represent them in D.C., because they hate government and want to “burn it to the ground.” (“And really, that’s what these people were sent to do.”)

Time magazine, which apparently still exists, comes to much the same conclusion, in a piece that I tragically can’t read in full without creating an account, which I wouldn’t do for a free steak dinner or a blanket future pardon from the governor of my choice:

So the twenty GOP holdouts hate government and want to sow chaos and burn democratic norms to the ground, mainstream political journalists calmly explain. Now, via RedState, here’s a letter from seven of the holdouts listing their actual demands as conditions for their vote. Sample demand:

So the monsters who hate government and want to burn it all down were demanding clearly written legislation that every legislator has time to read and fully debate before casting their vote on it.

Subject of Journalism: We want bills that are focused and readable

Journalist: They want to destroy all government because of racism

It’s not even sort of an interpretation or an argument about the thing being discussed — it’s just a wholesale invention, completely severed from the thing that’s allegedly being analyzed. It’s like you ordered a tuna melt, so the waitress broke into your house and mailed your couch to Finland. “There’s your tuna melt,” she says, handing you the receipt from the post office. It’s so aggressive a non-sequitur that it would usually suggest the need for a neurology consult. Have you recently suffered a serious fall, Ms. Gay? Have you experienced dizziness or unexplained nause— oh, wait, I see from your chart that you’re just a political journalist.

Similarly, look again at the essay I linked to yesterday, “An Age of Decay,” from Chris Buskirk. It describes the financialization of the American economy, and the subsequent divergence of trajectory at the top and bottom of the American class system, with a decline in living standards at the bottom. Along the way, it examines the decline of family and social connections, and examines the emerging decline in American life expectancy, looking at evidence like data on “the birth cohorts of 1940 and 1980 in terms of earning more than parents did.” Notice how many times I’ve used the word decline in this paragraph.

Now: I wasn’t familiar with Chris Buskirk’s work, so I used Google, which is always a mistake. You’ll be shocked to hear it, but Media Matters explains that Buskirk is just pretending to think about things like economic opportunity and the structure of the American economy, ‘cause he’s really a white nationalist who hates democracy. Oh, and he loved January 6 and he’s really an insurrectionist. And he ties slender young ingenues to the train tracks!

Actual image of Chris Buskirk

Weirdly, none of this is evident in Buskirk’s actual work, but Media Matters has a secret decoder ring.

Again and again and again, you can read what people say about the world, and then look at how woke non-profits and the mainstream news media, but I repeat myself, explain them — and see that there’s simply no connection at all between the description and the thing being described: Legislators advocate for plainly written legislation and full debate because they’re white nationalists who hate democracy.

I’ve been inclined to explain this behavior as a product of self-delusion and the mental habits born from a lifetime of status-signaling and cultural performance, but I’m increasingly inclined to say that they’re just consciously and calculatedly lying. Whatever they’re doing, there’s nothing in it — it’s empty and sick. We have journalists and teachers and activists whose job is to prevent you from seeing what’s actually happening.

Mercifully, they suck at it, because they’re stupid and because they’re terrible people.