You know I love ya, Claire, but this is hardly the bending of the knee. See Bezos' OpEd today. I think it's fantastic that Bezos recognizes the elite echo chamber his paper is in, and why people like me and folks who move in my small town, Christian conservative circles have tuned out.
I’ve been thinking about the WaPo and the LA Times in the context of the campus protests and the college presidents’ disastrous and disgraceful performance in Congress about a year ago, now.
In both cases, there was a politically-motivated reversal of policy. If the reversals of policy change had been made months before, the university presidents would have been applauded and the newspaper owners would have been… ignored (bcs for ages no one has been surprised nor informed by a newspaper editorial board’s election recommendations). But in each case, the change was announced at such a critical time that the political calculus behind the decision was transparent… and the decision makers appeared cowardly and morally suspect.
It seems to me a sign of the times that the societal pressures revealed in each of these examples come from different ends of the political spectrum. There’s little in common between college presidents struggling under the weight of campus political orthodoxy and newspaper owners’ prophylactic capitulation to DJT. Little in common, that is, unless you note that our cultural-political discourse as a whole has become more rigid, less forgiving of nuance, more binary.
Interesting, I read your entire article. But, I will need to read a second time, not because of any fault on your part. My brain needs a second reading.
I went to Istanbul for a 15-day vacation in 2011. My vacation was 14 days too long.
Both the WP and the LAT long ago forfeited any claim to balance, objectivity, or journalistic integrity. They’re now among the house organs of postmodern progressivism, and if they disappeared tomorrow, it would be no great loss. Besides, they lose money. And the people who work for those rags couldn’t care less. They behave as if the owners owe them a living. Profitability? Not their problem! And when they get called on that, the comrade journalists shoot the old line about a free press being essential to the preservation of “our democracy”—as if that’s what the WP and the LAT are doing.
The actual free press is right here on Substack. And people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton don’t like that. No, not at all.
Whenever I bring up Nietzsche everyone ignores me. I don’t know why. I would think it would spark a spirited debate. But if you read Nietzsche it’s a lot easier to understand Trump’s appeal as an example of what Nietzsche described as the death of God that he feared would destroy civilization. If you take just Nietzsche’s famous passage in The Gay Science about the madman in the street who seeks God and all the village atheists who surround him and make fun of him—the madman is a lot like Trump and all his followers, but the rest of us, the atheists, still aren’t listening. We haven’t come to terms with the magnitude of the death of God and what the madman is telling us. Not to invoke Fukuyama, but we are the last man at the end of history. And our enlightened will-to-truth as an end in itself has hollowed out the meaning of the world for downtrodden meaning-obsessed and surely contemptible Trump supporters, will to truth as embodied in climate fear, “the science,” the obsession with racism and every other ism. Though it’s anti-enlightenment in a fundamental way, the progressive left ultimately originated in it.
Moreover all Trump does is spin meaningful narratives that are comprised of honest people’s feelings of suffering, and explain it to them. Migrants, failing social programs, and fentanyl and self-dealing elites have stolen their country from them, robbing them of their identity. Most of his supporters are not impacted by migrants or free trade or endless wars at all, but the narrative is what they crave. The Democrats are losing to the MAGA movement because they can’t play the meaning game. For the most part they’ve declined to play it at all, except for warning about Trump being a threat to democracy, which is not sufficient.
Interestingly Biden and Harris are starting to try and their failing at it miserably with Biden’s stories and Harris’s stories about their personal lives and allusions to opportunity and hard work . But Trump who understands the death of God is much much more successful. Claire you still foolishly (i’m sorry) expect ordinary people to be as rational and liberal and smart and humane as you are. But most people don’t want to be rational and they also are not by nature liberal humanists. As Nietzsche said, the average person has more in common with an animal than above-average people. As a higher person, you need to do better to understand the average person or what Obama called people who cling to their guns and religion. You need even to face your own irrationality, the will to truth above all else, the fixation on democracy, breaking all the rules and precedents that make democracy worthwhile just to save democracy from Trump like by striking him off the ballot, browbeating tech companies to suppress the Biden laptop story which you think somehow is all fair game. We cannot deal with Donald Trump as a phenomenological event (not merely an unpleasant person) until we reckon with the death of God.
Or as Winston Churchill put it, the best argument against democracy is a ten-minute conversation with the average voter.
The American Founders and Framers well understood that democracy is dangerous, and they crafted the Constitution of the United States in such a way as to tame and limit it. That’s why progressives detest the Constitution, because it prevents 50% + 1 democracy from dominating national politics. That’s the purpose of the Electoral College, the equal suffrage of the states in the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Bill of Rights: The majority will usually rule, but not always, and minority interests will be upheld.
The alternative is some kind of people’s democracy in which large, populous states would dictate to small states: California laying down the law to Wyoming. The extent to which such domination exists in America today is the explanation of Donald Trump, and even if he loses the impending election, the spirit of MAGA will live on.
I think cultural decadence is the primary driver though even as the growth of government and limitless expansion of democracy to accommodate the will of the herd as you correctly say, does enable it. We don’t talk enough about cultural decadence though and how it’s basically killing the civic norms constitutional democracy depends on. From January 6th to George Floyd and the pro-Hamas protests on college campuses. These are the death cults that Nietzsche saw coming. It comes from the lack of a belief in man anymore let alone higher men like Churchill. The beast is born now and the beast desires that its untrammeled authority has the widest audience
A favorite anecdote of mine is of the first meeting between Churchill and General Bernard Law Montgomery in 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain and the invasion scare. At that time, Monty was commanding a division, and he was scathing in his comments about his superior officer’s plans, which were based on fixed defenses. Monty advocated mobility, but Churchill reminded him that the Army’s transport had been abandoned at Dunkirk. “Busses!” Monty replied. “Plenty of busses in the country, after all.” Churchill pondered for a moment. Then he said, “Very well. Then busses you shall have.”
That being settled, Churchill announced that it was time for lunch, and remarked that the General surely needed a drink. “I neither drink nor smoke,” Monty declared, “and I’m one-hundred percent fit.” To which Churchill replied, “Well, I both drink and smoke, and I’m two-hundred percent fit.”
Claire, let me tell you the story of how *you* personally have profited from the Washington Post's decrepitude.
Sunning myself at Narbonne-Plage this August I had a decision to make: was I going to renew - at full price - the annual CG subscription I'd taken out at a steep discount in response to your irresistible cry-for-help/McDonalds job avoidance scheme the August before? To be honest I wasn't sure; I felt things this summer had become a bit erratic, more miss and less hit, and I'd been too busy to read so much anyway.
But then ... Bozos to the rescue! Into my inbox droppped a WaPo subscription renewal notice, for $70. I'd taken one out when I became obsessed with US politics near the start of the Trump presidency. American friends would occasionally send me WaPo links, the paper seemed to be on the up with Bezos' billions behind it, UK media coverage of the US wasn't great, so I signed up. But I'd hardly been reading it this year, and I'd heard the newsroom was in turmoil after Jeff decided he'd had enough of losing money and hired some idiot from the (London) Telegraph to turn things round who didn't like his own journalists asking him questions.
So it was easy to can that (they feebly offered me an immediate discount to sign back up, which confirmed I'd been right to cancel) and keep yours. You seem to have been suffering a bit from geopolitical Weltschmerz since, here's hoping the underlying causes resolve themselves heathily soon...
Doubtless that Claire knows Erdoganville, inside and out —and before that, was an expat doctoral student at Oxbridge— thence an expat for quite some time in mainland SE Asia (a problematical consultant for her employer and for the local target of her professional engagement at UNDP, the late Lao-French editor of a semi-official newspaper in Vientiane). After leaving Turkey, Claire has spent at least a decade as an expat in Paris. Pas si mal! But my sense is that for a smart girl, and a professed "conservative". she is utterly clueless about what is really happening in depth in the U.,S., and A. (as Borat calls her country of birth and of her residence, primary, secondary and pre-doctoral education: almost exclusively in the bluest quarters of her motherland.) While no, I'm not a mind reader, I'd image that she believes that she kens out totally and perfectly how Orangeman Bad, whose demonstrably (?) boundless perfidy, stupidity, immorality and ignorance, have in their aggregate somehow deluded or mesmerized the contemptible, idiotic MAGA base. Sorry, IMHO she don't know jacksh*t. Nevertheless I'll hang in here as a paid subscriber until we see what comes down in ten days (I'm an official Rethug Election Judge for DeKalb County, Illinois).
The thought naturally occurs that an American who has lived abroad for so long might lose touch, so to speak, with America. But I think that I’ve gotten to know Claire Berlinski fairly well through her writings and our back-and-forths here on Substack and earlier (if she remembers) on Twitter. We see eye to eye on many if not all things, and where we disagree, e.g. regarding the Prince of the Golden Escalator, I can’t think it’s because she lives in Paris. There are plenty of people living in America who feel just the same about Trump as Claire does.
The real difference between us is that Claire’s an intellectual while I am not—and I don’t mean that as a criticism. That difference endows us with offsetting advantages. Claire has breadth of vision; I have a love of detail. If, for example, you seek information about the organization of a US Army infantry division during World War Two, I’m your man. If, on the other hand, you’re curious about the historical significance of Margaret Thatcher, get in touch with Claire.
There’s more than one way of getting at the truth. And we all have our blind spots. As Oliver Cromwell put it in a 1650 letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” Much as it pains me as an American with Irish blood in his veins to quote the Lord Protector, he had a point there. We all should pause to consider that we may be mistaken.
Firstly, Claire seemed shocked and dismayed a coupla days ago that a pathetic 13% of her subscriber base were self-declared hardcore Trumpistas and she begged and pleaded with these misguided and confused creatures to somehow get them to change their/our minds. Not tremendously respectful of their/our historico-political judgements and gratuitously insulting to those of us who over the past several years politely suggested that since they/we were carrying some of the freight around here, maybe indulging in a world class case of TDS within postings only obliquely, or even not at all, related to the Orangeman was impolite. But more bigly, somebody who hasn't lived for any extended period —as would appear— here in the USA, and whose cross-postings (TLDR!) leaned large towards non-Americans or to her fellow expats should maybe back way off.
As far back as 1961, President Eisenhower warned Americans about the increasing influence of the deep state. Of course he didn’t call it the deep state; the term hadn’t been invented yet. The deep state of the 1960s had a somewhat different form than the deep state of the first quarter of the 21st century, but it’s simply incorrect to suggest that the United States has a bureaucracy but not a deep state.
Here’s what Eisenhower said in 1961
“n the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
I know. Of course we have a deep state. Of course it would be ridiculous to say it’s like the People’s Republic of China that disappears people like their own foreign minister. But from “Russian collusion,” through the pandemic “misinformation” censorship, up to the Trump indictments and Jack Smith being its personification— obviously there’s something at least in the form of a conspiracy of megalomaniacal credentialed elites who at worst are controlling online discourse and at best forcing us to abandon gas stoves, oh and force Israel’s de facto surrender to Hamas. Why because brown-skinned Muslims simply can do no wrong. Period. From James Comey on down to Jack Smith, obviously there is a deep state. No one pays attention to it too but Lina Khan the FTC chair is basically crusading against every big business in the country just to punish it for being too big. She’s one of the worst
The problem is not just that we have a deep state. The real problem is that our deep state is so incompetent. Consider the power and influence of the United States. When during your lifetime has that power and influence collapsed at a faster pace?
Assume for a moment that Claire is right and that we don’t really have a deep state, just a good old-fashioned bureaucracy. Even if that’s true, it’s almost certain that Elon Musk is perfectly placed to cut that bureaucracy down to size and make it more efficient than ever. He fired 70 percent of the staff at Twitter and the site runs more or less the same as it ever did. SpaceX launches space craft at a fraction of the price that NASA can and much more efficiently than his private competitors. Tesla is the only company this side of China that actually earns a profit selling electric vehicles.
Trump’s promise to appoint Musk to critique the federal bureaucracy and make recommendations to cut it down to size is, in and of itself, a reason to vote Trump.
When the AKP took power, four large private groups owned almost all the country’s media—a concentration of power already far too dense for political health.
_
These non endorsements (their timing obviously being the rat that should be smelled) are ugly. But the media in the US on the whole is nowhere near this centralized. What’s more, it’s so aggressively anti-trump and furious at Bezos and the LA Times oligarch that the power balance is very different.
If Trump gets elected it will boil down to how quickly he can pull off Schedule F like overhauls, and the competence and cross-administration alignment of who he replaces the non-loyalists with. There’s liable to be a lot of infighting which might slow things down. Trump’s interest in doing any work governing and mental capacity to lead with any sharpness are also possible friction sources.
Those are the most obvious differences I see with the Turkey situation
You alluded to the big reason I think Trump could never be a successful authoritarian, even his “Republican allies” and “loyalists” hate the guy and they always quit, or he fires them. Watch Mike Flynn say the wrong thing one day, then Trump will fire him too. Trump is a joke. He loves the spectacle. He doesn’t want to govern not least with the discipline it takes to be an autocrat like Putin or Xi or even Orban. He’s too pathologically mercurial for it. The presidency for him is an Apprentice reboot. The fact is we’re living in a period of cultural decadence. And Trump is one of those late Roman leaders who presides over the system and the internal rot of the republic. He’s a glaring symptom and not the cause.
The elite media in the U.S. is anti Trump, not „the media“. The NYT, Post, NPR, etc. may be „the media“ in the eyes of the affluent, well educated people who read this blog, but most Americans don’t read the NYT or the Post. They watch Fox News, listen to radio stations controlled by Sinclair or just get tidbits from social media, all of which have a conservative bias. The days when a Walter Cronkite could still reach middle America are long past.
I don't really disagree with any of that; my point is that elite media themselves aren't decentralized enough to fall in line as fast as what happened in Turkey, and that among other reasons are why I don't see things going the way of Turkey or the like that quickly if Trump wins.
I think you mean centralized. Probably true, maybe more importantly Americans have access to English language media from outside the US, and even now plenty of educated Americans read The Guardian or The Economist regularly. It’s easier to create a hermetic media environment for Turkish or Hungarian speakers.
"In many ways, the reaction only proves why the Post was correct to make the decision it did. Believe me, it’s not about wanting to delude people into believing that the Post’s editorial board isn’t stocked top to bottom with azure-blue Democrats. It’s rather about the fact that the Post’s entire branding for the last eight years has been “resistance, resistance, resistance,” and not only has it led them to wade hip-deep into some of the most massively discrediting media disgraces over that span of time — the Russiagate hoax, suppressing news of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and their Covid-19 coverage being only the most memorable of them — it has utterly killed their business. The Post’s readership reached new heights during the Trump era, when it billed itself as the flagship vessel of “Resistance” narratives and commentators, but has been cratering all throughout the Biden era, to a point where it now has roughly half the audience it once did. This doesn’t sell anymore, even if you wholeheartedly believe that its activist turn has resulted in great and noble feats of muckraking defiance.
But the fact is that it hasn’t; the Post is threadbare and repetitive these days and hasn’t produced a quality of reporting and national journalism comparable to that of the New York Times or even the Wall Street Journal for several years now. The rot is internal, on a coverage level, not just an ideological one. That’s almost a secondary consideration — the economic bottom line is the primary one, particularly for an organization in as much financial distress as it is — but one that touches me personally. I grew up with the Post and loved it when it had the best sports section in the nation, a Style section I would read front to back, and an op-ed page full of interesting and divergent voices.
I’d like to see that Washington Post return. But it never will on its current trajectory, not until it shakes free from the madness of both openly embracing the crudest of activist politics and positions and also pretending to act as a sober-eyed tribune of the people. We will see if it can save itself." (Jeff Blehar.)
It's always rather disgusted me when media who claim to be unbiased or neutral officially endorse political candidates. Journalism at its best is about as close to objective as one can get, and picking a political horse to back just wrecks that.
Of course, I know that in America particularly there's a long tradition of large media outlets endorsing their preferred (almost always Left leaning) candidate. But for me it just underscores how partisan and biases they are.
Maybe it's because I'm a scientist and scientific publications have almost never endorsed politicians, before Trump back in 2016 anyways, when they started endorsing his opponents. I've rarely been more repulsed and ashamed as a scientist than seeing them take that step; and I'm definitely not alone.
So for me, it's a breath of fresh air seeing at least some in the media refusing to endorse a prefered candidate, even when it's obviously they have one.
It's funny how two people can look at the same data and reach wildly different conclusions. Claire, you see this refusal as the ending of Democracy in America, I see it as a very minor (though still encouraging) return to it.
Indeed. I was pleasantly surprised to hear it this morning. Suits those antisemitic rags of newspapers right. Let them lose more subscribers then for failing to continue this time being partisan and biased when they were punished before for being so. It’s hilarious. Let journalism in America burn like the reputations of the Ivy’s. It’s their own damn fault not Trump. And the sooner the conflagration happens, the sooner we can get back to objectivity in journalism and genuine liberal education in college. For months I’ve had nothing but despair for so many things, but this seemed like a good thing.
Claire is exactly right. Maybe because you’re a scientist you are naive about how the business world works. Claire‘s point that in the end all the oligarchs will do the wrong thing because there’s profit in it is sadly pretty spot on. The problem is the federal government is a soft target with a hell of a lot of money sitting there, and it is hardly surprising to see unscrupulous businessmen try to capture it. The GOP used to want to dismantle the federal government, they had a point. But Trump, Musk and the other new generation would rather simply rob it blind. You can argue that Democrats do the same thing, the difference is that the Democratic model is to be a sustainable parasite. The new GOP is going to hollow out the system and God knows what come after. Nothing good that I can see.
You know I love ya, Claire, but this is hardly the bending of the knee. See Bezos' OpEd today. I think it's fantastic that Bezos recognizes the elite echo chamber his paper is in, and why people like me and folks who move in my small town, Christian conservative circles have tuned out.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/28/jeff-bezos-washington-post-trust/
OK, I was wrong. There clearly is a US deep state, all in for Harris/Walz, and this guy must be Lodge Senior Magus at least... https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cy9jj2g75q4o
Claire,
I’ve been thinking about the WaPo and the LA Times in the context of the campus protests and the college presidents’ disastrous and disgraceful performance in Congress about a year ago, now.
In both cases, there was a politically-motivated reversal of policy. If the reversals of policy change had been made months before, the university presidents would have been applauded and the newspaper owners would have been… ignored (bcs for ages no one has been surprised nor informed by a newspaper editorial board’s election recommendations). But in each case, the change was announced at such a critical time that the political calculus behind the decision was transparent… and the decision makers appeared cowardly and morally suspect.
It seems to me a sign of the times that the societal pressures revealed in each of these examples come from different ends of the political spectrum. There’s little in common between college presidents struggling under the weight of campus political orthodoxy and newspaper owners’ prophylactic capitulation to DJT. Little in common, that is, unless you note that our cultural-political discourse as a whole has become more rigid, less forgiving of nuance, more binary.
You're absolutely right. We live in an age of appalling cowardice.
Another piece for your list of articles re "The Fascism Debate"
https://lucid.substack.com/p/trump-channels-nazisms-aesthetics?r=3sd2c
Interesting, I read your entire article. But, I will need to read a second time, not because of any fault on your part. My brain needs a second reading.
I went to Istanbul for a 15-day vacation in 2011. My vacation was 14 days too long.
Both the WP and the LAT long ago forfeited any claim to balance, objectivity, or journalistic integrity. They’re now among the house organs of postmodern progressivism, and if they disappeared tomorrow, it would be no great loss. Besides, they lose money. And the people who work for those rags couldn’t care less. They behave as if the owners owe them a living. Profitability? Not their problem! And when they get called on that, the comrade journalists shoot the old line about a free press being essential to the preservation of “our democracy”—as if that’s what the WP and the LAT are doing.
The actual free press is right here on Substack. And people like Joe Biden, Kamala Harris, and Hillary Clinton don’t like that. No, not at all.
David Goldman has a very interesting take on what Trump should do in the event he is victorious. It’s worth a read. See,
https://americanmind.org/features/what-trump-should-do-if-he-wins/make-peace-and-rebuild-americas-industrial-base/
Whenever I bring up Nietzsche everyone ignores me. I don’t know why. I would think it would spark a spirited debate. But if you read Nietzsche it’s a lot easier to understand Trump’s appeal as an example of what Nietzsche described as the death of God that he feared would destroy civilization. If you take just Nietzsche’s famous passage in The Gay Science about the madman in the street who seeks God and all the village atheists who surround him and make fun of him—the madman is a lot like Trump and all his followers, but the rest of us, the atheists, still aren’t listening. We haven’t come to terms with the magnitude of the death of God and what the madman is telling us. Not to invoke Fukuyama, but we are the last man at the end of history. And our enlightened will-to-truth as an end in itself has hollowed out the meaning of the world for downtrodden meaning-obsessed and surely contemptible Trump supporters, will to truth as embodied in climate fear, “the science,” the obsession with racism and every other ism. Though it’s anti-enlightenment in a fundamental way, the progressive left ultimately originated in it.
Moreover all Trump does is spin meaningful narratives that are comprised of honest people’s feelings of suffering, and explain it to them. Migrants, failing social programs, and fentanyl and self-dealing elites have stolen their country from them, robbing them of their identity. Most of his supporters are not impacted by migrants or free trade or endless wars at all, but the narrative is what they crave. The Democrats are losing to the MAGA movement because they can’t play the meaning game. For the most part they’ve declined to play it at all, except for warning about Trump being a threat to democracy, which is not sufficient.
Interestingly Biden and Harris are starting to try and their failing at it miserably with Biden’s stories and Harris’s stories about their personal lives and allusions to opportunity and hard work . But Trump who understands the death of God is much much more successful. Claire you still foolishly (i’m sorry) expect ordinary people to be as rational and liberal and smart and humane as you are. But most people don’t want to be rational and they also are not by nature liberal humanists. As Nietzsche said, the average person has more in common with an animal than above-average people. As a higher person, you need to do better to understand the average person or what Obama called people who cling to their guns and religion. You need even to face your own irrationality, the will to truth above all else, the fixation on democracy, breaking all the rules and precedents that make democracy worthwhile just to save democracy from Trump like by striking him off the ballot, browbeating tech companies to suppress the Biden laptop story which you think somehow is all fair game. We cannot deal with Donald Trump as a phenomenological event (not merely an unpleasant person) until we reckon with the death of God.
Or as Winston Churchill put it, the best argument against democracy is a ten-minute conversation with the average voter.
The American Founders and Framers well understood that democracy is dangerous, and they crafted the Constitution of the United States in such a way as to tame and limit it. That’s why progressives detest the Constitution, because it prevents 50% + 1 democracy from dominating national politics. That’s the purpose of the Electoral College, the equal suffrage of the states in the Senate, the Supreme Court, the Bill of Rights: The majority will usually rule, but not always, and minority interests will be upheld.
The alternative is some kind of people’s democracy in which large, populous states would dictate to small states: California laying down the law to Wyoming. The extent to which such domination exists in America today is the explanation of Donald Trump, and even if he loses the impending election, the spirit of MAGA will live on.
I think cultural decadence is the primary driver though even as the growth of government and limitless expansion of democracy to accommodate the will of the herd as you correctly say, does enable it. We don’t talk enough about cultural decadence though and how it’s basically killing the civic norms constitutional democracy depends on. From January 6th to George Floyd and the pro-Hamas protests on college campuses. These are the death cults that Nietzsche saw coming. It comes from the lack of a belief in man anymore let alone higher men like Churchill. The beast is born now and the beast desires that its untrammeled authority has the widest audience
I would say that the two go hand in hand, Jay. You focused on the philosophy; I focused on the politics.
Yeah I know
Or as Winston Churchill put it, the best argument against democracy is a ten-minute conversation with the average voter.
Cannot believe this is my first time hearing this one but it’s brilliant 🤣🤣
Churchill, like Bismarck, is eminently quotable.
A favorite anecdote of mine is of the first meeting between Churchill and General Bernard Law Montgomery in 1940, at the height of the Battle of Britain and the invasion scare. At that time, Monty was commanding a division, and he was scathing in his comments about his superior officer’s plans, which were based on fixed defenses. Monty advocated mobility, but Churchill reminded him that the Army’s transport had been abandoned at Dunkirk. “Busses!” Monty replied. “Plenty of busses in the country, after all.” Churchill pondered for a moment. Then he said, “Very well. Then busses you shall have.”
That being settled, Churchill announced that it was time for lunch, and remarked that the General surely needed a drink. “I neither drink nor smoke,” Monty declared, “and I’m one-hundred percent fit.” To which Churchill replied, “Well, I both drink and smoke, and I’m two-hundred percent fit.”
Claire, let me tell you the story of how *you* personally have profited from the Washington Post's decrepitude.
Sunning myself at Narbonne-Plage this August I had a decision to make: was I going to renew - at full price - the annual CG subscription I'd taken out at a steep discount in response to your irresistible cry-for-help/McDonalds job avoidance scheme the August before? To be honest I wasn't sure; I felt things this summer had become a bit erratic, more miss and less hit, and I'd been too busy to read so much anyway.
But then ... Bozos to the rescue! Into my inbox droppped a WaPo subscription renewal notice, for $70. I'd taken one out when I became obsessed with US politics near the start of the Trump presidency. American friends would occasionally send me WaPo links, the paper seemed to be on the up with Bezos' billions behind it, UK media coverage of the US wasn't great, so I signed up. But I'd hardly been reading it this year, and I'd heard the newsroom was in turmoil after Jeff decided he'd had enough of losing money and hired some idiot from the (London) Telegraph to turn things round who didn't like his own journalists asking him questions.
So it was easy to can that (they feebly offered me an immediate discount to sign back up, which confirmed I'd been right to cancel) and keep yours. You seem to have been suffering a bit from geopolitical Weltschmerz since, here's hoping the underlying causes resolve themselves heathily soon...
Glad to know it. "Geopolitical Weltschmerz?" Yes, I suppose.
Doubtless that Claire knows Erdoganville, inside and out —and before that, was an expat doctoral student at Oxbridge— thence an expat for quite some time in mainland SE Asia (a problematical consultant for her employer and for the local target of her professional engagement at UNDP, the late Lao-French editor of a semi-official newspaper in Vientiane). After leaving Turkey, Claire has spent at least a decade as an expat in Paris. Pas si mal! But my sense is that for a smart girl, and a professed "conservative". she is utterly clueless about what is really happening in depth in the U.,S., and A. (as Borat calls her country of birth and of her residence, primary, secondary and pre-doctoral education: almost exclusively in the bluest quarters of her motherland.) While no, I'm not a mind reader, I'd image that she believes that she kens out totally and perfectly how Orangeman Bad, whose demonstrably (?) boundless perfidy, stupidity, immorality and ignorance, have in their aggregate somehow deluded or mesmerized the contemptible, idiotic MAGA base. Sorry, IMHO she don't know jacksh*t. Nevertheless I'll hang in here as a paid subscriber until we see what comes down in ten days (I'm an official Rethug Election Judge for DeKalb County, Illinois).
The thought naturally occurs that an American who has lived abroad for so long might lose touch, so to speak, with America. But I think that I’ve gotten to know Claire Berlinski fairly well through her writings and our back-and-forths here on Substack and earlier (if she remembers) on Twitter. We see eye to eye on many if not all things, and where we disagree, e.g. regarding the Prince of the Golden Escalator, I can’t think it’s because she lives in Paris. There are plenty of people living in America who feel just the same about Trump as Claire does.
The real difference between us is that Claire’s an intellectual while I am not—and I don’t mean that as a criticism. That difference endows us with offsetting advantages. Claire has breadth of vision; I have a love of detail. If, for example, you seek information about the organization of a US Army infantry division during World War Two, I’m your man. If, on the other hand, you’re curious about the historical significance of Margaret Thatcher, get in touch with Claire.
There’s more than one way of getting at the truth. And we all have our blind spots. As Oliver Cromwell put it in a 1650 letter to the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland: “I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible that you may be mistaken.” Much as it pains me as an American with Irish blood in his veins to quote the Lord Protector, he had a point there. We all should pause to consider that we may be mistaken.
So after all this, you couldn’t explain what she lacks understanding about?
Firstly, Claire seemed shocked and dismayed a coupla days ago that a pathetic 13% of her subscriber base were self-declared hardcore Trumpistas and she begged and pleaded with these misguided and confused creatures to somehow get them to change their/our minds. Not tremendously respectful of their/our historico-political judgements and gratuitously insulting to those of us who over the past several years politely suggested that since they/we were carrying some of the freight around here, maybe indulging in a world class case of TDS within postings only obliquely, or even not at all, related to the Orangeman was impolite. But more bigly, somebody who hasn't lived for any extended period —as would appear— here in the USA, and whose cross-postings (TLDR!) leaned large towards non-Americans or to her fellow expats should maybe back way off.
No need to wait for the last one to leave turning off the lights:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2024/10/25/ann-telnaes-cartoon-donald-trump-kamala-harris-washington-post/
“Democracy Dies in Darkness” - WP
Bezos decided to turn off the lights…
Sorry but WP besmirched that motto long ago…
As far back as 1961, President Eisenhower warned Americans about the increasing influence of the deep state. Of course he didn’t call it the deep state; the term hadn’t been invented yet. The deep state of the 1960s had a somewhat different form than the deep state of the first quarter of the 21st century, but it’s simply incorrect to suggest that the United States has a bureaucracy but not a deep state.
Here’s what Eisenhower said in 1961
“n the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”
Eisenhower was right. It has persisted.
I know. Of course we have a deep state. Of course it would be ridiculous to say it’s like the People’s Republic of China that disappears people like their own foreign minister. But from “Russian collusion,” through the pandemic “misinformation” censorship, up to the Trump indictments and Jack Smith being its personification— obviously there’s something at least in the form of a conspiracy of megalomaniacal credentialed elites who at worst are controlling online discourse and at best forcing us to abandon gas stoves, oh and force Israel’s de facto surrender to Hamas. Why because brown-skinned Muslims simply can do no wrong. Period. From James Comey on down to Jack Smith, obviously there is a deep state. No one pays attention to it too but Lina Khan the FTC chair is basically crusading against every big business in the country just to punish it for being too big. She’s one of the worst
The problem is not just that we have a deep state. The real problem is that our deep state is so incompetent. Consider the power and influence of the United States. When during your lifetime has that power and influence collapsed at a faster pace?
Assume for a moment that Claire is right and that we don’t really have a deep state, just a good old-fashioned bureaucracy. Even if that’s true, it’s almost certain that Elon Musk is perfectly placed to cut that bureaucracy down to size and make it more efficient than ever. He fired 70 percent of the staff at Twitter and the site runs more or less the same as it ever did. SpaceX launches space craft at a fraction of the price that NASA can and much more efficiently than his private competitors. Tesla is the only company this side of China that actually earns a profit selling electric vehicles.
Trump’s promise to appoint Musk to critique the federal bureaucracy and make recommendations to cut it down to size is, in and of itself, a reason to vote Trump.
Some good points and sound logic, but I really don’t know about that last statement.
As you wrote:
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When the AKP took power, four large private groups owned almost all the country’s media—a concentration of power already far too dense for political health.
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These non endorsements (their timing obviously being the rat that should be smelled) are ugly. But the media in the US on the whole is nowhere near this centralized. What’s more, it’s so aggressively anti-trump and furious at Bezos and the LA Times oligarch that the power balance is very different.
If Trump gets elected it will boil down to how quickly he can pull off Schedule F like overhauls, and the competence and cross-administration alignment of who he replaces the non-loyalists with. There’s liable to be a lot of infighting which might slow things down. Trump’s interest in doing any work governing and mental capacity to lead with any sharpness are also possible friction sources.
Those are the most obvious differences I see with the Turkey situation
You alluded to the big reason I think Trump could never be a successful authoritarian, even his “Republican allies” and “loyalists” hate the guy and they always quit, or he fires them. Watch Mike Flynn say the wrong thing one day, then Trump will fire him too. Trump is a joke. He loves the spectacle. He doesn’t want to govern not least with the discipline it takes to be an autocrat like Putin or Xi or even Orban. He’s too pathologically mercurial for it. The presidency for him is an Apprentice reboot. The fact is we’re living in a period of cultural decadence. And Trump is one of those late Roman leaders who presides over the system and the internal rot of the republic. He’s a glaring symptom and not the cause.
The elite media in the U.S. is anti Trump, not „the media“. The NYT, Post, NPR, etc. may be „the media“ in the eyes of the affluent, well educated people who read this blog, but most Americans don’t read the NYT or the Post. They watch Fox News, listen to radio stations controlled by Sinclair or just get tidbits from social media, all of which have a conservative bias. The days when a Walter Cronkite could still reach middle America are long past.
I don't really disagree with any of that; my point is that elite media themselves aren't decentralized enough to fall in line as fast as what happened in Turkey, and that among other reasons are why I don't see things going the way of Turkey or the like that quickly if Trump wins.
I think you mean centralized. Probably true, maybe more importantly Americans have access to English language media from outside the US, and even now plenty of educated Americans read The Guardian or The Economist regularly. It’s easier to create a hermetic media environment for Turkish or Hungarian speakers.
https://www.nationalreview.com/corner/the-washington-post-declines-to-endorse-for-president-and-civilization-melts/?utm_source=recirc-desktop&utm_medium=homepage&utm_campaign=right-rail&utm_content=corner&utm_term=fourth
"In many ways, the reaction only proves why the Post was correct to make the decision it did. Believe me, it’s not about wanting to delude people into believing that the Post’s editorial board isn’t stocked top to bottom with azure-blue Democrats. It’s rather about the fact that the Post’s entire branding for the last eight years has been “resistance, resistance, resistance,” and not only has it led them to wade hip-deep into some of the most massively discrediting media disgraces over that span of time — the Russiagate hoax, suppressing news of Hunter Biden’s laptop, and their Covid-19 coverage being only the most memorable of them — it has utterly killed their business. The Post’s readership reached new heights during the Trump era, when it billed itself as the flagship vessel of “Resistance” narratives and commentators, but has been cratering all throughout the Biden era, to a point where it now has roughly half the audience it once did. This doesn’t sell anymore, even if you wholeheartedly believe that its activist turn has resulted in great and noble feats of muckraking defiance.
But the fact is that it hasn’t; the Post is threadbare and repetitive these days and hasn’t produced a quality of reporting and national journalism comparable to that of the New York Times or even the Wall Street Journal for several years now. The rot is internal, on a coverage level, not just an ideological one. That’s almost a secondary consideration — the economic bottom line is the primary one, particularly for an organization in as much financial distress as it is — but one that touches me personally. I grew up with the Post and loved it when it had the best sports section in the nation, a Style section I would read front to back, and an op-ed page full of interesting and divergent voices.
I’d like to see that Washington Post return. But it never will on its current trajectory, not until it shakes free from the madness of both openly embracing the crudest of activist politics and positions and also pretending to act as a sober-eyed tribune of the people. We will see if it can save itself." (Jeff Blehar.)
Blehar has been very good lately,
It's always rather disgusted me when media who claim to be unbiased or neutral officially endorse political candidates. Journalism at its best is about as close to objective as one can get, and picking a political horse to back just wrecks that.
Of course, I know that in America particularly there's a long tradition of large media outlets endorsing their preferred (almost always Left leaning) candidate. But for me it just underscores how partisan and biases they are.
Maybe it's because I'm a scientist and scientific publications have almost never endorsed politicians, before Trump back in 2016 anyways, when they started endorsing his opponents. I've rarely been more repulsed and ashamed as a scientist than seeing them take that step; and I'm definitely not alone.
So for me, it's a breath of fresh air seeing at least some in the media refusing to endorse a prefered candidate, even when it's obviously they have one.
It's funny how two people can look at the same data and reach wildly different conclusions. Claire, you see this refusal as the ending of Democracy in America, I see it as a very minor (though still encouraging) return to it.
Indeed. I was pleasantly surprised to hear it this morning. Suits those antisemitic rags of newspapers right. Let them lose more subscribers then for failing to continue this time being partisan and biased when they were punished before for being so. It’s hilarious. Let journalism in America burn like the reputations of the Ivy’s. It’s their own damn fault not Trump. And the sooner the conflagration happens, the sooner we can get back to objectivity in journalism and genuine liberal education in college. For months I’ve had nothing but despair for so many things, but this seemed like a good thing.
Claire is exactly right. Maybe because you’re a scientist you are naive about how the business world works. Claire‘s point that in the end all the oligarchs will do the wrong thing because there’s profit in it is sadly pretty spot on. The problem is the federal government is a soft target with a hell of a lot of money sitting there, and it is hardly surprising to see unscrupulous businessmen try to capture it. The GOP used to want to dismantle the federal government, they had a point. But Trump, Musk and the other new generation would rather simply rob it blind. You can argue that Democrats do the same thing, the difference is that the Democratic model is to be a sustainable parasite. The new GOP is going to hollow out the system and God knows what come after. Nothing good that I can see.
Good thing that once again, Hannes demonstrates high-calibre mind reading and truly nails the political naivité of some rando "scientist".