The Many Faces of US Politics...

[Main Street]

Watch this from Taibbi, from today - talking to the execrable Krystal Ball - they're well matched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oSf-kKv8hU&feature=emb_title

Pure bad faith false equivalence, both sides claptrap

A Putinist narrative if ever there was - "they're all as bad as each other"

Taibbi's narrative is that there's an equivalence between Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson and Anderson Cooper

But there isn't - Hannity and Carlson are active fascist disinformation agents, Maddow and Cooper are not - they're actual journalists who inhabit a reality based world

CNN and MSNBC have plenty of faults - being a left/liberal equivalent of Fox is not one - their main fault is that they have offered oceans of free coverage to Trump, and particularly in CNN's case, much of it far, far too respectful and unchallenging

Yet Taibbi has been far less challenging to Trump than even the most unchallenging CNN coverage

Stuff like this YouTube clip from Taibbi provides zero insight and is designed to do just that  - it's just bland generalities designed to confuse, designed to broad brush everything - but that's simplistic snake oil

This isn't a both sides thing

One "side" is clearly way, way worse than the other

There is only one side which is trying to take down democracy and trying to incite mass race hatred, there is only one side to which facts are a mortal enemy, which has identified science as an enemy

Taibbi doesn't care about that because it doesn't affect him

This is really basic, obvious stuff, and Taibbi refuses to get it

And anybody who refuses to get the most basic, obvious stuff has to have a bad motive for not doing so - the alternative is that they are merely a moron

Taibbi's stance is pretty much the following

Nah Sid , nothing in that interview supports the description 'a weasel down Trump's rabbit hole'. Matt Taibbi is spot on as he usually is, he's a first class investigator with one of the most  respected backlog  of investigative and informative journalism, a commentary on  the major issues in modern society especially around the 2008 Wall St crash, the bailout, the causes of and ramifications  -  new levels of extreme economic inequality.

As usual you refuse blindly to listen objectively to opinions expressed (the linked interview). You're stuck arm in arm with that Snowball character in Animal Farm bleating  "4 legs good, 2 legs bad".
Extreme media bias in the USA is an acknowledged phenomenon. The image of CNN good / Fox bad,  is a cartoon for the gullible.   CNN is good for pro capitalist elite, anti trade union /workers rights as embodied by The Democrat Party, workers /country small town folk were depicted to be stupid and racist, Archie Bunker types to be mocked,the  deplorables.  Fox News  was just the first to break away from old media tradition  and pick the demographic that would swallow what they were selling,  their debased version of fake populism.

Every time Trump farts a tweet, the media  are all over it like flies to shite, it's  the era of click bait media..
Even when Trump is barred from Twitter, CNN is there reporting on a proxy Trump tweet.  Polarization is a money tree , CNN just couldn't  for once ignore a Trump tweet even when he's barred,   just to  pick it apart and be outraged.

[J70]

The Democrats are "pro capitalist elite, anti trade union /workers rights"??

Seriously??

[sid waddell]

Watch this from Taibbi, from today - talking to the execrable Krystal Ball - they're well matched

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oSf-kKv8hU&feature=emb_title

Pure bad faith false equivalence, both sides claptrap

A Putinist narrative if ever there was - "they're all as bad as each other"

Taibbi's narrative is that there's an equivalence between Sean Hannity and Rachel Maddow or Tucker Carlson and Anderson Cooper

But there isn't - Hannity and Carlson are active fascist disinformation agents, Maddow and Cooper are not - they're actual journalists who inhabit a reality based world

CNN and MSNBC have plenty of faults - being a left/liberal equivalent of Fox is not one - their main fault is that they have offered oceans of free coverage to Trump, and particularly in CNN's case, much of it far, far too respectful and unchallenging

Yet Taibbi has been far less challenging to Trump than even the most unchallenging CNN coverage

Stuff like this YouTube clip from Taibbi provides zero insight and is designed to do just that  - it's just bland generalities designed to confuse, designed to broad brush everything - but that's simplistic snake oil

This isn't a both sides thing

One "side" is clearly way, way worse than the other

There is only one side which is trying to take down democracy and trying to incite mass race hatred, there is only one side to which facts are a mortal enemy, which has identified science as an enemy

Taibbi doesn't care about that because it doesn't affect him

This is really basic, obvious stuff, and Taibbi refuses to get it

And anybody who refuses to get the most basic, obvious stuff has to have a bad motive for not doing so - the alternative is that they are merely a moron

Taibbi's stance is pretty much the following

Nah Sid , nothing in that interview supports the description 'a weasel down Trump's rabbit hole'. Matt Taibbi is spot on as he usually is, he's a first class investigator with one of the most  respected backlog  of investigative and informative journalism, a commentary on  the major issues in modern society especially around the 2008 Wall St crash, the bailout, the causes of and ramifications  -  new levels of extreme economic inequality.

As usual you refuse blindly to listen objectively to opinions expressed (the linked interview). You're stuck arm in arm with that Snowball character in Animal Farm bleating  "4 legs good, 2 legs bad".
Extreme media bias in the USA is an acknowledged phenomenon. The image of CNN good / Fox bad,  is a cartoon for the gullible.   CNN is good for pro capitalist elite, anti trade union /workers rights as embodied by The Democrat Party, workers /country small town folk were depicted to be stupid and racist, Archie Bunker types to be mocked,the  deplorables.  Fox News  was just the first to break away from old media tradition  and pick the demographic that would swallow what they were selling,  their debased version of fake populism.

Every time Trump farts a tweet, the media  are all over it like flies to shite, it's  the era of click bait media..
Even when Trump is barred from Twitter, CNN is there reporting on a proxy Trump tweet.  Polarization is a money tree , CNN just couldn't  for once ignore a Trump tweet even when he's barred,   just to  pick it apart and be outraged.

You're clueless

Taibbi once did some good stuff

That time is long, long gone

He has been parody for a long time and is now pretty much an apologist for Trump fascism, as is his buddy Greenwald

As I have amply demonstrated above

John Pilger was once a great journalist

No longer, he's now a Putinist shill

When the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do, you dig in

[whitey]

Sid-LOL

So he was great when he agreed with you and now he's a cvnt because he presents a more balanced view

[sid waddell]

The Democrats are "pro capitalist elite, anti trade union /workers rights"??

Seriously??

Main Street goes for crude, context-free reductionism

Nobody can disturb his "both sides equally as bad" Greenwald/Taibbi narrative of Fox = CNN = MSNBC

The biggest problem with CNN was the amount of free coverage they gave Trump and how they continually platformed Trumpists with inadeqquate challenge, they platformed the Nazi Richard Spencer FFS

Yet the narrative is that CNN is a "left-wing Fox News"?

There is no such a thing in the US

Where in God's name do people get this nonsense

Not from reality, anyway

[sid waddell]

Sid-LOL

So he was great when he agreed with you and now he's a cvnt because he presents a more balanced view

Again this is Taibbi's version of balance

Yours is considerably to the right of that - you've never made any bones about your love for racism, fascism, context-free propaganda and naked disregard for the truth

[sid waddell]

Excellent article by Fintan O'Toole

What happened yesterday was always totally predictable - Greenwald, Taibbi and the other fascist appeasers continually poo-pooed the idea that Trump is fascist - Greenwald only considers something fascist when it presents a personal threat to him - as it does in Brazil - elsewhere, he's an appeaser

Trump needs to be removed from office now, ie. tonight, he has more earth to scorch yet

https://www.irishtimes.com/news/world/us/fintan-o-toole-trump-s-insurrection-has-been-advertised-for-months-1.4452191#

Fintan O'Toole: Trump's insurrection has been advertised for months
This was not a rush of blood to the head. It is the logic of a post-democratic Republican Party

Spare us, at least, the mock horror.

On the morning after the US presidential election of November 4th, The Irish Times ran a headline: "At 2.23am, the US president launched an attempted coup." This was merely factual reporting.

With tens of millions of votes still uncounted, Donald Trump had appeared on a carefully prepared stage bedecked with US flags and demanded that the counting be stopped and that he be declared the winner. The election was in the past tense: "Frankly we did win this election."

This was not a moment of madness. It was a show for which Trump had been running trailers for at least a year.

This was never a dark conspiracy. It was an undisguised insurrection. Trump's one great virtue is his openness. On September 23rd, asked whether he would "commit here today for a peaceful transferral of power after the November election", Trump replied, "Get rid of the [mail-in] ballots and you'll have a very peaceful – there won't be a transfer, frankly. There will be a continuation."

What more did anyone want? Read his lips: there will be no peaceful transition of power. Like every other autocrat, Trump understood the sole purpose of an election as the endorsement of his rule. Any other possibility could not be entertained.

Almost the entire Republican Party went along with this declaration of war on the democratic process; a majority of its congressional delegation actively supported it. And nearly 75 million people voted for Trump in the full knowledge that he would never, ever, accept the result of the election unless he won.

So what did they think he was going to do when he lost? There was no need to speculate. On December 19th, Trump tweeted: "Statistically impossible to have lost the 2020 Election. Big protest in DC on January 6th. Be there, will be wild!"

Over and over, Trump has made it plain that he would use every means available to subvert the will of the majority of voters and remain in power. What were those means? There were three layers of subversion.

First there was the courts. Trump believed his hand-picked judges, up to and including the three he had nominated to the Supreme Court, would deliver the election to him by invalidating millions of votes.

This would have been the cleanest kind of coup. But the judiciary baulked – not least because Trump's sabotage was too open, too crude, too unsubtle and, in the hands of his deranged lawyer Rudi Giuliani, too dementedly incompetent.

But Trump had two more sets of allies: the Republican Party in the chambers of Congress and the neo-fascists on the streets. This is an alliance he created and sustained precisely for such a purpose.

Again, the nature of this alliance was completely open. Look at the pictures from Wednesday of the leader of the congressional coup attempt, Missouri Republican senator Josh Hawley, giving the clenched fist salute to the mob outside the Capitol building.

Logic
This was not a rush of blood to the head. It is the logic of a post-democratic Republican Party that has given up hope of being able to win a majority in fair presidential elections.

Nor is this a passing phase. Even after the mob stormed the Capitol, a majority of Republican members of the House, including House minority leader Kevin McCarthy and House minority whip Steve Scalise, voted in support of Trump's bogus claims that Arizona's election results must be invalidated.

The only surprise about what happened on Wednesday, therefore, is that anyone can claim to be surprised. What do they think a post-democratic political party looks like?

There has been, though, a cognitive dissonance on the right of American politics. Conservatives think of themselves as, well, conservative – protective of established institutions and norms.

This has long been a dubious proposition: Watergate and Iran-Contra are merely the most egregious examples of Republican presidencies becoming actively criminal and flagrantly subversive of the US constitutional order. White supremacist repression of Black voting rights was not invented by Trump; it is a mainstream Republican tactic for suppressing the democratic vote.

Self-delusion
But the power of self-delusion can never be overstated. The mainstream right in the US has drifted more and more into the orbit of pre-fascist authoritarianism and lawlessness, even while seeking to retain its sense of conservative respectability.

It has become a political version of the Picture of Dorian Grey: suave men in well-cut suits retaining the outward veneer of republican democracy while, in the attic, the true picture comes to resemble more and more a Confederate flag-waving thug in combat gear.

That double game is up. The picture was readjusted on Wednesday. Respectable republicanism got a glimpse of its own true face and recoiled at the sight.

Yet here, too, there should be no surprise. This is what always happens with far-right takeovers. The suave men think they can use the demagogue and the thugs they calls patriots and "fine people", and dispense with them when they feel like it. They think they can keep the mob outside the door while they get on with the real business. Sooner or later, the mob comes through the door and openly occupies the space the suave men have prepared for it.

[sid waddell]

Timothy Snyder was very good on C4 News

His points:

Trump absolutely is a fascist and the Republican party is a fascist party

The "stolen election" nonsense is about criminalising black voting - black voters won the election for Biden, and in the eyes of the white supremacist Republican party, that is illegitimate

Ted Cruz cited the "1877 Compromise" as part of his bogus case to overturn the result of the election - but this "compromise" was a nakedly racist, apartheid measure, when the Reconstruction was abolished and federal troops were withdrawn from the South in favour of the era of Jim Crow

Yet Cruz thinks the start of Jim Crow was good, a proud moment of American history?

This is the essential abhorrent truth at the heart of the Republican party - they long for Jim Crow - and Cruz said the quiet part out loud

https://www.motherjones.com/kevin-drum/2021/01/ted-cruz-is-a-big-fan-of-the-compromise-of-1877/

[screenexile]

Watching the 5 here on Fox News... poor Juan Williams is suffering the repercussions of a double mental breakdown ... Greg and Jesse have completely lost the plot they are not taking Biden's win well!!!

[J70]

I cannot stomach that Jesse Watters.

Even by Fox News standards, he is a smug, arrogant, slimy, racist weasel who elicits an urge to punch him in the face.

A talentless, uncharismatic, unintelligent nothing who made his name door-stepping unsuspecting people for Bill O'Reilly and crying foul when some other crowd did it to him.

[Solo_run]

I cannot stomach that Jesse Watters.

Even by Fox News standards, he is a smug, arrogant, slimy, racist weasel who elicits an urge to punch him in the face.

A talentless, uncharismatic, unintelligent nothing who made his name door-stepping unsuspecting people for Bill O'Reilly and crying foul when some other crowd did it to him.

Tucker Carlson is a pr1ck

[Gmac]

I cannot stomach that Jesse Watters.

Even by Fox News standards, he is a smug, arrogant, slimy, racist weasel who elicits an urge to punch him in the face.

A talentless, uncharismatic, unintelligent nothing who made his name door-stepping unsuspecting people for Bill O'Reilly and crying foul when some other crowd did it to him.

never a big fan of him and his collar up style , bit of a nordie look.

[Eamonnca1]

[sid waddell]

Tucker Carlson's hill to die on tonight is that he maintains the terrorists yesterday weren't racists

Last night he equated "pasty" white skin with innocence and black clothes with criminality

He only equated black clothes with criminality because even on Fox you can't get away with explicitly branding black skin as criminal - which of course is what he really means - and every viewer knows it

[sid waddell]

Carlson permanently has the look of somebody who is about to go postal with an AR-15, possibly on his own family

All that money, yet all that deranged Nazi anger, sad