Progressive Media Bubble

Guest Post:   There is a tide of anger and frustration in the American public invisible to consumers of the Mainstream Media.

Peter Sage Introduction of the Guest Post:

Frequent Guest Post author Thad Guyer is expressing anger and frustration more clearly than in the past. [For the record, he says he isn't angry nor frustrated, but that's how he sounded to me.  Read to the end and decide for yourself.  Or just believe Thad.]  He thinks that the media environment of the educated voter (i.e. classy news sources like the NY Times, the Washington Post, serious magazines, network TV) are stifling and obscuring a giant undercurrent of public resentment over the state of the country and world.

Thad Guyer is getting at the same point that progressive TV documentarian provocateur Michael Moore said: that Trump is going to win because the media is missing just how appealing Trump's policy prescriptions are, especially in the upper Midwest states that Michael Moore knows best: Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio, Pennsylvania.   Those states are Democratic blue but they are no longer safe for Hillary.  They like what Trump says about the failure of the established policy.   Blue collar workers want protection.  They don't get it from higher education or monopoly licensure so they want to get it from strong government. 

Lots of swing blue collar votes

Polite society adopted the policy solutions that fit the world view of college educated successful white collar professionals but was blind to the limitations of those policies for blue collar workers.   Bernie suggested free public college.   Hillary--the moderate liberal--said college loan restructuring.   Trump says we ought to have great jobs for people without college and we would have them if we had fair trade deals with China.

Blue collar solutions to American problems are characterized as "tabloid news"--the NY Post not the NY Times.   People who listen to NPR rather than Rush Limbaugh miss a big part of what is going on.  

Guyer says that the Mainstream Media delegitimizes open discussion of the policy failures of progressive, multicultural society, which suggests intent.  An alternative view--my own-- is that the presence of endemic glimmers of misogyny, racism, religious intolerance, and xenophobia are matters of ideological faith among progressives.   It is there, in the public, they believe, and it is an ideological sin.  It is akin to the religion of anti-communism of the 1950s; anti-communists were sure communist thinking was out there.  It is not subject to discussion.   In the 1950's communism was evil per se so any tinges of progressive thinking was evil.   Thus blacklists.

The ideology of anti-racism is a current version of a similar secular religion, this time carried out by the faithful among white progressive Hillary supporters plus her coalition of the oppressed: women, blacks, Hispanics, LGBTQ.   Their religion channels progressives into finding racism and xenophobia often and everywhere, and losing the distinction between David Duke/KKK/alt-right neo-Nazi anti-semitism and the wider variety of low-grade endemic xenophobia and ethnic identity.    This is why "micro-aggressions" are noticed and condemned.  They are ever on the alert and they are sure it is everywhere and, bingo, they find it everywhere.  The result is that in their eyes low-grade xenophobic fevers get conflated with full-bore Bull Connor/Adolph Hitler racism.   So people with the slight disease of xenophobia-fever hide and repress it, feel bad about having their feelings mis-cast as ugly racism, and so they rebel against the pressure and complain about the tyranny of political correctness.   And become Trump voters.

The judgement and condemnation of the progressive multicultural left is harsh and broad.  Or perhaps the judgement and condemnation is exactly on point, because the xenophobia and racism really is there.  I believe it in fact is widespread, but because it is real it is in fact a significant element of politics.   In a democracy progressives have two problems, not one.   The first problem is the racism and xenophobia that is endemic and exacerbates social problems.   The second is political:  there are a whole lot of people  they have identified as their political rivals and whom they have shamed as tabloid-reading racists.  Trump gives those people voice and affirmation while Hillary blames them.  Trump gets their votes.

 Xenophobes, racists, proud Christians, and people generally uncomfortable with foreigners feel what they feel.    Having identified the problem as both real and big progressives now have to deal with the fact that the people they call racists are going to outvote them.

Progressives deeply and solely in their media bubble are out of touch with the emotions that fuel the Trump campaign.   Progressives may not share those feelings but they were not going to vote for Trump in any case.   But there is a huge voting block who will.

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

Guest Post by Thad Guyer

Anti-Trump Media Suffocates the Democratic Party

Americans left and right now sneer at our mainstream media (MSM). The New York Times, the Washington Post, LA Times, CNN, MSNBC, Huffington Post have all squandered their credibility in their unabashed and ever more trite efforts to shame and embarrass anyone straying from liberal progressive ideology. The MSM now actually and actively delegitimizes political centrism. We are either pro-Hillary and anti-Trump at an ideological level, or we are a suspected “hater”. Centrism has been the backbone of our political and cultural stability for a century, with Americans free to pick and choose policies from left or right of center. No more. The MSM has messaged as clearly as print and broadcast will allow that Democrats may not have any positions other than internationalism, global trade promotion, heavy immigration flows, burgeoning social welfare programs, budget deficits and not cutting taxes or regulations.
 
Codes of political correctness are promoted to make it unacceptable to publicly voice support for any part of the conservative agenda. We dare not say “I think welfare programs might not be the best way to foster economic inclusion”, or “maybe we need to control our borders to cut down on the amount of illegal immigration”, or even “I think America is great”. Centrism is dissent, and no dissent is legitimate.
  
The MSM is grossly out of touch with the innate centrism that is part of the American personality. I am based in Vietnam now, a communist country that controls the media. I have worked in and spent time in countries with state controlled media, like China, Cambodia, Bolivia, Morocco, and Turkey. In those countries, the media is the voice of the government. Citizens ridicule the government media behind its back, dismiss it as a joke, but fear to publicly disagree with it. Centrism is not acceptable in these countries. Political loyalty is demanded to the state media.

We now have parallels in America with some of these countries.. Our MSM is not government controlled, but it is the voice of political power. It is the voice of the Democratic Party. Like my Vietnamese, Chinese and Bolivian friends and colleagues, Americans are hesitant to speak centrist positions. Centrism is dissent. A Democrat cannot voice support for anything Republican. A carelessly stated centrist position on globalism, borders, public benefits, or taxation can have social consequences, and even impair employment opportunity. 

Democrats are now a party of closeted centrists, oppressed by media enforced liberalism, codes of political correctness, and seldom honestly engage with each other in political conversation. Democrats lie about not liking anything Trump advocates. This suppression of centrism is stifling and stagnating. The MSM is suffocating the Democratic Party, fueling extreme partisanship, and creating a greenhouse of anti-establishment nationalism, racial division, and a body politic ready to explode.
 
The mainstream liberal media has given us Donald Trump, far more than Fox News ever could.