Trump and Putin show how it is done. The media doesn't understand they are being used. Progressives haven't yet figured it out.
Down is up. Let me explain.
Two news stories are out and being talked about. One is the apparent mess Trump is making with our relations with Mexico. The other is the very conspicuous arrest for treason of some Russian cyber-spy people.
Big news. Controversy! On the surface the messages reflect problems and people are upset. That is perfectly fine for Trump and Putin. The more talk the better.
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| Coastal Liberals expected this: a New Yorker cartoon |
Progressives are delighted. They think it shows Trump to be incompetent, a wild man having a very bad first week. The liberal and sophisticated media was ready and waiting for this and Trump gave them just what they want. Trump is having tantrum over Mexico, making silly demands. It feeds the notion of Trump as a crazy bull in that china shop, upsetting relations with a neighbor.
Perfect. But not for progressives. For Trump.
Trump's people want that fight with Mexico. As this blog noted yesterday, a great many people feel that America's place in the world, one of overwhelming power, primacy, and respect has eroded. They feel that upstarts and the undeserving are stepping into line ahead of Americans and they resent it. This is backlash against affirmative action. It is backlash against uppity behavior by women, Hispanics, the poor. It is backlash against the courtly and internationalist manner of Barrack Obama.
They notice (as I personally did, when considering a new car to buy) that a Ford product was assembled in Hermosillo, Mexico. They do not want and American president to deal respectfully as a peer with the Mexican president. They want America visibly to bully the Mexican president and Mexican people. America on top. America first.
American voters do not understand supply chains and balance of payments with Mexico nor do they care very much. They assume that the business people and economists will more or less work things out. What they do know is whether Mexico shows America deference and respect or whether they presume to deal with us as peers. Americans want Mexico to say "Si, Senior" in some visible way.
Trump is not upsetting the apple cart. He is setting right the apple cart: America on top. We make the rules. Mexico pays for the wall, or at least appears to. Make America great again.
Meanwhile, Russia conspicuously arrests some Russian cyber-spies for cooperating with Americans, and does it by locating them in public and putting a bag over their heads and marching them out of a room in the presence of others. It could not have been more visible. What is going on? Isn't this showing Putin to be an authoritarian dictator? Doesn't this arrest only focus attention on the fact that Russia, notwithstanding denials, was in fact involved with the hacking and influencing the American election? Isn't that bad for Putin?
No. It is perfect for Putin. It confirms what the world knew. That Russia messed with the American election, that Putin would do a bald faced lie about it. It confirmed that Russia could do whatever it wanted.
It demonstrated to America and to every other democracy that the Russian ability to project power is very long and very powerful. Russia does not have to send nuclear missiles to destroy democracies in the West. Little people in faraway Siberia can do it. Russia need not send suicide squads to hijack jets to ram into buildings. Russia has far better first strike capability: cyber attacks on vulnerable spots, the power grid, the financial system, even the very democratic process.
Trump sent a blunt message to his fellow Americans: the American president bullies the Mexican president.
Putin sent a blunt message to western democracies: Russia's reach is far and I can destroy you.
Criticism of Trump by the coastal elites only spreads the idea that Trump wants spread: America First, Mexico grovels.
Angry bipartisan investigations of Russian hacking only spreads the message Putin wants spread: Russia is dangerous.
Perfect. But not for progressives. For Trump.
Trump's people want that fight with Mexico. As this blog noted yesterday, a great many people feel that America's place in the world, one of overwhelming power, primacy, and respect has eroded. They feel that upstarts and the undeserving are stepping into line ahead of Americans and they resent it. This is backlash against affirmative action. It is backlash against uppity behavior by women, Hispanics, the poor. It is backlash against the courtly and internationalist manner of Barrack Obama.
They notice (as I personally did, when considering a new car to buy) that a Ford product was assembled in Hermosillo, Mexico. They do not want and American president to deal respectfully as a peer with the Mexican president. They want America visibly to bully the Mexican president and Mexican people. America on top. America first.
 |
| You pay for our wall. |
American voters do not understand supply chains and balance of payments with Mexico nor do they care very much. They assume that the business people and economists will more or less work things out. What they do know is whether Mexico shows America deference and respect or whether they presume to deal with us as peers. Americans want Mexico to say "Si, Senior" in some visible way.
Trump is not upsetting the apple cart. He is setting right the apple cart: America on top. We make the rules. Mexico pays for the wall, or at least appears to. Make America great again.
 |
| Watch out for Russia |
Meanwhile, Russia conspicuously arrests some Russian cyber-spies for cooperating with Americans, and does it by locating them in public and putting a bag over their heads and marching them out of a room in the presence of others. It could not have been more visible. What is going on? Isn't this showing Putin to be an authoritarian dictator? Doesn't this arrest only focus attention on the fact that Russia, notwithstanding denials, was in fact involved with the hacking and influencing the American election? Isn't that bad for Putin?
No. It is perfect for Putin. It confirms what the world knew. That Russia messed with the American election, that Putin would do a bald faced lie about it. It confirmed that Russia could do whatever it wanted.
It demonstrated to America and to every other democracy that the Russian ability to project power is very long and very powerful. Russia does not have to send nuclear missiles to destroy democracies in the West. Little people in faraway Siberia can do it. Russia need not send suicide squads to hijack jets to ram into buildings. Russia has far better first strike capability: cyber attacks on vulnerable spots, the power grid, the financial system, even the very democratic process.
Putin sent a blunt message to western democracies: Russia's reach is far and I can destroy you.
Criticism of Trump by the coastal elites only spreads the idea that Trump wants spread: America First, Mexico grovels.
Angry bipartisan investigations of Russian hacking only spreads the message Putin wants spread: Russia is dangerous.
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“Dreaming of Rachel Maddow”
I dreamed of Rachel Maddow last night. We were snapping selfies as we mused over America’s culture wars. “You went all InfoWars tonight”, I chided her, as we leaned against some kind of a wall beneath a warm sun. Secure in our camaraderie, I jokingly needled her about her show’s ongoing conspiracy theory of Russians stealing the election from Hillary. I woke up just as passersby were photographing us.
Freud isn’t needed to interpret: I listen to Rachel’s podcasts at bedtime, and my dream was triggered by anxiety both over Trump, and my friends thinking I’ve gone to the dark side in my Upclose guest posts. I think a lot these days about my real life socialist journalist friend in Paris who warned me about the fate of Trotskyites—politicos who break from orthodoxy yet remain in the fold. His warnings to fellow socialists about overreach subjected him to biting criticism.
My limerent dream coalesced my support for Rachel despite increasingly sounding like InfoWars, that online conspiracy show that inspires millions of conservative viewers. News is not fake if it’s presented merely as conspiracy theory, no matter how outrageous the claims. InfoWars packages its accusations against the diabolical left as “you heard it here first”, connecting the dots of thin facts into big alarming pictures. It’s entertaining, feeds viewer ideology, and calls them to political action. That’s what Rachel is now doing in her MSNBC slot, unapologetically positioning her show as a bulkhead of activism, pressure and resistance in protecting the American Way from Trump.
The night of my dream, she had hyped the unholy Trump-Putin conspiracy with new opaque facts about the arrest of two KGB agents. These arrests, she speculated, may be the Kremlin silencing spooks who leaked information to the former British MI6 private eye who compiled the Moscow Ritz prostitution dossier on Trump. Rachel thinks the MI6 guy is hiding not from the paparazzi but from Russians with poison-tipped umbrellas. Alternatively, the New York Times reported “anonymous sources” speculating that the arrested KGB agents might have been CIA informants about “Putin’s direct involvement” in defeating Clinton. I also listened to a New Yorker podcast with the Buzzfeed editor who published the prostitution dossier, defending himself that its not fake news as long as it’s prefaced with the warning that it might all be bogus— "let the reader decide what’s true”, he proclaimed.
Why do I like the conspiracy theories, and accept that it’s ok as long as Rachel and Buzzfeed are upfront that it might all be wrong? Dreaming of Rachel answered my questions: Trump is so adept in manipulating public opinion, and so effective paired with a Republican Congress, that the left seems unable to slow his excesses armed only with conventional rules of journalism. The Buzzfeed editor was explicit on this point, demanding it’s up to a younger generation of bloggers to do what “legacy media” will not in delegitimizing Trump. He dismissed criticisms of him as “spurious”.
Might eroding journalistic convention open a Pandora’s box we’ll later regret? It this like gutting the filibuster to get Obama’s appointees though during our delusion that “a new Democratic majority” would guarantee a Clinton win? Is Trump such a threat that it’s worth the risk? I fear not, but in dreaming about Rachel Maddow, I learned this: It feels good to watch dueling fake news, alternative facts, and conspiracies. While I support Trump’s core policies such as trade and secure borders, his raw political power invites unprecedented abuses. If Trump has so disemboweled the press from succeeding in its critical role of checking that power within conventional journalistic norms, then the ends may well justify the means. But I doubt it.
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