Coop Scoop: Mass Amnesia Roils America
That the GOP can even ask if you were better off 4 yrs ago tells us how much trouble we are in.
May 14, 2024
By Marc Cooper
This is a direct and verified quote from accused criminal Donald J. Trump delivered to a New Jersey MAGA rally last Saturday. The quote from the Orange Turd:
'"Silence of the Lamb. Has anyone ever seen The Silence of the Lambs? The late, great Hannibal Lecter is a wonderful man. He oftentimes would have a friend for dinner. Remember the last scene? “Excuse me. I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” As this poor doctor walked by. “I’m about to have a friend for dinner.” But Hannibal Lecter. Congratulations, the late great Hannibal Lecter. We have people who are being released into our country that we don’t want in our country, and they’re coming in totally unchecked, totally unvetted."'
So, who exactly is suffering marked cognitive decline? 62% of Americans say Biden is not mentally fit. Only 35% say the same of Trump. That other third guy has a brain worm, afib, memory issues and mercury poisoning and a whole lot of dumbass political ideas.
This country is in Big Trouble as the collective cognitive and memory functions of the general population also seem to be in free fall. Biden should be ahead by 25 points and yet is tied with Trump and is a half dozen points behind in the half dozen swing states that will determine the election regardless of the popular vote.
I find it AMAZING that the Republicans have the courage to ask are u better off now than 4 years ago? You mean four years ago when we were hiding under our beds and our friends and families were dropping like flies? When Trump knew the pandemic was deadly but refused to adequately warn the public? You mean when unemployment crossed 20 million and thousands of businesses went dark? You mean when a long list of major American cities were plunged into chaos as Trump’s beloved police forces had no idea how to respond to the BLM protests? You mean when Trump pissed on the leg of our democratic allies and instead sucked off Kim and Putin and Xi? You mean when Trump put migrant kids in cages? Or do you more fondly remember his breaking up of a peaceful demo outside the White House so he could do a photo op with an upside down bible? Do you miss his requests to impose the Insurrection Act and deploy the US Army in American cities? You mean when DEMOCRATS led the legislation to issue the emergency relief checks that kept millions of cash-strapped families afloat? And do you miss how he so ably used his bully pulpit to dirty up, shit upon and degrade common public civility? Or maybe it was the January 6 Capitol Hill Picnic and Cakewalk he invoked that you miss?
Oh, yeah it was a fucking great banner year that we all want to relive as America gets greater, or will, if Trump is elected. So what if it was the beginning of a mass death plague that took more than a million lives? What fun!
That said, it tells me that at least in some ways the MAGATTS understand the American electorate better than the Democrats. The GOP knows what a short, disjointed and irrational memory, what a lack of serious political thinking infects the population. While Biden is still going around telling people they should be thankful for his economic policies because even if a Big Mac meal can cost $16, it might cost cost $20 if Biden were not in office.
The Biden admin DOES have an admirable economic record so far but most of that is due to the natural post-catastrophe recovery process. And, yes, there are specific reforms he can take credit for. Some are quite significant. But his approach is wrong and it keeps the GOP propaganda machinery humming. Biden has to stop asking Americans to applaud his achievements and he better get on the stick about admitting that while things are greatly improved, high prices are still battering millions of families and the housing and rental crisis is acute. College tuition at top tier colleges, with housing, now cost more than $100,000 a year.
Biden needs to stop lecturing them and start, um, ”sharing their pain.”
The collective amnesia we are suffering can in part be credited to an American mainstream media who firmly believes that instead of telling fundamental truths it should instead let the readers choose from a menu of alternative realities. He said. She said. Maybe. Sorta. Kinda.
I think the New York Times is the best news source, generally speaking, in the country. I also think it’s current editor, Joe Kahn is an out-of-touch asshat who is holding the paper back at one of the most crucial inflection points in our history i.e. in 100 days voting will start in an election in which one of the two candidates is vowing to end rule of law and democracy as we know it. I think that little detail should be factored into serious news coverage. No?
In a news-making interview with Ben Smith, who now runs Semafor news, Kahn let it all hang out and it’s too bad he did not keep his off-the-wall POV well tucked-in.
Like many ossified and obsolete journalists, Kahn firmly believes there are only two possible types of newspapers: non-partisan “objective” ones like the Times and partisan propaganda sheets who shill for a cause or a candidate.
Apparently he has not yet figured out that an honest, objective newspaper can very much have a point of view on certain subjects. If you believe strongly in civil rights, for example, I see no problem is skewing your paper to cover a lot of that news, and it can still be done objectively, honestly and reporting the flaws in “your side.”
Apparently, while Kahn was once foreign editor he has paid zero attention to media in other developed countries. We are the only one, arguably along with Canada, that has no major opposition press (unless u count The Nation, The New Republic and other small circulation journals and websites). In the UK, the Guardian is a serious, objective and honest newspaper and if u ask they will tell u they are in opposition to Tory rule. That does not make the paper an uncritical Labour broadsheet. In Italy, the excellent La Repubblica daily is 100% credible and 100% in opposition. The Prime Minsiter is a literal Fascist. Having little good to say about her does not make La Repubblica a commie propaganda sheet. The great daily Haaretz plays a similar role in Israel providing much more citical coverage of its own country than the US media does.. And so on and so on. When Kahn traveled overseas did he never pick up a local paper and just relied on USA Today being slipped under his hotel door?
Well, Kahn went recklessly off the rails when Smith asked him why the NYTimes does not declare itself a partisan of “democracy” and therefore report on the election as something other than a horse race, but rather as a make-or-break moment for the Republic?
Kahns’s answer was gob-smacking. It seems he prefers to base his coverage on polling, or clairvoyance, on giving the readers what he thinks they want to hear instead of informing them of the real stakes in play.
Kahn: “It’s our job to cover the full range of issues that people have. At the moment, democracy is one of them. But it’s not the top one — immigration happens to be the top [of polls], and the economy and inflation is the second. Should we stop covering those things because they’re favorable to Trump and minimize them.”
“Huh?” responds Steve Schmidt, formerly campaign manager for McCain and now a militant anti-Trumper. Schmidt continues.
Schmidt: “Joe Kahn can’t see the forest for the trees. He does not understand the great events of this moment in their connected totality.
The failure is immense and rivals, at some level, the great failures of The New York Times and the disgrace of its coverage of the Holodomor, when the newspaper became a tool of power for Josef Stalin. Of course, The New York Times refuses to return its disgraced and blood-stained Pulitzer, but that is a story for a different day.
Joe Kahn is wrong about another thing as well, and the flippancy of his answer is quite telling. He lives in a very small and cloistered world in which the American public doesn’t matter. They aren’t players in the great game in which Kahn fancies himself a master. He makes clear what role everybody plays on the great stage in the great game”
Schmidt then goes on to reprint the truly scary part of Kahn’s musings, one that tells you that if America were to ever live under dictatorship, the NYTimes would see no reason to adjust its coverage or it’s tone.
Make sure you are sitting down safely to read this next graph from the weak mind of the Big Cheese at the NYTimes.
Kahn: To say that the threats of democracy are so great that the media is going to abandon its central role as a source of impartial information to help people vote — that’s essentially saying that the news media should become a propaganda arm for a single candidate, because we prefer that candidate’s agenda. . . . also true that Trump could win this election in a popular vote. Given that Trump’s not in office, it will probably be fair. And there’s a very good chance, based on our polling and other independent polling, that he will win that election in a popular vote. So there are people out there in the world who may decide, based on their democratic rights, to elect Donald Trump as president. It is not the job of the news media to prevent that from happening. It’s the job of Biden and the people around Biden to prevent that from happening.
Wrong. The task of quashing a fascist movement and keeping it from taking power is not Biden’s job nor that of the New York Times. It is an imperative for the American people AND it’s a challenge to all democratic institutions to exercise all of their power, resources and judgment to defend our democratic system. It’s not at all clear that the Times is among them.
And just as a side note: I suspect Kahn knows quite well while Trump has an even or better chance of winning the electoral college he has almost zero chance of winning the popular vote in spite of his speculating to the contrary. But Kahn conflates Trump’s possible election with democracy itself as the voters would have made that choice allowing Trump to win the electoral college.
I suppose in Kahn’s mind, this would be good enough to call “democratic” even tough there is now a broad consensus that the electoral college is probably the most anti-democratic feature of our regime and helps cement minority rule common in authoritarian societies.
Might I also note that Kahn says the quiet part out loud when stating that because Trump is currently NOT in power the 2024 election results would probably be accurate. This clearly recognizes that when Trump is in power, they probably would not. And that clearly implies that Trump is immune to democratic norms but it’s not really the job of the Times to make a big deal out of it while he’s running for President, right?
I sincerely hope Trump is not elected. The damage he will do is unthinkable. But I am looking forward to one possible side effect. When he cracks down on the NYTimes from the Oval Office and the Times begins to flood your inbox asking for support, I will simply block them.
Get comfy in the bed you helped make will be my only response.
PS. Just remember, along with the WaPo, it took the NYTimes three years to start calling GW Bush’s legalization of torture as “torture.” As one of Kahn’s predecessors, Bill Keller, told us some years back, the paper did not want to use the word “torture” because the Democrats were using it and therefore it was “partisan.” Didn’t matter that it was true.
God help us. ++
One of the reasons I want to expand funding for the Coop Scoop is to have the ability to pay other writers to occasionally contribute. I don’t want to bang the cup too hard but we are in an emergency funding crunch and it is not clear if the Coop Scoop can be properly sustained till November.
We Need You to Convert to a Paid subscriber.
It costs literally pennies a day. Please step up today and and bolster this independent news source.
One year subs are now discounted to $31.00 (or $5 a month)
You can also become a strategic monthly donor for only $4 a month via Patreon.
A $25 donation or more via Paypal, Zelle or Venmo would be just as fab. So would smaller or bigger donations.
ZELLE ————————>marccooper.usc@gmail.com
VENMO ———————→ @marc-cooper-56022