Worse Than Trump? Yup

For people and media who treat the GOP "pivoting" from Trump (or trying to) as an objectively good thing, I think it is crazy and delusional. You actually think that DeSantis would be better? I think it's better than 50-50 that he'd be worse. Same for Cruz, Hawley, Youngkin. (I even have my doubts about someone like Nikki Hayley.)

I think we have to start treating this as something way beyond Trump. It's the Party. It started with Reagan--maybe sooner--and was maybe perfected by Trump, but the Party is what it is.

If I go back go back to, say, Ronald Reagan, and recall what I imagined at that time the GOP would look like in the future, the current reality is unbelievably worse than any worst case scenario I imagined at the time. It is beyond incredible. And that descent didn't start in 2017. Why would I believe that the Repubs won't be even worse ten years from now? I fully expect that--like 1981--it will be worse that the worst thing I can envision today.

New York Times at Its Worst

I am not going to cancel my subscription to the NY Times. (I tried that once and came back because WaPo is even worse.) The science section, book reviews, and other places are just too good. But, having said that, I have to also say that most of the political reporting is awful. And stop with the horrible headlines.

The Times actually seems to think that any pushback for their both-sideism and love affair with Trump somehow proves that they are exactly right. There's a word for this: hubris.

Here's the actual subheadline in a Peter Baker article today:

"For the sitting president, even a triumphant ceremony to sign major domestic legislation can hardly break through the nonstop attention on his predecessor."

 The article is as bad as the headline. Baker actually wrote an article about a major piece of legislation in which the article gave nonstop attention to Biden's predecessor. They create the nonstop attention for Trump and then report the same nonstop attention that they created, as if they discovered it.

Someone save us please.

A Few Bullets

 

• I am prepared to give Biden some pretty good marks on the domestic front (Congress too). If this latest bill becomes law it is pretty good, even with the glaring holes that the Dems shamefully put in place.

• Having said that, I give his administration a D in foreign policy. The Afghan withdrawal was a positive, amd probably Ukraine. But the Middle East policy is basically unchanged from Trump, and he seems fairly committed to forever war and American Exceptionalist foreign policy.

• Blaming cancel culture (which is not a thing) on a bunch of people on Twitter who have exactly zero power brings to mind Rick Santelli blaming a few poor people with subprime mortgages for bringing the world economy to it knees -n '07-'08. The difference is that Santelli is a right wing flake, whereas today's kancel kulture kops include a lot of "liberals". Follow the money.

• The idea that the American "free press" has failed us is--in my mind--no longer in doubt. And it's all about money. Big media is run by capitalists and we know the top priority of capitalists. So sad.