Over the last couple of years I have begun to understand that Matt Taibbi is a very …. Ummmm confused individual. but even in his confused mind he’s starting to get some things very close to correct. [1]
The 2016 campaign season brought to the surface awesome levels of political discontent. After the election, instead of wondering where that anger came from, most of the press quickly pivoted to a new tale about a Russian plot to attack our Democracy. This conveyed the impression that the election season we’d just lived through had been an aberration, thrown off the rails by an extraordinary espionage conspiracy between Trump and a cabal of evil foreigners.
This narrative contradicted everything I’d seen traveling across America in my two years of covering the campaign. The overwhelming theme of that race, long before anyone even thought about Russia, was voter rage at the entire political system.
The anger wasn’t just on the Republican side, where Trump humiliated the Republicans’ chosen $150 million contender, Jeb Bush (who got three delegates, or $50 million per delegate).
It was also evident on the Democratic side, where a self-proclaimed “Democratic Socialist” with little money and close to no institutional support became a surprise contender.
Because of a series of press misdiagnoses before the Russiagate stories even began, much of the American public was unprepared for news of a Trump win. A cloak-and-dagger election-fixing conspiracy therefore seemed more likely than it might have otherwise to large parts of the domestic news audience, because they hadn’t been prepared for anything else that would make sense.
Well, yes, and it had the added attraction of not exposing the complicity of the press in all that… A point which Taibbi is not willing to admit just yet, apparently keeping the Rolling Stone audience in mind.
Taibbi apparently he understands that Trump is the result of a great deal of anger in both parties, but I will warn you up front that he comes up with precisely the wrong answer to the problem. Personally I can’t wait to see what he comes up with in terms of analysis, of Trump’s runaway victory in 2020. The outstanding question seems to me to be, if he will at that point, admit that it comes down to the success of Trump’s policies…. policies that the vast majority of Americans have been clamoring for since Reagan left office?
I’m taking bets right now that he will not. There’s only so much truth that he can absorb at one time, I suspect.
People like Taibbi and Glenn Greenwald, who have long been leftist heroes, have of late become the pariahs of the left, simply for speaking the truth…. Albeit, in dribs and drabs. So much for the tolerance of the left. Anything outside complete lockstep must be immediately excised some the body politic in general and of course from the extensive news media in particular. My expectation is that the discovery of truth among these people will be thereby somewhat limited so as not to lose their positions.
By the way, does anyone remember when Rolling Stone (as well as MTV) used to be about music?