An 11-Point Plan To Fascism-Proof America

Sean: How should elected Democrats fight back against the epic levels of “sanewashing” we are seeing since the start of the Iran War, which reached yet another peak with shocking downplaying of Trump’s profane Easter threats.

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For those who weren’t following along, basically all independent media in the U.S., along with the handful of foreign news outlets I perused, covered Trump’s Easter threats as you’d expect: with full quotes, and an appropriate degree of urgency, given that he is the president of the United States, and was threatening in a blind panic to commit war crimes, because his own reckless actions have imperiled global stability. But, at least at first, big legacy American news outlets defaulted to their inside voices. They edited out the meat of Trump’s now infamous quote—“Open the Fuckin’ Strait, you crazy bastards, or you’ll be living in Hell,” and distilled it all down in the style of the New York Times, which wrote, “Trump Escalates Threats to Hit Iranian Power Plants After U.S. Rescues Downed Airman.”

I’ve written quite a lot in the past weeks about how Democrats can fight back against Republicans for enabling al this insanity, and I believe that remains the most important focus. Exposing, attacking, and cornering the elected opposition. Demanding accountability. Forcing votes. Citing all the MAGA infotainers who raced for the hills while acknowledging Trump should be removed from power. It is essential that the country have another public debate, right now, over Trump’s fitness for office, staged in a way that the media has no choice but to cover.

But media ref-working is important, too, and of a piece with the larger goal.

For a long time now, I’ve maintained the best way for Dems to do that is to borrow one piece of the GOP’s media relations playbook. Not the part where Republicans lie and tell people mainstream media is in cahoots with Democrats, and should be distrusted or destroyed as an institution. But the part where Republicans are willing to publicly upbraid specific reporters and outlets. Republicans do this whenever journalism impedes their objectives; Democrats could do it on more above-board grounds, e.g., when journalists knowingly misinform their readers or viewers in order to avoid telling the unvarnished truth about Trump.

It’d obviously be better if we could put reason back at the center of everything, from media criticism to tax policy, but when one of the two major parties devolves everything into a contest of raw power, the other party can either choose to engage, or watch helplessly as discourse and policy get warped in favor of the opposition.

One place Democrats could start, if they wanted to test my theory, is by monitoring legacy outlets to see if they’ll echo Trump’s false claim to have achieved regime change in Iran. That’s doublespeak for the whole administration now, much like last year, when everyone working for Trump had to assert that he’d “obliterated” the Iranian nuclear program. Or like how they all say “Department of War” and “Gulf of America” to signal tribal allegiance. But it’s a far more corrosive lie, and Democrats should have no misgivings about shaming journalists who echo it.