thebulwark--2020-07-31--Trump’s Difficulty Paying Respect to John Lewis

The death of Representative John Lewis ushered in a sense of mourning across the country .
Lewis was remembered as a courageous fighter against racial injustice and prejudice that was commonplace in the Jim Crow South .
Much of his work in the United States Congress was continuation of that fight .
Among the cascade of loving eulogies and statements from across the country there was no message from President Trump .
It took him 14 hours to even mention Lewis ’ s passing , in ( of course ) a tweet .
He then ordered that flags be flown @ @ @ @ @ @ @ a perfunctory statement that said almost nothing about Lewis except to note his “ longstanding public service.
” ( At least Vice President Mike Pence published a fine brief statement of remembrance . )
Trump even made a point of announcing that he would not be paying his respects to Lewis as his body lay in repose at the U.S. Capitol .
When I heard Trump make this remark , I was reminded of my year serving as a member of the Arimathea Pallbearer Ministry at Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ the legendary teacher Jim Skerl , was designed to help lay to rest those Clevelanders who did not have enough family or friends to serve as pallbearers at their burial .
When these situations arose , local funeral homes would contact the ministry and students would leave class to attend the services .
Today , the ministry serves about 250 funerals a year and nearly 500 of the school ’ s upperclassmen are members .
The concept has taken hold at other Catholic schools across the nation as well .
What the ministry @ @ @ @ @ @ @ men over the years was an appreciation for life and the meaning of empathy .
It was not enough for us simply to perform the duties of a pallbearer ; we also were expected to console the few family members and friends who were in attendance and offer them our prayers for their lost loved one .
We were there to grieve with them and to respect the dead .
The fact that we never knew the individual we helped lay to rest was of no matter .
What was important was grieving @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sisters and showing compassion to others in their time of mourning .
In other words , we were there to be Christians .
It can be hard for anyone—let alone high schoolers—to truly grasp mortality .
The idea that life was a sacred gift that could be taken at any moment is not commonly held among 17-year-olds .
That ’ s precisely why the Arimathea Ministry has such an impact on its participants : We learned how to grieve the loss of someone we never knew because each life is a unique gift @ @ @ @ @ @ @ appreciate our time on this earth .
It brought into perspective what truly matters in life because , in the end , we return to the dust from which we were made .
Was Donald Trump ’ s muted response to Lewis ’ s death caused by their opposing political views ?
Maybe so ; as a Politico headline put it , with considerable understatement , Trump “ struggle [ s ] to honor prominent critics.
” And of course the president of the United States has a busy job , so one @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to take the time to join former Presidents Obama , Bush , and Clinton at Lewis ’ s funeral in Atlanta .
But his decision to not even pay respects to Lewis down the street from the White House in the U.S. Capitol—as , again , Vice President Pence did—comes across as petty , unpresidential , and not in keeping with his Christian duties .
Personal quarrels and animosity do not follow one into the grave .
They are not an excuse to disregard celebrating the unique gift that we are all given @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the individual accomplishments achieved during life .
The president ought to have honored the greatness in the life of John Lewis , a man who fought so hard for civil rights .
Then again , should any of this surprise us ?
An utter lack of empathy has been a consistent characteristic of the president ’ s rhetoric and actions during the last several months , as tens of thousands of Americans died painful , gasping deaths because of COVID-19 .
Trump routinely used the coronavirus task force briefings to take shots at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ virus .
It is hard to think of anything he said or did that evinced real compassion or empathy for the sick , the dying , and the grieving .
Christians need to ask themselves if they can in good conscience vote for a man who so clearly lacks any of the virtues of their faith—a man so petty that he can not even bring himself to pay respects to someone like John Lewis .
I was blessed to have the opportunity to join the Arimethia Ministry .
It gave me a perspective @ @ @ @ @ @ @ my worldview to this day .
I learned that all life is sacred , no matter the personal relationship .
Donald Trump does not comprehend or accept this concept—and the country has suffered because of it .

The death of Representative John Lewis ushered in a sense of mourning across the country. Lewis was remembered as a courageous fighter against racial injustice and prejudice that was commonplace in the Jim Crow South. Much of his work in the United States Congress was continuation of that fight.
Among the cascade of loving eulogies and statements from across the country there was no message from President Trump. It took him 14 hours to even mention Lewis’s passing, in (of course) a tweet. He then ordered that flags be flown at half-staff for one day, in a perfunctory statement that said almost nothing about Lewis except to note his “longstanding public service.” (At least Vice President Mike Pence published a fine brief statement of remembrance.) Trump even made a point of announcing that he would not be paying his respects to Lewis as his body lay in repose at the U.S. Capitol.
When I heard Trump make this remark, I was reminded of my year serving as a member of the Arimathea Pallbearer Ministry at Saint Ignatius High School in Cleveland. The program, started in 2003 by the legendary teacher Jim Skerl, was designed to help lay to rest those Clevelanders who did not have enough family or friends to serve as pallbearers at their burial. When these situations arose, local funeral homes would contact the ministry and students would leave class to attend the services. Today, the ministry serves about 250 funerals a year and nearly 500 of the school’s upperclassmen are members. The concept has taken hold at other Catholic schools across the nation as well.
What the ministry taught me and hundreds of other young men over the years was an appreciation for life and the meaning of empathy. It was not enough for us simply to perform the duties of a pallbearer; we also were expected to console the few family members and friends who were in attendance and offer them our prayers for their lost loved one. We were there to grieve with them and to respect the dead. The fact that we never knew the individual we helped lay to rest was of no matter. What was important was grieving for the loss of our brothers and sisters and showing compassion to others in their time of mourning. In other words, we were there to be Christians.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
It can be hard for anyone—let alone high schoolers—to truly grasp mortality. The idea that life was a sacred gift that could be taken at any moment is not commonly held among 17-year-olds. That’s precisely why the Arimathea Ministry has such an impact on its participants: We learned how to grieve the loss of someone we never knew because each life is a unique gift worth celebrating. It taught us to appreciate our time on this earth. It brought into perspective what truly matters in life because, in the end, we return to the dust from which we were made.
Was Donald Trump’s muted response to Lewis’s death caused by their opposing political views? Maybe so; as a Politico headline put it, with considerable understatement, Trump “struggle[s] to honor prominent critics.” And of course the president of the United States has a busy job, so one can perhaps understand his not being able to take the time to join former Presidents Obama, Bush, and Clinton at Lewis’s funeral in Atlanta. But his decision to not even pay respects to Lewis down the street from the White House in the U.S. Capitol—as, again, Vice President Pence did—comes across as petty, unpresidential, and not in keeping with his Christian duties. Personal quarrels and animosity do not follow one into the grave. They are not an excuse to disregard celebrating the unique gift that we are all given. Death is a time to honor the individual accomplishments achieved during life. The president ought to have honored the greatness in the life of John Lewis, a man who fought so hard for civil rights.
Then again, should any of this surprise us? An utter lack of empathy has been a consistent characteristic of the president’s rhetoric and actions during the last several months, as tens of thousands of Americans died painful, gasping deaths because of COVID-19. Trump routinely used the coronavirus task force briefings to take shots at the media and spread misinformation about the virus. It is hard to think of anything he said or did that evinced real compassion or empathy for the sick, the dying, and the grieving.
Christians need to ask themselves if they can in good conscience vote for a man who so clearly lacks any of the virtues of their faith—a man so petty that he cannot even bring himself to pay respects to someone like John Lewis.
I was blessed to have the opportunity to join the Arimethia Ministry. It gave me a perspective and outlook on life that still shapes my worldview to this day. I learned that all life is sacred, no matter the personal relationship. Donald Trump does not comprehend or accept this concept—and the country has suffered because of it.


thebulwark--2020-08-01--The Show Must Go On

The Show Must Go On

In 1864 , our republic sat on the precipice of disaster .
The Union armies were still fighting with the Confederates .
Although the war turned in the North ’ s favor by the time of the election , it didn ’ t look good for Lincoln in early 1864 .
In fact , he contemplated and even made plans for his defeat .
His opponent , George B. McClellan , made it clear that he would end the war and end the Union by letting the South secede if he won the election .
In other words , the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the balance .
During the four years of his presidency , Lincoln had never been reluctant to use all of the constitutional and “ extra-constitutional , ” or , depending on who you ask , unconstitutional , powers at his disposal .
He interpreted his constitutional oath—to preserve , protect , and defend the Constitution—as giving him all the authority that was necessary to preserve the Union .
This included taking actions , otherwise illegal , such as suspending the writ of habeas corpus .
He even ignored a federal judge who had @ @ @ @ @ @ @ after the writ ’ s suspension .
All of which is to say , Lincoln was far from a blushing violet in his understanding of presidential power .
And yet , despite his robust belief in presidential power to do all kinds of things no president before him had claimed , he never even considered postponing the election of 1864 .
Thus , the most momentous election in American history proceeded to take place in the midst of a war for the very existence of the Union .
Why didn ’ t Lincoln @ @ @ @ @ @ @ until the war ’ s conclusion ?
Why not suggest that a fair election was impossible and that his overarching responsibility to save the Union demanded it be postponed ?
Because despite all of his rhetoric about his robust constitutional authorities to do those things necessary to win the war , those arguments ultimately had to stop at the point of constitutional processes .
His constitutional oath only permitted him so much power because Congress , through impeachment , and the people , through reelection , had the ability to hold him responsible @ @ @ @ @ @ @ him to postpone or cancel the election would be to deny the process by which he could be held responsible .
As long as he can be held responsible , the president remains within the Constitution ’ s structure .
His other potentially unconstitutional actions aren ’ t dangerous to the republic itself as long as he can be taken out of power .
His unconstitutional actions aren ’ t dangerous so long as they remain confined to the extraordinary circumstances of a civil war .
The danger comes if he abrogates the @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Constitution and thus paves the way for a limitless dictatorship based on some vague principle of “ necessity.
” If he were to have postponed or suspended the election because it was necessary to preserve the Union , then he would essentially be destroying the principle that makes the Union worth saving .
These processes are more important than anything else in the document because they insure that our politics remains essentially political and not a mere question of power .
For Lincoln , one of the biggest problems with southern secession @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to bullets.
” To postpone or cancel an election would be a similar act of power that departs from politics .
The Constitution establishes certain delineations and rules such that politics can take place without resorting to mere acts of power .
It makes possible what Hamilton called “ reflection and choice ” rather than mere “ accident and force.
” For this reason , any attempt to postpone the election would be the most dangerous thing Trump has done .
The founders recognized that republics of the past had failed because they @ @ @ @ @ @ @ with regular processes .
More than anything else , the Constitution is about creating various processes for establishing political authority .
Presidents are elected for four years through the electoral college .
Congress is specifically assigned the power to “ determine the Time of chusing [ sic ] the Electors , and the Day on which they shall give their Votes ; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.
” These powers and processes are permanent and not susceptible to debate .
There is not and ought not be room @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
No one doubts whether presidents can serve for more than four years or , until now , whether presidents can postpone an election .
The founders were wise enough to recognize that a republic could only survive its roiling politics if its institutions placed certain questions beyond the pale .
In 1800 , Adams and Jefferson might have disagreed vociferously with one another politically and even personally , but they didn ’ t extend their politics into a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the election .
As long as we have @ @ @ @ @ @ @ debates .
To postpone the election isn ’ t a matter for political debate .
It ’ s a strongman tactic that ’ s aiming to shut down debate .
As a constitutional republic that has sustained itself through constitutional processes in a way that no previous republic has ever sustained itself , we must stand against this without reservation .

In 1864, our republic sat on the precipice of disaster. The Union armies were still fighting with the Confederates. Although the war turned in the North’s favor by the time of the election, it didn’t look good for Lincoln in early 1864. In fact, he contemplated and even made plans for his defeat. His opponent, George B. McClellan, made it clear that he would end the war and end the Union by letting the South secede if he won the election. In other words, the fate of the Union itself hung in the balance.
During the four years of his presidency, Lincoln had never been reluctant to use all of the constitutional and “extra-constitutional,” or, depending on who you ask, unconstitutional, powers at his disposal. He interpreted his constitutional oath—to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution—as giving him all the authority that was necessary to preserve the Union. This included taking actions, otherwise illegal, such as suspending the writ of habeas corpus. He even ignored a federal judge who had ordered him to release those rounded up after the writ’s suspension.
All of which is to say, Lincoln was far from a blushing violet in his understanding of presidential power. And yet, despite his robust belief in presidential power to do all kinds of things no president before him had claimed, he never even considered postponing the election of 1864. Thus, the most momentous election in American history proceeded to take place in the midst of a war for the very existence of the Union.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Why didn’t Lincoln seek at least to postpone the election until the war’s conclusion? Why not suggest that a fair election was impossible and that his overarching responsibility to save the Union demanded it be postponed?
Because despite all of his rhetoric about his robust constitutional authorities to do those things necessary to win the war, those arguments ultimately had to stop at the point of constitutional processes. His constitutional oath only permitted him so much power because Congress, through impeachment, and the people, through reelection, had the ability to hold him responsible for its use and misuse. For him to postpone or cancel the election would be to deny the process by which he could be held responsible.
As long as he can be held responsible, the president remains within the Constitution’s structure. His other potentially unconstitutional actions aren’t dangerous to the republic itself as long as he can be taken out of power. His unconstitutional actions aren’t dangerous so long as they remain confined to the extraordinary circumstances of a civil war. The danger comes if he abrogates the principle of responsibility that tethers him to the Constitution and thus paves the way for a limitless dictatorship based on some vague principle of “necessity.” If he were to have postponed or suspended the election because it was necessary to preserve the Union, then he would essentially be destroying the principle that makes the Union worth saving.
These processes are more important than anything else in the document because they insure that our politics remains essentially political and not a mere question of power. For Lincoln, one of the biggest problems with southern secession is that they resorted from “ballots to bullets.” To postpone or cancel an election would be a similar act of power that departs from politics. The Constitution establishes certain delineations and rules such that politics can take place without resorting to mere acts of power. It makes possible what Hamilton called “reflection and choice” rather than mere “accident and force.”
For this reason, any attempt to postpone the election would be the most dangerous thing Trump has done. The founders recognized that republics of the past had failed because they didn’t have sufficiently strong institutions with regular processes. More than anything else, the Constitution is about creating various processes for establishing political authority. Presidents are elected for four years through the electoral college. Congress is specifically assigned the power to “determine the Time of chusing [sic] the Electors, and the Day on which they shall give their Votes; which Day shall be the same throughout the United States.” These powers and processes are permanent and not susceptible to debate. There is not and ought not be room for varying interpretations of these constitutional processes. No one doubts whether presidents can serve for more than four years or, until now, whether presidents can postpone an election.
The founders were wise enough to recognize that a republic could only survive its roiling politics if its institutions placed certain questions beyond the pale. In 1800, Adams and Jefferson might have disagreed vociferously with one another politically and even personally, but they didn’t extend their politics into a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the election. As long as we have these processes, we can have political debates. To postpone the election isn’t a matter for political debate. It’s a strongman tactic that’s aiming to shut down debate. As a constitutional republic that has sustained itself through constitutional processes in a way that no previous republic has ever sustained itself, we must stand against this without reservation.


thebulwark--2020-08-02--Erdogan’s Egregious Economic Experiment

Erdogan’s Egregious Economic Experiment

Controlled macroeconomic policy experiments are rare .
Yet that is what President Recep Erdogan seems to be offering in Turkey with his highly unconventional economic policies .
He might help us better understand how macroeconomics works but it is likely to come at a high cost for the Turkish public .
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman famously asserted that inflation was always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon .
He also cautioned countries against trying to fix their exchange rates with one-sided exchange rate intervention .
He reminded us that history was littered with examples , all ending in tears , of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ supplies and that attempted to fix their exchange rates .
Erdogan has a different theory .
In his view of the world , high interest rates to control the money supply are a cause and not a cure for inflation .
He also seems to think that trying to fix the exchange rate is a good idea even though this might mean burning through the country ’ s scarce foreign exchange reserves .
In addition , not content with these deviations from economic orthodoxy , he seems to think that budget discipline is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ management .
The Turkish president can not be accused of not practicing what he believes .
Over the last 18 months , he has leant heavily on Turkey ’ s central bank to cut interest rates drastically , hoping to jumpstart a flagging economy that was further enervated by the COVID-19 pandemic .
Following his orders , the central bank has slashed interest rates from 24 percent in November 2019 to their present level of 8.5 percent .
It did so with a view to boosting the economy ’ s consumption and construction @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bank ’ s largesse has been an explosion in Turkey ’ s money supply , with broad money now increasing by more than 40 percent over the past year .
Another consequence has been an uptick in inflation to over 12 percent , which has rendered interest rates significantly negative in inflation-adjusted terms .
That in turn has put considerable pressure on the Turkish balance of payments as the Turkish public , which is no stranger to earlier episodes of high inflation , has sought the safe haven of the U.S. dollar .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ source of the country ’ s exchange rate and inflation problem , Erdogan has instructed the central bank to intervene heavily in the exchange rate market to prevent the currency from depreciating .
He has also encouraged the central bank to borrow dollars heavily from domestic banks to finance the intervention , and he has increasingly resorted to exchange controls .
The net result has been that the central bank has burnt through its foreign exchange reserves and now has a negative net international reserve position of some $ 30 billion , meaning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ than it has on hand .
That is Turkey ’ s weakest foreign exchange position in the past 20 years .
As if to heighten the prospect that Turkey will soon experience an exchange rate crisis , Erdogan has been pursuing an erratic foreign policy as well .
Not content with alienating the United States by deepening his country ’ s military relationship with Russia , he now seems to be picking a political fight with Russia as well .
( Russo-Turkish relations have been mercurial since 2014 thanks to both countries ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ . )
In addition , he is ruling out any notion of having Turkey once again approach the IMF for financial support to help it manage its balance of payment difficulties .
A full-blown Turkish exchange rate crisis could have unwelcome ramifications for the rest of the world economy in general , and for French , Italian , and Spanish banks in particular .
Turkey is among the larger emerging market economies with an external debt of about $ 450 billion .
It also has a highly indebted corporate sector that has borrowed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the Turkish currency plunge , those corporations would have difficulty servicing their dollar-denominated debt .
That in turn would put even more pressure on the country ’ s already shaky banking system .
At a time when Turkey is hardly the only large emerging market economy that has a serious debt problem , a wave of Turkish corporate defaults , coupled with a Turkish banking crisis , could send shudders through the global financial system .
For the sake of the global economy , and especially for the sake of the poor Turks @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Erdogan ’ s policies , we should all hope that he will prove Friedman and a host of other economists wrong .
Not that I ’ d bet on it .

Controlled macroeconomic policy experiments are rare. Yet that is what President Recep Erdogan seems to be offering in Turkey with his highly unconventional economic policies. He might help us better understand how macroeconomics works but it is likely to come at a high cost for the Turkish public.
Nobel laureate Milton Friedman famously asserted that inflation was always and everywhere a monetary phenomenon. He also cautioned countries against trying to fix their exchange rates with one-sided exchange rate intervention. He reminded us that history was littered with examples, all ending in tears, of countries that failed to control their money supplies and that attempted to fix their exchange rates.
Erdogan has a different theory. In his view of the world, high interest rates to control the money supply are a cause and not a cure for inflation. He also seems to think that trying to fix the exchange rate is a good idea even though this might mean burning through the country’s scarce foreign exchange reserves. In addition, not content with these deviations from economic orthodoxy, he seems to think that budget discipline is not a necessary condition for sound economic management.
The Turkish president cannot be accused of not practicing what he believes. Over the last 18 months, he has leant heavily on Turkey’s central bank to cut interest rates drastically, hoping to jumpstart a flagging economy that was further enervated by the COVID-19 pandemic. Following his orders, the central bank has slashed interest rates from 24 percent in November 2019 to their present level of 8.5 percent. It did so with a view to boosting the economy’s consumption and construction sectors.
One result of the central bank’s largesse has been an explosion in Turkey’s money supply, with broad money now increasing by more than 40 percent over the past year. Another consequence has been an uptick in inflation to over 12 percent, which has rendered interest rates significantly negative in inflation-adjusted terms. That in turn has put considerable pressure on the Turkish balance of payments as the Turkish public, which is no stranger to earlier episodes of high inflation, has sought the safe haven of the U.S. dollar.
Rather than seek to address the underlying source of the country’s exchange rate and inflation problem, Erdogan has instructed the central bank to intervene heavily in the exchange rate market to prevent the currency from depreciating. He has also encouraged the central bank to borrow dollars heavily from domestic banks to finance the intervention, and he has increasingly resorted to exchange controls. The net result has been that the central bank has burnt through its foreign exchange reserves and now has a negative net international reserve position of some $30 billion, meaning it owes domestic banks that much more than it has on hand. That is Turkey’s weakest foreign exchange position in the past 20 years.
As if to heighten the prospect that Turkey will soon experience an exchange rate crisis, Erdogan has been pursuing an erratic foreign policy as well. Not content with alienating the United States by deepening his country’s military relationship with Russia, he now seems to be picking a political fight with Russia as well. (Russo-Turkish relations have been mercurial since 2014 thanks to both countries’ uncoordinated interventions in the Syrian civil war.) In addition, he is ruling out any notion of having Turkey once again approach the IMF for financial support to help it manage its balance of payment difficulties.
A full-blown Turkish exchange rate crisis could have unwelcome ramifications for the rest of the world economy in general, and for French, Italian, and Spanish banks in particular. Turkey is among the larger emerging market economies with an external debt of about $450 billion. It also has a highly indebted corporate sector that has borrowed more than $300 billion. Should the Turkish currency plunge, those corporations would have difficulty servicing their dollar-denominated debt. That in turn would put even more pressure on the country’s already shaky banking system.
At a time when Turkey is hardly the only large emerging market economy that has a serious debt problem, a wave of Turkish corporate defaults, coupled with a Turkish banking crisis, could send shudders through the global financial system.
For the sake of the global economy, and especially for the sake of the poor Turks who have to bear the brunt of Erdogan’s policies, we should all hope that he will prove Friedman and a host of other economists wrong. Not that I’d bet on it.


thebulwark--2020-08-02--Political Junkies Are Killing Our Democracy

On the evening of January 20 , 2019 , as I scrolled aimlessly through Twitter , a short video shot that day in Washington , D.C. grabbed my attention .
“ This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous People ’ s March , ” the caption read .
A young , white man we now know as Covington Catholic high school student Nick Sandmann stood , smiling .
Facing him was 64-year-old Nathan Phillips , an Omaha Nation elder and military veteran , beating a drum rhythmically , inches from Sandmann ’ s face .
@ @ @ @ @ @ @ hashtag # CovingtonBoys , I could see this video going viral .
In this first wave of coverage , some outlets , and my own progressive social media feeds , reported the confrontation as it was framed by the video ’ s producers : it was a typical instance of Trumpian racism performed by a teenager .
Many conservatives readers told a different story : They believed that the liberal media was accusing these boys of racism , when it was just as possible that the Native-American elder was really a political activist @ @ @ @ @ @ @ wave of coverage framed the incident as a Rohrschach test .
“ Tell me how you voted and I ’ ll tell you what you think you saw , ” wrote Jack Shafer in Politico , who warned of “ our newly discovered infinite capacity for dispute.
” Worse , from the moment the video began to populate social media feeds , Sandmann and his family were showered with abuse and violent threats—even as new , unedited videos showed that he and the Covington students had done nothing wrong .
The school closed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , the Sandmann family sued several mainstream outlets .
Eighteen months and much unwanted notoriety later , they have won retractions , apologies , and two settlements .
The # CovingtonBoys video was , in a way , synecdoche for the fun-house world that the 2016 election created .
Because one of the under-appreciated aspects of Trumpism is that since the president has now made himself not just the head of government , but the center of American public life , we ’ re all political junkies now .
Which means that we @ @ @ @ @ @ @ true to be true .
I became interested in the # CovingtonBoys story because I was working on a book about the rise of alternative media .
As I worked on verifying the story , I realized that Nick Sandmann had been framed .
Progressive friends were angry and disappointed with me when I urged them to stop sharing the video because it felt true to them .
Many went on at length about how Sandmann reminded them of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh , another Catholic school alumnus who @ @ @ @ @ @ @ sexual assault .
As it turns out , I was right , and a good many people ( or many good people , depending on how you want to think about it ) were wrong about what happened in Washington that day , which is why this episode seems worth reflecting on as we come ever closer to another presidential election .
Why ?
Because today , digital media outlets are still shaping stories to create conflict , and mainstream media outlets still lean on social media feeds as tip lines .
These @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they will continue to hurt all of us until we grapple with what digital media has become , what role it plays in our political imagination , and why we are so unwilling to put our responsibility to be informed citizens ahead of the pleasure and excitement of being political junkies .
Political junkies used to be the most informed people .
They were the ones who read two or three newspapers a day and subscribed to National Review or the New Republic ( or both ) .
But the combination of extreme @ @ @ @ @ @ @ has turned the political junkie into a person who reads more—much more—about political life .
And actually knows less .
Political junkies now persistently search for “ scoops ” that reaffirm their views—even if it means willfully misunderstanding reality .
The old media ecosystem produced and distributed the news , critical forms of truth-seeking—fact , expert opinion , and principled disagreement—which were necessary to maintaining democracy .
But thanks to the economics of the digital world , that ecosystem is in the process of collapse .
In its place has grown an alternative @ @ @ @ @ @ @ so-called “ political news ” sites and social media apps that bends reality to its will and serves as a perfect platform for political lies posing as news .
In many cases , actual fake news doesn ’ t just reflect partisan divides , it creates them , bringing speculation , gossip , alternative realities , and conspiracy theories into the mainstream .
By 2012 , Donald Trump ’ s signature phrase— “ a lot of people are saying ” —was enough to launch crackpot theories from the alt-web into Twitter , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ cable news programs .
As citizens , we should be outraged , not entertained , by fake news .
We should be even more outraged when real news is said to be fake , as Donald Trump and his enablers do on a regular basis .
And we don ’ t need to romanticize the public square , or the good old days of nightly news broadcasts on only three channels , to imagine that a country that could agree on basic facts would be on a path to a more democratic future @ @ @ @ @ @ @ way .
From the political newsletters of the 1950s , to public television , to blogging , alternative media once promised Americans better reporting and deeper political knowledge .
But when politics discovered the internet , a new and disturbing reality emerged : that alternative media channels could find a mass audience without having to clear any of the gatekeeping hurdles that professional journalists had built to keep themselves honest .
And after them came the real fake news : The Facebook content mills run by Macedonian teenagers and husband and wife teams @ @ @ @ @ @ @ how early alternative journalists with strong ideological perspectives , like I.F .
Stone or William F. Buckley , would have responded to this torrent of sludge .
But I think they would have been astonished by how freely we speak and write online , and , at the same time , how little of what we say contributes to the project of knowledge and human freedom .
Alternative new outlets like I.F .
Stone ’ s Weekly and Buckley ’ s National Review helped readers think through the issues of the day because @ @ @ @ @ @ @ as they understood it .
Each story was selected by a trusted friend , produced with care , packed with facts and well-considered opinions , and curated for an audience that valued information over sensation .
It was this same impulse to improve on the mainstream news that motivated the first generation of political bloggers—Mickey Kaus , Jonah Goldberg , Heather “ Digby ” Parton , and Andrew Sullivan .
Whether on the left or the right , these political junkies believed in well-researched facts .
In addition , they trusted their readers @ @ @ @ @ @ @ inspire conversation , and to lead the entire demos to consensus based on what was true and what was false .
As economics blogger Tyler Cowan reflected in 2011 , the best blogs were “ self-critical and self-reflective ” ; a blogger needed to cultivate a sense of “ your own weaknesses , where you were wrong last time , and where you can do better.
” But the blogosphere was killed by social media , aspirational corporate behemoths which ushered in a number of changes : • It reduced the barrier to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ an iPhone .
• It made public comments so voluminous and ephemeral that crowd-sourced fact checking became much less frequent .
• It helped magnify and accelerate the existing trends toward polarization by allowing everyone to create remarkably sturdy information bubbles .
The end result was that Americans fled to their ideological corners , consuming news that was curated for “ them ” but contributed little to the informed democracy that twentieth century alternative media pioneers had imagined .
How can democratic conversation function when it seems like all we do is reassure @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , that “ we ” are right and “ they ” are fatally wrong ?
The answer is : It doesn ’ t .
The new digital alternative media has fueled a crisis of political civility and distrust , as well as contempt for traditional forms of cultural and social authority , while giving up its valuable historic role of holding mainstream media accountable .
It also forfeited the special role alternative media had played in telling truth to power .
I.F .
Stone revealed the truth about the Vietnam war , and @ @ @ @ @ @ @ scandal .
At the turn of the twentieth century , bloggers confronted mainstream media ’ s relationship to the political establishment and not only won , but made new grassroots political movements , and outsider candidacies , possible .
Alternative digital media can also play a particularly destructive role in choosing surrogates for political conflict .
This is why the # CovingtonBoys video and its aftermath was always a bigger story than Donald Trump and his MAGA followers .
It was a story about us : About how badly we want access to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ willing to work to get it .
About how eager we are to engage in politics , but how much more energized we are by conflict , rather than reasoned debate .
And about how eagerly we accept any story that confirms our priors and reject any caution that challenges them .
But that isn ’ t how it has to be .
We don ’ t have to get up off the porch and chase every stick that Twitter throws .
Yes , we now live in an illiberal political culture that @ @ @ @ @ @ @ tweeting , Facebooking , watching YouTube videos , and scrolling through partisan sites whose main purpose is to capture and sell our data .
We can ’ t change the past .
But the great thing about alternative media is how responsive it can be to failure , and how swiftly it can adapt to what its audience demands .
On the brink of a historic election , we might remember a moment , almost 250 years ago , when all American media that didn ’ t belong to the king of England @ @ @ @ @ @ @ historian Bernard Bailyn , “ the sheer explosiveness of the controversies ” catapulted Americans ’ minds “ toward a mode of understanding altogether new , altogether modern.
” Those early Americans reflected before they reacted .
They fought a war , but they also wrote pamphlets .
They clamored in coffeehouses , and they dueled .
They settled , often grudgingly , for compromises and imperfect solutions , acted on them , and then started writing , reading , and listening some more .
And their descendants kept doing it , generation after @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in which they upbraided each other , resolved their differences , and gathered like-minded folks together to imagine new futures .
So can we .

On the evening of January 20, 2019, as I scrolled aimlessly through Twitter, a short video shot that day in Washington, D.C. grabbed my attention. “This MAGA loser gleefully bothering a Native American protester at the Indigenous People’s March,” the caption read. A young, white man we now know as Covington Catholic high school student Nick Sandmann stood, smiling. Facing him was 64-year-old Nathan Phillips, an Omaha Nation elder and military veteran, beating a drum rhythmically, inches from Sandmann’s face.
Traveling through social media rapidly under the hashtag #CovingtonBoys, I could see this video going viral. In this first wave of coverage, some outlets, and my own progressive social media feeds, reported the confrontation as it was framed by the video’s producers: it was a typical instance of Trumpian racism performed by a teenager.
Many conservatives readers told a different story: They believed that the liberal media was accusing these boys of racism, when it was just as possible that the Native-American elder was really a political activist trying to provoke them.
The second wave of coverage framed the incident as a Rohrschach test. “Tell me how you voted and I’ll tell you what you think you saw,” wrote Jack Shafer in Politico, who warned of “our newly discovered infinite capacity for dispute.”
Worse, from the moment the video began to populate social media feeds, Sandmann and his family were showered with abuse and violent threats—even as new, unedited videos showed that he and the Covington students had done nothing wrong. The school closed temporarily because of bomb threats. Subsequently, the Sandmann family sued several mainstream outlets. Eighteen months and much unwanted notoriety later, they have won retractions, apologies, and two settlements.
The #CovingtonBoys video was, in a way, synecdoche for the fun-house world that the 2016 election created.
Because one of the under-appreciated aspects of Trumpism is that since the president has now made himself not just the head of government, but the center of American public life, we’re all political junkies now. Which means that we all want the political narratives that feel true to be true.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
I became interested in the #CovingtonBoys story because I was working on a book about the rise of alternative media. As I worked on verifying the story, I realized that Nick Sandmann had been framed.
Progressive friends were angry and disappointed with me when I urged them to stop sharing the video because it felt true to them. Many went on at length about how Sandmann reminded them of Associate Justice of the Supreme Court Brett Kavanaugh, another Catholic school alumnus who had recently been confirmed amidst allegations of sexual assault.
As it turns out, I was right, and a good many people (or many good people, depending on how you want to think about it) were wrong about what happened in Washington that day, which is why this episode seems worth reflecting on as we come ever closer to another presidential election.
Why? Because today, digital media outlets are still shaping stories to create conflict, and mainstream media outlets still lean on social media feeds as tip lines.
These practices hurt all of us. And they will continue to hurt all of us until we grapple with what digital media has become, what role it plays in our political imagination, and why we are so unwilling to put our responsibility to be informed citizens ahead of the pleasure and excitement of being political junkies.
Political junkies used to be the most informed people. They were the ones who read two or three newspapers a day and subscribed to National Review or the New Republic (or both).
But the combination of extreme polarization and the rise of digital media has turned the political junkie into a person who reads more—much more—about political life. And actually knows less. Political junkies now persistently search for “scoops” that reaffirm their views—even if it means willfully misunderstanding reality.
The old media ecosystem produced and distributed the news, critical forms of truth-seeking—fact, expert opinion, and principled disagreement—which were necessary to maintaining democracy. But thanks to the economics of the digital world, that ecosystem is in the process of collapse.
In its place has grown an alternative digital media ecosystem, a forest of so-called “political news” sites and social media apps that bends reality to its will and serves as a perfect platform for political lies posing as news. In many cases, actual fake news doesn’t just reflect partisan divides, it creates them, bringing speculation, gossip, alternative realities, and conspiracy theories into the mainstream. By 2012, Donald Trump’s signature phrase—“a lot of people are saying”—was enough to launch crackpot theories from the alt-web into Twitter, and from there, to major newspapers and cable news programs.
As citizens, we should be outraged, not entertained, by fake news. We should be even more outraged when real news is said to be fake, as Donald Trump and his enablers do on a regular basis. And we don’t need to romanticize the public square, or the good old days of nightly news broadcasts on only three channels, to imagine that a country that could agree on basic facts would be on a path to a more democratic future.
It wasn’t always this way. From the political newsletters of the 1950s, to public television, to blogging, alternative media once promised Americans better reporting and deeper political knowledge. But when politics discovered the internet, a new and disturbing reality emerged: that alternative media channels could find a mass audience without having to clear any of the gatekeeping hurdles that professional journalists had built to keep themselves honest. And after them came the real fake news: The Facebook content mills run by Macedonian teenagers and husband and wife teams of grifters.
We cannot know how early alternative journalists with strong ideological perspectives, like I.F. Stone or William F. Buckley, would have responded to this torrent of sludge. But I think they would have been astonished by how freely we speak and write online, and, at the same time, how little of what we say contributes to the project of knowledge and human freedom.
Alternative new outlets like I.F. Stone’s Weekly and Buckley’s National Review helped readers think through the issues of the day because they took pains to tell the truth as they understood it. Each story was selected by a trusted friend, produced with care, packed with facts and well-considered opinions, and curated for an audience that valued information over sensation.
It was this same impulse to improve on the mainstream news that motivated the first generation of political bloggers—Mickey Kaus, Jonah Goldberg, Heather “Digby” Parton, and Andrew Sullivan. Whether on the left or the right, these political junkies believed in well-researched facts.
In addition, they trusted their readers to do their own research, to inspire conversation, and to lead the entire demos to consensus based on what was true and what was false. As economics blogger Tyler Cowan reflected in 2011, the best blogs were “self-critical and self-reflective”; a blogger needed to cultivate a sense of “your own weaknesses, where you were wrong last time, and where you can do better.”
But the blogosphere was killed by social media, aspirational corporate behemoths which ushered in a number of changes:
It reduced the barrier to entry for publishing to simple possession of an iPhone.
It made public comments so voluminous and ephemeral that crowd-sourced fact checking became much less frequent.
It helped magnify and accelerate the existing trends toward polarization by allowing everyone to create remarkably sturdy information bubbles.
The end result was that Americans fled to their ideological corners, consuming news that was curated for “them” but contributed little to the informed democracy that twentieth century alternative media pioneers had imagined.
How can democratic conversation function when it seems like all we do is reassure each other, within our partisan bubbles, that “we” are right and “they” are fatally wrong?
The answer is: It doesn’t.
The new digital alternative media has fueled a crisis of political civility and distrust, as well as contempt for traditional forms of cultural and social authority, while giving up its valuable historic role of holding mainstream media accountable.
It also forfeited the special role alternative media had played in telling truth to power. I.F. Stone revealed the truth about the Vietnam war, and Matt Drudge the truth about the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal. At the turn of the twentieth century, bloggers confronted mainstream media’s relationship to the political establishment and not only won, but made new grassroots political movements, and outsider candidacies, possible.
Alternative digital media can also play a particularly destructive role in choosing surrogates for political conflict. This is why the #CovingtonBoys video and its aftermath was always a bigger story than Donald Trump and his MAGA followers.
It was a story about us: About how badly we want access to truth,but how little we are willing to work to get it. About how eager we are to engage in politics, but how much more energized we are by conflict, rather than reasoned debate. And about how eagerly we accept any story that confirms our priors and reject any caution that challenges them.
But that isn’t how it has to be.
We don’t have to get up off the porch and chase every stick that Twitter throws. Yes, we now live in an illiberal political culture that snuck up on us while we were tweeting, Facebooking, watching YouTube videos, and scrolling through partisan sites whose main purpose is to capture and sell our data. We can’t change the past.
But the great thing about alternative media is how responsive it can be to failure, and how swiftly it can adapt to what its audience demands.
On the brink of a historic election, we might remember a moment, almost 250 years ago, when all American media that didn’t belong to the king of England was alternative media and, to paraphrase historian Bernard Bailyn, “the sheer explosiveness of the controversies” catapulted Americans’ minds “toward a mode of understanding altogether new, altogether modern.”
Those early Americans reflected before they reacted. They fought a war, but they also wrote pamphlets. They clamored in coffeehouses, and they dueled. They settled, often grudgingly, for compromises and imperfect solutions, acted on them, and then started writing, reading, and listening some more. And their descendants kept doing it, generation after generation, creating new, alternative media in which they upbraided each other, resolved their differences, and gathered like-minded folks together to imagine new futures.
So can we.


thebulwark--2020-08-03--‘The Craziness Is Exhausting People’

‘The Craziness Is Exhausting People’

With just over 90 days left until the election , it ’ s worth taking a close look at the political trends in one of the regions most important to the outcome of the 2016 election and potentially just as important in 2020—specifically , the five northwestern Pennsylvania counties bordering Ohio ( Erie , Crawford , Mercer , Lawrence , and Beaver ) and some of the nearby metro areas on both sides of the state line .
This region was part of the Democrats ’ vaunted “ blue wall ” that crumbled in 2016 .
Formerly dominated by staunch @ @ @ @ @ @ @ region flipped to the Trump-led GOP .
Take the northernmost of the five counties , Erie .
In this county with a population of about 270,000 , Obama beat McCain by 25,000 votes in 2008 and beat Romney by about 19,000 votes in 2012 , but Clinton lost to Trump by about 2,000 votes in 2016 .
It was a pocketbook issue in these counties .
According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer , between 2000 and the 2016 election , Ohio ’ s Trumbull County—part of the Youngstown metro area , where many western @ @ @ @ @ @ @ 40 percent of its total payroll , ” a total of $ 1.7 billion no longer in the workers ’ pockets .
Two-thirds of those jobs disappearing were in manufacturing .
Four years ago , Trump campaigned like a rock star in this part of the country , betting smartly that one really big campaign event has more impact than 40 more traditional stops where he shakes hands and kisses babies in local diners .
And Trump ’ s message resonated for these people looking for economic salvation .
By contrast , Trump @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
“ Erie County and the rest of the region felt ignored by Hillary Clinton , because she didn ’ t set foot in this area during the campaign , ” Robert Speel , a political science professor at Penn State Behrend in Erie , told me .
“ If she had come here once or twice , she would have won this county and likely the state .
It is very obvious now.
” And when Trump did come to western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio , he was less an intellectual policy @ @ @ @ @ @ @ bought it .
In June 2016 , at a rally outside Pittsburgh , Trump said “ I am going to talk about how to Make America Wealthy Again .
.
.
.
Many Pennsylvania towns once thriving and humming are now in a state [ of ] despair .
.
.
.
This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class .
It doesn ’ t have to be this way .
We can turn it all around—and we can turn it around fast.
” In August 2016 , Trump told an @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to bring jobs back to Pennsylvania , ” adding that Pennsylvania had lost a third of its manufacturing jobs to other countries and that “ we ’ re not taking care of our miners.
” In October 2016 , he told a crowd at a rally near Youngstown that , incredibly , “ I consider myself , in a certain way , to be a blue-collar worker.
” It was all about job growth—and that message worked in 2016 .
In Ohio , Trump won by about 442,000 votes , so his winning @ @ @ @ @ @ @ in the combined Youngstown counties ( Trumbull and Mahoning , where Obama won by about 57,000 in 2008 and again in 2012 ) didn ’ t make much of a difference there .
But in the five Pennsylvania counties on the northwest Ohio border , with their combined population of about 710,000—counties that Obama won by a total of 19,000 in 2008 and 3,500 in 2012—Trump won by 58,000 votes .
Recall that Trump ’ s margin in the entire state was just 44,000 .
But what is happening now in the region @ @ @ @ @ @ @ The craziness of last three years is exhausting people , and when people talk of Youngstown as being this big swath of red voters it is way overblown , ” says David Cohen , a University of Akron political scientist .
“ He came here and told people jobs are coming back and not to sell their homes and he was the one who was going to do all that.
” “ Think about that , ” Cohen continued .
“ People who had been on the losing ends of jobs for 50 @ @ @ @ @ @ @ them he is going to reverse it all .
They were desperate and bought in .
But of course , it didn ’ t happen , and there is an awful lot of resentment toward him right now.
” The poll numbers are showing that resentment .
In Pennsylvania , Biden is up by 6.0 percent .
In Ohio , he leads by 1.5 percent .
Ohio has lost about 84,000 manufacturing jobs from January 2017 to April 2020 ( a loss of 9 percent ) , while Pennsylvania lost about 60,000 ( @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Youngstown there has been a loss of 3,900 jobs over that time period , and 500 jobs in the smaller Erie .
This doesn ’ t count the 300 workers laid off in April at the Erie-based Wabtec Corp. , a train-locomotive manufacturer formerly owned by GE , and still the largest employer in Erie with 1,200 employees after the layoffs ( at its peak , the Erie plant employed about 18,000 people ) .
Back in October of last year , longtime Youngstown resident Monica Beasley-Martin—a local pastor and substitute school teacher @ @ @ @ @ @ @ his GM job—were $ 5,000 behind on the mortgage and considering leaving the area .
“ Right now , [ we ] can ’ t afford to do anything , ” she told a local newspaper .
“ I feel like [ its ] the dog that ’ s chasing its tail but never catches it .
I honestly don ’ t know what exactly I ’ m gon na do .
I know I can ’ t continue in this situation .
.
.
.
This is the time I thought I @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of slowing down and enjoying my life.
” “ Chasing their tail but never catching it ” has been a longtime problem in this part of the country .
The manufacturing jobs had been leaving for decades , and most people 65 and over still remember “ Black Monday ” in September 1977 , when a Youngstown giant steel mill closed its doors without warning and 5,000 workers instantly lost their jobs While some commentators at the national level interpreted Trump ’ s 2016 victory as a referendum on the nation ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ to service-sector and high-tech employment in the more globalized 2000s—in places like Erie and Youngstown , Trump ’ s “ Make America Great Again ” slogan was much more important .
It seemed like a lifeline to people who had been drowning for a long time .
That ’ s why some gave a side-eye look to Trump when he told a Youngstown crowd six months after his 2017 inauguration that the time when jobs were leaving Ohio was ending .
“ Don ’ t move , ” he said .
“ Don @ @ @ @ @ @ @ said this as talk was circulating that GM ’ s huge Lordstown plant might close .
And indeed , GM ended its production at Lordstown in March 2019 .
About 4,000 jobs were gone .
The importance of these two states is quickly moving to the forefront .
The Democrats had until recently seen Ohio as firmly in the hands of the GOP and a lost cause ; now they see it as in play .
The Biden campaign has recently begun running ads in Youngstown and Toledo .
The Youngstown-born-and-raised actor Ed @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for playing middle-aged working guys like Al Bundy on Married With Children and Jay Pritchett on Modern Family—and who once had a tryout as a football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers—put it succinctly on a recent Ohio Democratic party podcast tweeted out a few days ago : “ This guy is nuts , ” O ’ Neill said of Trump .
A retired Scranton trucker put it even more vividly in a recent Politico story on Pennsylvania voters : Trump was supposed to Make America Great Again , but “ now look at @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the shitter , and he ’ s the one flushing.
” This year , the question in this part of the country has morphed from being whether Trump is a viable candidate for political leadership and economic revival to whether he has the basic rationality and human decency needed to lead the country through the crisis of the pandemic .
Some polling shows Trump falling way short on that question .
In a June survey taken in Erie County , 54 percent of the respondents found that President Trump was “ ineffective ” @ @ @ @ @ @ @ from the COVID-19 pandemic.
” And this view of the president comes from a county that has had low numbers of deaths and infection cases—only 16 deaths and 954 cases total as of this writing .
In a mid-July poll of Pennsylvania voters , Monmouth University broke out ten swing counties amounting to about a quarter of the total vote in the state—counties where the winning margin for either candidate was less than 10 points in 2016 .
Clinton won those combined counties ( one of which is Erie ) by a close @ @ @ @ @ @ @ In this poll , in those same ten counties , Joe Biden has a 46 percent to 37 percent margin .
That is enough to win the state .
The Monmouth pollsters note that “ a weak spot for the president is his handling of the coronavirus outbreak.
” The pandemic has put on the back burner a number of smaller job-growth projects that Trump has focused on .
One is a “ cracker ” plant northeast of Pittsburgh that will make plastics from Marcellus Shale natural gas polyethylene ; the other is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ into a maker of battery-powered pickup trucks .
Both have long-term question marks because of the uncertainties in the transportation and energy industries , and neither is expected to start up in any way before mid-2021 .
One of the major reasons for the change in political thinking in this region is that with decline of manufacturing jobs over decades—and the rise of jobs in education and medicine over that same time period—women are replacing men in a political leadership shift .
“ Older female voters are more suspicious of him now in @ @ @ @ @ @ @ they were in 2016 , ” says Lara Putnam , a professor of political history at the University of Pittsburgh , who wrote about this in a recent policy paper .
“ Women may have voted for him with reservations in 2016 , but have put up with him for too long and are changing their minds.
” “ Part of the reason is the occupational advantage women have at this time , ” she told me .
“ Hospitals are where it is happening for political discussion .
Education institutions are where @ @ @ @ @ @ @ more of the breadwinners now , and are dominating the political discussion much more than they used to.
” But politically , there seems to be some stabilization 90-some days out .
Part of the reason for Biden ’ s rise in the polls is that his campaign strategy seems to be taking a step backward in thinking .
Not everyone in the Rust Belt is struggling , but even those who are retired and semi-comfortable still see their communities hurting economically , and where they live is eroding slowly .
Hence , @ @ @ @ @ @ @ of the country ( pride and history ) , and the Democrats are finding policy messages that are based on that sense of place .
It is the best way for Democrats to win outside the major cities , and Biden ’ s team seems to understand that in this important stretch of Pennsylvania-Ohio borderland .
They are taking a national political plotline and making it local , energizing local voters to have an awareness of responsibility .
Trump isn ’ t doing that in these states .
“ Trump was able to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ people in this part of the country in 2016 ; they lost jobs and he spoke to them personally , ” Rogers Smith , a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania told me .
“ He ’ s in trouble now because he didn ’ t deliver , even before the COVID-19 epidemic ravaged job growth even further.
” “ And this is a politically very important place , ” Smith continued .
“ It is diverse and no one section stands out .
It ’ s vital because it is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Neither party can really win without them .
”

With just over 90 days left until the election, it’s worth taking a close look at the political trends in one of the regions most important to the outcome of the 2016 election and potentially just as important in 2020—specifically, the five northwestern Pennsylvania counties bordering Ohio (Erie, Crawford, Mercer, Lawrence, and Beaver) and some of the nearby metro areas on both sides of the state line. This region was part of the Democrats’ vaunted “blue wall” that crumbled in 2016. Formerly dominated by staunch Democratic union workers, in 2016 this region flipped to the Trump-led GOP.
Take the northernmost of the five counties, Erie. In this county with a population of about 270,000, Obama beat McCain by 25,000 votes in 2008 and beat Romney by about 19,000 votes in 2012, but Clinton lost to Trump by about 2,000 votes in 2016.
It was a pocketbook issue in these counties. According to the Cleveland Plain-Dealer, between 2000 and the 2016 election, Ohio’s Trumbull County—part of the Youngstown metro area, where many western Pennsylvanians used to work—“lost nearly 40 percent of its total payroll,” a total of $1.7 billion no longer in the workers’ pockets. Two-thirds of those jobs disappearing were in manufacturing.
Four years ago, Trump campaigned like a rock star in this part of the country, betting smartly that one really big campaign event has more impact than 40 more traditional stops where he shakes hands and kisses babies in local diners. And Trump’s message resonated for these people looking for economic salvation.
By contrast, Trump’s 2016 opponent was a no-show. “Erie County and the rest of the region felt ignored by Hillary Clinton, because she didn’t set foot in this area during the campaign,” Robert Speel, a political science professor at Penn State Behrend in Erie, told me. “If she had come here once or twice, she would have won this county and likely the state. It is very obvious now.”
And when Trump did come to western Pennsylvania and eastern Ohio, he was less an intellectual policy determiner than a snake-oil salesman—and the crowd bought it. In June 2016, at a rally outside Pittsburgh, Trump said “I am going to talk about how to Make America Wealthy Again. . . . Many Pennsylvania towns once thriving and humming are now in a state [of] despair. . . . This wave of globalization has wiped out our middle class. It doesn’t have to be this way. We can turn it all around—and we can turn it around fast.”
In August 2016, Trump told an Erie crowd “I’m going to bring jobs back to Pennsylvania,” adding that Pennsylvania had lost a third of its manufacturing jobs to other countries and that “we’re not taking care of our miners.” In October 2016, he told a crowd at a rally near Youngstown that, incredibly, “I consider myself, in a certain way, to be a blue-collar worker.”
It was all about job growth—and that message worked in 2016. In Ohio, Trump won by about 442,000 votes, so his winning by a total of about 2,200 votes in the combined Youngstown counties (Trumbull and Mahoning, where Obama won by about 57,000 in 2008 and again in 2012) didn’t make much of a difference there. But in the five Pennsylvania counties on the northwest Ohio border, with their combined population of about 710,000—counties that Obama won by a total of 19,000 in 2008 and 3,500 in 2012—Trump won by 58,000 votes. Recall that Trump’s margin in the entire state was just 44,000.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
But what is happening now in the region is a sense of tiredness. “The craziness of last three years is exhausting people, and when people talk of Youngstown as being this big swath of red voters it is way overblown,” says David Cohen, a University of Akron political scientist. “He came here and told people jobs are coming back and not to sell their homes and he was the one who was going to do all that.”
“Think about that,” Cohen continued. “People who had been on the losing ends of jobs for 50 years were listening to some showman telling them he is going to reverse it all. They were desperate and bought in. But of course, it didn’t happen, and there is an awful lot of resentment toward him right now.”
The poll numbers are showing that resentment. In Pennsylvania, Biden is up by 6.0 percent. In Ohio, he leads by 1.5 percent.
Ohio has lost about 84,000 manufacturing jobs from January 2017 to April 2020 (a loss of 9 percent), while Pennsylvania lost about 60,000 (also about 9 percent). In Youngstown there has been a loss of 3,900 jobs over that time period, and 500 jobs in the smaller Erie. This doesn’t count the 300 workers laid off in April at the Erie-based Wabtec Corp., a train-locomotive manufacturer formerly owned by GE, and still the largest employer in Erie with 1,200 employees after the layoffs (at its peak, the Erie plant employed about 18,000 people).
Back in October of last year, longtime Youngstown resident Monica Beasley-Martin—a local pastor and substitute school teacher whose husband had been laid off from his GM job—were $5,000 behind on the mortgage and considering leaving the area.
“Right now, [we] can’t afford to do anything,” she told a local newspaper. “I feel like [its] the dog that’s chasing its tail but never catches it. I honestly don’t know what exactly I’m gonna do. I know I can’t continue in this situation. . . . This is the time I thought I’d be doing other things—just kind of slowing down and enjoying my life.”
“Chasing their tail but never catching it” has been a longtime problem in this part of the country. The manufacturing jobs had been leaving for decades, and most people 65 and over still remember “Black Monday” in September 1977, when a Youngstown giant steel mill closed its doors without warning and 5,000 workers instantly lost their jobs
While some commentators at the national level interpreted Trump’s 2016 victory as a referendum on the nation’s changing economy—the shift from 20th-century manufacturing jobs to service-sector and high-tech employment in the more globalized 2000s—in places like Erie and Youngstown, Trump’s “Make America Great Again” slogan was much more important. It seemed like a lifeline to people who had been drowning for a long time.
That’s why some gave a side-eye look to Trump when he told a Youngstown crowd six months after his 2017 inauguration that the time when jobs were leaving Ohio was ending. “Don’t move,” he said. “Don’t sell your house.” He said this as talk was circulating that GM’s huge Lordstown plant might close. And indeed, GM ended its production at Lordstown in March 2019. About 4,000 jobs were gone.
The importance of these two states is quickly moving to the forefront. The Democrats had until recently seen Ohio as firmly in the hands of the GOP and a lost cause; now they see it as in play. The Biden campaign has recently begun running ads in Youngstown and Toledo.
The Youngstown-born-and-raised actor Ed O’Neill, who is known for playing middle-aged working guys like Al Bundy on Married With Children and Jay Pritchett on Modern Family—and who once had a tryout as a football player for the Pittsburgh Steelers—put it succinctly on a recent Ohio Democratic party podcast tweeted out a few days ago: “This guy is nuts,” O’Neill said of Trump.
A retired Scranton trucker put it even more vividly in a recent Politico story on Pennsylvania voters: Trump was supposed to Make America Great Again, but “now look at us! We’re going down the shitter, and he’s the one flushing.”
This year, the question in this part of the country has morphed from being whether Trump is a viable candidate for political leadership and economic revival to whether he has the basic rationality and human decency needed to lead the country through the crisis of the pandemic. Some polling shows Trump falling way short on that question.
In a June survey taken in Erie County, 54 percent of the respondents found that President Trump was “ineffective” in addressing the local “economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.” And this view of the president comes from a county that has had low numbers of deaths and infection cases—only 16 deaths and 954 cases total as of this writing.
In a mid-July poll of Pennsylvania voters, Monmouth University broke out ten swing counties amounting to about a quarter of the total vote in the state—counties where the winning margin for either candidate was less than 10 points in 2016. Clinton won those combined counties (one of which is Erie) by a close 48.6 percent to 47.4 percent margin. In this poll, in those same ten counties, Joe Biden has a 46 percent to 37 percent margin. That is enough to win the state.
The Monmouth pollsters note that “a weak spot for the president is his handling of the coronavirus outbreak.”
The pandemic has put on the back burner a number of smaller job-growth projects that Trump has focused on. One is a “cracker” plant northeast of Pittsburgh that will make plastics from Marcellus Shale natural gas polyethylene; the other is to repurpose the former GM Lordstown plant into a maker of battery-powered pickup trucks. Both have long-term question marks because of the uncertainties in the transportation and energy industries, and neither is expected to start up in any way before mid-2021.
One of the major reasons for the change in political thinking in this region is that with decline of manufacturing jobs over decades—and the rise of jobs in education and medicine over that same time period—women are replacing men in a political leadership shift.
“Older female voters are more suspicious of him now in this area, much more so than they were in 2016,” says Lara Putnam, a professor of political history at the University of Pittsburgh, who wrote about this in a recent policy paper. “Women may have voted for him with reservations in 2016, but have put up with him for too long and are changing their minds.”
“Part of the reason is the occupational advantage women have at this time,” she told me. “Hospitals are where it is happening for political discussion. Education institutions are where networking is taking place. Women are more of the breadwinners now, and are dominating the political discussion much more than they used to.”
But politically, there seems to be some stabilization 90-some days out. Part of the reason for Biden’s rise in the polls is that his campaign strategy seems to be taking a step backward in thinking. Not everyone in the Rust Belt is struggling, but even those who are retired and semi-comfortable still see their communities hurting economically, and where they live is eroding slowly. Hence, geography is very important in this part of the country (pride and history), and the Democrats are finding policy messages that are based on that sense of place.
It is the best way for Democrats to win outside the major cities, and Biden’s team seems to understand that in this important stretch of Pennsylvania-Ohio borderland. They are taking a national political plotline and making it local, energizing local voters to have an awareness of responsibility. Trump isn’t doing that in these states.
“Trump was able to pull out a compelling story for the people in this part of the country in 2016; they lost jobs and he spoke to them personally,” Rogers Smith, a political science professor at the University of Pennsylvania told me. “He’s in trouble now because he didn’t deliver, even before the COVID-19 epidemic ravaged job growth even further.”
“And this is a politically very important place,” Smith continued. “It is diverse and no one section stands out. It’s vital because it is like a microcosm of the country. Neither party can really win without them.”


thebulwark--2020-08-03--The Blind Oracle of Noonan

The Blind Oracle of Noonan

Good news !
All of us who are worried about President Trump and the future of the Republican party can pack it up .
Peggy Noonan , our cherished Reaganic oracle , has spoken and has the answer to align the Always Trump , Sometimes Trump , and Never Trump factions of the GOP .
In her latest Wall Street Journal column , Noonan enters the “ Burn It Down ” debate and argues against voting out all the Trump enablers and sycophants because—are you ready for this ?
— “ persuasion will be key ” to saving the Republic @ @ @ @ @ @ @ easy , pour ourselves a cool beverage , and retire early .
Our work is done !
Praise be to Peggy !
That ’ s the kind of wistful , head-in-the-clouds analysis Noonan is known for , though .
Like , wouldn ’ t everything be better if everyone just played along more nicely ?
Why all this anger toward a president who lets Russia put bounties on the heads of our soldiers , tear-gases peaceful protesters , and lies and obstructs justice as a way of life ?
Why on earth should @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Cory Gardner be sacrificed on the altar of Trump just to prove a point about accountability ?
Because follow-the-leader Republicans like Collins will surely be the ones to save us from another trillion in deficit spending and finally stop funding for Planned Parenthood !
Because Collins , of all people , must have “ learned lessons ” from Trump .
We should all be so , so very concerned about the future of the GOP without Republicans like Collins .
Noonan concedes that “ Donald Trump is burning himself down.
” Yet she @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the people who handed him a lighter and kerosene .
No thank you .
Noonan , however , is free to throw herself on the Trump dumpster pyre .
She says Never Trumpers are “ bloody-minded ” and encouraging “ nihilism , ” but what she proposes is politically suicidal .
Noonan says Never Trumpers should not engage in “ pyromaniac fantasies but constructive modesty , even humility.
” More naïve , high-minded divinity from the Temple Noonan .
“ Constructive modesty ” sounds not like a political path to the future but @ @ @ @ @ @ @ Maybe she has clothing on the brain .
In May , Noonan was busy worrying how the pandemic would influence our outfit choices .
( How is that for a priority ? )
God save me from her sermons because there are no yoga pants comfortable enough to get me to find my “ humility ” and prostrate myself before our “ grab ’ em by the pussy ” president .
Let ’ s pray for those who do .
Noonan sees fashion as “ a leading indicator of a nation ’ s @ @ @ @ @ @ @ s the case , tell me what kind of fashion statement face masks on children make .
Because , thanks to our incompetent president , my kids will be wearing one for eight hours a day if they are lucky enough to leave the house and attend school this fall .
Not that going to school will actually happen , or socializing normally will return anytime soon .
Trump promised if he was president we ’ d all be able “ to say Merry Christmas again !
” Probably not in person to @ @ @ @ @ @ @ .
All because too few Republicans could bring themselves to tell Trump last spring that no , coronavirus is nothing like the flu .
Still , Peggy wants me to be more docile and polite while my family shelters in place for the next however many months as President Trump golfs his time away and the GOP lets him do it .
Noonan says that part of Trump ’ s “ momentary genius ” in 2016 was that he uniquely spoke to the “ anxieties ” of Americans about illegal immigration .
Is @ @ @ @ @ @ @ about Trump ’ s announcement speech that said Mexico is bringing rapists to America ?
Genius ?
Never Trumpers can ’ t find the pity in their hearts Noonan has for Trump , who “ came up against his own perfect storm ” with the pandemic , the lousy economy , and violence in the streets .
As if he were a passive observer in his presidency .
Oh , what to do !
“ When the Trump experience is over , the Republican Party will have to be rebuilt , ” Noonan @ @ @ @ @ @ @ A lot is going to have to be rethought .
Simple human persuasion will be key.
” And then she tries to persuade her readers that we Never Trumpers are really the problem .
“ Never Trumpers never seem to judge themselves , ” she complains , never once pausing to consider why it ’ s okay for her write things like Trump is “ weak , unserious and avoidant of the big issues ” while she remains “ weak , unserious and avoidant ” of the big issue of how to go @ @ @ @ @ @ @ leadership she pines for .
Noonan is too timid to admit that the dismal “ Trump experience ” will not end unless some Republicans screw up the nerve to forcefully close the curtains on it .
Otherwise , Donald Trump Jr. and a QAnon Congress will carry forth the freak flag of conservatism .
Is that what she wants ?
Because Trump is never going to go gently into the night as a good loser president should .
The Trump experience doesn ’ t end unless Never Trumpers “ finish him ” Mortal @ @ @ @ @ @ @ her , Noonan thinks Trumpism will disappear if Never Trumpers just shut up .
“ Mr .
Trump has been very publicly doing himself in , mismanaging his crises—setting himself on fire , ” she writes .
“ As long as that ’ s clear , his supporters won ’ t be able to say , if he loses , that he was a champion of the people who was betrayed by the party elites , the Never Trumpers and the deep state : ‘ He didn ’ t lose , he was @ @ @ @ @ @ @ if Trump depicting himself as a “ victim ” would be any different than any other day of his presidency .
“ Nobody likes me , ” he whined last week .
Who are the Never Trumpers to disagree ?
Noonan tries her best to avoid overtly positioning herself as yet another MAGA enabler , but that ’ s what her column implicitly amounts to .
She squints at Trump through a self-imposed gauzy blindfold instead of looking at him head-on .
Noonan imagines another time when Republicans had civil intra-party debates about @ @ @ @ @ @ @ the commander-in-chief and those who seek to make his manic authoritarian dreams come true .
She doesn ’ t want Never Trumpers making noise because their critiques “ will be unhelpful for Republicans , and bad for the country , if that ’ s the background music of the party the next 10 years.
” As if Noonan hasn ’ t been dancing to her own outdated tune for decades .
Yet , she sings on and on about her unrealistic , nostalgic views on politics from deep inside her walk-in closet of @ @ @ @ @ @ @ for one , am pressing the mute button on her .
While I ’ m at it , someone pass me a match .

Good news! All of us who are worried about President Trump and the future of the Republican party can pack it up. Peggy Noonan, our cherished Reaganic oracle, has spoken and has the answer to align the Always Trump, Sometimes Trump, and Never Trump factions of the GOP.
In her latest Wall Street Journal column, Noonan enters the “Burn It Down” debate and argues against voting out all the Trump enablers and sycophants because—are you ready for this?—“persuasion will be key” to saving the Republic. Ah! We can all rest easy, pour ourselves a cool beverage, and retire early. Our work is done! Praise be to Peggy!
That’s the kind of wistful, head-in-the-clouds analysis Noonan is known for, though. Like, wouldn’t everything be better if everyone just played along more nicely? Why all this anger toward a president who lets Russia put bounties on the heads of our soldiers, tear-gases peaceful protesters, and lies and obstructs justice as a way of life? Why on earth should Susan Collins, Martha McSally, and Cory Gardner be sacrificed on the altar of Trump just to prove a point about accountability? Because follow-the-leader Republicans like Collins will surely be the ones to save us from another trillion in deficit spending and finally stop funding for Planned Parenthood! Because Collins, of all people, must have “learned lessons” from Trump. We should all be so, so very concerned about the future of the GOP without Republicans like Collins.
Noonan concedes that “Donald Trump is burning himself down.” Yet she thinks we ought to keep voting for the people who handed him a lighter and kerosene.
No thank you. Noonan, however, is free to throw herself on the Trump dumpster pyre. She says Never Trumpers are “bloody-minded” and encouraging “nihilism,” but what she proposes is politically suicidal.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
Noonan says Never Trumpers should not engage in “pyromaniac fantasies but constructive modesty, even humility.” More naïve, high-minded divinity from the Temple Noonan. “Constructive modesty” sounds not like a political path to the future but like shapewear for the prudish soul. Maybe she has clothing on the brain. In May, Noonan was busy worrying how the pandemic would influence our outfit choices. (How is that for a priority?) God save me from her sermons because there are no yoga pants comfortable enough to get me to find my “humility” and prostrate myself before our “grab ’em by the pussy” president. Let’s pray for those who do.
Noonan sees fashion as “a leading indicator of a nation’s mood.” Well, if that’s the case, tell me what kind of fashion statement face masks on children make. Because, thanks to our incompetent president, my kids will be wearing one for eight hours a day if they are lucky enough to leave the house and attend school this fall.
Not that going to school will actually happen, or socializing normally will return anytime soon. Trump promised if he was president we’d all be able “to say Merry Christmas again!” Probably not in person to friends and family this year, though. All because too few Republicans could bring themselves to tell Trump last spring that no, coronavirus is nothing like the flu.
Still, Peggy wants me to be more docile and polite while my family shelters in place for the next however many months as President Trump golfs his time away and the GOP lets him do it.
Noonan says that part of Trump’s “momentary genius” in 2016 was that he uniquely spoke to the “anxieties” of Americans about illegal immigration. Is that what the great Reagan speechwriter thinks about Trump’s announcement speech that said Mexico is bringing rapists to America? Genius?
Never Trumpers can’t find the pity in their hearts Noonan has for Trump, who “came up against his own perfect storm” with the pandemic, the lousy economy, and violence in the streets. As if he were a passive observer in his presidency. Oh, what to do!
“When the Trump experience is over, the Republican Party will have to be rebuilt,” Noonan prophesies. (Duh.) “A lot is going to have to be rethought. Simple human persuasion will be key.” And then she tries to persuade her readers that we Never Trumpers are really the problem. “Never Trumpers never seem to judge themselves,” she complains, never once pausing to consider why it’s okay for her write things like Trump is “weak, unserious and avoidant of the big issues” while she remains “weak, unserious and avoidant” of the big issue of how to go about restoring the kind of strong Republican leadership she pines for.
Noonan is too timid to admit that the dismal “Trump experience” will not end unless some Republicans screw up the nerve to forcefully close the curtains on it. Otherwise, Donald Trump Jr. and a QAnon Congress will carry forth the freak flag of conservatism. Is that what she wants? Because Trump is never going to go gently into the night as a good loser president should. The Trump experience doesn’t end unless Never Trumpers “finish him” Mortal Kombat style.
With all evidence against her, Noonan thinks Trumpism will disappear if Never Trumpers just shut up. “Mr. Trump has been very publicly doing himself in, mismanaging his crises—setting himself on fire,” she writes. “As long as that’s clear, his supporters won’t be able to say, if he loses, that he was a champion of the people who was betrayed by the party elites, the Never Trumpers and the deep state: ‘He didn’t lose, he was the victim of treachery.’”
As if Trump depicting himself as a “victim” would be any different than any other day of his presidency. “Nobody likes me,” he whined last week. Who are the Never Trumpers to disagree?
Noonan tries her best to avoid overtly positioning herself as yet another MAGA enabler, but that’s what her column implicitly amounts to.
She squints at Trump through a self-imposed gauzy blindfold instead of looking at him head-on. Noonan imagines another time when Republicans had civil intra-party debates about policy and not the possible psychopathy of the commander-in-chief and those who seek to make his manic authoritarian dreams come true.
She doesn’t want Never Trumpers making noise because their critiques “will be unhelpful for Republicans, and bad for the country, if that’s the background music of the party the next 10 years.”
As if Noonan hasn’t been dancing to her own outdated tune for decades. Yet, she sings on and on about her unrealistic, nostalgic views on politics from deep inside her walk-in closet of memories from the 1980s.
Enough already.
I, for one, am pressing the mute button on her. While I’m at it, someone pass me a match.


The New Network

On the last edition of the Sub-Beacon ( subscribe !
Leave a review ! )
, I wondered if Netflix is , more or less , the modern-day equivalent of a 1980s or 1970s broadcast network : something to watch if not necessarily something great to watch .
I believe it was JVL who suggested the equivalent was Simon & Simon .
If you ’ re under the age of 30 or so , you ’ ve probably never heard of Simon & Simon , a program that ran for eight ( 8 ! )
seasons on CBS and starred @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ( And if you don ’ t remember Major Dad , please keep that to yourself ; I feel old enough as it is . )
But then , there ’ s a decent chance you ’ ve never heard of Gypsy or Godless or Seven Seconds , or recognize them only as tiles flickering past you on Netflix ’ s homepage while you scroll through an endless sea of mediocrity trying to find something interesting to watch before sighing and settling on The Office or Friends or 30 Rock .
The original @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , titles like The Old Guard or Extraction , to say nothing of the buzzier Bird Box .
.
.
but then , there are a lot of nonentities in that category as well , movies with insanely generic titles like—and I swear to God these are all real—Amateur and Dude and Candy Jar and Sometimes and Cargo and Extinction .
With a handful of obvious exceptions , must of which fall into the “ Blank Checks for Awards-Caliber Directors ” category—the Coens ’ Ballad of Buster Scruggs ; Cuaron ’ s Roma @ @ @ @ @ @ @ ; Scorsese ’ s The Irishman—Netflix originals have been , well , pretty “ meh.
” But don ’ t take my word for it !
This is the age of The Great Okay , as M.G .
Siegler put it : The Old Guard is the movie above that rates “ fine ” and that ’ s being slightly generous .
Despite some , frankly , bizarre hype as something special , a magical reinvention of the comic book movie or the superhero genre , The Old Guard was almost the definition @ @ @ @ @ @ @ were competently shot without overwhelming anyone with “ style ” or “ flair ” ; a storyline that was altogether too dour for its ridiculous premise ; a handful of solid actors given nothing to act against , given the utterly banal nature of the villain they were facing .
In short : It ’ s the sort of movie you watch while folding your socks and need something on in the background .
And if you decide to watch it at 2x speed , well , all the better .
There ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ kind of movie , that type of show !
Which brings me back to the broadcast networks .
TV was once referred to as a vast wasteland because it was , well , a shallow sea of mediocrity .
Classics could , undoubtedly , wander out of that primordial ooze—the occasional MASH ; the sublime early Simpsons—but most network TV came and went and no one really missed it .
It was , in a very real way , designed to be disposable .
In the era before mass adoption of the VCR @ @ @ @ @ @ @ , those programs all consisted of episodes that had to stand alone .
You had to be able to miss something and for that miss not to really matter .
And if it doesn ’ t really matter if something is missed .
.
.
does it matter if it ’ s watched ?
Anyway , Netflix strikes me as , more or less , the modern equivalent of broadcast networks , a reinvention of TV ’ s place in the cultural landscape as “ The Great Okay.
” A shockingly high number @ @ @ @ @ @ @ almost 73 million in the United States alone , and those subscribers often share accounts with multiple people .
And while Netflix undoubtedly does some micro-targeting , hitting different groups of viewers with different kinds of properties , at the end of the day the thing they seem most interested in impressing us with is the number of people who watch various of their big entities ( for at least two minutes ) .
They ’ re making mass-market mediocrities and delivering it in a slightly new way .
But Netflix isn ’ @ @ @ @ @ @ @ re just repackaging broadcast TV .

On the last edition of the Sub-Beacon (subscribe! Leave a review!), I wondered if Netflix is, more or less, the modern-day equivalent of a 1980s or 1970s broadcast network: something to watch if not necessarily something great to watch. I believe it was JVL who suggested the equivalent was Simon & Simon. If you’re under the age of 30 or so, you’ve probably never heard of Simon & Simon, a program that ran for eight (8!) seasons on CBS and starred Major Dad himself, Gerald McRaney. (And if you don’t remember Major Dad, please keep that to yourself; I feel old enough as it is.)
But then, there’s a decent chance you’ve never heard of Gypsy or Godless or Seven Seconds, or recognize them only as tiles flickering past you on Netflix’s homepage while you scroll through an endless sea of mediocrity trying to find something interesting to watch before sighing and settling on The Office or Friends or 30 Rock. The original movies you might have more familiarity with, titles like The Old Guard or Extraction, to say nothing of the buzzier Bird Box . . . but then, there are a lot of nonentities in that category as well, movies with insanely generic titles like—and I swear to God these are all real—Amateur and Dude and Candy Jar and Sometimes and Cargo and Extinction.
With a handful of obvious exceptions, must of which fall into the “Blank Checks for Awards-Caliber Directors” category—the Coens’ Ballad of Buster Scruggs; Cuaron’s Roma; Lee’s Da 5 Bloods; Scorsese’s The Irishman—Netflix originals have been, well, pretty “meh.” But don’t take my word for it! This is the age of The Great Okay, as M.G. Siegler put it:
The Old Guard is the movie above that rates “fine” and that’s being slightly generous. Despite some, frankly, bizarre hype as something special, a magical reinvention of the comic book movie or the superhero genre, The Old Guard was almost the definition of fine. Flat action scenes that were competently shot without overwhelming anyone with “style” or “flair”; a storyline that was altogether too dour for its ridiculous premise; a handful of solid actors given nothing to act against, given the utterly banal nature of the villain they were facing.
In short: It’s the sort of movie you watch while folding your socks and need something on in the background. And if you decide to watch it at 2x speed, well, all the better.
Podcast · August 15 2023 A.B. Stoddard: All the Ex-President’s Conspirators Donald Trump has been a low-rent mobster for his entire career, and now he’s getting…
There’s long been a place for that kind of movie, that type of show! Which brings me back to the broadcast networks. TV was once referred to as a vast wasteland because it was, well, a shallow sea of mediocrity. Classics could, undoubtedly, wander out of that primordial ooze—the occasional MASH; the sublime early Simpsons—but most network TV came and went and no one really missed it. It was, in a very real way, designed to be disposable. In the era before mass adoption of the VCR (to say nothing of DVRs), those programs all consisted of episodes that had to stand alone. You had to be able to miss something and for that miss not to really matter.
And if it doesn’t really matter if something is missed . . . does it matter if it’s watched?
Anyway, Netflix strikes me as, more or less, the modern equivalent of broadcast networks, a reinvention of TV’s place in the cultural landscape as “The Great Okay.” A shockingly high number of people have access to Netflix: almost 73 million in the United States alone, and those subscribers often share accounts with multiple people. And while Netflix undoubtedly does some micro-targeting, hitting different groups of viewers with different kinds of properties, at the end of the day the thing they seem most interested in impressing us with is the number of people who watch various of their big entities (for at least two minutes).
They’re making mass-market mediocrities and delivering it in a slightly new way. But Netflix isn’t reinventing the wheel. They’re just repackaging broadcast TV.