Try telling this to the “gEnOciDE jOe” clowns, because they are the ones that need to understand this- not the trumpers. Trumpers are too far gone. They won’t listen to reason.

But these ‘single issue’ kids that are grassrooting the ideology that not voting is better than a vote for “genocide” are going to fuck around and find out the hard way when they get Trump installed as a permanent fixture in the White House.

Hunter S. Thompson reflected on the problems with Objective Journalism throughout his career: summarized well in a section of his obituary for Nixon.

Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism — which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful.

Why sober, thoughtful conversation like this is not happening is beyond insane to me. Like I just do not know how to deal with a reality that treats this as normal.

Well said, I agree with every word.

The downfall of American democracy, like all democracies is lack of protection for its principles. If democracy becomes so radical about the principle of freedom of expression that there is no utterance that isn''t worthy debating, no matter how debased it is while at the same time anything and everything is up for debate and nothing enshrined in principle democracy becomes its own worst enemy. Freedom of expression becomes the tool with which it destroys itself.

The crux however lies in the fact that if institutions exist that protect democracy from itself, like the Austrian "Verfassungsschutz" , that watch the radical ends of the political spectrum and hamper their political efforts, sometimes trying and convicting individuals as members of a criminal organisation they could easily be accused as stifling democracy.

Ultimately the democratic principle rests upon its subjects willingness to practise it and to participate in it. If enough people are unhappy or uneducated enough to believe in the statements of demagogues and radicals its downfall cannot be stopped by institutionalized violence, political will, or anything else. Democracy cannot defend itself against its own worst enemy: People that for some reason or other have given up on that idea. Democracy therefore will always come with its own 5th column.

What makes a working democracy is that everyone is actively participating in the dicourse and does what they can to stop the 5th column from rising to the top. A working democracy depends on a working educational system that produces strong critical minds. It relies on making sure everyone gets their share and that each and every subject has a stake in a system. Then the 5th Column is small enough to not really damage democracy and there is no instituion necessary to protect it.

These days however the world is far beyond that tipping point. There are enough people unhappy enough with democracy that collective supression no longer works. And its troublesome to watch. I am terrified that someone like Donald Trump could even get to the point where he is the presidential candidate for a major party, let alone serve a term as president of the United States.

Usually these sentiments are met with endless barrages of whataboutism... Literally no one, no matter what they have done with their emails or how many lobal conflicts they started in their term could be a worse president then someone whose aim is to just aimlessly wield power like a European monarch whose mind is impaired by the hereditary conditions that come with generations of incest.

To demonstrate the inability of conventional media to cover an extremist like Trump, this article points out that the New York Times once ran an article titled “Hitler Tamed By Prison”. The article, published in 1924, starts off with a disturbing parallel to recent events:

Adolph Hitler, once the demi-god of the reactionary extremists, was released on parole from imprisonment at Fortress Landsberg, Bavaria, today and immediately left in an auto for Munich.

Damn right! It's about time a publication in (the outskirts of) the main stream points this out!

The establishment media and the Dem politicians insisting on pretending that the GOP is a legitimate party of regular conservatives rather than a fascist movement is how it was allowed to get this far in the first place!

But facism gets such great short turn proffits before we blow ourselves and the rest of nature to shit. /s

Calling out the false "both sides" thing (h/t to The Professional Left, by the way!) is something that should be common currency in the "liberal media".

Thanks to the silliness of false "objectivity" and, let's be honest, corporatism, it is hardly ever discussed. But thank goodness Vanity Fair did here...however, they still called these treasonous insurrectionists (really: terrorists) "rioters", FFS.