This newsletter will appear at the start of New Year’s weekend, and the inevitable articles are already appearing expressing the dread of 2024 in the United States. Considering what it will be like a year from now, after the 2024 election, no one can imagine anything good. Either Biden will have won, in which case there will be widespread violence and disruption from the right and disillusioned resignation on the part of liberals and moderates who think Biden has done nothing, or nothing for them, and will accomplish nothing for another four years because he’s old and senile. Or Trump will have won, in which case we will witness the end of American democracy and the beginning of fascistic mob rule. Happy New Year.
The article you mention by Michelle Goldberg spins out of the same echo chamber as the one by Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce the week before in In These Times. It is the popular Resistance faux outrage of "whatever happened to Uncle Toby." Goldberg adduces examples of people “defecting” from mainstream perspectives—she lists Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Russell Brand—and never once considers it might be linked to people like her disregarding everything they have to say and caricaturing them as racist Trump-adjacent grifters with sexual skeletons in their closet. This attitude will tend to alienate not just the people she’s talking about, but a big percentage of the people watching. The problem is the one she lists: entitled people proud not to listen.
I appreciate the generosity of spirit behind your "like." Thanks. Michael
The article you mention by Michelle Goldberg spins out of the same echo chamber as the one by Jeff Sharlet and Kathryn Joyce the week before in In These Times. It is the popular Resistance faux outrage of "whatever happened to Uncle Toby." Goldberg adduces examples of people “defecting” from mainstream perspectives—she lists Glenn Greenwald, Matt Taibbi, and Russell Brand—and never once considers it might be linked to people like her disregarding everything they have to say and caricaturing them as racist Trump-adjacent grifters with sexual skeletons in their closet. This attitude will tend to alienate not just the people she’s talking about, but a big percentage of the people watching. The problem is the one she lists: entitled people proud not to listen.