April 12, 2019
Even by the degraded standards of the Trump era, the chaos, contempt for the rule of law and naked racism displayed by the motley band of miscreants in this administration over the past several days stands out. We began the week with the purge at the Department of Homeland Security, followed by numerous articles featuring efforts to rehabilitate Kirstjen Nielsen’s shredded reputation. With the ascendancy of aspiring Nazi, Stephen Miller, some journalists bought the absurd spin that Jared Kushner, was Miller’s polar opposite and was trying to make a grand immigration deal, (Source: “Miller and Kushner on a potential collision course in Trump’s border crisis,” by Ashley Parker, Josh Dawsey and Robert Costa, The Washington Post, 4/10/19). The idea that the shallow dilettante with the cozy relationship with the murderous MBS and Miller are anything other than two sides of the same coin is a sick joke.
Many of these same journalists were hoodwinked by Bill Barr’s avuncular mien and establishment credentials into believing him to be an honest broker, rather than the corrupt partisan hack appointed for the express purpose of burying the Mueller Report and helping Trump evade accountability. Given that Barr auditioned for the position by writing an Op-Ed attacking the investigation, the decision by some journalists to contort themselves to spin Barr’s accusation that the FBI was “spying” on the Trump campaign as a mere synonym for surveillance was bizarre, (Source: “The Bigs Can’t Handle Bill Barr’s Cons,” by Josh Marshall, Talking Points Memo, 4/11/19). With that one sentence, Barr revived Trump’s widely discredited “Deep State” conspiracy, red meat that fed the disordered fever dreams of Trump’s fetid base. It was a deeply cynical move by someone who would rather weaponize his pedigree to destroy democracy, than share power with women and people of color.
While the agents of the kakistocracy were busy spinning the press, the escalating menace that they were determined to pose to wide swaths of Americans was barely being covered. Governor Mike DeWine made Ohio the third state in recent weeks (after Mississippi and Georgia) to enact the unconstitutional so-called “heartbeat bill,” which outlaws abortion once there is a detectable heartbeat, (Source: “Ohio governor signs ban on abortion after first heartbeat,” by The Associated Press, The Washington Post, 4/11/19). A Texas legislator went one step further, introducing a bill that would impose the death penalty for women who have abortions, exacting the ultimate penalty for exercising the constitutional right to control one’s own body!
In Louisiana, authorities announced the arrest of a suspect in the arson that burned three historic Black churches in Louisiana to the ground, (Source: “A Charred Gas Can, A Receipt and An Arrest in Fires of 3 Black Churches,” by Alan Blinder, Richard Fausset and John Eligon, The New York Times, 4/11/19). The authorities claimed that the suspect had been influenced by “black metal” music, a Satanic offshoot of heavy metal whose adherents have been involved in church burnings and murders. Most coverage of the arrest buried the lede that black metal is associated with neo-Nazi and racist views, claiming that there was no “proof” that this suspect espoused these views. Given the long history of burning and bombing black churches in the South, it requires the most extreme mental gymnastics to think otherwise, yet, here we are.
Over and over again, as the news takes a darker turn, we see journalists being deliberately obtuse, and in the process, obfuscating the truth. We are increasingly under attack from an emboldened cadre of unrestrained white supremacists. Those who willfully refuse to see what is right front of them are complicit. By choosing to accord the benefit of the doubt to those who have repeatedly shown that they don’t deserve it; by minimizing the danger being faced by the marginalized, they are choosing privilege over justice. History will remember.