{"id":53656,"date":"2020-06-13T17:12:45","date_gmt":"2020-06-13T22:12:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53656"},"modified":"2020-06-13T17:12:49","modified_gmt":"2020-06-13T22:12:49","slug":"the-american-press-is-destroying-itself","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=53656","title":{"rendered":"The American Press Is Destroying Itself"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The American Press Is Destroying Itself<\/a><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

A flurry of newsroom revolts has transformed the American press<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sometimes it seems life can\u2019t get any worse in this country. Already in terror of a pandemic, Americans have lately been bombarded with images of grotesque state-sponsored violence, from the murder of George Floyd to countless scenes of police clubbing and brutalizing<\/a> protesters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Our president, Donald Trump, is a clown who makes a great reality-show villain but is uniquely toolless as the leader of a superpower nation. Watching him try to think through two society-imperiling crises is like waiting for a gerbil to solve Fermat\u2019s theorem. Calls to \u201cdominate\u201d marchers<\/a> and ad-libbed speculations about Floyd\u2019s \u201cgreat day\u201d looking down from heaven at Trump\u2019s crisis management and new unemployment numbers (\u201conly\u201d 21 million<\/a> out of work!) were pure gasoline at a tinderbox moment. The man seems determined to talk us into civil war.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But police violence, and Trump\u2019s daily assaults on the presidential competence standard, are only part of the disaster. On the other side of the political aisle, among self-described liberals, we\u2019re watching an intellectual revolution. It feels liberating to say after years of tiptoeing around the fact, but the American left has lost its mind. It\u2019s become a cowardly mob of upper-class social media addicts, Twitter Robespierres who move from discipline to discipline torching reputations and jobs with breathtaking casualness.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The leaders of this new movement are replacing traditional liberal beliefs about tolerance, free inquiry, and even racial harmony with ideas so toxic and unattractive that they eschew debate, moving straight to shaming, threats, and intimidation. They are counting on the guilt-ridden, self-flagellating nature of traditional American progressives, who will not stand up for themselves, and will walk to the Razor voluntarily.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u2026click on the above link to read the rest of the article\u2026<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The American Press Is Destroying Itself A flurry of newsroom revolts has transformed the American press Sometimes it seems life can\u2019t get any worse in this country. Already in terror of a pandemic, Americans have lately been bombarded with images of grotesque state-sponsored violence, from the murder of George Floyd to countless scenes of police clubbing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[29877,496,3733],"class_list":["post-53656","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-liberty","tag-american-press","tag-mainstream-media","tag-matt-taibbi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53656","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53656"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53656\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":53657,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53656\/revisions\/53657"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53656"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53656"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53656"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}