On a typical day, it’s difficult enough to not hear the term “January 6” while watching CNN or listening NPR. But now, one year has passed since the harrowing incident at Capitol. The media is abuzz with claims the country is “now on the brink” of an impending “greater abyss.” This is driven by major political parties whose “unofficial litmus is” believing that 2020’s presidential election was stolen.
So maybe, in the midst of all the negativity surrounding democracy today, it might be worth focusing on some less-ballyhooed headlines that appeared January 5, including: “GOP officials at Arizona’s largest County affirm that the 2020 election is secure to rebut Trump’s claims”The Washington Post), “Senate Republicans open door to revising obscure 1887 law to protect elections” (NBC News), and (from The Union Journal), “Liz Cheney Says Donald Trump Unfit For Holding Any Future Office.”
The hundreds and thousands published articles about how America’s democracy has been “more threatened than ever” (as suggested by The Washington PostPaul Waldman). It can be difficult to see how such evidence shows Republican deviance from the “big lie”, and the media’s portrayal of an ununified GOP determined on fulfilling the authoritarian wishes of Donald Trump.
Barton Gellman, a highly-regarded, 13500-word-long cover story, wrote that Trump loyalists have taken control. “There is not room for disobedience in a party now completely devoted to twisting electoral system for former president,” he said. AtlanticThis article was titled, “Trump’s Next Corruptive Act Has Already Began.” Gellman stated that the “near unanimous embrace” of former President Trump by elected Republicans over the last year has led to Trump compelling the “whole party’s genuflection towards the Big Lie.”
Gellman does not represent a journalistic anomaly in exaggerating the GOP’s submission to the 45th President. The Washington PostYesterday’s article, titled “How Republicans became Trump’s party after Jan. 6,” included the following strange formulation: “Of all 32 candidates so far identified by the [GOP]The ‘Young Guns program’ has promised in the 2022 election cycle. At least twelve have begun to embrace the Republican orthodoxy of fraud that tainted 2020. Normally, one would expect an “orthodoxy,” to be able to achieve a higher percentage of votes than George McGovern did in 1972.
You would think that the facts of Republican capitulations to Trump and his conspiracy-believing fans—beginning with the 139 House members and eight senators who one year ago today shamefully voted against certifying a free and fair presidential election—would be journalistically sufficient. Recognizing the existence of 42 GOP senators, and 67 House member who did so would be journalistically sufficient. NotVote Trump’s Way, along with the legions of Republican state and local election officials who were honest and the many Republican-appointed judges that swatted down lame duck president’s Mickey Mouse-challenging lawsuits.
However, this is a naive view of the role of news agencies in an era of increased “moral clarity” that has forever endangered democracy. It is as follows: Washington Post media columnist Margaret Sullivan implored her colleagues earlier this week, “If American democracy is going to survive,” then media outlets need to make “democracy-under-siege a central focus of the work they present to the public,” and then “shout it from the rooftops. It’s not too late. Don’t waste your time on arguing for both sides. Get straight to democracy.
However, what happens when journalism ceases to even pretend it is trying to understand the opposing views? A key and certain development that will affect the political coverage of the midterms year is the collapse of all nuance regarding competing factionalisms within the GOP into one Trump monolith. This is something that should be ignored and opposed en bloc.
One of the more alarmist pieces Sullivan penned was a New York TimesEditorial for New Year featuring the five-alarm headline. Or was it an editorial threat? The title of this article is “Every Day Is January 6 Now.” The newspaper of record provides all citizens with the marching orders.
A movement openly hostile to democracy, and willing to resort to violence in order to its ends, poses a threat to the Republic. No self-governing society can survive such a threat by denying that it exists….
In the months and years to come, Americans of all stripes who value their self-government must mobilize at every level — not simply once every four years but today and tomorrow and the next day — to win elections and help protect the basic functions of democracy.
This somewhat startling statement was too much for Thomas Zimmer, Georgetown visiting professor, who was approvingly cited Sullivan. complainedYou can find the TimesEvidence for this is that “is frequently complicit in concealing the anti-democratic radicalization by the Republican Party, and the acute threat American democracy emanating form the Right,” includes“regularly providing an opportunity to people whose sole purpose it is to uphold traditional hierarchies and launder rightwing talk points and legitimize reactionary counter-mobilization to multiracial pluralism.” Zimmer was referring to anti-Trump conservative Bret Stevens.
It is January 6 every day, and each Republican a Trumpite. wordsIf it is related to Trump, or any other “big lie”, then the “underlying project of white Christian patriarchal dominance, by establishing one party-rule systems”, we will know what to do.
Waldman tried to sound optimistic, stating that “Because 2022 represents the first midterm election of a Presidential term, so the opposition party will likely win a significant victory anyway”, but not with violence. On the other hand, this victory will allow’respectable” portions of GOP to continue in their efforts to make fair elections a distant memory as they gain more control over the voting apparatus to ensure Republicans never lose.
Tabling for a moment those attempts to change voting laws and election officials—which are real, ongoing, and disturbing—think of the practical import of Waldman’s words, on both politics and journalism. Some journalists and news organisations will be forced to declare nearly any Republican candidate not specifically anti-Trump as either a passive participant or a complicit in Trump’s devastation of democracy. This is done in order to portray an election on the issue as a referendum, regardless how relevant it may have been in that campaign.
This recipe is for bad politics and terrible journalism. As anyone who has ever looked at the Virginia gubernatorial election should be reminded, it’s a recipe that leads to ineffective politics. Democratic favorite Terry McAuliffe desperately tried to make Republican Glenn Youngkin a Trump “surrogate”, and too many people in the media believed that a state that voted Democrat for the four previous presidential elections was experiencing a sudden “flare of democracy.”white backlash.” It turned out that voters are more driven by education policies than national journalists thought.
It is possible to drill down to the democracy-in–peril beat. You will be able get over heated nonsenses, such as Gellman’s 1,866-word section that probes how Trump may be “just like”. [Slobodan] Milošević,” you get to four concretely worrying (at least to me) trends:
1)Trump is, in spite of his horrible actions one year ago, and the characteristic lies since then, still the most important and popular figure in GOP politics. 2)Due to the insistence of former President 2+2=5, the majority of Republicans believe that the myth that President Joe Biden won was fraudulent. This encourages GOP politicians and others to follow that dream. 3)Republicans attempt to change electoral laws to increase political pressure, sometimes with success. These are just a few of the many things that you can do to help. 4)Trump wants to install his people in important election-tabulating posts at the state level. These are bad trends!
It’s still difficult to understand and trust all the details of these developments, even if you read the most detailed news reports. This Associated Press article “Slow motion insurrection: How GOP seizes electoral power” is a great example. We learn that the Republicans are attempting to take control of once-overlooked election machinery. This is evident by the activity in battleground states Michigan, Wisconsin and Pennsylvania (changing staff, auditing). “Experts claim this is a new time: In all of American modern history, no major party attempted to transform the administration and conduct of elections into a explicitly partisan matter.”
This scaremongering is a delight to me, as alarmed at the act of the former president using the Republican National Committee’s machinery to cancel free state presidential primaries for 2020. However, I crave context and proportion to be able to calibrate outrage appropriately. What is this? Really unprecedented?
Er, no.
“In anticipation for a photo finish presidential election.” PoliticoIn November 2008 it was reported that Democrats had built an administrative firewall to safeguard their electoral interests in five key battleground states, with no democracy-in-peril siren. The bulwark consists of control of secretary of state offices in five key states—Iowa, Minnesota, Nevada, New Mexico and Ohio—where the difference between victory and defeat in the 2004 presidential election was no more than 120,000 votes in any one of them.”
As I hear both sides’ accusations rushing towards my ears, I’ll give you a quick reminder: I don’t Know if the “Secretary of State Project,” as this George Soros–funded (no, really!) The “Secretary of State Project,” as this George Soros-funded (no, really!) initiative was called was comparable in its scope and potential for nefariousness with what the Trumpies are currently doing. But, DoYou should know I would rather have it explained to me than to just accept the one-sided journalistic onesideism.
By omitting helpful and complicating context, maximizing scary adjectives, and browbeating Democrats to do more (“they have so far failed to confront the urgency of this moment—unwilling or unable to take action to protect elections from subversion and sabotage,” the TimesEditorial board complaint: News organizations contribute to suspicions that they may not be honest brokers for these conflicting interpretations of events.
Margaret Sullivan takes it as axiomatic, for instance, that Stacey Abrams, a former Georgia Democratic gubernatorial hopeful and voting rights activist, is a hero, even though Abrams has not conceded defeat in 2018’s controversial election and spread misinformation regarding Georgia’s voting laws. Universal democratic values can be much more persuasive when they are applied to all people.
The January 6 story of lopsided media hype about democracy’s decline is far less important than the real thing. America’s problems with populism, violence and whackaloonery continue. This is why a large portion of the major party continues to engage in the same pathologies which contributed to the traumatic riot last year and prevented the transfer of power.
However, the only way out from this madness is to eradicate the existence of Trumpy Republicans and make every political encounter a struggle for the republic. The two-party system produces partisan swings. Is the country and its news media capable of coping?