There is much that could be said about whatever form of madness it was that happened during last night’s Biden-Trump debate. But the thing that matters most is that the media have made up their hive mind. What Trump is, what Trump has done, and what Trump intends to do no longer matters. The media, in ecstasy from the smell of blood, have found their victim, and it is Biden.
I wrote this to a friend this morning:
“I did not watch the debate last night. I am horrified at what I am reading this morning, a media ghoul feast like I’ve never seen before. The media being what it is, and the American people being what they are, I can’t imagine how Biden and the DNC can reverse this kind of press (and it must be nine times worse in the TV media). The media will do the Republican party’s work for them from here on, and Russia here we come. Everything other than Biden’s age will be drowned out; Trump’s age and what he is and what he has done doesn’t even matter anymore. We’re now in a manic psychic-epidemic mode, led and fed by a hyperventilating media, doing to Biden, and to history, what we did to Jimmy Carter, revising him into a failure. Kamala Harris as the Democratic candidate for president would be a guaranteed way to lose. Nobody likes her, including me; she was a mistake in 2020. The only person who has the political ability to do what would need to be done in a mere four months is Gavin Newsome. Lots of people must have stayed up all night in Washington gaming out a plan, or at least I hope they did. Biden did great during the state of the union speech three months ago, while Trump has been rambling about sharks and not remembering people he has known for years. I don’t understand this. But it was clearly the miracle straight from hell that Republicans needed to sell Hitler to the American people. The media will be fine with it, because doomscrolling will bring back the 2016-2020 glory years. God save us.
“I feel like the world just got turned upside down. Yesterday I did something I hadn’t done in ages. I stopped at a greasy spoon and had a (terrible) breakfast. There was a group of old farmer guys talking. In the previous two election years, they’d have been angry, repeating Fox News talking points. Yesterday there wasn’t a bit of that. They were laughing, having a good time, and not a bit of anger, talking about cows, broomstraw, and how people used to know their neighbors. I was pulled toward the conclusion that Republicans simply have not been able to stir up enough rage and provide enough fear-inducing talking points to get the deplorables to bother to vote in November. Now I’m afraid that has all changed.”
There are sane voices (including Biden’s). But sane voices will be drowned out in the media stampede. This is from Heather Cox Richardson’s newsletter this morning:
“It went on and on, and that was the point. This was not a debate. It was Trump using a technique that actually has a formal name, the Gish gallop, although I suspect he comes by it naturally. It’s a rhetorical technique in which someone throws out a fast string of lies, non-sequiturs, and specious arguments, so many that it is impossible to fact-check or rebut them in the amount of time it took to say them. Trying to figure out how to respond makes the opponent look confused, because they don’t know where to start grappling with the flood that has just hit them.
“It is a form of gaslighting, and it is especially effective on someone with a stutter, as Biden has.”
Who knows at this point how the Democratic Party will respond. Democrats versus a depraved Republican Party is one thing. But Democrats versus a depraved Republican Party and a depraved and savage media is another.
Update:
A few media watchers get it right, but pretty much no one pays attention to them. Dan Froomkin at Press Watch: “CNN fails the nation.”
I had a quick look at the front page of the New York Times this morning and I figured as much by the hysterical headline.