How do liberal pundits and Dem political operatives who advance right-wing framing stay in business?
How do audiences swallow this in a time of authoritarian outrages? Somebody must be paying them to keep it up because how much demand in the "free market" is there for right-wing content for the left?
I know I'm not just paranoid, because it would not be the first or even the most stupid of operations to convince liberals of right-wing framing and ideas.
Trump is being ratio’d by his own MAGA base about the Epstein files. And instead of focusing on that scandal, and what good things some Democrats are trying to do some of the time at least, many so-called liberal pundits and Dem operatives online are ignoring it.
What are they doing instead? They're attacking so-called “left” journalists, whatever that means. People really need to pin people down when they say "far left" or even "left" for that matter — because nobody knows what anyone's talking about because "far left" could mean anything from Joe Biden to accelerationists stanning North Korea. Can we at a minimum demand these people articulate better when they making sweeping statements about "the left" when what they mean is maybe tankies, and probably people who were paid to do online strawmanning as a form of narrative sabotage, or are just people who call themselves communists and then attack people they perceive to be lefties online. You might be surprised when you ask someone what they mean when they say "far left" after all. Recently when I asked that question, someone defined “the far left” as people who are "obsessed with minorities"; which is what right-wingers claimed about Kamala Harris, and I don't think many people left of George W. Bush would describe Kamala Harris as far left.
What else are these ostensibly Democratic party aligned pundits doing these days? Of course they're very much still re-litigating whatever pissed them off during the 2016 primary – over and over. I'll admit I'm a little cynical, so I tend to think they're just dipping that bucket down into a well they know got them clicks and dopamine hits in the past in the attention economy. That's why I'm not going to name them, and I sure won't link to examples, I have no interest in helping that nonsense. Anyone reading this far into this text has probably already seen a few examples already anyhow.
And another popular past time these days is somehow for some reason political experts equating everyone disappointed with the likes of John Fetterman as the same as some paid political operative who was associated with some Bernie campaign at some point a decade ago and turned out to be a jackass, mercenary, or otherwise disgraced. As if it could never be the case that sketch people get jobs on legitimate normal political campaigns. As if everyone who ever liked Bernie Sanders policy proposals or have critiques of their Democratic party politician representatives can be considered on par with professional high level political operatives who've upset some people. I really take offense to this because I'm nobody and it's insulting to equate me with anyone who gets paying jobs with high level national political campaigns, and commands attention. And I at least have a blog. Equating the average left voter or the garden variety registered Democrat with the likes of people who were paid operatives in high levels of movers and shakers is ridiculous. Of course you’re going to have some dubious actors funded to move in those circles, and every political campaign probably attracts some grifters. Trying to shame politicians, let alone ordinary people, because they believed some scammer in the past says more about the person who’s rehashing that crap than the people who were done wrong years ago.
And meanwhile the same people who think the worst thing on earth is liking the middle of the road garden variety Democrat policy proposals of Zohran Mamdani, are also supporting the disgraced Andrew Cuomo and portraying that as somehow a sign of being on the winning side, the good guys side, the American way and all the rest of it.
It's even permeated natural disaster discourse. Social media was full of people saying Texans voted for having no weather warning system, and other people scolding those people, many who were just poorly expressing resentment toward Texas for having a right wing kooky weirdo political mess of representatives in the state and federal government. People feel powerless to stop the train wreck they're watching, it's not surprising some things get expressed sideways. And then of course there's always the most gross anonymous social media accounts who come along and stir the pot until the most acrimonious stuff rises to the top and then gets centrifuged out to splatter on all onlookers.
Strangely climate catastrophe or the causes for public safety failures should be center stage in this surely. The talking point for Democrats should surely be the defunding of the weather service by TrumpMusk and pushed by various loopy climate denier weather conspiracy obsessed people in the Republican party. But nope, a huge portion of the media and social media discourse is all focused on chastising and tone-policing everyone else for every reason and then hopping on the silly both-sidesing bus and shouldering past the most craven of reporters in the media to get to that steering wheel and yank it to the right while claiming to drive on some imaginary straight line.
Words can't express how fucked up the discourse is. And it's everywhere online.
I don’t think this is an accident, I think it’s all too conveniently a way to keep everyone bickering among ourselves toward the bottom while the people at the top get away with murder, by policy at least, and maybe also scandalous sex crimes involving children.
Beware pundits, influencers, and popular accounts on social media that stoke up divisions between labor voices, disability advocates, climate activists. Oh, and so-called leftists. And as always, when someone says "the left" or "far leftists" or anything like that, demand that they describe for you who they're talking about and the actual attributes of the people they're referring to. And for pity's sake get off social media. Curtail the scrolling. And just don't look at what used to be that twitter place at all.