Paul Campos at LGM offers yet one more example, based on a "chatty cheerful conversation among four of [the New York Times'] op/ed columnists" on their digital page (no link), of how our elite media are normalizing fascism:
America is on the edge of installing a fascist dictatorship via a presidential election. This really shouldn’t be in any way controversial. I mean if you want to get all technical and pedantic you could say America is on the ee of installing an authoritarian dictatorship with a number of strikingly fascist-like features, so we don’t have to get into a stupid argument about whether Donald Trump actually meets the fascist minimum, whatever that might be defined to require.
And one reason this is about to happen is that our media elites simply refuse to acknowledge this extremely obvious fact. If they did, they couldn’t possibly hold chummy conversations among themselves about how Biden and Trump are both unsatisfactory options — a view I share if “unsatisfactory” in one case means “this pizza is slightly overcooked and therefore unsatisfactory,” while in the other case it means “this bubonic plague is an unsatisfactory disease.”
Campos cites recent polling (which, a year out, should be taken with a fist full of salt) showing Biden trailing the Malignant Loser in 5 of 6 battleground states, demonstrating the extent to which many Americans either don't understand the fascist threat or approve of it. The media's (in this case, the NYT, though you could easily substitute the Washington Post, network news, etc.) failure to acknowledge the fact that we're potentially on the verge of a fascist takeover of America (but, "Joe Biden is old!") confirms Masha Gessen's prescient warnings that institutions like the media/ press won't save us, and that we should not "be taken in by small signs of normality."
BONUS: Look at who the Washington Post is installing as its new publisher and CEO; Q.E.D.
