That’s the most infuriating part of our corporate media’s complete failure over the past nine years*—the failure/refusal to draw the very simple line between the abstractions and the results. The Supreme Court’s rampant corruption is a perfect example, and voter suppression is another. They might cover the passage of laws making it harder to vote, but this November if Biden gets a million fewer votes in Georgia and virtually none in Atlanta, the coverage will 100 percent be “Gosh, what could Biden have done better?”
*(They’ve been failing for a lot longer than that, but the last nine years is the exact situation where they’ve spent decades bragging that they’ll stand up and come through, they did the opposite.)
Every animal whose emotional responses have been studied has a profound sense of fairness (eg the monkey who freaks out about being given a cucumber, after happily taking cucumber slices, when his neighbor starts getting grapes instead of cukes; but also if you have a family pet you know this is true). Humans are no different; unfairness evokes strong negative emotions. But the problem is that this is only true when you’re not the beneficiary of unfairness (the monkey with the grapes felt tip top). So yes the unfairness that’s allowed to take root in the one branch of government that we rely on to adjudicate fairness should set off klaxons, and it should be unrelenting. Communicating that to people who *think* they’re the beneficiaries is hard to do. It’s clear to the rest of us that the Alito fans are being played, but how do you get them to see that? I think that’s why Dobbs has been energising across party lines (the aftermath stories connected the dots) while voter repression, Trump’s accountability, and heaps of other decisions don’t gain broad traction. You can tell people it’s rigged but if they think it’s rigged for them they’re happy with it. And that’s what Fox and countless right wing pundits communicate effectively to their base.
That’s the most infuriating part of our corporate media’s complete failure over the past nine years*—the failure/refusal to draw the very simple line between the abstractions and the results. The Supreme Court’s rampant corruption is a perfect example, and voter suppression is another. They might cover the passage of laws making it harder to vote, but this November if Biden gets a million fewer votes in Georgia and virtually none in Atlanta, the coverage will 100 percent be “Gosh, what could Biden have done better?”
*(They’ve been failing for a lot longer than that, but the last nine years is the exact situation where they’ve spent decades bragging that they’ll stand up and come through, they did the opposite.)
😤 Abbott and the conservative SCOTUS justices.
Every animal whose emotional responses have been studied has a profound sense of fairness (eg the monkey who freaks out about being given a cucumber, after happily taking cucumber slices, when his neighbor starts getting grapes instead of cukes; but also if you have a family pet you know this is true). Humans are no different; unfairness evokes strong negative emotions. But the problem is that this is only true when you’re not the beneficiary of unfairness (the monkey with the grapes felt tip top). So yes the unfairness that’s allowed to take root in the one branch of government that we rely on to adjudicate fairness should set off klaxons, and it should be unrelenting. Communicating that to people who *think* they’re the beneficiaries is hard to do. It’s clear to the rest of us that the Alito fans are being played, but how do you get them to see that? I think that’s why Dobbs has been energising across party lines (the aftermath stories connected the dots) while voter repression, Trump’s accountability, and heaps of other decisions don’t gain broad traction. You can tell people it’s rigged but if they think it’s rigged for them they’re happy with it. And that’s what Fox and countless right wing pundits communicate effectively to their base.
I wonder if our gimp governor will show up next week in Manhattan, TexBanistan needs to be represented