Tolerance as death wish

I’m front paging this comment from Tzimiskes, because it gets to the heart of something I’ve been brooding about ever since I read that imbecilic POLITICO piece early this morning:

[T]he basic problem with the media is that they just can’t accept the implications of what they are noticing. The coverage specific to January 6 has generally been pretty good, but the implication is that if the Republican party is actively trying to destroy democracy in America then there is a responsibility for every member of society to oppose them. At a very minimum they should be denying a platform to those that support the efforts of the party, make clear what those people are doing, and honestly contrast the Democrats with Republicans.

But they just can’t do this. They are willing to write an article pointing out that a group of powerful and prominent people are trying to destroy the country, but then they will quote those very same people directly when they defend themselves. They will publish op-eds by them. Basically, they won’t let a little thing like inciting people to murder, commit a coup, and destroy the country get in the way of elites extending privileges to other elites. Elite privilege trumps keeping this country functional.

The elite legacy media are now willing to say X is the case, at least to some extent. What they’re not willing to do is to have their subsequent behavior affected by the fact that X is the case.

Here’s a striking example: The New York Times, both on its news and op-ed sides, has on the whole been pretty decent in this week in regard to its coverage of the anniversary of the culmination of Trump’s two-month long attempted autogolpe. (Oh the words I didn’t know five years ago!). But then they go and give the most valuable op-ed space in America to authoritarian seditionist theocrat Sohrab Ahmari, so he can publish an apologia for the insurrectionists.

One question these people never ask themselves is: If the Trumpian political program is successful, will Ahmari and his ilk give space in prominent outlets to the opposition, to publish broadsides against our revenant fascism? To ask that question is to answer it.

But to ask that question would interrupt the placid flow of favor-trading and log rolling among the elites for who “all this” remains on the most basic level a kind of game, that deep down inside they don’t believe can really hurt them. And until it does, that will never change.