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MSNBC is interested in ginning up fears of a future in which there is no liberal democracy left, but in the process of ginning up those fears, it papers over the fact that liberal democracy has already been lost.
In a long, too long, segment last night, Maddow explained why Donald Trump’s attacks on the federal judiciary are a harbinger of “autocratic breakthrough,” and that if he decides to ignore courts orders against him, that “puts the US on the brink of abandoning democracy.”
Maddow listed rulings by federal judges in the past week alone that block the president’s criminal and unconstitutional plans to:
- cut scientific and medical funding,
- “buyout” federal workers,
- give Elon Musk access to classified and sensitive data,
- send “illegal” immigrants to Guantanamo Bay prison,
- release the names of FBI agents who investigated J6,
- end birthright citizenship,
- shut down the US Agency for International Development,
- freeze as much as $3 trillion in loans and grants.
She said the Trump administration’s choices are illegal and harmful, but “categorically, the most important thing here is their willingness to defy the courts, because that is the ultimate autocratic breakthrough.”
A willingness to defy the courts, Maddow said, is “a declaration that the rule of law does not apply to them, that it cannot constrain anything they want to do. That is a worse than any one outcome.”
“That is a forever-decision,” Maddow said, one that’s designed to prevent the American people from having any say about anything, ever. “That means nothing anyone else wants, and no court ruling, will ever again have any impact on what our government wants to do to us.”
We are “on the precipice,” she said, “looking over the edge.”
We’re not, though. We already over the edge, and we will never find our way back to liberal democracy if we do not accept that reality.
Maddow came close.
In the segment, she noted that federal judges have already said that the Trump administration is not complying with their orders. He is already doing what she said is “the ultimate autocratic breakthrough.”
Yet by the end of the segment, she pulled back, as if to suggest that though we are facing the abyss, we haven’t fallen into it quite yet, even though we have fallen into it. We have been falling since November.
Maddow is in good company. Lots of liberals, especially the affluent white liberals who tend to watch MSNBC, don’t want to believe the electorate handed the keys to the republic to a demented criminal president. Denial is natural, but it helps no one to encourage it.
That’s what I think is happening with segments like Maddow’s. We must accept that our beloved is dead in order to ask ourselves how to move forward, but Maddow encourages us to believe the dead are not.
Again, I think she means well, but meaning well is also in line with MSNBC’s interests. It’s better to keep viewers glued to their screens with highfalutin talk of liberal democracy being “on the precipice” than tell viewers the hard truth and risk giving them a reason to tune out.
This isn’t just about Maddow. Though hardly anyone watches her or the cable news network that employs her, together they have a commanding influence over the Democrats, and on how they think.
Rest at link.
