pics

This is the news section of a major newspaper. It’s not a leftist blog.

Which is funny, given that the bloggers - left, right, and center - have consistently been breaking more stories with better researched articles of late. The last straggling remnants of print journalism don't have the budget to do more than stenography or the clout to do more than lick the taint of whomever is in charge.

Biden’s age was indeed a major concern.

If you treat MAGA Fascism and Biden's Octogenarianism as equally important, so will your audience.

Their coverage of Trump was extremely good and extensive

It was extremely late and ineffectual.

Meanwhile, for every Trump scandal story, we got three different Transgender Athlete pieces. North of 30 distinct pieces appeared, often at the front page of the Times coverage. These ran in lockstep with the Republican political campaign ads vilifying liberal candidates for support of Title XI and Equal Access laws.

This, alongside a slew of stories demonizing student protesters which went so far as to call them unwitting agents of the Iranian military.

So, after echoing a slew of lies that echoed Republican talking points in a razor thin election all year long, they also popped off a handful of stories critical of the Republican nominee weeks into the early voting period. Cool. Great job.

Americans voted for him. That’s their choice.

Millions of Americans were disenfranchised in 2024.

This was a failure of democracy regardless of outcome. But the dogged assertion that "Americans Voted For This" consistently ignores how many Americans were strictly prohibited from participating, to the point of facing years of jail time, if they even dared submit a provisional ballot.

This is what people need to understand. MAGA supports and revels in evil acts. They are your enemy, they are threatening you, and doing violence unto you and your family through government violence. They want you dead, enslaved, amd/or as a personal rapetoy. And if it's not you, they want your children.

Which I wish was all an exaggeration, but its not.

Republicans are the enemy. An enemy you will likely have to kill to stay safe, because you can bet your ass they are coming for you.

The news that American conservatives see is not the same as the news that everyone else sees. Part of the trick of a media bubble is lying so comprehensively that sources from outside the bubble sound genuinely out of touch with reality, a belief that is consistently and purposefully reinforced by sources inside the bubble. A lot of conservatives in the bubble, especially those that work two or three jobs, don't really have time to fact check everything they see on the news, hear on the AM radio, read on twitter, etc. Some of them (a depressingly high number of them) did genuinely want awful things to happen to others, some of them didn't, but they all were certainly lied to and manipulated.

I’m not sure how to reply.

Their level of delusion and cognitive dissonance is so large it is difficult to describe.

You can’t put opinions in news.

Sure you can. These journals do it all the time by filtering it through a cushy interview or ghostwritten native ad or "unnamed source".

That was not an opinion. He said all those things. That full-page headline is only facts.

You can! In the "opinion" section! It's right there on the first page, actually, right next to the naked lady and perfume ads.

Fox would like a word…

First term, second term... Jan6 should've been the tipping point in everybody's perception. Not just the event and Trump's involvement in it, but the aftermath, all of MAGA, the baking, the hysteria, the hate.

I expected his 2nd term to become much worse, I felt the fear in my gut across the ocean when the election result came out.

But yeah, of course I didn't have any concrete vision, so it's still shocking, all the time.

I kinda suspect that the GOP was rigging the voting machines

It's not just the machines. The whole system is - well, prone to rigging. Voter ID, closing down voting places, fucking gerrymandering .... also see Florida 2001, that was a blueprint for what we're seeing today.

I'm pretty sure they did.

They wanted it